Reading Bob Hoge’s most excellent September 1, 2025 takedown of Los Angeles City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado’s inane rant against Home Depot for not actively opposing ICE and Homeland Security operations against illegals who congregate around said stores looking for freelance work — like it’s the store’s responsibility to prevent Federal law enforcement measures — brings to mind a few lessons learned from the inside regarding how retail works, and how liberals routinely fail to grasp both economic and practical realities regarding same.
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As Bob notes, Ms. Jurado is the latest in a “proud” lineage of politicos possessed by the belief that the funds in government coffers are blown into them through open windows at city halls and state capitols across the land, all conveniently located next to money trees carefully tended by Twinkles, the happy material blessings pixie. Wait, what, taxpayers actually put the money there? Oh p’shaw! And it certainly isn’t business owners employing people who contribute to the piles of cash spent with such alacrity that the Drunken Sailors Society is a comparative model of restraint. Here in California, our elected officials have made a cottage industry of sending potential investment in silly things like roads and other public safety plus service measures elsewhere in favor of preaching to the progressive choir while seeking new ways to squeeze an even bigger, uh, donation from the congregation foolish enough to elect these power-mad pimples.
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Amplifying Bob’s observation, the Ysabel Jurados of this world know less about how economics work than your average fifth-grader, including those presently suffering under the tremendous handicap of being in the public education system. In addition to not understanding that in the real world, businesses need to follow the law lest the same sniggly nitty-pickers who, to some degree, work for Ms. Jurado, bleed them dry via multiple paper cuts courtesy of paper-thin regulations designed to hamper free enterprise under the name of consumer protection, she fails to grasp the following:
- Businesses employ people, not as a charitable venture but rather to make the services or goods supplied by said businesses readily and more favorably available to potential customers. We’ll focus on retail for this example. A large retailer requires a specific number of employees in various operational areas to run its stores efficiently. It requires people to receive merchandise from vendors, merchandise it for the public to buy, and then service customers by providing product knowledge at the point of sale and maintaining proper professionalism at checkout time. Retailers who fail to do these things, especially when there is competition, fail period.
- Given that with no known exceptions, a retail salary does not facilitate quantity purchases of hookers and blow, said salaries invariably find themselves spent on more mundane items such as food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and other such life necessities. This means retail workers frequenting other — brace yourself, Ysabel — retail establishments. The employees at the big box store in the retail center head over to the sandwich shop in the same center to grab lunch, and the employees at the sandwich shop groove on down to the big box after their shift is over to grab laundry detergent or what have you. It’s a lovely arrangement. By the way, unless you are fortunate enough to live in a state with no sales tax, the funds from these transactions make up no small portion of the collection progressives believe the aforementioned Twinkles, the happy material blessings pixies provide for their assorted, destined-for-failure social engineering experiments.
It takes a certain profound lack of intelligence to think such things through. Much like the customer who believes it is more efficient, money and time-wise, to mail order the exact same pair of shoes in three different sizes, then drive to the nearest store to bring the two that don’t fit back rather than going to the store in the first place and trying on different sizes, Ms. Jurado has not the slightest hint that her perception and reality occupy different, utterly disconnected universes. Indeed, the very salary she draws for the position, abetted by sycophantic, sympathetic local media, she uses to lambaste Home Depot for a situation utterly outside of its control comes from the taxes raised in no small part by the selfsame retail workers she is actively telling to go elsewhere.
Home Depot, like all retailers pursuing the elusive goal of profit, will gladly go somewhere where local politicians seek publicity by cutting the ribbon at a grand opening, rather than sealing the doors shut with false moral outrage. Should this take place, perhaps Ms. Jurado’s constituents should consider whose side she is actually on.
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