1880 called, they'd like their crime wave back...

So we're back to train robbery? Train robbery. I ask because that's the new crime same as the old crime crime that's apparently come back into fashion.

Well, 2022 is off to a great start.

Our ocean are choking on plastic,
but at least our hair will be volumized.

First of all, I think it comes as something of a shock that trains contain anything that anyone would want to steal. I kind of thought that everything was about container ships and then semi trucks, but no, apparently 28% of U.S. shipping is still done by train, including a fair amount of the junk we order online from Amazon--incidentally, please let's all stop ordering junk online, especially from Amazon. Anyway, now people are breaking into train cars and making off the with our precious essential oil diffusers and one-step hair dryer and volumizer hot air brushes. What? I looked it up. According to Union Pacific, instances of theft from their trains jumped 356% from 2020 to 2021.

The problem has gotten so bad in Los Angeles specifically that the company is threatening to hold a press conference where they will announce that not only do they still exist as a company, but that they'll be pulling out of L.A. due to lax prosecution of the crime. Which, I mean, if I was a 911 dispatcher, I'm not sure I'd believe someone calling about a train robbery either, but I guess this is actually a serious problem.

"Hello? Hello? Operator, connect me with the Pinkertons, post-haste!"

-some train company official 

Those are empty packages left by the
thieves littering the tracks, and not, as I first
assumed, just L.A. being kind of a pit.

So who and or what is to blame? Union Pacific, which operates its own security force, complains that thieves that they catch are released with no bail and come back to rob them again within twenty-four hours, so they're blaming the police. The city is saying they'd love to prosecute these crimes, but they need evidence, which is I suppose hard to come by. The sheer volume of the crimes makes it kind of unlikely that they're going to dust a hundred and fifty trains per day for prints.

The pandemic is obviously in the mix here, as it's been screwing with every aspect of the economy from supply lines to people being able to go to work. And because every crisis of the twenty-first century so far just combines into the calamitous frittata of fuckery that we've all been living in, the thieves have been making off with at-home COVID tests. 

A fuck-tata, if you will.

When Mitch McConnell is thanking
you, you're doing everything wrong.

But basically everyone just comes back to blaming poor people. Well, poverty really, which, thanks to our short memories, will eventually transfer to blaming the administration. And I have a couple of issues with that. For one, reversing the four-year shit show that was the Trump era is going to take more than a year when you have a hostile and unhinged opposition party, and two Democrats who have taken it upon themselves to doom voting rights so as not to upset the people who attempted an actual coup d'état.

No, really, give it back.

But I think if we really want to place the blame for an uptick in the crime that made Butch goddamn Cassidy famous where it really belongs, I think we should be looking elsewhere. I'm by no means an economist, but if people are raiding trains, I mean, trains! It's because half of Americans, collectively, only have two percent of the total wealth. That's insane. According to Bloomberg Wealth, Elon Musk nearly doubled his net worth in the second year of the pandemic. He made added another hundred billion. 

Obviously, the solution here isn't to just rob more trains until things even out. The solution is to blame the people who are really at fault--Republicans. You thought I was going to say rich people, didn't you? Well, there's a lot of overlap, but what I'm saying is that if Democrats actually controlled the Senate--Sinema and Manchin are basically Republicans--they could cancel student debt, close tax loopholes, and I don't know, impose a windfall tax on people who make a hundred billion dollars while the rest of us are resorting to train robbery. 

What I'm saying is that I think we're all a little sick of living in the end game
of Monopoly, where one player has all the money and hotels and it's just not fun anymore.
If we don't do something about it, sooner or later, someone's going to flip the board.