The country is suffering badly. People are unemployed, with no end in sight. We have people who are broke and starving. Just today there are over 5 major news reports on the different items being stolen to provide for starving families, and our government is sending aid to foreign countries where the average citizen hates the US and we still feed them.
Dozens of deputies on the front lines of agricultural crime in California, home to the nation’s most productive farms and the people who prey on them. While thievery has long been a fact of life in the country, such crimes are on the rise and fighting them has become harder in many parts of California as many grants for rural law enforcement have withered on the vine.
While other states have their own agricultural intrigue — cattle rustlers in Texas, tomato takers in Florida — few areas can claim a wider variety of farm felons than California, where ambushes on everything from almonds to beehives have been reported in recent years. Then there is the hardware: diesel fuel, tools and truck batteries regularly disappear in the Central Valley, the state’s agricultural powerhouse, where high unemployment, foreclosures and methamphetamine abuse have made criminals more desperate, officials say.
Counties up and down the state also are dealing with a surge in copper theft — a perennial problem made all the worse of late by the soaring price for the metal. Such robberies are remarkably simple. Bandits simply snip copper wires running between outdoor wells and their power boxes.
And copper is not the only tempting metal. Two hundred pounds of iron might bring them 75, 100 bucks.That’s money they can use to put gas in their trucks. They can get some food.
Nor are the crimes limited to poorer areas; in Napa County, where fans of the good life flock for the wine and warm weather, the police set up a tip line in June to combat a raft of thefts, including solar panels at some vineyards. In other areas, deputies say they have witnessed a kind of Robin Hood effect, where some small, struggling farmers filch materials from their better stocked competitors.
Not even insects are immune. In Madera County, about 130 miles east of San Francisco, officials saw a rash of bee burglaries this year, as a shortage of able-bodied pollinators drove up the price. They just go in there and they smoke the bees, sedate them and take them. And they wear protective gear just like the pros. A beekeeper based in Colorado, was one of those hit, losing more than 400 hives — valued at about $100,000 — in California in January. And while later the hives were recovered, and most of the bees therein, the thieves were getting bolder.
Criminals are now preying on paramedics. It is being reported that thieves have been breaking into ambulances right outside the doors of North Texas emergency rooms. Seconds matter for paramedics. They have to act quickly to save lives, which is hard to do if someone has stolen critical equipment or medications from their ambulance. Someone is walking right up to emergency rooms where ambulances are parked and taking what they can. One person jumps out and goes into the back of the ambulence and removes items from the back. Generally, it takes less than 30 seconds. The Coppell Fire Department lost a defibrillator that cost $35,000. The Lewisville Fire Department had a bag full of medicines stolen and now at least five fire departments are reporting ambulance break-ins in the last few days. Investigators believe the burglars are trying to sell the stolen items on the black market.
Suspects have stolen more than 100 storm drain grates in Sacramento in recent weeks, forcing city workers to rush to replace them, at least 13 of the cast iron grates went missing overnight Wednesday, and city workers have begun welding the replacement grates in place. Although prices for recycled copper have jumped to about $3.25 a pound, cast iron can only sell for about a penny if you can find a recycler willing to pay for it. At least one cover disappears a night, according to city officials, but suspects take as many as 15 in other nights.
These people are risking arrest to steal things that are only worth pennies a pound. I think we need to stop supporting people who hate us and our country, bring those billions of dollars home. Feed our hungry. Let's try lowering business taxes and bring our manufacturing companies back to the US and create the jobs that are no longer here. If we lowered the tax on these manufactured goods, more businesses would return, thus, more money would be collected in taxes on the LARGER amount of businesses and the income tax on the people who are back to work.
Also, stop spending a MILLION dollars to study the effects of GAYS in the military. I mean, why would we have to study this. If they want to join then who cares. I am not thinking this openly gay in the military is such a good idea. But, I am a weirdo. I think this is going to cause a lot of problems. What about base housing? Are gay couples who can not marry be able to get the same opportunity for base-housing? What about benefits, are we going to allow people who are not married to reek the benefits of their "Life-partner" being in the military? Non-married straight people can not receive housing or benefits, is that fair? I don't know, I guess I am not politically correct enough to think these types of things are ok; allowing one person to have these benefits but not another person, all depending on sexual orientation.
I just don't know where America is heading, but, I bet it isn't where most of the American people are going to like.
Who knows....afterall, I am just weirdo....
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