Afghanistan is Back
Hey fam, Bob Dole has passed away at 98. My thoughts and prayers are with his family. In memory of Senator Dole, check out this funny clip with him and Tim Russert.
Remember Afghanistan?
Joe Biden’s botched U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan is having devastating affects on the region. The Taliban has been in power for a mere four months and has already driven the country into crisis.
This is from The New York Times:
Nearly four months since the Taliban seized power, Afghanistan is on the brink of a mass starvation that aid groups say threatens to kill a million children this winter — a toll that would dwarf the total number of Afghan civilians estimated to have been killed as a direct result of the war over the past 20 years.
While Afghanistan has suffered from malnutrition for decades, the country’s hunger crisis has drastically worsened in recent months. This winter, an estimated 22.8 million people — more than half the population — are expected to face potentially life-threatening levels of food insecurity, according to an analysis by the United Nations World Food Program and Food and Agriculture Organization. Of those, 8.7 million people are nearing famine — the worst stage of a food crisis.
Afghanistan is notorious for having brutally cold winters. A significant portion of the population survives the winter with food grown and stored during warmer months. A collapsed economy amid international sanctions and a historic drought has made this almost impossible. The worst is yet to come.
So San Francisco
San Francisco legalized the public sale and consumption of cannabis products in 2018 with the end goal of adding additional taxes. Sounds like a great plan to raise extra revenue, right? Nope.
This is from Fox News:
City supervisors in San Francisco unanimously approved an ordinance suspending the city's business tax on cannabis retailers last week.
San Francisco Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who penned the ordinance, said in a statement to the San Francisco Examiner that the suspension is intended to help out legal cannabis retailers who are trying to compete with illegal drug dealers and a spike in theft.
The tax, which imposes a 1% to 5% citywide tax on gross receipts from cannabis businesses, was approved by voters in November 2018 and was slated to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2022. The ordinance, which passed Tuesday, suspends the tax through Dec. 31, 2022.
So what happened? The crime wave in San Francisco forced legal cannabis dispensaries to raise prices. Instead of cracking down on crime or pursuing the illegal drug dealers, the city would rather wave taxes. Will they do this for other businesses as well?
More crime and fewer cops in Seattle
Seattle has defunded the police for the second year in a row.
This is from The Wall Street Journal:
Last week the City Council voted 8-1 for a 2022 city budget that cuts police funding by more than $7 million. That slash comes after the City Council cut the 2021 police budget by nearly $35.6 million, or 9%, from 2019.
The punchline is the lone holdout in the 8-1 vote was from Kshama Sawant of the Socialist Alternative party who wanted a 50% cut to the police budget. Ouch.
The debate over police funding happens as Seattle sees a spike in shootings over the past two years. At the beginning of December in 2021, Seattle has seen 509 shootings. 2020 reported 438 shootings which was up from 332 in 2019.
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