As a California state assemblywoman, Mary Hayashi is accustomed to taking things from people and companies because she wants to. She apparently just forgot that she had to get the rest of the Legislature to approve of the theft before she did it.
The Castro Valley Democrat came into a San Francisco Neiman Marcus store with two shopping bags, one from Neiman Marcus and one from another store. She picked up $2,500 worth of merchandise and left the store — passing multiple checkout registers along the way. Store security watched and recorded on video — and then confronted her after she left the store. San Francisco police arrested Hayashi and she’s charged with felony grand theft.
A spokeswoman for Hayashi says it’s all just a misunderstanding, of course. She said Hayashi was talking on her cell phone and simply left the store “without really thinking about it.”
Hayashi is part of an institution whose members simply take what they want from others and give those things to pretty much anyone they want. It’s an institution that believes it has the moral right to control people’s lives and take their property without compensation. My experience with politicians who have that kind of power get pretty arrogant about what they can have when they want it. My suspicion is that she thought she was entitled to the “five-finger discount.”
There are three kinds of lonely — and I don’t know which this is
If you were once a nerdy outsider, you need to go see ‘Ender’s Game’
Do I oppose rulers because I hate rulers — or because I hate rules?
Romantic attraction is a trickster, appearing when we least expect it
Galt’s Gulch? I can live without that, but I need my own ‘Akston’s diner’
‘This path leads to somewhere I think I can finally say, I’m home’
Trust and spontaneous order don’t require heavy hand of the state
Maybe it’s so hard to love others because we don’t love ourselves
With space shuttle finally dead, free market can do better job in space