L&T Publisher Earl Watt
Some people don’t like oil-based products.
Forget the fact that many life-saving devices and health care products, not to mention the oil and fuel that have created worldwide and even interplanetary mobility, these morally superior types believe they are saving the planet by trying to end the use of oil.
Crazy, I know, but everyone has the right to protest.
Protest moves into a totally different realm, however, when the protesters damage historic items or property.
Let’s start with the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6. We have been very consistent in saying that anyone who broke a window or any other property should be tried for criminal damage. Anyone who tried to steal anything or actually removed anything should be tried for theft.
Someone standing outside who broke nothing and touched nothing should face nothing.
Wednesday, two climate protesters with Just Stop Oil decided to make Stonehenge their latest target and threw orange powder paint on the historic stones, because to these deranged protesters, no one should be able to enjoy anything until they get their way.
This same activist group cut through the fence of a British airport and spray painted two jets.
For the past two years these vandals have also attacked historic paintings around the world including the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper and more, mostly using orange paint and gluing themselves to the wall or floor.
They know they will be arrested, and they know their punishment will be nothing more than a slap on the wrist.
They are funded mostly by the Climate Energy Fund based in Los Angeles with a primary benefactor Aileen Getty, a descendant of the famed Getty Oil empire. Of course the group takes the money and states that she, herself, never participated in the oil industry. Obviously her inherited fortune came form oil, but these types don’t care about details like that.
America has also seen its share of protests that led to massive property damage as well as theft.
Taking advantage of soft-on-crime policies in California, groups started to do what became known as “flash robs,” breaking into high-end stores like Apple and convenience stores like 7-Eleven and looting whatever they wanted.
The police response was minimal at best, and in many cases the thieves got away with the merchandise.
It’s insured, right?
Of course, insurance premiums in Kansas would have to be adjusted by these national firms to make up for the claims in California and elsewhere, but that’s the price we all pay for civil disobedience.
It’s a shame those thought to be involved in a political riot were treated like insurrectionists while those robbing stores blind or defacing national treasures received little correction at all.
Using the shiny deflection from the crime-ridden streets, California Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed an initiative to raise the minimum wage on fast food chains to $20 per hour. That would keep people from looting, or at least push the looting to later in the news broadcast or onto the back page while this insane inflation-feeding idea would be used as a pacifier.
The result has been stores closing down instead of going broke. I guess it’s harder to loot an empty store.
Law and order is not some big government mantra. When the settlers first came to the prairie they, too, were victimized by outlaws. That’s why one of the first necessities of a new town was a lawman, and society began to flourish.
The Capitol should have had a heavier law presence an Jan. 6, 2021, and every city in America should enforce their laws and get rid of prosecutors who refuse to hold looters and rioters accountable for the damage they are causing.
St. Louis is short 33 percent of its police force, but even if they were there, would prosecutors support their arrests with charges and convictions? Right now, in St. Louis and around the nation, the answer seems to be only if there is a conservative political connection.
