Burlington, Vermont, experienced a mini-version of this when the increasingly socialist city government raised property taxes on businesses to the point that all the grocery stores moved out. In response to the \u201cfood-desert\u201d crisis, the city tried to lure food stores back, but the restrictions and requirements for what products had to be stocked, how much had to be \u201corganic\u201d, etc, resulted in only one taker, a \u201cWhole-Foods\u201d type grocery, with prices way too expensive for the low-income neighborhoods it was supposed to service.
\nReductions in the Police Dept have resulted in some areas of the city becoming no-go zones, and the once-prosperous Church Street shopping district has lost its major anchor stores, and is overrun with panhandlers and homeless.
\n(Thanks, Bernie!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Burlington, Vermont, experienced a mini-version of this when the increasingly socialist city government raised property taxes on businesses to the point that all the grocery<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3776,1489],"tags":[3777,1596,1437],"class_list":["post-33885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-ed-brault","category-guest-contributors","tag-ed-brault","tag-guest-contributors","tag-socialism"],"yoast_head":"\n