At the beginning of the year, I made a vow to never buy an item stored under lock and key at Walmart after my electric toothbrush not only had to be unlocked by a store employee, but walked by that same employee to the register, where it would wait for me while I finished shopping.
On the upside, I wasn't the woman who needed the pregnancy test.
But I — and many others — would really like to live in a world where we're not punished and inconvenienced because politicians and law enforcement don't have the spine to arrest criminals and put them behind bars.
Instead, the politicians in particular seem to think theft, and the societal decay it brings, is a small price to pay for them to earn votes from their constituents who prefer a five-finger discount to paying for items like civilized people. Such is the mentality of New York Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher.
Gallagher thinks people steal things because they're poor, and that these "crimes of poverty" shouldn't be prosecuted.
NY Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher:
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) August 14, 2026
"If you steal soap, it means you need it"
She wants to allow "crimes of poverty" pic.twitter.com/I47grF9WWw
"Most of what we saw were crimes of poverty," Gallagher said. "People who are stealing things like toothpaste, people who are stealing things like soap ... that means if you are stealing those things you need them."
Kudos to whoever put this video together, showing thieves swiping high-end handbags immediately after Gallagher whines about soap and toothpaste. That's not a crime of poverty. But Gallagher isn't happy with letting people steal toothpaste. She wants to decriminalize public urination and bringing trash onto the subway.
You get the government you vote for, and sometimes it smells like a urine-soaked pile of trash in your subway car.
First, there are no "crimes of poverty." People are not stealing soap because they need it. They are stealing whatever they can because they are degenerates with no self-control and no incentive to behave in civilized society. New York spends roughly $17 billion on welfare annually; you're telling me with a straight face that not one dime of that goes to buy people soap?
It's an interesting admission that maybe handing people free stuff, paid for by hardworking taxpayers, doesn't actually fix crime. Remember this when the socialists say "public safety" is contingent on spending $211.6 trillion dollars over ten years, an eye-watering tax bill of $64,000 per American.
There will be a lot of poverty if these "compassionate" socialists get their way.
I've been poor, I've been broke. I've had $1.73 in my bank account and I never, ever stole anything.
My grandparents grew up during the Great Depression. They picked maggots from meat, ate lard sandwiches, and made shoes out of old tires. They never resorted to stealing.
You can get a full-sized tube of toothpaste or a bar of soap at the local dollar store, by the way. There is no one in America who doesn't have $1.50 to pay for that, and I'd bet all these impoverished people stealing hygiene products all have cell phones, cars, and nice manicures.
It's incredibly racist and bigoted for Gallagher to excuse these crimes of poverty, knowing full well she believes only certain racial groups commit such crimes, and that poor people have so little self-respect they'd resort to theft.
Then again, she's a liberal white woman, and they are the reason society is decaying around us. Gallagher is 42 years old and has no children. So instead of using her innate maternal instincts to raise a family, she has decided to turn her warped sense of compassion towards the criminals to the detriment of the rest of us. This is moral poverty masquerading as public policy.
All her policy guarantees is that no one will pay for items like soap or foodstuffs. Any smart person will simply load up their cart, claim poverty, and walk out of the store. And when stores close and employees are laid off, and the tax base dries up, Gallagher will wonder why. Add to that mix a society where homeless vagrants can urinate in public, throw their trash everywhere, and sleep on public transportation, and the Third World-ification of New York will continue.
When voters get fed up and rebel, when the economy collapses and people flee the state for saner locales, she'll blame capitalism, the patriarchy, greedy corporations. Anything and everything that means she won't have to look at her well-fed face in a mirror and place the blame where it does belong: on politicians like her, who have destroyed America one stupid, crime-loving policy at a time.
