Category: Opinion

Earlier this week, San Francisco Supervisors unanimously approved legislation to suspend the City’s Cannabis Business Tax through the end of 2022.

The city said the decision to suspend the cannabis tax is an attempt to support legal cannabis retailers while curtailing illegal marijuana sales.

Spearheaded by District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, the legislation suspends the cannabis tax through Dec. 31, 2022, as legal cannabis merchants say they have difficulty competing with illegal cannabis sources.

“Cannabis businesses create good jobs for San Franciscans and provide safe, regulated products to their customers,” said Mandelman.
“Sadly, the illegal market is flourishing by undercutting the prices of legal businesses, which is bad for our economy as illegal businesses pay no taxes while subjecting workers to dangerous conditions and consumers to dangerous products.,” Mandelman added.

“Now is not the time to impose a new tax on small businesses that are just getting established and trying to compete with illicit operators.”
In 2016, State voters passed Proposition 64 which legalized adult cannabis use and also established a 15% state excise tax on retail cannabis sales as well as a tax on cannabis cultivation.

Since the proposition passed five years ago, the State estimates that illegal market sales are $8 billion annually in California, that’s double the number of legal sales.

“The imposition of new local cannabis tax in San Francisco while State taxes remain high runs the risk of further undermining our local legal market and the good union jobs that it creates,” said Jim Araby, Director of Strategic Campaigns for United Food & Commercial Workers Union Local 5 which represents 30,000 workers in the Bay Area, including workers in San Francisco’s cannabis industry.

“This legislation will help provide additional stability for workers in the emerging cannabis industry in San Francisco.”

The Bay Area is facing a rash of retail thefts — the city says cannabis businesses are often targeted by organized and armed groups.
On November 16, BASA Cannabis Dispensary had thousands of dollars of product stolen from their store on Grove Street.

BASA owners say its business has now been robbed five times.

“Cannabis businesses, along with many other retailers in San Francisco, are struggling under the weight of out-of-control retail theft,” said Mandelman.

“San Francisco needs to do more to protect these businesses, their employees, and their customers before we hit them with a new tax.”

A Texas plumber found more than a busted pipe while working at the Lakewood Church in Houston where Joel Osteen is the pastor. But the plumber never thought he would stumble onto a shocking secret hidden deep within the church.

“There was a loose toilet in the wall, and we removed the tile. Went to go remove the toilet and I moved some insulation away and about 500 envelopes fell out of the wall,” he said. “I was like ‘Oh wow.’ I got my flashlight, shined up in there.”

The plumber said the envelopes were filled with cash and checks, which he claims he reported to the maintenance supervisor.

“I went ahead and contacted the maintenance supervisor that was there, and I turned it all in,” he said.

In March 2014, Lakewood Church reported that $200,000 in cash and $400,000 in checks had been stolen along with some credit card information.

At the time of the theft, the church said the missing money had been insured, since that time, there has been no arrest made in the case.

Lakewood Church issued a statement saying that cash and checks had been discovered recently while work was being done on the church, but there was no mention as to how much money was actually found.

“Lakewood immediately notified the Houston Police Department and is assisting them with their investigation. Lakewood has no further comment at this time,” the church said in a statement.

Houston police said in a statement Friday that they were notified after the discovery was made and that the recovered checks suggest that the money found in envelopes is related to the 2014 theft.

Authorities said the explosion of a World War II-era bomb shook a construction site near the train station in Munich, Germany earlier this week. The 250-kilogram (550-pound) bomb was discovered while workers were drilling.

The explosion left four people injured with one suffering from serious injuries according to the Munich fire brigade.

Germany’s Deutsche Bahn rail operator temporarily suspended all operations following the incident.

The police told commuters that there was “no danger outside of the immediate area.”

Approximately 2,000 tons of undetonated bombs from World War II are still in Germany, and construction sites are typically scanned for potential explosives prior to drilling.

