This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Why Is An Epidemic Of Thievery Sweeping America?
Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,
Desperate people do desperate things, and it appears that Americans are rapidly becoming a lot more desperate. An epidemic of thievery is sweeping across America, and authorities are not quite sure what to make of it.
Down in Texas, cattle thieves can get up to $1,500 per head of cattle, and cattle rustling was up nearly 40 percent last year. As you will read about below, cargo hijacking is becoming much more sophisticated, and it is being estimated that losses from cargo thefts will total about $216 million this year alone. And for some reason, Tide laundry detergent has become a very hot commodity among common criminals all across America. In fact, it is being reported that some grocery stores are "losing $10,000 to $15,000 a month" as a result of Tide thefts.
So why is all of this happening? Well, as I have written about previously, crime is on the rise in the United States, and poverty is absolutely exploding. In fact, according to the latest numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, 49.2 percent of all Americans are receiving benefits from at least one government program each month. Over the past five years, we have seen an unprecedented rise in the number of people that cannot take care of themselves without help from the government. Millions upon millions of Americans that have been forced into poverty are becoming increasingly angry, frustrated and desperate. And what we are watching right now is only just the beginning - all of this is going to get a whole lot worse.
When people think of the "social decay" that is happening to America, most of the time Texas and Oklahoma would not be the first places that come to mind. But according to NPR, there was nearly a 40 percent rise in the theft of cows and horses down in that area of the country last year...
Ranchers saw a sharp jump in cattle rustling last year in Texas and Oklahoma. Over 10,000 cows and horses were reported missing or stolen. That’s an almost 40 percent increase from the year before. It’s a trend that’s surprised some in law enforcement.
And this is happening even though the penalties for cattle rustling have gotten much stronger...
Penalties against rustlers were toughened by Texas lawmakers in 2009. Now, the crime could put you in prison for up to 10 years. But ironically more and more cattle have gone missing or stolen since that law was passed.
Another trend that is baffling law enforcement authorities is the huge wave of cargo hijackings that they have been seeing. According to a recent CBS News article, cargo thefts are becoming a lot more elaborate these days...
To steal huge shipments of valuable cargo, thieves are turning to a deceptively simple tactic: They pose as truckers, load the freight onto their own tractor-trailers and drive away with it.
It’s an increasingly common form of commercial identity theft that has allowed con men to make off each year with millions of dollars in merchandise, often food and beverages. And experts say the practice is growing so rapidly that it will soon become the most common way to steal freight.
You may not think that stealing truckloads of walnuts or cheese is a big deal, but the truth is that the dollar values of some of these thefts are absolutely staggering...
News reports from across the country recount just a few of the thefts: 80,000 pounds of walnuts worth $300,000 in California, $200,000 of Muenster cheese in Wisconsin, rib-eye steaks valued at $82,000 in Texas, $25,000 pounds of king crab worth $400,000 in California.
And this is not just happening in a few isolated locations. We are literally seeing an epidemic of cargo theft that stretches from coast to coast...
Although cargo thieves prey on companies across the nation, the hot spots are places with shipping ports or rail hubs. California leads the nation. Large numbers of thefts have also been reported in Texas, Florida, New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.
Perhaps most fascinating of all is the wave of Tide thefts that is sweeping the nation. The following is an excerpt from a New York Magazine article from earlier this year...
The call that came in from a local Safeway one day in March 2011 was unlike any the Organized Retail Crime Unit of the Prince George’s County Police Department had fielded before. The grocery store, located in suburban Bowie, Maryland, had been robbed repeatedly. But in every incident the only products taken were bottles—many, many bottles—of the liquid laundry detergent Tide. “They were losing $10,000 to $15,000 a month, with people just taking it off the shelves,” recalls Sergeant Aubrey Thompson, who heads the team. When Thompson and his officers arrived to investigate, they stumbled onto another apparent Tide theft in progress and busted two men who’d piled 100 or so of the bright-orange jugs into their Honda. The next day, Thompson returned to the store’s parking lot to tape a television interview about the crimes. A different robber took advantage of the distraction to make off with twenty more bottles.
So why are criminals so interested in Tide detergent?
Well, apparently it is heavily used as currency in the drug trade...
Southern California authorities say it’s a dirty business and a bizarre trend – drug users trading Tide detergent for crack.
