If Vermont is the poster child for Democrat decline, Burlington is the picture at its center. It is by far Vermont’s largest municipality and, again -and perhaps then some – its greatest cistern of liberal policy, making its decline, while sad, easy to predict.
The people of Burlington made it illegal to prosecute prostitution, gave illegal aliens the vote, defunded the police (then regretted it), and the list goes on and on. It is as if the citizens elected a cadre of toddlers and left them unattended in the liberal policy candy store. They grasped at every sweet-tasting shiny lie of the Left. If it failed somewhere else, they felt sure it could work here.
They were wrong.
The disaster of Democrat rules has followed the same prescribed pattern of decline, and the latest evidence is the exodus of small businesses.
(WCAX) An exodus on Burlington’s Church Street– where three more businesses are leaving the downtown following other recent departures and adding to the number of vacant storefronts. That has city officials wondering what will happen as the holiday shopping season heats up.
Whatever could be the problem?
“Sales volumes are down,” said Kelly Devine of the Burlington Business Association.
Devine pointed to a number of factors for the decline: public safety concerns, a shortage of workers and fewer people working in downtown offices to provide regular foot traffic to supplement tourists.
Local businesses are hoping for a holiday boost to sustain them with the promise of more business when a development project creates living space for many new residents. People who will ignore the crime that has plagued Burlington since the Summer of Love? How exactly does that change this dynamic? If anything, it creates more targets of opportunity.
The Legislature has set its feet firmly on the path of civilian disarmament. If it allows local municipalities to set their own gun restrictions, Burlington will jump in with both feet. The already declining value of a right to self-defense, which exacerbates property crime, robbery, assault, and murder, will turn Burlington into what gun-free zone mass-casualty-seeking shooters call a target-rich environment.
Every day, misery will increasingly be relieved by acts of robbery or petty theft. Those who resist will be assaulted to separate them from their cash and belongings. A process that is already underway. You have a 1 in 27 chance of being a victim of property crime in Burlington, nearly three times the state average.
Given the current trajectory, that’s not about to change, and anyone who can eventually leaves for safer spaces.
