San Francisco

The Bay Area Has Become An Absolute Paradise For Violent Criminals

June 30, 2021June 30, 2021 by Michael

Over the past couple of decades, northern California has prospered more than any other area in the country. In fact, the two wealthiest metropolitan areas in the entire nation are located in northern California. But even though the region is absolutely swimming in cash, crime is completely and totally out of control and violent criminals are having a field day. We have never seen the sort of crime wave in the Bay Area that we are seeing now, and it seems to be getting worse with each passing month.

Let me give you an example of what I am talking about. According to the local CBS affiliate, the number of car break-ins has risen “by more than 700 percent in some parts of the city”…

Car break-ins have skyrocketed in San Francisco, increasing by more than 700 percent in some parts of the city. With more people visiting after county and state restrictions were lifted, thieves are taking advantage of tourists by breaking into rental cars.

“Sucky end to our vacation but what can we do,” said Kaitlin Lore, visiting from New Jersey.

The politicians running the city don’t like to admit this, but San Francisco is dealing with an absolutely massive epidemic of street drug abuse.

The addicts that endlessly wander the streets are constantly looking for more drug money, and they have discovered that tourists are easy targets.

So I would not recommend making San Francisco your next vacation destination.

But of course tourists are not the only ones being hit. In fact, a news crew was just robbed at gunpoint right in the middle of a television interview…

The attack took place outside City Hall on Monday just hours after the police chief blasted his city’s decision to defund its police department by $18.5 million despite a 90 percent increase in murders.

The NBC Bay Area news crew was interviewing Guillermo Cespedes at around 3 pm when two armed men tried to take their camera, the Oakland Police Department said.

It boggles my mind that Oakland politicians would want to slash 18.5 million dollars from the police budget in this environment.

Shootings are up 70 percent in Oakland and murders are up 90 percent, and so the answer is to radically reduce police funding?

Are they nuts?

This is the same sort of thinking that caused California politicians to make all theft below $950 a misdemeanor. As a result, thieves have learned that they can engage in wild shoplifting sprees as long as they keep the value of goods stolen in each store to under $950…

A steady increase in shoplifting at big chains like Walgreens and CVS prompted a recent hearing before the Board of Supervisors, with some city leaders expressing shock after hearing how bad things are. One executive said thieves would hit several stores in a day, keeping each theft below the $950 threshold, but stealing more than $30,000 of goods overall. City leaders promised to explore the idea of “aggregating” such crimes for prosecution.

“Like other retailers,” said a statement from Safeway, “we’ve seen a dramatic increase in shoplifting incidents and losses from shoplifting since California sentencing laws changed in 2014 to make all theft below $950 a misdemeanor when it was previously a wobbler, either a felony or a misdemeanor based on prosecutorial discretion. Enterprising thieves have figured out there are few consequences to shoplifting if they keep the value of their crimes below $950.”

The shoplifting in San Francisco has gotten so bad that it has started to make headlines all over the globe.

Politicians will give a lot of speeches about the problem, but don’t expect any real solutions any time soon.

Meanwhile, homelessness is another crisis that just continues to grow in the Bay Area.

Even though the region is swimming in more cash than ever before, the number of people camping out in the streets has just kept on climbing.

At this point, many local residents have had enough. Just check out the results of one recent survey…

The SF Chamber of Commerce released results Thursday from their annual CityBeat Poll, which asks San Francisco voters a range of questions about the state of the city and their perceptions of it.

This year’s poll, like last year’s, found 70% city residents saying that quality of life in the city has declined. 80% of residents polled said that addressing homelessness needs to be a high priority for the city, and 88% said that the problem had gotten worse in the past few years.

Some of the homeless have been herded into a large encampment run by the city, but that has turned out to be a rather expensive proposition.

In fact, it is being reported that each tent in that homeless encampment is costing the city “$60,000 per year”…

Today in “liberals making wonderful capital allocation decisions with your tax dollar news”…

It turns out “solving” the homelessness problem that has (along with sky high taxes) been plaguing San Francisco, driving residents out of the city (and state), is a costly endeavor.

In fact, a homeless encampment run by San Francisco costs the city $60,000 per year, per tent, the NY Post reported this week.

To put that in perspective, putting each one of those homeless individuals into a $5,000 apartment for 12 months would also cost $60,000 a year.

If things are this bad in San Francisco now, how bad will they get when economic conditions really start going downhill?

And if such an incredibly prosperous city cannot solve the problems that I have discussed in this article, how will other less prosperous cities fare as the fabric of our society continues to steadily deteriorate?

Understandably, a large number of San Francisco residents have chosen to leave the city for good in recent months, and of those that remain 40 percent say that they intend to move out of the city permanently within the next few years.

If I was living in San Francisco right now, I would definitely be planning to relocate as well.

But the truth is that the entire country is on the exact same path that San Francisco has gone down.

So what are you going to do when the conditions that we are currently witnessing in San Francisco seem like they are virtually everywhere?

As California goes, so goes the nation.

All around us we can see evidence of America’s decline, and the clock is ticking.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com. In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe. I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook, Twitter and Parler, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help. During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.

Many U.S. Cities Are Already Starting To Resemble Post-Apocalyptic Cesspools As America’s Collapse Accelerates

June 15, 2021 by Michael

For a moment, I would like you to take an imaginary tour of a major U.S. city with me, and I would like for you to try to guess which city I am talking about. As you stroll along the sidewalks in the heart of this city, it seems like tents have been erected everywhere. Homelessness is completely and utterly out of control in this particular city, and even though city officials keep making more promises the crisis just continues to get worse. As you continue your tour, you notice multiple addicts doing drugs right in front of you. Drug needles, human waste and other trash are strewn all over the place, and you wonder why nobody from the city has cleaned up the mess. All of this filth has created a stench that is overpowering at times, and you try not to gag. As you travel deeper into the urban core of this city, you are shocked to see two men with guns carjack a woman a couple of blocks away. Not wanting to get involved, you abruptly change direction. You are startled when a couple of addicts that look like they were pulled straight out of a zombie movie start asking you for money, and you begin instinctively walking faster without even thinking about it. Unfortunately, you have stumbled into an alley that you should never have gone down, and you now find yourself completely surrounded by curious street people. You try to make a break for it, but it is too late.

