J.T. Young writes for the Federalist about the latest silliness from a member of the congressional “Squad.”
If patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, the charge of racism has become the first refuge of the liberal. And few people in Washington epitomize this problem more than Democrat Rep. Ayanna Pressley.
Her latest target? Walgreens. According to Walgreens, it is planning to close its Boston-area Roxbury location “due to several factors including the cost of operating, low prescription volume and low reimbursement rates.” Pressley, a member of the House of Representatives’ ultra-leftist “squad” who represents Roxbury in Congress, shot back, “These closures are not arbitrary and they are not innocent. They are life-threatening acts of racial and economic discrimination.”
Joined by Massachusetts Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, the three “demand answers” from Walgreens for its actions. Because “when a Walgreens leaves a neighborhood, they disrupt the entire community and they take with them, baby formula, diapers, asthma inhalers, life-saving medications, and, of course, jobs.”
The private sector can’t win with the left. When it stays it is accused of “taking” from communities, and when it leaves it is also accused of “taking.”
In Pressley’s diatribe of indignation, there is no mention of the neighborhood itself. However, Roxbury’s reputation is no secret. Roxbury “has 104 percent more crime than Boston overall with a high violent crime rate of 1,271/100k people. Roxbury has a higher rate of rape and attempted rape and it’s most known for drugs and violent crime.”
A quick scan of the internet shows site after site after site listing Roxbury as the second most unsafe neighborhood in the Boston area. And Boston is having its shoplifting problems; WBUR in Boston ran a segment recently in which David Johnston of the National Retail Federation stated: “I can tell you in my 35, 36 years of doing this, it’s unprecedented and unmatched. First and foremost, we’re seeing the frequency of theft, the openness and the brazenness of the criminals, the quantities and the type of merchandise that are stolen.”
