Thursday, November 19, 2009

FOOD BANKS BURDENED BY HIGH DEMAND - Best Time to Hand Amnesty to 38 MILLION ILLEGALS?

IS THIS REALLY A GOOD TIME FOR OBAMA, AND THE LA RAZA DEMS TO BE HANDING OVER OUR JOBS AND HOMES TO ILLEGALS?
THEIR PROPAGANDA IS AMNESTY FOR 12 MILLION ILLEGALS. LET’S GET REAL. THERE ARE 38 MILLION ILLEGALS! AND ALL THE “CHEAP” LABOR IS STAGGERINGLY EXPENSIVE!
HEARD ENGLISH TODAY?
DO A SEARCH IN YOU LOCAL PAPER FOR “GANGS”!

Food banks burdened by high demand in sour economy
By ANN SANNER, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, November 19, 2009
(11-19) 13:47 PST WASHINGTON (AP) --
Soup kitchen workers are seeing new faces in line and charities are taking more calls for help as the recession makes for a less-than-bountiful Thanksgiving.
Hunger relief advocates came to Congress on Thursday and painted a bleak picture of a country struggling to meet an increased need for food assistance at a time of high unemployment.
"In our 42-year history, we have never witnessed a demand for our services like we are seeing now," said Josh Fogt, public policy manager for Northwest Harvest in Seattle. The organization operates Washington state's largest food bank.
Charities and nonprofit groups called on lawmakers to give people tax incentives to donate to charities, expand federal nutrition programs and spend more on programs to help people prepare for work.
The Northwest Harvest pantry in Seattle gets more than 2,500 visitors on busy days, up from a peak of 1,800 early last year, Fogt told members of the House Ways and Means Committee.
"Hunger relief is truly a growth industry and we are increasingly being asked to do more with less," Fogt said.
Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., said Americans are facing a time of uncertainty.
"As we approach the holiday season, we all have grave concerns about how these difficult times are generating unprecedented need for life's basic necessities: food, clothing, shelter," Boustany said.
The congressional hearing on food banks followed an Agriculture Department report that more than one in seven households struggled to put enough food on the table in 2008 — the highest rate since the agency began tracking food security in 1995.
That's about 49 million people, or 14.6 percent of U.S. households counted as lacking the food for an active, healthy life.
"Hunger is not just touching the urban homeless, but it is touching the suburban housewife," Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., said. "It is touching the middle class. It is touching our children and seniors."
Candy Hill of Catholic Charities USA said local agencies are getting more requests from first-time clients.
The Catholic Charities office in Youngstown, Ohio, is getting 70 calls a day for help with food and utilities — up from 100 a month last year, Hill said. "It will not only take government being our partner, but it will also take all of us — corporations, philanthropy and individual donors — to solve the extreme problem of hunger in our country today."
"Those we serve are now our neighbors, our former colleagues and hard-working individuals struggling to make ends meet," Hill said.
In October, the Catholic Charities of Central Texas' food pantry fed 2,637 people — its largest monthly number, the agency reported. Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada saw its number of food bank clients double from July to September, compared with the same period last year.

UNDER OBAMA ARREST OF ILLEGALS PLUMMETS - Hey, They're Obama Voters!

Obama soft on illegals enforcement

Arrests of illegal immigrant workers have dropped precipitously under President Obama, according to figures released Wednesday. Criminal arrests, administrative arrests, indictments and convictions of illegal immigrants at work sites all fell by more than 50 percent from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2009.

The figures show that Mr. Obama has made good on his pledge to shift enforcement away from going after illegal immigrant workers themselves - but at the expense of Americans' jobs, said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the Republican who compiled the numbers from the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Mr. Smith, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said a period of economic turmoil is the wrong time to be cutting enforcement and letting illegal immigrants take jobs that Americans otherwise would hold.

N.A.A.C.P. Prods Obama on Job Losses - HISPANDERING OBAMA SAYS "NO LEGAL NEED APPLY" Got To Keep Wages Depressed For Wall Streeters"

MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

OBAMA CARE ABOUT JOBS? GET REAL! THE ONLY JOBS OBAMA CARES ABOUT ARE HIS, AND HIS BANKSTERS!


SOMEONE ACTUALLY THINKS BARACK OBAMA CARES ABOUT THE AMERICA PEOPLE, JOBS, FORECLOSURES, UNEMPLOYMENT, MEXICAN GANGS AND DRUG CARTEL?

WHAT WAS MORE REVILING THAN OBAMA’S TRIP (FINALLY) TO NEW ORLEANS WHERE HE SPENT FORTY SECONDS?