I’ll stop our imaginary tour right there.

Can you guess which major U.S. city I am talking about?

Sadly, the reality of the matter is that there are many U.S. cities that closely fit the description that I just gave you. For example, Los Angeles was once one of the most beautiful cities on the entire planet, but today it is being described as a “squalid cesspool”…

The Democrat-controlled city of Los Angeles has devolved into a squalid cesspool of rampant crime, uncontrolled homelessness and filthy streets littered with trash, drug paraphernalia and human waste.

That’s the observation of numerous Californians, including award-winning actor James Woods, who lamented on Monday that the picturesque city he once loved “is gone.”

If you walk through the streets of Los Angeles today, you will find that homeless people have erected tents literally all over the city. Jeremiah Babe has demonstrated this over and over again in his excellent videos, and the footage that he captures during his visits to the core of Los Angeles just seems to keep getting worse over time.

As conditions in Los Angeles deteriorate, it is fueling a dramatic rise in violent crime. The murder rate in Los Angeles is up 95 percent so far this year, and it is now the number one political issue in the entire city.

Further north, San Francisco officials are dealing with their worst drug epidemic ever. San Francisco has always had a big problem with drugs, but Dr. Christopher Colwell says that the widespread use of fentanyl has taken things to an entirely different level…

“Our most immediate threat right now is the opioid epidemic and the trauma we are seeing. We are seeing increases I haven’t seen in my career around dependency and overdoses, mostly involving fentanyl. We always had problems with opioids, specifically heroin, but fentanyl has changed the whole landscape of drugs.”

When we think of addicts, we tend to envision street people in our minds, but in San Francisco a lot of people that are overdosing these days are respected professionals…

A physician, two nurses, a professional athlete, a drug dealer and a lawyer who had nodded off in court. Teenagers, specifically a 14- and a 15-year-old. And a 7-year-old who got into a stash in her mother’s purse.

These are some of the types of people Dr. Christopher Colwell, the chief of emergency medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, has recently seen in the emergency room for medical issues related to fentanyl use and overdoses.

Whenever you have large numbers of drug addicts in a particular city, you are going to have a problem with property crime. Addicts are always looking for more money to pay for their next hits, and shoplifting has gotten wildly out of control in the city.

What makes things even worse is that shoplifters in San Francisco face very light consequences if they are actually caught, and so at this point they have become extremely brazen…

Alarming video captured the moment a brazen robber filled a garbage bag with products at a San Francisco Walgreens and bicycled out of the store after no one tried to stop him.

The footage posted on Twitter by ABC7 Reporter Lyanne Melendez was filmed on Monday afternoon in a Walgreens at the corner of Gough and Fell streets in the Bay Area – where 17 of the pharmacy’s stores have been forced to close in recent years due to theft.

I watched the video, and the thief actually brushes right up against the security guard without any concern whatsoever.

On the other side of the country, police in the Atlanta area are operating under new rules that restrict them from chasing criminals. This is infuriating many residents, because now violent criminals can literally get away with just about anything if they just drive away fast enough…

This is the moment cops appear to do nothing amid a drive-by shooting in Atlanta as residents of the wealthy Buckhead area say it’s a ‘warzone’ and demand to secede.

The video, which was played on Tucker Carlson Tonight, shows people lining up near a dark-colored van that is parked on the side of the road when a white car passes by and shots ring out, with one going straight through the dark van, striking one of the passersby and sending people scrambling.

A few seconds later, blue lights could be seen reflecting off the windshield of the black van, symbolizing police cars passing by and not stopping at the scene in the wealthy Buckhead neighborhood.

By the way, the murder rate in Atlanta is up 60 percent so far this year, and officials in Atlanta say that they are desperate for solutions.

Here is a solution. Perhaps they should actually allow the police to chase down criminals that are shooting at people.

Just a thought.

Up north, New York City hasn’t seen this much degradation since the dirty days of the 1970s. Crime is wildly out of control, and filth is seemingly everywhere.

Earlier today, I came across a report from the local Fox affiliate that discussed the fact that the number of subway cars that are soiled by “feces, vomit, and blood” is increasing…

As people return to the subway system in New York City, they are finding more trash and filth, according to a new report.

There has been a rise in soiled train cars this year according to Daily News including cases of feces, vomit, and blood.

Do you ever wonder who gets to clean up those messes?

I hope that whoever has to do that job is well paid.

As our major cities degenerate into cesspools of crime, drugs and filth, vast numbers of ordinary citizens are fleeing for greener pastures. In fact, North American Van Lines has just released a report that confirms that there was a huge wave of migration from “blue states” to “red states” in 2020…

The pandemic saw people leave Democratic blue states in droves and head towards sunnier climes in the red states of the south to escape the strict lockdowns and spiraling crime.

A migration report from moving company North American Moving Services found those living in the states of New York, California, Illinois, New Jersey and Maryland headed for Arizona, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina and Idaho.

Unfortunately, this is just the beginning. As our cities continue to deteriorate, millions more Americans will be seeking to relocate.

Of course this ongoing mass exodus has already pushed home prices in many desirable rural and suburban areas to absolutely absurd levels.