Joachim Herrmann, Bavaria’s state interior minister, said the authorities’ main focus needs to be on finding out why the explosive had not been found earlier.

Official estimates are that somewhere around 15% of the explosives from World War II did not detonate and some could potentially be hidden as deeply as 20 feet underground.

Gov. Ralph Northam announced Sunday that the pedestal on which the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee stood for 131 years in Richmond, Virginia is scheduled to be removed.

Northam said in a press release that the land that housed both the statue and the pedestal will be returned to the city.

“This land is in the middle of Richmond, and Richmonders will determine the future of this space,” Northam said. “The Commonwealth will remove the pedestal and we anticipate a safe removal and a successful conclusion to this project.”

The pedestal has been repeatedly defaced with profane, anti-police graffiti.

The Lee statue was the last remaining Confederate figure to remain on the city’s historic Monument Avenue, after having become the subject of profound controversy following the death of George Floyd in May 2020.

Shortly after Floyd’s death while in police custody, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney ordered the removal of the memorials of Confederate Gens. Jeb Stuart and Stonewall Jackson, as well Confederate Naval commander Matthew Fontaine Murray. Protesters previously overturned a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

Court litigation delayed the removal of the Lee statue because it was on state-owned land. The Virginia Supreme Court ultimately ruled in a 7-0 decision that the statue should be taken down and sawed into two pieces and put into storage.

“The commonwealth of Virginia will remove the largest Confederate statue remaining in the United States – the statue of Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue in Richmond – on Wednesday, September 8, following authorization by all three branches of state government, including a unanimous decision last week by the Supreme Court of Virginia,” the state announced in a press release at the time.

Former President Donald Trump issued a statement against the statue’s removal at the time, saying, “Our culture is being destroyed and our history and heritage, both good and bad, are being extinguished by the Radical Left, and we can’t let that happen!”

Northam faced a racially charged controversy himself in 2019, regarding a yearbook photo from his college days.

Many people are going to great lengths to try and get around vaccine mandates and one man in Italy is now looking at fraud charges for wearing a prosthetic arm to avoid actually receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.

The man went to a vaccine hub in Biella, a city in Northern Italy, to get his vaccination in accordance with recent governmental restrictions banning unvaccinated individuals from participating in a number of social activities.

It has been estimated that he spent hundreds of euros on the prosthetic arm which he then used to try to get a health pass while avoiding the actual vaccine.

When he sat down and rolled up his sleeve to receive the shot, health worker Filippa Bua noticed something peculiar about his arm.

“I felt offended as a professional,” she said. “The color of the arm made me suspicious and so I asked the man to uncover the rest of his left arm. It was well made but it wasn’t the same color.”

“At first I thought I made a mistake, that it was a patient with an artificial arm.”

Bua said that the deceptive man pleaded with her to not expose him.

Fake vaccination cards have been turning up across the country as a growing number of people are looking to get around COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

Former President Donald Trump has never been one to hold back and he certainly didn’t start with General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when he called him a “f*cking idiot” Saturday.

Turning Point USA hosted an event at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida Saturday where Trump spoke his truth about Milley and the part he played in the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Referencing a previous conversation he’d had with Milley, Trump told the crowd that Milley claimed it would be “cheaper” to leave military equipment in the Middle East than it would be to bring it back to the U.S.

“Sir, sir. It’s cheaper to leave the equipment than to bring it,” Trump began, describing Milley’s advice. Trump listed the millions of dollars of brand new equipment in the Middle East. “You think it’s cheaper to leave it there so they can have it than to fill it up with a half a tank of gas?” questioned Trump.

“That’s when I realized he was a f*cking idiot,” Trump said as the audience broke out in laughter.

Trump also called Milley out in September, calling him a “dumbo” while citing the infamous phone call Milley made to China warning them of U.S. military strikes. Trump said “lightweight” Milley’s decision to make the call was counterproductive and outrageous.