The Riverside Press-Enterprise says it’s a nationwide problem – people are stealing the popular but expensive detergent and trading it for marijuana and crack cocaine.
San Bernardino police Sgt. Travis Walker says detectives raiding dope houses in recent years were puzzled when they found lots of Tide. Turns out it wasn’t being used to make drugs but to buy them.
We live at a time when an increasing number of Americans will do just about anything for money.
Down in Florida, one mother was so desperate for money that she was actually prostituting her three teenage daughters. Two of them were under the age of 18...
A St. Cloud mother was picked up Thursday on charges of serving as her three teenage daughters' madam in a West U.S. Highway 192 prostitution ring, according to the Osceola County Sheriff's Office.
At 2:30 p.m., Paula Howard flagged down an undercover detective acting as a "John" in front of a bus stop and arranged for him to have sex with one of her girls, ages 16, 17, and 18, an arrest record states.
The daughter agreed to perform the act for $20 and hopped into the car, telling the detective, "Oh yea. That's my family, but don't even worry about it. They know what I do," the report states.
But haven't you heard?
Everything is just fine in America. Barack Obama and the mainstream media keep telling us that over and over, so it must be true.
Right?
I think that we got a glimpse into the true condition of America last month when a "technical glitch" caused the system that processes food stamp card payments to malfunction for a couple of hours. A Time Magazine article described what happened at one Wal-Mart in Louisiana...
Customers cleared shelves and police were called in to control crowds taking advantage of suddenly unlimited spending allowed on their Electronic Benefits Transfer cards, which are issued to recipients of government food stamps. Spending limits on the cards were reportedly disabled for about two hours.
When a store in Springhill, La., announced over the loudspeaker that the glitch was fixed, shoppers simply abandoned loaded carts, according to Springhill Police Chief Will Lynd.
And similar "mini-riots" happened in a bunch of other locations as well.
For example, customers at one Wal-Mart in Mississippi just started taking groceries out of the store that they hadn't paid for when their food stamp cards were not accepted...
Customers staged a disturbance then walked out of a Mississippi Walmart store with groceries that hadn’t been paid for Saturday night after a computer glitch left them unable to use their food stamp cards.
People in 17 states found themselves unable to buy groceries with their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program cards after a routine check by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a temporary system failure.
Shortly after the mini-riot, managers decided to temporarily close the store, citing customer safety.
Keep in mind that all of this was caused by a "technical glitch" that only lasted for a few hours.
What would happen if there was a problem that lasted for much longer?
That is a sobering thing to think about.
And as I wrote about recently, all 47 million Americans on food stamps just had their benefits reduced on November 1st. This is causing food banks all across the country to brace for a huge influx of needy people...
Food banks across the country, stretched thin in the aftermath of the recession, are bracing for more people coming through their doors in the wake of cuts to the federal food stamp program.
Food stamp benefits to 47 million Americans were cut starting Friday as a temporary boost to the federal program comes to an end without new funding from a deadlocked Congress.
Under the program, known formally as the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program, or SNAP, a family of four that gets $668 per month in benefits will find that amount cut by $36.
In fact, the president of the Food Bank for New York City says that members of her organization "are panicking"...
As president of the Food Bank for New York City, Margaret Purvis expects those cuts will draw even more people to organizations that already provide 400,000 meals a day to hungry city folks.
"Our members are panicking," she said as time wound down before the benefit decreases go into effect. "We're telling everyone to make sure that you are prepared for longer lines."
Purvis also told Salon.com that "when people cannot afford to eat food" it has the potential to start "riots"...
“If you look across the world, riots always begin typically the same way: when people cannot afford to eat food,” Margarette Purvis, the president and CEO of the Food Bank for New York City, told Salon Monday. Purvis said that the looming cut would mean about 76 million meals “that will no longer be on the plates of the poorest families” in NYC alone – a figure that outstrips the total number of meals distributed each year by the Food Bank for New York City, the largest food bank in the country. “There will be an immediate impact,” she said.
So will we see riots as a result of these food stamp cuts?
No, I do not believe that we will see riots yet.
But the volcano of anger, frustration and desperation that is simmering just below the surface of this country continues to get hotter.
Someday it will explode.
What will you do when that happens?