If you are thinking about relocating, I would recommend doing it as soon as possible, because the collapse of our major cities is only going to get worse.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

9 Signs That Some Of America’s Long-Term Trends Are Starting To Become Very Serious Short-Term Problems

June 14, 2021June 14, 2021 by Michael

Ignoring long-term problems can work for a while, but eventually they catch up with you. Over the years, I have written many articles about alarming long-term trends in our society that desperately needed to be addressed. Of course the vast majority of those long-term trends never got much attention, because our political system tends to reward politicians that focus on short-term issues. As a result, many of the long-term trends that I have written about previously have now gotten to a point where they have started to become very serious short-term problems. In this article, I would like to share 9 examples of this with you.

#1 I have been warning about exploding debt levels for as long as I have been writing about the economy. Most people know that the U.S. national debt has now crossed the 28 trillion dollar threshold, but hardly anyone is talking about the explosion of corporate debt that we have been witnessing in recent months. According to the Federal Reserve, total corporate debt in the United States is now up to a whopping 11.2 trillion dollars…

Before the pandemic, U.S. companies were borrowing heavily at low interest rates. When Covid-19 lockdowns triggered a recession, they didn’t pull back. They borrowed even more and soon paid even less.

After a brief spike, interest rates on corporate debt plummeted to their lowest level on record, bringing a surge in new bonds. Nonfinancial companies issued $1.7 trillion of bonds in the U.S. last year, nearly $600 billion more than the previous high, according to Dealogic. By the end of March, their total debt stood at $11.2 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve, about half the size of the U.S. economy.

#2 Needless to say, this level of corporate debt is not even close to sustainable, and we are starting to see a lot of prominent names go bankrupt. In fact, one of the largest mall owners in the entire country officially filed for bankruptcy on Sunday…

Washington Prime Group, a major mall owner of more than 100 locations across the United States, filed for bankruptcy, citing pandemic-related shutdowns.

The Columbus, Ohio-based company filed for Chapter 11 late Sunday, saying Covid-19 “created significant challenges” and that the move is “necessary.” Washington Prime secured $100 million in new funding to support its day-to-day operations so it can “continue in the ordinary course without interruption.”

#3 The standard of living in the United States has been going down for a very long time. Here in 2021, inflation is growing at a much faster rate than wages are, and this is squeezing middle class families like never before. One of the ways that families are dealing with this is by putting off major purchases, and that is one of the reasons why the average age of the vehicles on our roads has now reached an all-time record high…

The average age of vehicles on U.S. roadways rose to a record 12.1 years last year, as lofty prices and improved quality prompt owners to hold on to their cars longer.

It was the first time the average vehicle age rose above 12 years, according to data released Monday by research firm IHS Markit. While the average vehicle age has risen steadily over the last 15 years, the trend accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic partly because of a drop in new-car sales, IHS said.

#4 America’s growing homelessness crisis has accelerated greatly during the pandemic, and the big cities in California are being hit the hardest. At this point, it is really difficult to navigate through the streets of San Francisco without stumbling over a tent or stepping in human excrement…

For a city as opulent as San Francisco, it’s long been jarring to see the extreme poverty of those experiencing homelessness on its streets. If you walk around downtown, tents, makeshift cardboard beds and human excrement can be seen littering the sidewalks. Impoverished people lie on the ground as a blur of highly paid professionals whiz by.

#5 The homelessness crisis is also one of the factors that is fueling the dramatic rise in crime rates that we have been seeing all over the nation. Once upon a time, millions of eager tourists would flock to Venice Beach, but now the phrase “like hell went to hell” is being used to describe conditions at that once pristine tourist trap…

Year-to-date numbers show that robberies have nearly tripled since the same period last year. Homeless-related robberies are up 260 percent; homeless-related assaults with a deadly weapon is up 118 percent; property crimes and area burglaries are up 85 percent; and grand theft auto is up 74 percent.

According to Embrich, felony arrests are up 68 percent, while misdemeanor arrests have grown by 355 percent. But arrests aren’t enough: Suspects are often released back onto the streets within hours.

#6 The police are the ones that are supposed to protect us from crime and restore order when things get out of control, but now they are leaving public service in record numbers. After being endlessly demonized by leftist activists and the mainstream media, police officers are either retiring or resigning at a staggering rate….

Police retirements have risen by 45 percent in the past year, with officers opting out of forces across the country amid Black Lives Matter demonstrations that fueled anti-cop rhetoric.

The alarming statistic was revealed by the Police Executive Research Forum on Sunday, with the organization also revealing that resignations rose by 18 percent during the same twelve month period.

#7 Have you noticed that many of our cities are becoming disgustingly filthy? When I was growing up, I often heard the phrase “cleanliness is next to godliness”, but you never hear anyone use it anymore. These days, filth and grime are everywhere, and that has resulted in widespread infestations. Many of our cities now have massive problems with rats and bed bugs, but Chicago is the worst of them all…

The Windy City is known for quite a few things: hot dogs, deep dish, baseball. But here’s one thing you probably don’t associate with Chicago: bed bugs. Turns out these tiny hitchhiking pests are quite fond of our city, according to the latest numbers available through Atlanta-based Orkin, a company that specializes in pest control services.

In fact, Chicago ranked no. 1 on the 2021 list, according to Orkin, reclaiming the top spot for the first time since 2017, when it slipped to no. 3, just behind Baltimore and Washington. For the sixth year in a row, Orkin also ranked Chicago the “rattiest” city in America.

#8 I have been writing about the drought in the western half of the country for years, but here in 2021 it is the worst we have ever seen. As I write this article, an astounding 88 percent of the West is officially in a state of drought…

Lakes at historically low levels, unusually early forest fires, restrictions on water use and now a potentially record heat wave: even before summer’s start the US West is suffering the effects of chronic drought made worse by climate change.

