Why is it that, time and again, glaring evidence of government-run failures fails to deter progressives from championing the same broken solutions? You’d think endless examples of public sector debacles would give them pause — a moment of reflection, maybe even a course correction. However, the stubborn tenacity of the left in trying and trying again with the same failed ideas borders on fanaticism.
Take a walk down the memory lane of government “solutions,” and you’re bound to trip over the ruins of one progressive pipe dream after another, each one sold as the silver bullet for social justice. The latest fantasy? City-run grocery stores in New York. This terrible idea has been pushed by the Democratic Party’s NYC mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani to wage war on so-called “food injustice,” and naturally, the usual suspects are jumping in, not only claiming it’s a great idea, but claiming that such things actually work.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, ever the reliable cheerleader for state intervention, is more than happy to endorse these interventions. “It’s been tried in other cities around the country and has had some real successes,” she insists.
Has it though?
Elizabeth Warren goes full socialist and backs NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani's plan for government-run grocery stores:
— Martin Walsh (@martinwalsh__) July 18, 2025
"It’s been tried in other cities around the country and has had some real successes.” pic.twitter.com/gAYvWOGDS1
In the minds of radical leftists, nothing screams efficiency like letting the same people who can’t fix potholes take over your local grocery store. According to Mamdani, all it takes is a mountain of tax dollars and a few layers of red tape to magically correct the market’s “failures," as if central planning hasn’t already proven to be a recipe for disaster.
In New York, the same fantasy now takes center stage. City-run groceries will, they tell us, banish hunger and injustice.
Neither Mamdani nor Warren has visited Kansas City’s city-run grocery, where rot and emptiness have proven more plentiful than affordable meals. If Kansas City’s taxpayer-funded grocery is a “success,” then failure must have a new definition. Empty shelves, decaying produce, theft without consequence: It’s a familiar script that the left seems to watch on repeat.
BREAKING: City-funded grocery store trial in Kansas City has already failed. Shelves are completely empty, food rotten, theft. pic.twitter.com/UWlFZDkcYM
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 23, 2025
What’s truly baffling is how anyone can look at the wreckage these “pilot programs” have left behind — shuttered businesses, gutted neighborhoods, jobs erased — and still insist that the only problem was not enough government. But that’s leftist orthodoxy in a nutshell: government never fails. And if it does? It’s only because the program wasn’t big enough, the bureaucrats weren’t woke enough, or capitalism somehow sabotaged it from the sidelines.
Strip away the polished slogans about “helping the underprivileged,” and what you’re left with is the same old power grab: another scheme to drain control, resources, and freedom from everyday Americans and hand it to an already bloated bureaucracy. The fallout these programs leave behind isn’t a bug; it’s a feature. And the price? It’s always paid by the working and middle class, not the wealthy leftists who dream them up. For them, failure is abstract. For everyone else, it’s lost jobs, shuttered businesses, and neighborhoods hollowed out, all while hearing that the cure is even more government.
The evidence is overwhelming. The left keeps betting on central planning no matter how many lives it wrecks or communities it decimates. Their faith in government control is impervious to facts, immune to reason, and utterly detached from results. The real question isn’t why they keep pushing these doomed ideas; it’s whether voters will finally wake up and say no before their own cities get dragged into the next progressive disaster.
