But he is not alone. Every incumbent politician is probably out and about hitting up any organized entity (PACs, Super PACs, corporations, unions, billionaires, etc.) that they can trade political and government favors for some campaign cash. According to CBS News, as reported in the November 11, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, Congress will be in session only 109 workdays in 2012 and in recess for 151 weekdays, primarily to focus more on their re-election than the business of the country. In January, August, and October of 2012, they are scheduled to work six days, three days, and five days, respectively.
Disgraceful. For this minimal amount of time, work, and positive output, their salaries, benefits, and perks probably put them in the upper 3% of earners in this country. Never have so few worked so little for so much reward.
Unfortunately, while these so-called leaders are out on the campaign trail, the rest of the country continues to fall apart in the void of leadership they created. CNN reported this week that almost 13 million Americans are still unemployed and over 5 million of them have been unemployed for over six months. The 13 million does not include the millions of Americans that are under employed or have become so discouraged that they have left the work force and have stopped looking for a job.
We are existing in a world of "still." Health care costs "still" continue to escalate with no political class contingency plan in place if the Supreme Court strikes down part or all of Obama Care, which was never going to reduce health care costs in the first place. Gas prices are "still" about 80% higher than when Obama came into office with no long term strategic and coherent energy plan close to be implemented. Our borders "still" leak and our defense spending is "still" out of control. Our public schools "still" continue to under educate our kids relative to the rest of the world's kids.
There is one other "still" area that, unfortunately, seems to be getting worse, as we have forecasted many times before in this blog. We are still losing the so-called "war on drugs" since the Nixon administration. While the political class has been doing their typical low performance and vanishing act, the Mexican drug cartels have continued to enrich themselves, empower themselves, spread their dominance and violence, and seem to have more fully penetrated into this country:
- The Associated Press reported on June 4, 2012 that in the southwestern desert of the United States, within 35 miles of Phoenix and a full 70 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, Arizona authorities found a car ablaze with five bodies burned beyond recognition inside. The Arizona police authorities investigating the blaze are almost positive that Mexican drug cartel members are involved.
Apparently this is not an isolated incident since according to the AP article: "The area is so heavily trafficked that at one point the Bureau of Land Management posted signs warning the public that they 'may encounter armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high rates of speed.'"
The article also quoted Michael Vigil, a former DEA chief of operations who had previously worked on the California and Arizona borders with Mexico. He said the killings are just another example of of increased kidnappings, shootings, and other cartel violence within boundaries of the U.S.: "When you have a massive drug trade that spans both sides of the border, you're going to have violence."
The article points out that this is not the first gruesome drug cartel violence to spill over into our country:
- In October 2010, Alejandro Cota-Monroy, a former smuggler was beaten, stabbed, and decapitated in a suburban Phoenix apartment, likely because he stole from the cartel he used to work for.
- In March 2010, Arizona rancher Robert Krentz was gunned down while checking water lines on his property near the border. Local police believe that a scout for drug smugglers was to blame for his killing.
- In May 2009, a former drug cartel member, who became an informant for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), was shot eight times outside his home in El Paso. Jose Daniel Gonzalez Galeana, was living in U.S. on a visa that ICE gave him, and is believed to be the first ranking cartel member killed in the U.S. As we predicted, the violence that accompanies drug cartel activities was never going to be confined outside of our borders. This article reports on a gruesome five person homicide, fully 70 miles into this country, which in many metro areas would be consider a suburb of the local downtown metro area.
- But the drug cartel spillover violence and activities are not confined to just the border areas. A June 12, 2012 article on the CNN website offered some insightful knowledge of what is happening in and around Wilmington, North Carolina relative to drug cartel penetration. Wilmington is probably more than 2,000 miles from the burning car found in the Arizona desert but distance has not restricted the reach of the Mexican drug cartels.
The article begins with law enforcement following up on a tip from an informant. Right outside of Wilmington, police pulled off a county road and headed into the forest where they soon found exactly what the informant told them they would find: about 2,400 marijuana plants, next to a camp where the growers had illegally squatted on private property and where they had set up a generator and pump to tap the river for irrigation. The camp contained a tarp shelter, canned fuel, drinking water, toiletries and clothing.
This was just one example of the cartel's reach into North Carolina, far away from the drug cartels' home turf:
• A commercial-grade refrigerator concealing 23 kilograms of cocaine was intercepted at a trailer park home in Warsaw, North Carolina in September 2009. It had been shipped from Brownsville, Texas. Inside the trailer park home, police found cutting agents, packing materials, a cocaine press, and a loaded handgun. Two Mexican nationals were arrested.