Eighty-eight percent of the West was in a state of drought this week, including the entire states of California, Oregon, Utah and Nevada, according to official data.

#9 When drought gets bad enough, it leads to water shortages, and we will want to watch developments in California very closely. Water supplies have gotten very tight throughout the state, and officials in Santa Clara County just officially declared “a water shortage emergency”…

Santa Clara County is in extreme drought. We can’t afford to wait to act as our water supplies are being threatened locally and across California. We are in an emergency and Valley Water must do everything we can to protect our groundwater resources and ensure we can provide safe, clean water to Santa Clara County residents and businesses.

To better deal with these threats and the emergency they are causing, today my fellow Board Members and I unanimously declared a water shortage emergency condition in Santa Clara County. This declaration, which is among the strongest actions we can take under law, allows Valley Water to work with our retailers, cities and the county to implement regulations and restrictions on the delivery and consumption of water. We also are urging the County of Santa Clara to proclaim a local emergency and join us in underscoring the seriousness of the threats posed by the extreme drought.

Over the past few years, America has been hit by crisis after crisis, and many are yearning for a return to the good old days. Unfortunately, that simply is not going to happen.

The United States is never going to be like it once was. Too many things have changed, and our culture has been radically transformed over the past several decades.

Many of the items that I have shared in this article are simply symptoms of much broader cultural problems. We are a deeply, deeply sick society, and it is getting worse with each passing day.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

If You Need To Move Somewhere Before Everything Hits The Fan, You Need To Do It Now

March 8, 2021March 7, 2021 by Michael

Enjoy this brief period of relative stability while you can, because it won’t last. I have been sitting here searching for the right words for this article, and I hope that I can accurately convey the urgency of this hour to all of you. Following the election of Joe Biden, there appears to be a bubble of hope in the United States. Short-term economic conditions have stabilized a bit, the COVID pandemic seems to be subsiding, and many are hoping that life will “return to normal” this summer. But what most people do not understand is that the next chapters of “the perfect storm” are about to begin.

The cracked pieces of our planet that we are all floating around on are becoming increasingly unstable, and we witnessed multiple examples of this last week. On one day alone, New Zealand was shaken by a magnitude 7.3 earthquake, a magnitude 7.4 earthquake and a magnitude 8.1 earthquake. On the other side of the globe, Iceland has been hammered by more than 20,000 earthquakes over the past week, and geologists are warning of imminent eruptions at two prominent volcanoes.

Overall, there have been more major earthquakes during the first 65 days of this year than we have ever seen in the first 65 days of any other year in recorded history.

As our planet continues to become more unstable, I would not want to be living anywhere near a major fault line.

Now that the warmongers are back in control in Washington, it also appears that war is on the horizon. Just a little while ago, I published an article entitled “9 Signs That Chess Pieces Are Being Moved Into Place For A Major War In The Middle East” in which I detailed some of the threats that we are potentially facing. Once war begins, things will begin to change very rapidly.

Up until now, most of the civil unrest that we have witnessed in this country has been focused on “social justice” issues, and this week there will be more protests.

But soon there will be a shift. Once war starts, a lot of people will be angry about that, and economic conditions will also feature prominently as the U.S. economy steadily deteriorates.

Speaking of the economy, we are already seeing homeless encampments take over large portions of major cities on the west coast, and we haven’t even gotten to the largest tsunami of evictions in U.S. history yet.

Meanwhile, the emerging global food crisis gets worse with each passing day. Global food prices have risen for nine months in a row, and the head of the UN World Food Program has warned that we will be facing “famines of biblical proportions” in 2021.

I could go on and on. The truth is that there is not a single element of “the perfect storm” that has not already begun, but of course global events are going to escalate dramatically in the months and years ahead.

So if you need to move somewhere before everything hits the fan, you need to do it now.

Over the past 12 months, we have seen the greatest exodus out of our major cities that we have ever seen as millions of Americans have scrambled to relocate.

In fact, one new study found that the number of people fleeing San Francisco increased by 649 percent last year compared to the year before.

San Francisco saw an exodus of residents during the coronavirus pandemic, with the net number of exits increasing 649% in 2020, according to a new report published by the California Policy Lab.

Unfortunately, most of those that have left San Francisco are staying in the state of California, and I believe that is a huge mistake.

When things get really bad, you will not want to be in a heavily populated area or in a region of the country that is prone to natural disasters.

Even cities that used to have low crime rates have totally changed. When I was a kid, I really enjoyed the trips that my family would take to Minneapolis, but now it has become a crime-ridden hellhole that is dominated by roving gangs…

Bill Carlyon moved to the metropolitan area in 1980 to work as an electrical engineer after a brief stint in the army. Back then, he says, Minneapolis was more inclusive than just about anywhere else in the country he ever visited.

“Almost everybody I know won’t come downtown anymore for any reason. We used to come down to theater events and movies all the time. Now there’s gangs that just rove around and beat up old people,” said Carlyon, 69, who prides himself on working with the black community for decades on anti-poverty initiatives.

Believe it or not, Portland was a very nice city at one time too. But now violent crime is absolutely soaring…

More people died of gunfire last year in Portland — 40 — than the entire tally of homicides the previous year. The number of shootings — 900 — was nearly 2 1/2 times higher than the year before. The spike has continued this year, with more than 150 shootings, including 45 people wounded and 12 killed so far.

It is so sad to watch what is happening to that once great city. At the end of last week, I wrote about the epidemic of crimes that are being committed in broad daylight around the nation, and I just came across another example that happened just outside a bar in Portland…

Elmer Yarborough got a terrifying call from his sister: She wept as she told him two of his nephews may have been shot in broad daylight as they left a bar in Portland, Oregon.

