Ex-San Francisco supervisor rips 'immoral' handouts of drugs to homeless: 'Should be feeding their stomachs'

A former San Francisco city supervisor responded Friday to reports that alcohol and other addictive substances are being provided to homeless people who are being kept in California hotels in an effort to stem the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

Joe Alioto told "Tucker Carlson Tonight" that it is wrong for the government to "feed the addiction" of a "vulnerable population," but added that officials aren't using taxpayer dollars to do so.

"[That] begs the question – where is this money coming from?" Alioto asked. "If the reason we are not using taxpayer dollars is because it would otherwise not be legal to do? We know that's true on the federal level anyway," Alioto said.

"The idea that the government can poison a few people for the good of the many is immoral. This has been debated over years, it’s unconstitutional [and] very un-American for that matter."

Host Tucker Carlson also questioned whether the practice would be legal if the government were using taxpayer dollars.

"I can’t think of a clearer signal to taxpayers, citizens, people trying to do the right things, that we just hate you and are spending all of our time on people who aren’t contributing," Carlson remarked. "I mean, honestly. Why would they be giving the homeless free stuff?"

Alioto agreed, adding that if the homeless and impoverished population were to receive any help, it should be in the form of food.

"We should be feeding their stomachs, not their addictions," he said. "I guess they feel as though the rest of us can fend for ourselves, I think the real concern here by the Department of Health is, to give them a little bit of credit, they don’t want to spread the COVID disease… [But] some of these homeless people who are being housed in the hotels specific to this program – that are getting methadone, marijuana, alcohol, some of them are not even COVID positive, but what they are trying to do is force them into self-isolation by feeding these addictions."

Carlson then claimed authorities in Los Angeles are threatening to "commandeer" hotels whose management is opposed to letting the homeless be housed there.

"I am for helping the homeless," the host said. "So many need actual help … But all the concern seems to be for the homeless, but what about people who are trying really hard to do well for their kids and make society better? They are totally ignored. Why?"

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the city's health department said that in some situations, "limited quantities" of booze, marijuana, methadone and tobacco are being distributed through "private funding" to those being helped by the program.

"Managed alcohol and tobacco use makes it possible to increase the number of guests who stay in isolation and quarantine and, notably, protects the health of people who might otherwise need hospital care for life-threatening alcohol withdrawal," the city Department of Health said in a statement obtained by the paper.

The Chronicle also reported that more than 700 homeless have been given housing, with priority being given to the elderly and those with health issues.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/san-francisco-coronavirus-drug-alcohol-homeless

When ex-spies go rogue by becoming lawmakers

By

Ian Shapira

Jan. 3, 2019 at 1:34 p.m. PST

GLEN ALLEN, Va. — Once Rep. Abigail Spanberger embraced the secret life of a CIA operative, she never imagined breaking cover.

She handled and recruited spies in Europe, where she specialized in counterterrorism and nuclear proliferation issues. She aspired to an appointment somewhere as chief of station, the Langley equivalent of ambassador. Instead she wound up leaving the agency in 2014 in search of a less nomadic life after having three children.

Then came the Trump presidency and an overheated climate in which partisanship often triumphed over facts. So Spanberger (D-Va.), a proudly apolitical collector of evidence, decided to do something profoundly radical for an ex-spy. She ran for the House of Representatives — and won, upsetting Rep. Dave Brat (R) in Virginia’s 7th District. On Thursday, as the 116th Congress convened, she joined a small vanguard of ex-intelligence officers becoming Instagram-friendly lawmakers.

“Leaving the CIA was the biggest loss of my life. I mourned the agency. I miss it every day,” said Spanberger, 39, one of three former CIA officers serving in the new Congress.

The idea of CIA officers running for national political office would have struck previous generations of agency spies as sacrilegious, said former CIA director Leon E. Panetta, who headed the agency after more than 15 years as a California congressman. For one thing, agency officers, more than others in the intelligence community, usually maintain low profiles, even after they leave Langley. And even if CIA people do take on a modicum of celebrity — television punditry or Hollywood are popular career paths — they typically have avoided Congress, whose oversight of the agency has generated lingering ill will.

“The old Yale guys would say, ‘What the hell is going on? You gotta be secret and anonymous and let the other guys who don’t know what they’re doing play the political game,’ ” Panetta said. “But young people at the CIA now are not particularly tied to the long legacies of the intelligence business and recognize that it’s important to get involved in politics because if they do not, others will distort the work of intelligence agencies.”

Spanberger, who worked for the CIA for eight years, is serving alongside two other former agency officers: Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), 42, an analyst who deployed to Iraq three times and won a seat representing Michigan’s 8th District by beating a Republican incumbent; and Rep. Will Hurd (R-Tex.), 41, who worked undercover in the Middle East and South Asia, and has served Texas’s 23rd District since 2015.

“For so many of us with national security backgrounds, bringing our history of public service without a partisan lens is important — and it’s a skill set,” Spanberger said. “We served the mission under Republican and Democratic presidents.”

