2 thoughts on “The Joy Of Shopping”

1. Your photo shows a real quality of life issue. There is good news though, because productive citizens who live a law abiding life are approaching the breaking point and want change.

   I live between two counties that contrast the difference that police who are allowed to do their job and backed by a district attorney who actually prosecutes can make. Your lockup photo could be from Woodland Hills, CA. I used to a shop at a Ralph’s that had items locked up as shown. There was a Rite-Aid in the same shopping center that had a shrink of $3,500 per day. Rite-Aid Corporate had remodeled the center around five years ago. They shut down the unprofitable location a couple years ago. Woodland Hills is part of LA City and the District Attorney is George Gascon. Gascon is a Soros’ backed DA who made a mess of San Francisco by not prosecuting criminals. before becoming LA County’s DA. He barely survived a recall campaign two years ago because the canvassers were suddenly fastidious about checking signatures on the recall petitions and kept if off the ballot.

   By contrast, you will not see locked up goods and people openly living homeless in Ventura County. You break the law in Thousand Oaks and you are going to get arrested, prosecuted and punished. People move to Ventura County to have better quality of life.

   Crazy California is at the breaking point. I just saw an article that George Gascon, the Social Justice Warrior is down 30% to Nathan Hochman, the real prosecutor. Proposition 47, which made drugs and theft under $950 unpunished is on its way out. Prop 47 resulted in an increase in homelessness that is driven by addiction and mental illness by taking away the tool of offering the drug addicted homeless the choice between treatment or incarceration. It also resulted in rampant shoplifting. The most infamous example was the flash mob hitting Nordstrom’s in Woodland Hills. Shoplifting is mass crime, with fences full of warehouses of stolen goods that they resell on eBay and Amazon. Proposition 36 is on the ballot and will undo the damage caused by Proposition 47. It is forecasted to pass.

   At a national level, Demonrat controlled cities are failing because of high cost and lawlessness. I read an article yesterday that young people in their 20s and 30s are not moving to large cities because of affordability, safety and quality of life issues. Remote work really ramped up during Covid-19 and has really enabled the process. There was a similar cycle in the late 60s and 70s, before urban pioneers starting moving into large cities in the late 80s. They bought big old houses in urban areas and restored the properties to their former glory. They voted for mayors like Rudy Giuliani and Police Chief’s like William Bratton who made cities like NYC safe. It’s a shame that as a country we are having to relearn lessons from only 50 years ago.

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   1. Yes – the problems here remind me of what we see in the news from San Francisco. This Target Store is in the “nice area” of St Paul, our Capitol City. It’s near the Catholic University our son when to college at. Things have changed a lot in the 4 years since he graduated. Our metro suburbs are largely safe and free of this nonsense. St Paul & Minneapolis are the decaying urban core.

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