He drove there as fast as he could. An officer told him one of his nephews was heading to the hospital and the other, Tyrell Penney, hadn’t survived.

Of course there are countless other examples of people being shot in broad daylight in our major cities. Here is an example from New York…

A man was fatally shot in the head in broad daylight during a dispute outside a Bronx bodega late Friday afternoon, police have said.

Travis Brooker, 35, was killed outside of G&K Deli on Rosedale Ave. near East Tremont Avenue in Parkchester at around 5:15pm.

There is so little fear of the police that the criminals aren’t even waiting for the sun to go down to start shooting people anymore.

And once economic conditions completely implode, the violence is going to get far, far worse.

We should mourn for America, because things could have turned out very differently for our nation if we had made much different choices.

At the same time, if you plan on living through what is ahead you need to get prepared, because the years in front of us are not going to be easy.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

The Streets Of U.S. Cities Descend Into Chaos As Criminals Brazenly Hunt For New Victims In Broad Daylight

March 4, 2021 by Michael

The thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted on a daily basis is steadily disappearing all around us. As I write this article, hordes of criminal predators are roaming the streets of major U.S. cities searching for their next victims. Even when crime rates were high in the 1970s and 1980s, most of the time you would be okay as long as you were inside by nightfall. But in 2021, criminals are so unconcerned about the police that they are brazenly committing crimes in broad daylight. When KPIX 5 reporter Don Ford went to do a report on the horrible crime wave that had hit one troubled section of San Francisco, he got robbed too…

On Wednesday afternoon, the smash-and-grabs turned into armed robbery. KPIX 5 reporter Don Ford was on the story Tuesday and again on Wednesday, and was preparing to interview nearby homeowners when a white luxury sedan with four men inside pulled up.

This happened right in the middle of the day. A vehicle pulled up to where Ford was conducting an interview, three criminals jumped out, and one of them put a Glock right in his face…

“The car came up here while we were about to do an interview, three guys jumped out,” said Ford. “One had a gun and put in my face and said, ‘We’re taking the camera.’”

The whole encounter with a Glock in his face took less than a minute. “My whole thought at the moment was be calm. Let’s not get this guy excited. He’s got the gun. I don’t. So you take you the camera. It’s yours Buddy.”

Since this is a high profile case, I am sure that the overwhelmed police in San Francisco will “look into” this incident.

But of course there are thousands of other crimes being committed in San Francisco on a daily basis, and the police are never able to solve most of those either.

Brazen daylight crimes are being committed on the other side of the country as well. For example, two criminal predators recently attacked a 61-year-old man on a Bronx sidewalk, and video footage shows that bystanders just kept “walking by the entire time”…

Police released a shocking video showing a man being attacked and robbed in the middle of the day on a Bronx sidewalk. People are seen walking by the entire time.

The NYPD says it happened just before 2 p.m. on Monday on White Plains Rd. in the Wakefield section.

Old people are being targeted because they are easy prey.

In this instance, what the two criminals were really after was cold, hard cash…

Two men walked up to the 61-year-old man and demanded cash.

One of them pushed the victim and knocked him to the ground. The other man stomped on his face. Both men searched the victim’s pockets, punched the victim in the head, and stole $817 before taking off.

As crime rates have soared, New York and other big cities have slashed police budgets.

Needless to say, that has not worked out very well. Sadly, the truth is that the police do not control the streets of many U.S. cities at this point.

In New York, the spike in crime has been unprecedented. Just check out these numbers…

New York City in 2020 experienced an unprecedented one-year increase in homicides and shootings. Through December 27, 2020, the number of murders was up 41 percent from 2019 and 53 percent from 2018. Shooting victims were up 103 percent from 2019 and 109 percent from 2018; shooting incidents rose 97 percent and 104 percent. In gang-ridden precincts, the spike was even more startling. In Brooklyn’s Brownsville and Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhoods, there were 170 percent more shooting victims in 2020 than in 2019 and 151 percent more shooting incidents. Murder was up 94 percent in these parts of Brooklyn.

Gangs have such free reign in the streets that they have begun “tagging” thousands of buildings in NYC in order to show their domination of certain areas.

On Wednesday, the NYPD announced a “major clean-up operation” in an attempt to do something about all of the graffiti…

New York City has been blighted by graffiti leaving some areas of the Big Apple ‘looking like war zones’ reminiscent of the 1970s and 1980s, leading to a barrage of vandalism complaints.

As part of a major clean-up operation announced on Wednesday, NYPD officers will examine graffiti tags for clues about gang activity in the city after the department said it had received over 6,000 complaints in 2020 alone.

Of course it is a whole lot easier to spray on graffiti than it is to remove it, and unless the NYPD starts arresting people they are going to be fighting a losing battle.

Unfortunately, prosecutors are going soft on crime all over the nation. For example, dozens of violent terrorists that have been involved in the rioting, looting and arson in downtown Portland have had their cases completely dismissed…

Federal prosecutors have dismissed more than one-third of cases stemming from last summer’s violent protests in downtown Portland, when protesters clashed with federal agents. KGW reviewed federal court records and found 31 of the 90 protest cases have been dismissed by the U.S. Department of Justice, including a mix of misdemeanor and felony charges.

Some of the most serious charges dropped include four defendants charged with assaulting a federal officer, which is a felony. More than half of the dropped charges were “dismissed with prejudice,” which several former federal prosecutors described as extremely rare. “Dismissed with prejudice” means the case can’t be brought back to court.

I was absolutely stunned when I read that.

Hardly anyone ever gets arrested during the endless violence in Portland anyway, and so it is disheartening to learn that many of those that do actually get arrested end up going free.

And of course most of them will soon be back among the protesters.

As our major cities continue to descend into madness, the mass exodus that we are witnessing out of our major cities is likely to accelerate even more.

