Looting Stores, Crossing The Border, Drinking Milk, Furnishing Vacant Offices
Looters Need Benefits: Looters may soon find fewer opportunities to deploy the skills they have honed in recent years, skills that have caused so much “inventory shrinkage” that have so reduced retail profitability that hundreds of stores around the country are closing. Should this decline in employment opportunities become protracted, the question arises whether they will be eligible for unemployment benefits. As gig workers they would be counted among the unemployed for purposes of official statistics, but the information needed to provide benefits – addresses, history of employment, where they plied their trade, etc. – would be hard to come by.
Then there is the effect of the reduced supply of boosted goods moving through the supply chains that run from stores, to looters, to retailers unburdened by the high costs that bedevil such as Nordstrom’s, Lululemon, Target, Rite Care pharmacies, Apple and others with legacy leases and the need to pay taxes. Final sales of goods passing through this supply chain often benefit from having been “advertised” on social media platforms such as TikTok by those who came into possession of them, often after business hours.
It is sad that most of the newly unemployed looters and shoplifters will have had careers that, all in all, must be considered failures. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pointed out that these people “need to shoplift some bread or go hungry that night.” Unfortunately, the swarming looters and individual shoplifters most often have failed to locate that bread, and settled for sneakers, large-screen TVs, liquor, jewelry, handbags, razor blades and electronic gear.
Reducing The List of Banned Substances: With students subject to so many dangers these days it is odd that congress is considering removing one item from its list of banned substances – whole and 2% milk. Those dangerously health-destroying items made the list because the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a food and health watchdog group notes, believes students already consume too much saturated fat and congress should not be “making school meals less healthy by allowing whole milk."
The food police at the Agriculture Department are also considering the elimination of flavored milk from elementary and middle schools to cut down on added sugar. Unflavored skim milk has one disadvantage: many kids won’t drink it. The chairman of the House Agriculture committee told his colleagues, “We have seen students opt out of consuming milk altogether if they don’t have access to a variety they enjoy. Let’s face it: the only way to benefit from milk’s essential nutrients is to consume it.”
Critics of continuing the ban on whole and 2% milk, and eliminating chocolate milk, claim kids will consume more unhealthy sugar-laden drinks and sodas. Never can tell what people will do with freedom if they have it.
Legality Is Not An Option For The Impatient: The government has set up an app to permit immigrants to set up appointments for legal entry into the United States, not a bad idea to cope with the plight of these desperate men and some families until the country regains control of its borders. But migrants don’t like it. “They got sick of waiting for an appointment on the smartphone app…. Some said the app offered appointments to ask for asylum … longer than they were willing to wait…” reports the WSJ. So tens of thousands entered illegally in a single day, some with terrorists’ tattoos on their faces agents told Elon Musk who came to see for himself, which the President refuses to do. The swarms of migrants were waved through by overwhelmed border agents and, in the case of Venezuelans, offered work visas by Biden without another annoying delay. They headed for sanctuary cities that offered food, shelter, health care, free schooling for their kids and a variety of benefits. Crime pays.
It Looks Nice: Three out of every four federal employee choose to work at home, their bosses wishes notwithstanding. Should they finally concede that a visit to the office is sometimes needed, they should be pleased with the shiny new desks, chairs and other office furniture on which the government has spent $3 billion of taxpayer money in the past three years to accommodate any drop-in workers reports the NY Post.