Cali's Great Train Robberies

The Union Pacific Railroad Company’s trains are routinely being robbed by gangs. These miscreants are tricking the safety protocols by pulling a hand lever break, causing the trains to slow to a crawl. The rest of the nefarious crew, armed with bolt cutters, easily breaks into the vulnerable train cars, where they quickly grab what they can. They throw the rest of the merchandise onto the tracks so that other opportunistic scavengers can pick through the leftovers. It looks like a garbage heap. Union Pacific wrote a letter to the Los Angeles County district attorney pleading with him to start prosecuting these crimes that are devastating the supply chain.

Governor Gavin Newsom visited the trash-strewn tracks of downtown Los Angeles on January 20. After picking up a few pieces of trash, he said to the gathered reporters: “I see what you see. I see what you’ve been covering. I’m asking myself, ‘What the hell is going on?’ We look like a third-world country.” As National Review’s Dominic Pino pointed out, this does a disservice to third-world countries. At least they are trying to change their circumstances through the enforcement of law and order. California is doing precisely the opposite.