»
- 25972 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
Elevated crime just plays to the game plan like every other crap falling on our heads. Increased demands for police "protection" with their ever inflating budgets to match. More restrictions on gun ownership, and imprisonment for anyone who would dare to protect their own lives and property. The police look at it like any other union employee for as you know the truck driver would receive no end to the retributions from his fellow union members if he were so bold as to pick up a wrench. The velocity increases as we near the drain, even if it does still appear tangential.
Now, more than at any time in the history of this country, one must align oneself with: discernment, understanding, love, faith, integrity, and character development. What one "puts out" comes back ten fold, is a fair description of the reaction that follows ones life-supporting or life-damaging action.
This is a good opportunity to get into the private security field. Merchants are going to need protection. Riding shotgun with a trucker carrying high value freight is easy money. A pro robbery gang is not looking for a firefight. How about that for a post crash business?
They may as well steal, that is how the TOP gets theirs, and it's for damn sure nobody will offer the bottom any deal on anything. Work for 20 years as a loyal and dedicated employee and see that pension you were promised go away when the parent corporation sells out? Don't expect any prosecutions. Lose your house when that 'helpful' agent at the mortgage company converts your fixed rate to a variable, all while promising this will save your home, so they can get a bonus? Too bad, those things happen.
Most of you people here have not had that rape experience yet, or you think you can recover from it. When you lose the fruits of 20 years and are blown off in calls for legal redress, you can begin to wear those feels.
"Tide laundry detergent has become a very hot commodity among common criminals all across America. "
Imagine the criminal going to prison for stealing Tide. Real dumb.
While the bankster stealing billions is laughing all the way to the bank.
There's only one problem with this post. In the 1930's another activist Preseident continually screwed with the economy, and desperation then meant something worse than food stamps, medicaid and subsidized heating fuel, according to this thesis, we should've had a far worse crime wave, but we didn't.
Something else is going on.
Does this mean there will be hotter, younger chicks on the porn sites?
Hotter? Maybe.
Younger? Maybe.
Skinnier? Definitely, Dave, definetly...
and there you have it folks... Tide is money because it acts like money... every time you gold bugs get all in a tizzy I read your tirades by replacing the word "gold" with "Tide"... oddly enough, it makes about as much sense that way as any other
Try this one: Due to thousands of years of hoarding, the amount of new Tide created per year is only 1.5% of the aboveground supply of Tide, therefore Tide is money which even Proctor and Gamble can only print at a trickle.
If this didn't make sense, that's because gold is money, but Tide is just a commodity.
Tide does have one important advantage over gold and cash: The greedy pigs can't be bothered to steal your stash of Tide.
But clean clothes with colors that pop and an aroma of springtime freshness are worth their weight in gold!!!
I think I see a new P&G ad campaign arising.
So why is all this happening? The overarching system if governance is based on a total disregard for private property papered over with hypocrisy. That sets the tone. The respect for the property of others is gonek mix that with economic decay and poverty and what do you expect?
"Oh Fab I'm glad you've got active enzyme, lemon freshened, borax fuck you"
Now gimme the Tide bitch!
Crest has proven to be an effective decay preventive dentifice when used in conjunction with regular dental program.
Jim never asked for a second cup of my coffee...
Lucky Strikes Means Fine Tobacco LSMFT
Huge amount of unemployment, but everywhere I go I see LOTS of Mexicans with their anchor babies. Mostly not even bothering to speak English!
FUCK OBAMA! He is a trator!
Yep, same here! They always have three or four little nino's tagging along, some ten or twenty feet back behind them, as if they lost one, it's ok, they can pop another one out easily. And because they're from some village in Mexico and have a third grade education (if that), their kids always seem to look like little morons. The kids have blank stares and seem to be not all that bright, but each one, costs the LA Unified School District, $12,000 a year, apiece! Or for your average illegal, $36K to $48K a year in Education costs alone to the real Taxpaying middle class (or what's left of it).
They're all cheering the minimum raise hike, because as one car wash worker stated in an LA Times article: "It's hard to raise a family with the money I make at the car wash...". Stupid is, as stupid does.
The people who used a semi to steal cattle are ripping off Jeff Bridges & Sam Waterson. They tried the same thing in Rancho Deluxe. When Slim Pickens caught 'em, he uttered the famous line, "All large scale crime is ALWAYS an inside job."
This is mild compared to what is coming.
You ain't seen nothing yet.
Whoabe-Tide's the new Glue!