We have entered a period of time when civil unrest is going to be a permanent part of our lives, and what we have experienced so far is just the beginning.

As economic conditions continue to deteriorate, our young people are going to become even more frustrated and even more desperate.

As I have always said, desperate people do desperate things, and now horrific crimes are regularly happening in broad daylight all over the country.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

We Are Witnessing A Last Minute Mass Exodus Before The Final Collapse Of Our Major Cities

February 28, 2021 by Michael

Americans fled the big cities “in droves” in 2020, and one recent survey discovered that even more Americans are planning to move in 2021. The corporate media is attempting to frame this mass exodus as a temporary phenomenon, but there is nothing temporary about it. Millions upon millions of people can see that our society is literally melting down all around us, and they want to get somewhere safe while they still can. In recent weeks, I have written articles about the specific problems that we are witnessing in Chicago and San Francisco, but the truth is that virtually all of our major cities are coming apart at the seams, and this is motivating more people than ever to seek greener pastures.

With so many Americans looking to move, this has pushed up home prices in desirable suburban and rural areas to insane heights.

In fact, in some parts of the country it is difficult to find a decent home for sale at all. In Bozeman, Montana one man has actually resorted to walking around with a cardboard sign asking for someone to sell him a house…

“I’m just asking for someone to sell us a home. My sign says please sell me a home,” said Sean Hawksford, a Bozeman resident.

You may have seen Hawksford strolling down Main Street with a cardboard sign, asking for leads on a house for sale.

This is not a homeless man that we are talking about.

Sean Hawksford is a family man that owns a successful business, and he has been approved for a mortgage.

He just can’t find a house to buy.

According to Hawksford, he has made 18 offers over the past 6 months, but none of them have been accepted…

“It’s been about 6 months, we’ve made I think 18 offers now on different properties and haven’t had one accepted yet,” said Hawksford.

“It’s been a little bit tough with them, and all of my first-time homebuyers to be honest with you,” said Jeff Bent, the Hawksfords’ realtor in Bozeman.

I warned that this would happen.

I warned that when things started to get crazy many Americans wouldn’t be able to move because there would be a crushing amount of demand for available housing as hordes of Americans suddenly sought to relocate. NBC News has used the term “droves” to describe the mass exodus that we witnessed last year…

Americans fled big cities in droves to escape the coronavirus pandemic — and many of them are staying, permanently or indefinitely. But escape means something different depending on whom you ask.

We have never seen anything like this before in U.S. history. According to the Pew Research Center, about one-fifth of all Americans either moved or know someone who moved in 2020…

A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center while the pandemic was in full swing in June 2020 found that approximately a fifth of Americans moved or know someone who moved as a result of COVID-19. The reasons they gave for people moving were extremely varied — ranging from being called into active military duty to college housing being closed down to, of course, sudden financial constraints.

The corporate media keeps trying to blame COVID for the mass migration, but now the COVID pandemic is fading and Americans are still moving in large numbers.

In fact, one recent survey actually found that “20% more people are planning to move in 2021 than moved in 2020”.

If I was currently living in a major city on the east or west coast, I would be highly motivated to move too.

For example, just check out what is happening in Los Angeles…

Los Angeles, the state’s largest city and arguably the most populous now in the United States, has become a byword for violent crime and especially the stronghold of the enormous, ultraviolent and rapidly growing MS 13 organization, routinely mislabeled as a mere “gang” in media reports. MS 13 has up to 50,000 members worldwide of whom at least 10,000, officially, and probably twice as many according to the private assessments of many police officers are in LA.

Jeremiah Babe recently went into the wealthy areas of downtown Los Angeles, and the footage that he captured was mind blowing.

L.A. has never looked like this, and it is getting worse with each passing day.

Of course many would argue that San Francisco is in even worse shape…

San Francisco – America’s “anything goes” city – is in even worse shape. Its most famous, historically popular and beautiful stylish locations are now swamped with aggressive, unsanitary street people who openly urinate and defecate in the streets. Public services, long superb, are now appalling.

For much more on the tragedy that is playing out in that once beautiful city, please see my previous article entitled “The Reason Why A Lot Of People Are Leaving San Francisco Might Surprise You”.

Of course it isn’t just individuals that are moving. In recent months we have seen large numbers of businesses choose to relocate. At one point, Tesla CEO Elon Musk made headlines all over the globe when even he decided that it was time to leave California for good…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has left California and is now a resident of Texas.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Musk said that the move made sense, amid plans underway for a new Tesla factory in the Austin area.

I certainly can’t blame him.

What rational person would choose California over Texas at this point?

On the east coast, hordes of businesses have left New York as well. If you can believe it, even the New York Stock Exchange is thinking of leaving…

The head of the world’s largest financial market, Stacey Cunningham, floated the idea of leaving New York in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal to avoid taxes.

When people think of Florida, they often picture restaurants and shopping, the kind of business you do on vacation. But more and more, people are choosing to move down to the sunshine state because there’s no income tax, and the cost of living is low.

Perhaps they will need to rename it “the Florida Stock Exchange” if they actually pull the trigger on such a move.

Sadly, when things get really bad in this nation, no part of the country will be fully immune.

We will all feel the pain, and the suffering will be off the charts.

But if you do feel motivated to relocate, I would do it as soon as possible, because later this year global events will start accelerating at a very rapid pace.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

A Mass Exodus Away From Big Cities On Both Coasts

August 16, 2020August 16, 2020 by Michael

In all of U.S. history, we have never seen anything like “the mass exodus of 2020”. Hundreds of thousands of people are leaving the major cities on both coasts in search of a better life. Homelessness, crime and drug use were already on the rise in many of our large cities prior to 2020, but many big city residents were willing to put up with a certain amount of chaos in order to maintain their lifestyles. However, the COVID-19 pandemic and months of civil unrest have finally pushed a lot of people over the edge. Moving companies on both coasts are doing a booming business as wealthy and middle class families flee at a blistering pace, and most of those families do not plan to ever return.

