[City Journal] By latest count, some 109,089 men and women are sleeping on the streets of major cities in California, Oregon, and Washington. The homelessness crisis in these cities has generated headlines and speculation about "root causes." Progressive political activists allege that tech companies have inflated housing costs and forced middle-class people onto the streets. Declaring that "no two people living on Skid Row . . . ended up there for the same reasons," Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti, for his part, blames a housing shortage, stagnant wages, cuts to mental health services, domestic and sexual abuse, shortcomings in criminal justice, and a lack of resources for veterans. These factors may all have played a role, but the most pervasive cause of West Coast homelessness is clear: heroin, fentanyl, and synthetic opioids.
Homelessness is an addiction crisis disguised as a housing crisis. In Seattle, prosecutors and law enforcement recently estimated that the majority of the region’s homeless population is hooked on opioids, including heroin and fentanyl. If this figure holds constant throughout the West Coast, then at least 11,000 homeless opioid addicts live in Washington, 7,000 live in Oregon, and 65,000 live in California (concentrated mostly in San Francisco and Los Angeles). For the unsheltered population inhabiting tents, cars, and RVs, the opioid-addiction percentages are even higher‐the City of Seattle’s homeless-outreach team estimates that 80 percent of the unsheltered population has a substance-abuse disorder. Officers must clean up used needles in almost all the homeless encampments.
For drug cartels and low-level street dealers, the business of supplying homeless addicts with heroin, fentanyl, and other synthetic opioids is extremely lucrative. According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the average heavy-opioid user consumes $1,834 in drugs per month. Holding rates constant, we can project that the total business of supplying heroin and other opioids to the West Coast’s homeless population is more than $1.8 billion per year. In effect, Mexican cartels, Chinese fentanyl suppliers, and local criminal networks profit off the misery of the homeless and offload the consequences onto local governments struggling to get people off the streets.
West Coast cities are seeing a crime spike associated with homeless opioid addicts. In Seattle, police busted two sophisticated criminal rings engaged in "predatory drug dealing" in homeless encampments (they were found in possession of $20,000 in cash, heroin, firearms, knives, machetes, and a sword). Police believe that "apartments were serving as a base of operations that supplied drugs to the streets, and facilitated the collection and resale of stolen property." In other words, drug dealers were exploiting homeless addicts and using the city’s maze of illegal encampments as distribution centers. In my own Fremont neighborhood, where property crime has surged 57 percent over the past two years, local business owners have formed a group to monitor a network of RVs that circulate around the area to deal heroin, fentanyl, and methamphetamines. Dealers have become brazen‐one recently hung up a spray-painted sign on the side of his RV with the message: "Buy Drugs Here!"
#1
"heroin, fentanyl, and synthetic opioids". This plaque is anywhere and everywhere in this country. I have concluded that a die off is the only solution.The World health organization has stated there are too many people in the world. So drugs and abortions accommodate that thought.Socialism also.
[Babylon Bee] Shortly after Joe Biden promised to cure cancer if he is elected president, presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren attempted to one-up her opponent, promising to cure smallpox as one of her first actions upon taking office.
"We will fend off the smallpox attacks of the white man," she said while sipping "fire water" in a live video posted to her social media accounts. "If I am elected, I will find a way to end this scourge on our people and send the white devils back across the great sea where they came from."
Warren also vowed to support housing construction by funding new low-cost wigwams, longhouses, and teepees across the land.
Her policies would also address hunger. "I promise a buffalo over every fire!" she said, before giving off a war cry that she had found on Google and carefully rehearsed ahead of time.
"A vote against me is a vote for the smallpox blankets the white man used to oppress our people!" she concluded.
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/15/2019 10:09 ||
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[Hot Air] Good question, and Lindsey Graham makes sure to frame it as a value applicable to all parties. "No party should be hiring foreign agents to look at their opponents," Graham told reporters this morning, "and we shouldn’t be taking meetings" with them, either.
For Democrats setting their hair on fire over Donald Trump’s comments this morning, the Senate Judiciary chair advises, they should first remember that Hillary Clinton and the DNC did exactly that in 2016 too. "I’m hoping that some of my Democratic colleagues will take more seriously," Graham argued, "that Christopher Steele was a foreign agent paid for by the Democratic Party to gather dirt on Trump."
#4
The Dems haven't even tried to process the Hillary side of the equation yet. They won't until the primaries are over and they have someone else to get behind.
[Jpost] Iranian media falsely reported that the country rescued all the crew of the tankers, that one sank and even showed fake video. Why?
Just after six in the morning on Thursday, June 13 the Kokuka Courageous oil tanker off the coast of Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan, the abbreviation IRGC is a cognate form of Stürmabteilung (or SA), the term Supreme Guide is a cognate form of either Shah or Führer or maybe both, and they hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... traveling in a major shipping lane experienced what crew described as an attack. The vessel called for help. It was 10 nautical miles from another ship, the Front Altair, where an kaboom occurred. The second vessel also made a distress call. The US has accused Iran of attacking the ships and provided video evidence of Iran’s alleged involvement.
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Posted by: trailing wife ||
06/15/2019 00:00 ||
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#1
Sanctions hurt bad and if they cannot ship oil through the straight, no one else can. That is their statement
[AmericanThinker] "A republic, if you can keep it" was Ben Franklin's famous reply to the breathless folks waiting outside Independence Hall in 1787 who had asked him, "Well, doctor, what have we got ‐ a republic or a monarchy?"