While Spanberger and Slotkin have earned attention for being spies turned lawmakers, their paths are not without precedent.

Porter Goss began his CIA career as a clandestine officer in the 1960s, then served in Congress from 1989 to 2004, representing the 14th District in Florida, before returning to Langley as its director. Bob Barr, a former Latin American analyst, represented Georgia in Congress from 1995 to 2003. (Barr ran in 2008 for president as a libertarian; former CIA operations officer Evan McMullin vied for the White House in 2016 as an independent.)

This year’s Congress includes at least 10 others besides Spanberger, Slotkin and Hurd who have worked with classified material in the military or at the National Security Council, according to the public affairs analytics firm Quorum.

Panetta, who served as CIA director from 2009 to 2011 under President Barack Obama, considers President Trump’s attacks against the intelligence community to have emboldened its recent former members to enter the political fray.

Nine days before his inauguration, Trump likened U.S. intelligence agencies to Nazis, after news reports surfaced about his links to Russia. “Are we living in Nazi Germany?” he tweeted.

Trump also has constantly disputed key findings by American spy agencies, including those about North Korea’s nuclear threats, Iran’s adherence to a 2015 nuclear agreement with the United States and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s involvement in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi dissident who was a contributing columnist for The Washington Post.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/when-ex-spies-go-rogue-by-becoming-lawmakers/2019/01/01/9890c4da-095c-11e9-a3f0-71c95106d96a_story.html

When ex-spies go rogue by becoming lawmakers

By

Ian Shapira

Jan. 3, 2019 at 1:34 p.m. PST

GLEN ALLEN, Va. — Once Rep. Abigail Spanberger embraced the secret life of a CIA operative, she never imagined breaking cover.

She handled and recruited spies in Europe, where she specialized in counterterrorism and nuclear proliferation issues. She aspired to an appointment somewhere as chief of station, the Langley equivalent of ambassador. Instead she wound up leaving the agency in 2014 in search of a less nomadic life after having three children.

Then came the Trump presidency and an overheated climate in which partisanship often triumphed over facts. So Spanberger (D-Va.), a proudly apolitical collector of evidence, decided to do something profoundly radical for an ex-spy. She ran for the House of Representatives — and won, upsetting Rep. Dave Brat (R) in Virginia’s 7th District. On Thursday, as the 116th Congress convened, she joined a small vanguard of ex-intelligence officers becoming Instagram-friendly lawmakers.

“Leaving the CIA was the biggest loss of my life. I mourned the agency. I miss it every day,” said Spanberger, 39, one of three former CIA officers serving in the new Congress.

The idea of CIA officers running for national political office would have struck previous generations of agency spies as sacrilegious, said former CIA director Leon E. Panetta, who headed the agency after more than 15 years as a California congressman. For one thing, agency officers, more than others in the intelligence community, usually maintain low profiles, even after they leave Langley. And even if CIA people do take on a modicum of celebrity — television punditry or Hollywood are popular career paths — they typically have avoided Congress, whose oversight of the agency has generated lingering ill will.

“The old Yale guys would say, ‘What the hell is going on? You gotta be secret and anonymous and let the other guys who don’t know what they’re doing play the political game,’ ” Panetta said. “But young people at the CIA now are not particularly tied to the long legacies of the intelligence business and recognize that it’s important to get involved in politics because if they do not, others will distort the work of intelligence agencies.”

Spanberger, who worked for the CIA for eight years, is serving alongside two other former agency officers: Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), 42, an analyst who deployed to Iraq three times and won a seat representing Michigan’s 8th District by beating a Republican incumbent; and Rep. Will Hurd (R-Tex.), 41, who worked undercover in the Middle East and South Asia, and has served Texas’s 23rd District since 2015.

“For so many of us with national security backgrounds, bringing our history of public service without a partisan lens is important — and it’s a skill set,” Spanberger said. “We served the mission under Republican and Democratic presidents.”

While Spanberger and Slotkin have earned attention for being spies turned lawmakers, their paths are not without precedent.

Porter Goss began his CIA career as a clandestine officer in the 1960s, then served in Congress from 1989 to 2004, representing the 14th District in Florida, before returning to Langley as its director. Bob Barr, a former Latin American analyst, represented Georgia in Congress from 1995 to 2003. (Barr ran in 2008 for president as a libertarian; former CIA operations officer Evan McMullin vied for the White House in 2016 as an independent.)

This year’s Congress includes at least 10 others besides Spanberger, Slotkin and Hurd who have worked with classified material in the military or at the National Security Council, according to the public affairs analytics firm Quorum.

Panetta, who served as CIA director from 2009 to 2011 under President Barack Obama, considers President Trump’s attacks against the intelligence community to have emboldened its recent former members to enter the political fray.

Nine days before his inauguration, Trump likened U.S. intelligence agencies to Nazis, after news reports surfaced about his links to Russia. “Are we living in Nazi Germany?” he tweeted.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/when-ex-spies-go-rogue-by-becoming-lawmakers/2019/01/01/9890c4da-095c-11e9-a3f0-71c95106d96a_story.html