Los Angeles is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Once upon a time it attracted wealthy and famous people from all over the globe, but in 2020 it is “a city on the brink“…

Today, Los Angeles is a city on the brink. ‘For Sale’ signs are seemingly dotted on every suburban street as the middle classes, particularly those with families, flee for the safer suburbs, with many choosing to leave LA altogether.

British-born Danny O’Brien runs Watford Moving & Storage. ‘There is a mass exodus from Hollywood,’ he says.

Almost half of the entire homeless population of the entire country now lives in the state of California, and a large proportion of them are addicted to drugs. Needless to say, this has created a nightmarish environment…

Junkies and the homeless, many of whom are clearly mentally ill, walk the palm-lined streets like zombies – all just three blocks from multi-million-dollar homes overlooking the Pacific.

Stolen bicycles are piled high on pavements littered with broken syringes.

Could you imagine trying to raise a family in such a community?

I certainly couldn’t.

And the worse economic conditions become, the worse the problem gets. Crime is skyrocketing in L.A., and some residents have been shocked to discover strangers actually “defecating in their front gardens”…

TV bulletins are filled with horror stories from across the city; of women being attacked during their morning jog or residents returning home to find strangers defecating in their front gardens.

Of course Los Angeles is definitely not the only major city dealing with such issues.

On a per capita basis, drug use is even worse in San Francisco, and it is being reported that there is “a mass exodus of people looking to get out of San Francisco real estate”…

According to online real estate company Zillow, there is a mass exodus of people looking to get out of San Francisco real estate – as the housing market is on fire in the Bay Area suburbs, all the way to Lake Tahoe.

According to the company’s “2020 Urban-Suburban Market Report,” home prices in the city have fallen 4.9% year-over-year, while inventory has jumped 96% during the same period, as a flood of new listings hit the market.

In the end, a lot of people may have to take losses on their homes, but it will be worth it simply to get out of California.

And the state legislature has apparently decided that the mass exodus is not happening fast enough, because a bill is being introduced that would impose a new “wealth tax” on the very wealthy…

Fast forward to today when the ultra-liberal state of California is now ready to take this “socialist” idea from concept to the implementation phase, with the SF Chronicle reporting that a group of CA state lawmakers on Thursday proposed a first-in-the-nation state wealth tax that would hit about 30,400 California residents and raise an estimated $7.5 billion for the general fund.

The proposed tax rate would be 0.4% of net worth (most likely ended up far higher), excluding directly held real estate, that exceeds $30 million for single and joint filers and $15 million for married filing separately.

In the old days, a lot of Californians would just head north to Portland or Seattle, but those two cities are not exactly desirable options at this point.

The civil unrest in Seattle never seems to end, and Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf recently said that there had been “twelve official riots” in the first ten days after federal law enforcement officials left Portland.

Sadly, the east coast has experienced plenty of chaos as well, and the mass exodus out of New York City has been particularly dramatic.

In a previous article, I discussed the fact that the the New York Times had reported that 420,000 New Yorkers had moved out of the city between March 1st and May 1st.

But the exodus certainly didn’t end there.

According to the local Fox affiliate, between May and July there was “a 95 percent year over year increase in interest in moving out of Manhattan”…

According to the most recent data from United Van Lines, between May and July, there was a 95 percent year over year increase in interest in moving out of Manhattan. That compares with a 19 percent increase in moving interest in the U.S., overall.

The top destinations for people who moved out of New York City between March and August were Florida and California – which together comprised 28 percent of relocations. Texas and North Carolina made up 16 percent of moves.

And it isn’t just residents that are leaving.

Business after business is shutting down, and that includes some of the most iconic retailers in the city…

J.C. Penney and Neiman Marcus, the anchor tenants at two of the largest malls in Manhattan, recently filed for bankruptcy and announced that they would shutter those locations.

The Subway restaurant chain has already closed dozens of locations in New York City in recent months,

Le Pain Quotidien has permanently closed several of its 27 stores in the city and plans to leave others closed until more people return to the streets, an executive at the chain’s parent, Aurify Brands, told the Times.

Earlier today, I watched a video that someone had taken of all the boarded up shops along 5th Avenue.

If you have not seen that video yet, you can watch it right here.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. At one time 5th Avenue was a playground for the elite of the world, but now it essentially looks “like a demilitarized zone”…

De Blasio’s New York has finally hit an all-time low: the once bustling city is now on the verge of looking like a demilitarized zone. Between the pandemic and the riots in the city, iconic 5th Avenue now looks more like a dystopian nightmare in a recently shot video posted to Twitter.

The video follows a car driving down a deserted 5th Avenue, with almost all of the area’s high end stores boarded up and shut down. There are few people seen on what is usually a busy street.

“Look at everything. Everything’s boarded up. Even the hotel. Boarded up,” the video’s narrator, who is obviously fed up with how the city looks, says.

In about six months, most of the progress that New York City has made since the dark days of the 1970s and 1980s has completely disappeared.

Homelessness and poverty are both exploding, and crime rates are shooting into the stratosphere.

If you can believe it, the number of shootings in July was 177 percent higher than for the same month last year.

If the deplorable conditions in our major cities were just going to be temporary, I don’t believe that we would be seeing such a mass exodus.

But at this point it should be clear to all of us that things aren’t going to turn around any time soon, and many people are convinced that things are just going to continue to get even worse.

Our major cities are degenerating right in front of our eyes, and there doesn’t seem to be any hope of reversing this process now that it has started.

