On Twitter, progressives claim to hate the Lone Star State. In real life, they are moving to Texas.
“It’s becoming ever more difficult to have this as our global headquarters, a city which has so much violence,” billionaire Ken Griffin recently told the Economic Club of Chicago.
“I mean Chicago is like Afghanistan, on a good day, and that’s a problem,” said the wealthiest man in Illinois and CEO of Citadel, before relating his own harrowing brushes with rising crime in Chicago.
Griffin recounted personally seeing 25 bullets fired into the glass of his retail space. On another occasion, someone attempted to carjack the security detail outside his residence.
“It just tells you like how deep crime runs in this city,” said Griffin. “There is nowhere where you can feel safe today walking home at 9:30 at night and you worry about your kids coming to and from school.”
From every corner of Chicago, all the way to Washington, D.C., the same concern is being raised. And raised. And raised.
Nor is the problem of rising crime limited to Chicago. In NYC, L.A., San Francisco, Portland and Seattle it’s the same story.
Though the mainstream media is loathe to report on the rates of rising crime, word is getting out anyway. Crime is becoming more and more high-profile, too, as unchecked crime was bound to do.
Former Senator Barbara Boxer was assaulted and robbed in California a couple of months ago in broad daylight; there was a shooting outside National’s Stadium in Washington, D.C. over the summer; a man was attacked with a hatchet while using an ATM recently in New York City. In truth, there are too many incidents to mention.
Just in time for Halloween, Minneapolis has become “Murderopolis” again, the grim moniker by which the city was known in the bad old days of the mid-90’s. Until this past year, crime had been on a steady decline.
The FBI recently released statistics detailing a 30% increase in homicide nationwide over the past year- the single biggest jump since the agency started tracking murder rates nationwide six decades ago.
Optimists are fond of blaming this spike on COVID-19, while ignoring the fact that most countries, with so many people staying home, experienced a drop in property and violent crime during the same time period.
Even all areas in the U.S. haven’t experienced this crime wave equally. It isn’t anecdotal, either. The proof is in the pudding; people are moving away from areas where crime is increasing. Businesses are moving.
Because of course they are.
Ivory tower, purely academic progressives who have never owned a business themselves love to remind the victims of property crimes and looting of the existence of commercial insurance.
One good turn deserves another. Someone should remind these same progressives that insurance policies go up when claims are filed against them; too many claims, cancelled insurance.
Insurance companies don’t like losing money; so they don’t. If operating in an area of high crime becomes more loss than profit, goodbye location. Companies don’t like losing money either; they will pass any losses due to “shrinkage”- that is retail-speak for “theft by employees or customers”- on to customers, just as they always have.
Companies operating in high crime areas have another insurmountable problem besides not being able to get commercial insurance. It is impossible to attract top talent to your company if, as Ken Griffin pointed out, the headquarter city isn’t a safe place in which to live and raise a family.
While progressives ignore rates of rising crime, and Democrats running on tough-on-crime platforms sweep the New York City Democratic mayoral primary in every borough but Manhattan- companies and families with the wherewithal to do so are fleeing high-crime areas in droves.
Where are they going?
In a nutshell, they are moving to areas governed by conservatives, or at the very least they are moving to areas where Democrats do not enjoy a decades-long super-majority and there is less of a monotheistic approach to government.
Progressives don’t like Texas’ new abortion heartbeat law; they don’t like Texas’ governor Greg Abbott either. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, were it not for one Donald J. Trump, would probably have emerged the winner of the 2016 Republican primary and become Democrats’ public enemy number one.
As is, Cruz isn’t well-known for being popular on the left.
When it comes to immigration, and the humanitarian crisis unfolding at the U.S. Southern border, progressives tend to favor more and more lenient laws, more people admitted- even economic refugees who aren’t really in need of asylum so much as gainful employment.
Plenty of progressives favor completely open borders and would happily see ICE and the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol disbanded and replaced with social services and benefits for anyone who wants a new life in the U.S.
Texas politicians and elected officials, even most of the Democratic ones, don’t share this far-left fantasy of open borders. Texas, it won’t surprise progressives to learn, favors a more law enforcement-focused solution to illegal immigration.
Even given all this, even considering how vehemently opposed progressives are to any restrictions on abortion, progressives are still moving to Texas.
After the last census, California, which is only 24% Republican, is actually going to lose a Congressional seat for the first time in history- and it should have lost two.
Which states gained seats?
Why, the two states progressives claim to hate most, of course.
Florida and Texas both gained seats. Which means people are moving to those states; they are not moving to blue areas with more progressive politics.
Why not?
People fleeing New York City, Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, San Francisco and Portland, or not electing to move there in the first place, list a number of reasons for their decision.
Property and regulatory taxes are so high in California, the cost of a home nearly doubles under the weight of them. The average house in California costs about $850,000. The average house in Texas or Florida is half that.
High-sounding morals are nice and everything; but not everyone can afford to support progressive areas with tax dollars if this is the cost of doing business.
Everyone would like to eat all-organic, local food that is gentler on the environment, too; not everyone has the opportunity, or the money, to do that. Some working people living paycheck to paycheck, or living in a food desert, have to make do with what they have.
Every progressive in America would likely love to live in progressive bastions like New York City, San Francisco or Seattle.
To the horror of these working-class Democrats, progressive policies in these areas long ago made many of them unaffordable. Now, to the growing horror of same, progressive criminal justice policies has made many of these places dangerously unlivable as well.
Taxes and the cost of living has been high in progressive cities forever: The real reason people are now moving away from San Fransisco, New York City, Chicago, Minneapolis and Seattle is always the same.
Just ask them. No matter how many elections in which they have voted blue no matter who, they’ll tell you.
Crime and violence makes voters more conservative; or at the very least, it is making them more accepting of conservative politics and areas where conservatives are in charge.
Whether these transplants will bring their liberal politics with them remains to be seen. But it can’t be denied that while progressives might talk a good game about what real Texans always call “The Great State of Texas”, when the chips are down- and they are- safer neighborhoods, a higher standard of living, and more money in the pocket talks.
Like those irresistible chicken sandwiches at Chick-fil-A which progressives just can’t quit, the siren song of Texas is hard to resist.
(contributing writer, Brooke Bell)