• A March 2010 drug and weapon seizure in Duplin and Sampson counties in North Carolina found an AK-47 as well as a .50-caliber sniper rifle that had been reported stolen from a Marine at nearby Camp Lejeune. Two Mexican nationals were arrested.
• Five pounds of methamphetamine were seized in Columbus County, North Carolina in July, 2011. One Mexican national was arrested.
• Two 2011 police raids in Robeson County, North Carolina resulted in the seizure of 118 kilos of cocaine and more than $550,000 along with 90 kilograms of cocaine the police found buried under a shed on a farm.
• In September, nearly $660,000 in drug money was seized in a Robeson County, North Carolina hotel room.
Federal law enforcement agents interviewed in the extensive article reported two disturbing trends:
- While the intensity of the violence is nowhere near as bad as the violence in Mexico itself, there have been any number of killings and decapitations within the North Carolina area that are believed related to the drug cartels.
- Dozens of Federal law enforcement officials and officers have been arrested over the past several years, accused of receiving cartel bribe money to facilitate the drug cartels' U.S. operations.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/09/us/mexican-cartels-small-town-usa/index.html
- Consider some facts pointed out in another extensive CNN article, this one from January 20, 2012:
- In the past five years, nearly 48,000 people have been killed in Mexican drug-related violence in Mexico.
- In the first three quarters of 2011, almost 13,000 Mexicans died in drug cartel-related violence.
- The Mexican drug cartels earn about $39 billion a year.
- The death toll doesn't include the more than 5,000 people who have disappeared, according to Mexico's National Human Rights Commission.
- The violence doesn't account for the tens of thousands of children orphaned by the violence.
- The cartels had a presence in 230 cities in the United States in 2008, according to the U.S. Justice Department. However, its 2011 report shows that presence has already grown to more than 1,000 U.S. cities.
- While the drug cartel violence has remained mostly in Mexico, authorities in Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Alabama and other states have reportedly investigated abductions and killings suspected to be tied to the cartels.
- Mexican black tar heroin is cheaper than Colombian heroin, and used to be a rarity in the United States. However, it can now be found throughout dozens of cities and small towns throughout America.
- The LA Times reported that local LA drug customers phone in their orders and dealers deliver the drug to the caller's location, almost like pizza deliverymen.
- Traffickers are recruiting in the United States and prefer to hire young.
- Texas high schools say cartel members have actually recruited on their campuses.
- An infamous 14-year-old from San Diego became a head-chopping cartel assassin: "I slit their throats," he testified at his trial, held near Cuernavaca. The 14 year old was found guilty of torturing and beheading and sentenced to three years in a Mexican prison.
- Recent gruesome violence in Mexico, courtesy of the cartels include 35 bodies left on a Mexican highway during rush-hour in a major tourist city, a person's face sewn onto a soccer ball, bodies found stuffed in barrels of acid, decapitated heads sent rolling onto nightclub dance floors, dozens of journalists killed and their bodies mangled over the past few years, and a sack full of decapitated heads found near a school in a major tourist city.
The importance of the busts were neatly summarized by Richard Weber, the chief of the IRS' criminal investigation unit: "This case is a prime example of the ability of Mexican drug cartels to establish footholds in legitimate U.S. industries and highlights the serious threat money laundering causes to our financial system."
These were not small time operations. The article reports that the violent Zetas drug cartel was behind the operations. Millions of dollars passed through both operations and involved hundreds and hundreds of horses, many of which were of the top performers. No word on what the American political class was doing when the busts went down, as outlined in the article. Busts that were just another indication of how far the Mexican cartels have penetrated everyday life in our country and how ineffective our politicians have been in resisting this penetration
You get the idea. The cartels have been busy. The cartels have been successful. The cartels have been expanding their reach, their effectiveness, and their associated violence.
Our political class works less than two weeks some months. Our political class has been unsuccessful in just about anything they do. Our political class has only been expanding their campaign coffers and their chances of being elected in November.
No wonder we have lost the war on drugs for about forty years and have lost the TRILLIONS of dollars that this losing effort cost. Forty years and we still do not have a coherent plan to address the drug plague in this country, we have not even had a decent adult conversation about the need to change our ways relative to our lost war on drugs. TRILLIONS of dollars spent for nothing, drug rehab efforts that are meager, democracy and liberties lost.
The violence we have been seeing and reporting on from Mexico has now crossed the border and that potential for cartel violence extends from the deserts of Arizona to the woods of North Carolina and beyond. Our only hope might be to ensure that all incumbents who executed this lost war lose their jobs in November, how much worst could it get?
We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple at:
http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/
The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.
The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of our times.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/
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