“The same ceasefire agreement was almost signed in May 2024. Instead, the pointless violence continued for several more months—at Americans’ expense.”
…
“Hundreds of Israeli troops have died since May 2024, as well as several Israeli hostages who would have been released under this week’s deal, including at least one American. Hamas has nearly recovered from its military losses by recruiting new fighters, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared in his farewell speech on Tuesday. As Israeli troops withdraw, Hamas fighters will once again be in charge of Gaza.”
…
“Hamas will rule over a traumatized population living in bombed-out wreckage. The dead have still not been properly counted; the official death toll of 46,600 may have missed 40 percent of violent deaths, and it doesn’t include deaths from starvation and disease. Back in May 2024, the United Nations estimated that rebuilding Gaza would take decades and cost $50 billion, money that will not be forthcoming to any Hamas-led government.”
Cities should not have minimum apartment sizes. Such restrictions make city living more expensive, preventing some people from moving or staying there, and worsening homelessness. Some people can live just fine in tiny apartments and spend time in city amenities while utilizing the city’s intellectual and job benefits.
“If stopping the flow of illegal drugs is as straightforward as Trump implies, one might wonder, why didn’t he do that during his first term? “I’m going to create borders,” he promised during his 2016 campaign. “No drugs are coming in. We’re gonna build a wall. You know what I’m talking about. You have confidence in me. Believe me, I will solve the problem.”
Trump did not, in fact, solve the problem. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the annual number of drug-related deaths in the United States rose by 44 percent between 2016 and Trump’s last year in office.
As drug warriors have been discovering since Congress banned nonmedical use of opiates and cocaine in 1914, prohibition creates a strong financial incentive to evade any obstacles that the government manages to erect between suppliers and consumers. That problem is compounded in the case of fentanyl, which is cheap to produce and highly potent, making it possible to smuggle large numbers of doses in small packages.”
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“Mexican drug cartels “move illicit fentanyl into the United States, primarily across the southwestern border, often in passenger vehicles,” the CRS reports. “The U.S.
Department of Homeland Security asserts that 90% of [seized] fentanyl is interdicted at ports of entry, often in vehicles driven by U.S. citizens. A primary challenge for both
Mexican and U.S. officials charged with stopping the fentanyl flow is that [the cartels] can meet U.S. demand with a relatively small amount.”
Finding those small amounts among the hundreds of thousands of cars and trucks that cross into the United States from Canada and Mexico each day is a daunting task.”
…
” Even if the U.S. “managed to stop 100 percent of direct [fentanyl] sales to the US, enterprising dealers [would] simply sell into nations such as the UK, repackage the product, and then resell it into the US,” economist Roger Bate noted in a 2018 American Enterprise Institute report. “Intercepting all packages from the UK and other EU nations to the US will not be possible.” And “whether or not drugs are available to the general public via the mail,” Bate added, “drug dealers have domestic production and overland and sea routes and other courier services that deliver the product to the US.””
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“after Trump had four years to deliver on his promise that “no drugs” would be “coming in” during his administration. Yet he now claims that Mexican and Canadian officials could accomplish what he manifestly failed to do if only they tried harder.”
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“Even if severe legal penalties were enough to deter all Chinese suppliers of fentanyl precursors, that would not be the end of the story. As The New York Times recently noted, Mexican cartels already have a backup plan: They are recruiting “chemistry students studying at Mexican universities” so they can “synthesize the chemical compounds, known as precursors, that are essential to making fentanyl, freeing them from having to import those raw materials from China.””
https://reason.com/2024/12/11/trumps-plan-to-fight-illegal-drugs-with-punitive-tariffs-makes-no-sense/
Did all the death and destruction wrought by Israel trying to get Hamas achieve anything? If Gaza is still ruled by a terrorist organization, won’t it just rebuild, then attack Israel, and this happens all over again?
“Trump has repeatedly said he might use the military to suppress a domestic protest, or to raid a sanctuary city to purge it of undocumented immigrants, or possibly defend the Southern border. Some in the military community say they are especially disturbed by the prospect that troops might be used to serve Trump’s political ends.”
“even as the former Trump strategist claims that Musk has limited influence, Bannon acknowledged that Musk had backed Trump’s campaign with hundreds of millions of dollars, and he “deserves a place at the table.””
“The FTC’s stated motivation for challenging the merger was to avoid “higher prices for groceries and other essential household items for millions of Americans.””
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“Kroger and Albertsons would still only account for 9 percent of overall grocery sales, as C. Jarrett Dieterle has noted in Reason, belying the FTC’s concerns that the merger would grant them significant market power. The FTC’s overly narrow definition of the grocery market is the actual cause of concern: The Commission’s definition includes traditional supermarkets and “hypermarkets” like Walmart and Target, but excludes Amazon and Costco, the second and third largest grocery retailers, respectively.
Considering Kroger’s and Albertsons’ single-digit shares of the properly defined market, and competition from other grocers not recognized by the FTC, the merger was more likely to save Albertsons from insolvency, not afford them enough market power to increase prices. Kroger and Albertsons projected the merger would create $500 million in cost savings—at least some of which would be passed onto consumers. The pair also planned to invest $1.3 billion to improve customer service, according to Nate Scherer, a policy analyst with the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit research institute dedicated to the promotion of consumer welfare.”
“Extending the individual income tax portions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) is supposed to be a good thing, right? After all, who doesn’t love lower taxes? However, data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts that, without accompanying spending cuts, these tax cuts are going to cost the government.
If the cuts continue, it’s possible that “the positive effects of lower taxes would be counteracted by the negative effects of higher debt,” according to a Tuesday report from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB).
“Despite claims that tax cuts pay for themselves,” the CRFB adds, “analyses from across the political spectrum have found that the economic effects of extending the expiring parts of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) would offset 1 to 14 percent of the revenue loss – falling well short of the 100 percent needed to pay for itself.”
While the tax cuts would create an economic boost in the short term, increasing gross domestic product (GDP) by around 0.3 percent in 2027 and 2028, the CRFB predicts that the cuts will actually lower projected GDP by 0.08 percent by 2034. Further, the CBO’s data shows that continuing TCJA tax cuts are likely to lead to increasing interest rates over the next decade.
While continuing the cuts “would produce about $90 billion of positive revenue feedback,” according to the CRFB, “those higher interest rates would add $150 billion to the debt, more than counteracting the revenue gains.””