In life, the decisions that we make always have consequences, and the consequences for the decisions that we have made as a nation as a whole will be very bitter indeed.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.***

About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com. By purchasing the book you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe. I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article. In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help. During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.

For Millions Of Americans In The Middle Of The Country, It Feels Like An Economic Depression Right Now

November 10, 2019November 10, 2019 by Michael

What do you do when you have lost all hope that things will ever turn around? It may still feel like “the economy is booming” for those at the top end of the economic food chain in big coastal cities such as New York and San Francisco, but for millions of hard working Americans in the middle of the country, talk of a “coming recession” is absolutely ludicrous because it already feels like a severe economic depression is happening right now. In America’s heartland, bankruptcies are surging, debt burdens are becoming overwhelming, and suicide rates are spiking to unprecedented levels. We have not seen economic despair this extreme since the last recession, and I am about to share a story with you that will absolutely break your heart.

At one time, South Dakota farmers Chris and Amber Dykshorn looked toward the future with great optimism. But mounting debts and several years of disastrous weather changed all that, and in June their community was shocked when Chris took his own life…

Amber Dykshorn stood at her kitchen window and watched the storm come in.

It was a very dark Saturday night in the middle of the summer in the middle of a year that is on track to be the wettest in more than a century. The wind blew over the farm, the rain came down and she heard the ominous pings on her roof – pea-sized hail, striking the still-fragile stalks of the only corn her husband, Chris Dykshorn, was able to plant before he took his own life in June.

Chris had lost all hope.

The couple was absolutely drowning in debt, and they desperately needed a good year just to keep the farm going.

But then the rain just kept on coming, and now Amber has to deal with three young kids and $300,000 in farm debt all by herself…

Did their crop insurance cover hail damage? She had no idea. That was something Chris would have taken care of, if he were here. Instead she was alone, with nearly $300,000 in farm debt, three kids ages 5 to 13 and a host of grief-fueled questions. Why hadn’t she been able to save him? What would happen to them now?

Sadly, the Dykshorns are not an isolated case.

All across the Midwest, farms are going under at a staggering rate. According to the vice president of the National Farmers Union, the state of Wisconsin is “losing two farms a day” at this point…

“You look at the weather, you look at the crops you can’t get off the field, you look at the bills you can’t pay,” Patty Edelburg, vice president of the National Farmers Union, told Yahoo Finance. “Bankruptcies are up. Wisconsin is attributed as the No. 1 bankruptcy in the nation right now, when it comes to dairy farmers. That number is up, I think, 24% from last year already. We’re losing two farms a day.”

If you can believe it, the state of Wisconsin “lost almost 1,200 dairy farms” between 2016 and 2018.

Overall, the number of dairy farms in the state has fallen by 49 percent during the last 15 years.

Just think about that.

Half of all the dairy farms in our most important dairy producing state are completely gone.

And instead of tapering off, this “farm apocalypse” just continues to pick up speed. Sadly, the bankers are contributing to this crisis in a major way by denying loans to many of these troubled farmers…

“Farming is such a stressful occupation by itself,” Edelburg said. “When you start adding financial stress on top of it, it’s just going to add more stress. Farmers can’t pay their bills, they have no extra money, they have people honing down their neck looking to pay bills. They’re going to banks and they can’t get loans. They’re literally being denied loans.”

When you are already drowning in debt and your crops are failing and the banks won’t give you any more money, it can seem like there is no way out.

This is the position that Chris Dykshorn found himself in, and we can get an idea of what his emotional state was like just before he committed suicide from the final texts that he sent to his wife…

“I’m struggling so bad today. I don’t know what to do anymore,” he texted on May 31. “I seriously don’t know how we r gonna make it.”

On June 1: “I just want to sit in the house and cry.”

And then: “What am I supposed to do. I am failing and feel like I’m gonna lose everything I’ve worked for the past how many years.”

As I have stressed over and over, suicide is never the answer. But when someone loses all hope that there will ever be an opportunity to turn things around, it can be very difficult to keep going.

Meanwhile, money is flowing like wine on Wall Street thanks to the Federal Reserve. The unelected Fed has been pumping billions upon billions of dollars into the financial markets, and this has resulted in a higher concentration of wealth among the top one percent than ever before. The following comes from Bloomberg…

The top 1% of American households have enjoyed huge returns in the stock market in the past decade, to the point that they now control more than half of the equity in U.S. public and private companies, according to data from the Federal Reserve. Those fat portfolios have America’s elite gobbling up an ever-bigger piece of the pie.

The very richest had assets of about $35.4 trillion in the second quarter, or just shy of the $36.9 trillion held by the tens of millions of people who make up the 50th percentile to the 90th percentile of Americans — much of the middle and upper-middle classes.

In essence, Wall Street is being showered by “welfare money” from the Federal Reserve, and nobody is holding the Fed accountable.

At the same time, tens of millions of American families are working low paying jobs and are just barely getting by from month to month. The following comes from Zero Hedge…

For instance, a new report sheds light on 53 million Americans, or about 44% of all US workers, aged 18 to 64, are considered low-wage and low-skilled.

Many of these folks are stuck in the gig economy, making approximately $10.22 per hour, and they bring home less than $20,000 per year, according to a Brookings Institution report.

Today, half of all American workers make less than $33,000 a year. As the cost of living continues to rise much faster than wages do, hard working Americans are increasingly turning to debt in order to make ends meet, and during the next recession many families will not be able to service those debts.

All over the nation, we are watching a tragedy play out in slow motion.

America’s heartland is being gutted, and the “next recession” hasn’t even officially started yet. But soon enough it will, and the deep depression that we are already witnessing in many parts of the middle of the country will get a lot worse.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing those books you help to support my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I need those that republish my articles to include this “About the Author” section with each article. In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished. This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.

+ More