California’s new $20 minimum wage law for fast food restaurants is wrecking small towns. Glenn reviews the plight of the town of Lemoore, California, where business are laying people off, raising prices, or even closing due to the strain these government edicts have put on them. But how long until these progressive policies spread to other states?
Transcript
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: Not a lot of people know of the little town of Lemoore, California. But if you live there, it's probably one of the greatest places on earth. Buildings are from the early 1900s. They decorate the street corners. And residents gather around the town gazebo in the downtown area.
And murals are painted on the sides of businesses that tell their history. Sounds like a place, I would love to live in, except it's in California.
But it's not the typical California town.
It sits inland. Way, way away from the Pacific Ocean. And it's about directly in the middle of the state.
Lemoore is around 200 miles north of the glitz and glam of Los Angeles, 200 miles south of San Francisco.
And about 200 miles south of Sacramento. So if you've ever driven the 400 or so miles along Highway 5 from LA to San Francisco.
You might have an idea of the type of community the people of Lemoore live in.
The city of Los Angeles just kind of fades away. The bright lights of Hollywood. The hopes and dreams of making it in show business. Slowly gives way to more practical, hard-working lifestyle.
And little by little. One by one. You pass farming communities and dairy communities. At times, you might think you're in rural Texas.
Hard work. Kind of hard work that is evidenced by the blisters, on one's hands.
The sweat on their brow. The dirt on their clothes.
It breeds hard and determined people. You can find these people everywhere in the state. Everywhere in the union, really.
They're the people in Abilene, Texas. Or Preston, Idaho or Sheraton, Wyoming. Lemoore, California.
But these are also the people that all too often, have to accept their fates, as their fates are being decided by people in big cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Sacramento.
California recently passed a statewide legislation. Mandates a 20-dollar minimum wage for restaurants.
It went into effect on Monday.
And on Monday, the reality of big city politics landed in the small town of Lemoore.
When workers at the local Fosters Freeze showed up on Monday morning, they were told, we're closing the doors. For good. Why?
The assistant manager said the owner blamed the state's new minimum wage increase. According to her, Fosters Freeze isn't the only business in Lemoore, where the wage hike is affecting people.
Quote, this is not the first business that's closing.
There already have been a few local businesses for me, that are closing.
So I feel like, this is just the beginning.
How many businesses will be destroyed by big city policies?
Destroying the small towns, all across America?
Lee more has around 30,000 people. There are only 11,000 jobs.
How many jobs will remain in a month?
How many jobs in two months?
What does that do to the town, and the population?
How many people, that do have jobs, will be able to afford, the inevitable price increases?
So far, restaurants like Chipotle, McDonald's, Jack in the Box, Starbucks. They already announced they have to raise prices.
The prices are already out of control. Other restaurants like Pizza Hut have announced layoffs.
1200 employees.
This is the beginning. Who knows how bad this is going to get. For your small town.
Which will empty your small towns.
Make your small towns, that were just maybe beginning to thrive again. Back into ghost towns.
If you live in places like Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Sacramento. You might be able to find another job. Or eat at a cheaper restaurant.
But what about all the people that live in towns like Lemoore?
What if I live in a small town outside of California? Do you feel safe?
You shouldn't. Because California is the proving ground, for radical left-wing politics.
And when I say proving ground, not that they work. Just that they can get them passed.
It's like a giant crash test dummy for bad ideas.
And our country is being destroyed, because of it.
The history tells the tragic story.
Obamacare likely would have never gotten done without a radical California socialist. Who advised both Bill Clinton and Obama, and a high profile, named Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Schwarzenegger's insane climate agenda was all, but copied by President Obama.
Now under bind, it's destroying all of the reliable energy, at breakneck speed. I don't live in California for a reason!
Because there is no reason, in California!
We've all watched over the past few years, how the left's radical criminal justice reform is incentivizing. Incentivizing crime, all over the country.
Back in 2014, California passed proposition 47.
It reclassified multiple crimes from felonies to misdemeanors.
Rendering things like shoplifting, theft of property.
Forgery, drug possession.
And others, to mere slaps on the wrists.
It gave criminals, early release from prisons.
We're seeing the ramifications on the streets, everywhere.
You know what the base of the Statue of Liberty there, there is a poem, that was written just to raise the funds to erect the statute of liberty.
In it, it says, give me your tired. Your poor. Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.
The wretched refuse of your teeming shores.
Send these, the homeless, the tempest tossed to me.
We always read that in the wrong way. We always read that as, oh, send me your homeless.
No! Send me the people that you have made homeless. Send me the people you have made homeless! Send me the people that you say, cannot make it. Send me the people that you have broken through all of your policies, and your rules.
And your experts.
Send those people to me!
Send them to Texas. And let us show you what those people can do.
But what a new meaning this has, in this new progressive day and age. For the tired, poor, homeless. And huddled masses, yearning for freedom.
They're now the American cities, that are being left in the wake, of California progress.