Everyone has a breaking point. People can only be pushed so far before they react. In a comfortable, well ordered first world society like the U.S. used to be, it took a lot more provocation for ordinary people to get angry and lash out at others than it does today.
Check out this scene on a San Diego street. A bartender for the longtime Henry’s Pub loses his cool at what we’re told is a street food cart vendor who is an illegal alien, pushing the man’s cart over and cursing him out.
What got the bartender so angry? Apparently the city of San Diego has been declining to enforce laws regulating street food vendors and their carts, especially when the vendors are illegal immigrants. What a surprise, eh? The government feels so warmly toward border jumpers that they leave them alone to take business away from establishments run by American citizens.
That’s according to a lawsuit from 10 San Diego businesses against the city. They claim the city just chooses not to enforce the rules governing sidewalk food sales, and they’ve lost thousands in sales due to the cart-pushers setting up shop outside their doors. The suit wants $12 million from the city, and it wants to force bureaucrats to do their jobs.
One restaurateur, Mareous Sitto, claimed he loses up to $2,000 a night in sales because of the illegal food carts crowded along the streets.
Americans are losing faith in government because it seems as though pencil pushers are more interested in vexing and harassing Americans for no good reason while turning a blind eye to real problems. How do you argue against that with the example of New York state regulators raiding the house of Mark Longo and seizing, then killing, his internet-famous pet squirrel P’Nut simply because Longo didn’t have a license to “have wildlife” in his house?
Users on X/Twitter were mainly sympathetic to the business owners and hostile to what they perceived as a feckless or adversarial city government.
But some others pointed out that there may be other problems affecting business in the Gaslamp district that have nothing to do with hot dog carts. Indeed, a lot of users thought the restaurants’ complaints were just an excuse for businesses that couldn’t compete in the open market.