Trump pushed back on Milley in July when Milley accused him of wanting to launch a coup after the November election. “So ridiculous! Sorry to inform you, but an Election is my form of ‘coup,’ and if I was going to do a coup, one of the last people I would want to do it with is General Mark Milley,” Trump exclaimed.

New York City Mayor-elect Eric Adams maintained his support of “stop and frisk” in reaction to last week’s Thanksgiving Eve shooting that wounded two police officers.

Adams, who will be the city’s second Black mayor, praised the “professional conduct” of NYPD officers Alejandra Jacobs and Robert Holmes in their handling of suspect Charlie Vasquez in the Bronx last week. Adams said the officers handled the situation correctly when they approached the suspect matching a 911 caller’s description and asked him to show his hands.

In response to the request Vasquez opened fire and shot officer Jacobs in the arm, Jacobs returned fire, and, “the threat was neutralized. One more gun off the street. One more blow against the bad guys,” Adams said. “Yet there are some in our city who would say these officers should never have confronted Vasquez, that he never should have been stopped and questioned.”

Adams rejected his opponents’ demands to “end stop and frisk forever,” maintaining that the tactic “stop, question and frisk” must be reinstated because it can actually help reduce crime “without infringing on personal liberties and human rights.”

“In fact, as American courts have affirmed over many years, stop, question and frisk is a perfectly legal, appropriate and constitutional tool, when used smartly, as opposed to indiscriminately against hundreds of thousands of young Black and Brown men, as it was for years in New York City,” Adams said. “Not only that, but it is a necessary tool, whereby police approach someone who fits a witness description or otherwise appears to be carrying an illegal weapon.”

He continued: “The question was never whether stop, question and frisk should be allowed; it was how it should be done. Those who claimed it should be outlawed entirely reduced a nuanced issue to an either-or argument, and unwisely answered it with a blanket ban.”

Adams has called for an end to “fighting from the extremes about public safety” and promised to make solutions his “number one priority” in January. He also discussed arguments about stop, question and frisk, defund the police and bail reform.

“The question should not be whether or not police are allowed to confront suspects; it should be about how we train them,” he said. “The question should not be whether we have police; it should be how we use them. The question should not be whether judges should have the ability to protect New Yorkers from violent offenders; it should be how we let them.”

At a press conference following the shooting, both NYPD Police Commissioner Dermot Shea and a police union president, Pat Lynch, spoke about the lack of fear among criminals in the streets in spite of efforts to remove illegal guns. Vasquez, who was also wounded in the shooting, was charged Saturday with attempted murder and other weapons offenses.

Florida Democrats are enraged about the Biden administration’s decision to remove a Colombian rebel group from a list of foreign terrorists.

The decision to take FARC, a guerrilla movement the Colombian government has been at war with for decades, off the terrorist list was based on an annual review that included input from the intelligence community, law enforcement, the U.S. embassy, and the State Department, according to a senior administrator.

However, the hundreds of thousands of lives lost at the hands of FARC and the millions displaced by the conflict still weigh heavily on the 150,000 Colombian American voters in Florida.

“This is terrible. It’s bad policy. It’s bad politics,” Florida state Sen., Democratic gubernatorial candidate and Colombian American, Annette Taddeo said. “These were terrorists, murderers.”

She blasted Biden’s decision on Twitter too, noting that she had to flee Colombia at the age of 17 “because of the Marxist terrorist organization, FARC, a group of militias who kidnapped my father who was a WWII American fighter pilot.”

When I was 17 years old I was forced to flee Colombia, the only country I ever knew because of the Marxist terrorist organization, FARC, a group of militias who kidnapped my father who was a WWII American fighter pilot.

1/ https://t.co/nwh9pvGL5H

— Annette Taddeo (@Annette_Taddeo) November 23, 2021

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist tweeted that he was “deeply concerned” with the administration considering the action. “They’ve caused decades of war and death — they’ve earned their designation,” he said.