If you can keep it? Let's just say it's not looking good. And that isn't good. For America ‐ or the world at large.
The Left never gives in, never tires, never wavers, always presses on.
...When a society loses faith in itself, something must fill the void. Bizarrely, we have lost faith in what demonstrably works and brings the most freedom, prosperity, and happiness to the largest number of people‐ a mix of free-market capitalism and Judeo-Christian values ‐ and are now supplanting that faith with "faith" in what demonstrably doesn't work ‐ socialism, an economic and governing philosophy that has brought only death, tyranny, poverty, and despair to all who have lived under it. The federal government has usurped states' roles and rights. And now Democrats want to dispense with the Electoral College.
...Sadly, Dr. Franklin, it does not appear that we will be able to keep the republic you and your contemporaries bequeathed to us after all. Thanks for trying.
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/15/2019 16:14 Comments ||
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#6
Well, deTocqueville said that the "American experiment" would last only up to the point that the citizens discovered they could vote themselves largess from the public treasure.
With the kleptocracy in full flower we may be there.....
#7
Do humans, homo sapiens that is, have a hard-wired tendency to break down into smaller, more stable social groups? This makes far larger social groups such as "Republics" or "Empires" inherently unstable. Look at the USSR, for example, it was supposedly communist when in reality it quickly converted into a bureaucratic swamp of oligarchies fighting over the spoils. Dunbar's Number: In 1992,[1] Dunbar used the correlation observed for non-human primates to predict a social group size for humans. Using a regression equation on data for 38 primate genera, Dunbar predicted a human "mean group size" of 148 (casually rounded to 150), a result he considered exploratory due to the large error measure (a 95% confidence interval of 100 to 230).[1]
#8
^^Large social groups only work as long as their is a general 'Trust' that the 'Rules' are being adhered to. Once this breaks down it is a down hill rush for each petty group to establish and defend their turf against all comers.
#12
Entropy is at work, and the more complex and unequal the perception of government behavior, the faster it fractures the system...we have tipped I fear, and the coming societal velocity to violence is visible now.
#13
I suspect group size is a scaling problem that comes from the fact that we spent most of our history as roving bands of hunter-gatherers.
(Scaling is *one* reason why socialism doesn't work. Don't get me started on the others)
One of the greatest accomplishment of the American Experiment is that we managed to unite people from all over the world under one idea - America. Not blood, not soil, but the set of beliefs laid out in our Constitution. E Pluribus Unum, baby!
I fear the current obsession with identity politics is shattering the whole idea of America. Whether it can be put back together remains to be seen.
[Orange County Register] The state of California has made no secret that it wants to let as many people out of prison as possible.
From the early release of inmates through AB 109, to filling parole boards with felon friendly commissioners, to decriminalizing a litany of felonies and drug offenses with Props 47 and 57, Sacramento lawmakers are bending over backwards to dramatically reduce the state’s inmate population.
Despite all of these efforts, the number of inmates hasn’t dropped dramatically enough to satisfy the state’s ruling Democrats, so they’re kicking tires on a new approach ‐ rigging the jury system so no one gets convicted in the first place.
This most recent push is Senate Bill 310, authored by state Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, and would allow Californians who have prior felony convictions to serve on juries.
In a press release promoting the proposal, Skinner wrote, "SB310 will help ensure that California juries represent a fair cross-section of our communities...People with felony records have the right to vote in California. There is no legitimate reason why they should be barred from serving on a jury."
Click through to read the whole thing. Top comment:
Another essay in which Dr. Frankenstein gripes about her monster.
I’d normally be on Ms. Bindel’s side, but I notice in this piece and every other she’s written she never addresses how trans ideology is based on the radical feminist rules she worked so hard to set down.
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Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
06/15/2019 00:00 ||
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#3
As I've said before, the LGBT movement probably originated in the idle minds of entrenched communists and actuated some dumb mothers into activism for their darling boys. They grafted their cause into the feminist movement, and gradually hijacked it.
Today the LGBT thing overshadows the feminist thing. Even the genuine movement for emancipation and safety of women in a man's world has been brushed aside by mamma's boys and attention seeking mentally ill narcissists. The feminists still fought with womanly grace and dignity (even if such a fight itself is pointless). They fought for a society in which sex did not decide authority or preferential treatment and where men could not treat them as unequals.
The LGBTSQSVRwhatevers fight like aggressive men for preferential treatment. Because they are basically... well, men. It's unfortunate to see so many dumb women marching rank and file into a social conflict that ultimately unfairly empowers only men in the end. Men with penises surgically altered (yeeugh!) or wearing pantyhose, women with more testosterone in them than Schwarzenegger, all weirdos but mainly men.
#6
The comments are a gold mine of people taking the piss out of the writer for utter hypocrisy. A couple of other feminists show up and start calling everyone misogynists and get their asses handed to them by cold, rational arguments. It's hilarious. An hour well spent.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
06/15/2019 13:30 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Babylon Bee] Shortly after Joe Biden promised to cure cancer if he is elected president, presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren attempted to one-up her opponent, promising to cure smallpox as one of her first actions upon taking office.
[Jpost] Iranian media falsely reported that the country rescued all the crew of the tankers, that one sank and even showed fake video. Why?
[Orange County Register] The state of California has made no secret that it wants to let as many people out of prison as possible.
