I’m reading this article tonight on the Wall Street Journal where Mark Brvnovich ignorantly tries to bash California in an attempt to somehow boost his own *accomplishments.

He uses this NRF organized retail crime survey on two occasions to bash California. He states the following:

According to a 2020 survey by the National Retail Federation, three of the top 10 cities affected by organized retail crimes are in California.

We expect our efforts will deter such theft and hope our task force becomes a model for California and other states.

Here is the actual report he’s referencing.

The issue with this report is there’s an almost perfect correlation to the cities impacted by crime and the largest cities by GDP. You can compare the list yourself here.

This clearly isn’t a problem associated to policy as much as it is just a problem that comes with having a successful local economy. Perhaps instead of pointlessly bashing our neighbors to gain political points we could just focus on ourselves? Please Arizona can we just start electing normal human beings to our run our state?