I stand with Colombians across Florida and the U.S. who are deeply concerned with the State Department’s reported consideration of removing FARC from the list of international terrorist organizations.

They've caused decades of war and death — they've earned their designation. pic.twitter.com/nLBQ3j4Syy

— Charlie Crist (@CharlieCrist) November 24, 2021

The State Department had notified Congress of the decision, but the Colombian government had not been made aware of it when it was reported Tuesday. The government is five years into a peace deal with FARC rebels, of which 90 percent have been demobilized and met their commitments.

The administration intends to add the new armed groups formed by those who have not been demobilized to the list, but Florida Democrats say voters won’t understand the distinction.

“I can explain this to my students. I can have this debate among my colleagues, but local politics isn’t making that distinction,” Eduardo Gamarra, who polls Latino voters in the United States and throughout Latin America said.

“There are people in this community who were either kidnapped or had relatives who were kidnapped — while some of the people responsible [former FARC rebels] are now sitting in the Colombian Congress,” he said.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis criticized the decision in a statement on Wednesday, stating that it would “embolden terrorist groups” throughout the continent.

“Biden’s policy is an insult to members of the Colombian American community, many of whom fled that terrorist group’s barbaric attacks on civilians,” he said. “My administration stands squarely on the side of the millions of Floridians who want democracy, peace and freedom to endure in Colombia and against Joe Biden’s Castrochavista allies.”

A Madison, Wisconsin police officer opted to resign Wednesday after having been recorded while having sex in his patrol car Sept. 16. Lieutenant Reginald Patterson was in the back of his police cruiser with a woman when as soon as they noticed they were being recorded, the woman tried to cover herself.

Marcel Scott recorded the incident from the parking lot of a Farm and Fleet store. Scott said he started recording when he saw “white legs pop up in the back of the police car.” At one point during the video, Patterson can be seen getting out of the car briefly, when got back into the vehicle, he climbed over the seat then drove off according to Scott.

A departmental investigation found Patterson “violated multiple department policies” during the incident, of which Patterson has not been officially accused of committing. Results of the investigation recommended terminating Patterson, but Patterson chose to resign before a hearing in front of the city’s Police and Fire Commission could be conducted.

A hearing in front of the Commission could have taken up to a year and Patterson would have remained on paid administrative leave during that time.

The Dane County Sheriff’s Office found no crime had occurred in the incident in the parking lot of the store. Barnes has previously stated that the woman involved is not a prostitute.

Illegal immigrants from around the world are using the border crisis to their advantage by traveling to Del Rio, Texas and attempting to cross the southern border from there.

Migrants descending on Del Rio to cross into the U.S. from the southern border are coming from South American countries, Africa and the Middle East and include Eritrea, Lebanon, Uzbekistan, Lebanon and Tajikistan — which is next door to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

The Del Rio border sector in October saw more than 28,000 illegal migrants apprehended from 50 different countries.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued a statement on Tuesday outlining the countries of origin for the apprehended migrants.

“We encounter individuals from all over the world attempting to illegally enter our country,” Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Jason D. Owens said in the release. “Our agents are focused and work hard to ensure that we detect, arrest, and identify anyone that enters our country in order to maintain [the] safety of our communities.”

The surge of migrants from these countries further shows the urgency and growing danger at the southern border which has largely been ignored by the Biden administration.

Vice President Harris, who was appointed border czar by President Biden has only visited the border once since taking office. Furthermore, Biden himself has not visited the border in over a decade, in fact, the administration as a whole has done nothing in the way of improving the ever growing crisis.

Texas landowners who have been deeply and negatively impacted by the crisis are now demanding compensation from the federal government for damages they have incurred.

“It’s getting very expensive. We have heard nothing from the federal government on help for private property owners,” South Texans’ Property Rights Association executive director Susan Kibbe said.