Victor Davis Hanson: California is going after 'innocent people'

Congratulations, California, you just made history in and out. Burger just closed its first location ever and it's due to crime. It really is unfortunate that like it has to close and there really isn't much that they could do about it. But like, you know, a lot of people want to eat in and out in and out, says the closure comes on the heels of waves of car break ins, property damage, theft and robberies affecting both customers and employees. So it's one last piece of evidence in the nationwide debate between water burger in and out and shake shack. But instead of worrying about that debate or the closure of an in and out, California is cracking down on a different crime. Oakland is going after this man, Victor Silva Senior. He's 102 year old and he's wheelchair bound. Earlier this month, he got a violation citation from the city of Oakland to remove it by Tuesday, the 19th or face an $1100 fine plus an additional $1277 for each failed reinspection. I thought somebody's crazy in his younger years before the wheelchair. He often painted over the graffiti himself had a roll over the paper painted. It's hard to keep up with because as soon as we get a painted, it's going to be graffiti on it again and it won't last. So that man is facing fines. 102 year old soon to be 103 year old instead of the crime that's plugging the state, forcing the closure of one of its most popular restaurants. Joining me now is Victor David Anthony, the Hoover Institute senior fellow. Victor, what do you think this says about the priorities of the state where you live, California? Well, we have these existential problems will that we either cannot or will not address. And so the government, the bureaucracy, the administrative states compensates by going after the law abiding citizen for minor offenses because they can't address the felonies and that the real causes that are destroying the state. Now that weird asymmetry, they feel psychological redemption or they're doing their job. But what's happening is they're picking on the middle class and the upper middle class. And remember, 1% pays 50% of the income tax and the 5% pay 80% and they're leaving at a rate of about 400,000 people a year given 13.2 income tax and what you just described. And we know what the problem is. You know, it's a classical Roman dilemma when the Romans, the great historian Libby said when the medicine is worse than the disease, civilizations decline and we know what we have to do. We have to put the homeless in facilities. We've got to go after gangs. We've got to lock people up. If they have three strikes, we have to incarcerate them for a long, long time. We have to produce more energy. We've got to build more down. We all know that. But the very idea that we would try to do that or close the border and not give 500 million to illegal aliens when we're 76 billion in debt, then we're afraid to do it. We feel that would be contrary. We'd be racist, homophobic, sexist, xenophobic, illiberal, whatever the particular slur or smear is. So we don't, we're in we're in paralysis and that's what paralysis does. We go after innocent people. We think they have resources. We'll go, we'll go attack them and we'll tell everybody we enforce the law even when gangs are running wild in Oakland and people are being shot, killed, raped with impunity. But they don't have a clue how they would address that because they know what would happen if they did. It's interesting what you describe victor, that if I'm understanding correctly as a form of impotence, at least when it comes to law enforcement, if I can't enforce the big crimes, I'm gonna have to exercise my power in the small crimes. But here's a lot of us out there, victor. I'm curious your perspective here that it's less impotence and more malevolence and it's hard not to come away with that conclusion because when you see criminals described as victims and victims described as criminals, it doesn't simply seem impotence. It seems malevolent. It is as a form of bullying. They go, they go after the weak and vulnerable and not the predator and the bully because they're scared. And the same thing applies to the tax. So we have one of the largest black market economies in the world. We have in every corner, we have vendors, we have a mobile restaurants, we have swap meets, we have a huge cash economy where thousands of people will not do work plumbing unless they're paid in cash. And we don't know how to, we don't want to address it because we feel it will be a liberal. So we go after the law abiding taxpayer and keep increasing taxes even as he please. And we could go across the spectrum will it's but the theme is the same. We always pick on the law abiding person who plays by the rules and we consider him a chump or a fool or an idiot for doing so. But we pick on him and then we don't either. We don't want to pick on the person who's breaking the law or we were afraid to. But it creates such a cynicism that people are, we're in a doom loop now. The few more people leave than the worse the problem gets and the more they attack the law abiding citizens to get revenue or to get psychological satisfaction that they're not impotent. Fascinating as always. Thank you so much. Victor Davis Hanson. Hey, Sean Hannity here. Hey, click here to subscribe to Fox News YouTube page and catch our hottest interviews and most compelling analysis. You will not get it anywhere else.