THIS IS A MAN THAT IS OWNED BY BANKSTERS, KISSES THE BUSH’S FRIENDS, THE 9-11 INVADING SAUDI’S ASS, SERVES UP BIG BONUSES TO CRIMINAL BANKSTERS, PROMISES THESE BANKSTERS NO REAL REGULATION, AS BANKSTERS’ PILLAGE ROLLS ON AND ON… AND IS DETERMINED TO IMPOSE THE LA RAZA DEMS’ AMNESTY.

WHAT HAS BEEN MORE DEVASTATING TO BLACK AMERICAN THAN THE INVASION, OCCUPATION AND WELFARE STATE CREATED FOR ILLEGAL MEXICANS?

IN LOS ANGELES, MEXICAN GANGS REGULARLY MURDER BLACK AMERICANS IN COLD BLOOD. MEXICANS ARE THE MOST RACIST PEOPLE IN THE HEMISPHERE. THERE ARE 500 – 1000 PEOPLE MURDERED BY MEXICAN GANGS AND ILLEGALS IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY YEARLY.

IN LOS ANGELES 47% OF THOSE WITH A JOB ARE ILLEGALS USING STOLEN SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS.

LOS ANGELES PAYS OUT $50 MILLION PER MONTH IN WELFARE TO ILLEGALS, AND THE TAX-FREE MEXICAN UNDERGROUND ECONOMY IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY ALONE IS CALCULATED TO BE $2 BILLION PER YEAR.

OBAMA IS NOTHING BUT AN EXTENSION OF THE CORRUPTION OF 20 YEARS OF BUSH, HILLARY, BILLARY, BUSH, DURING WHICH THE NUMBER OF ILLEGALS THAT WALKED OVER OUR BORDERS AND INTO OUR JOBS BECAME 40 MILLION…..

40 MILLION ILLEGALS AND POTENTIALLY FUTURE OBAMA VOTERS! HE KNOWS HE HAS LIED TO US SO MUCH NO AMERICAN WILL VOTE FOR HIM AGAIN. OBAMA WILL HAVE THE BANKSTERS’ MONEY, HE JUST NEEDS THE ILLEGALS’ VOTES. THEREFORE HIS LA RAZA MINISTER FOR “HOMELAND SECURITY = PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP” JANET NAPOLITANO HAS ANNOUNCED THAT AFTER BANKSTERS CLEAN UP AND ARE GUARANTEED NO REGULATION, AND THEN IT’S AMNESTY!

THERE HAS ALREADY BEEN A NON-TRANSPARENT – NO PRESS INVITED CONVENTION AT THE WHITE HOUSE FOR LA RAZA DEMS, LA RAZA RACIST MEXICAN PARTY, AND THE SPECIAL INTERESTS THAT BENEFIT FROM OPEN BORDERS WITH NARCO MEX!

ISN’T IT TIME TO END THE MEXICAN OCCUPATION? ISN’T IT TIME TO END WALL STREET’S STRANGLE ON OUR LIVES?


November 17, 2009
N.A.A.C.P. Prods Obama on Job Losses
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
With unemployment among blacks at more than 15 percent, the N.A.A.C.P. will join several other groups on Tuesday to call on President Obama to do more to create jobs.
The organizations — including the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group— will make clear that they believe the president’s $787 billion stimulus program has not gone far enough to fight unemployment.
They will call for increased spending for schools and roads, billions of dollars in fiscal relief to state and local governments to forestall more layoffs and a direct government jobs program, “especially in distressed communities facing severe unemployment.”
In speaking out on jobs, N.A.A.C.P. leaders say they are not trying to pick a fight with the first African-American president. Rather, they say, they are pressing Mr. Obama in an area where they believe he wants to be pressured.
“It’s time for us to really stoke this issue up,” said Hilary O. Shelton, the N.A.A.C.P.’s senior vice president for advocacy and policy. “We’re not so much trying to convince him to do something he doesn’t want to do, but urging him to move forward on an issue we have agreement on.”
African-American leaders say it makes sense to pressure the president on jobs because the unemployment rate for blacks has jumped to 15.7 percent, from 8.9 percent when the recession started 23 months ago. That compares with 13.1 percent for Hispanics and 9.5 percent for whites.
The black unemployment rate has climbed above 20 percent in several states, reaching 23.9 percent in Michigan and 20.4 percent in South Carolina.
In recent months, the N.A.A.C.P. has lobbied Mr. Obama on numerous issues, including the hate crimes bill and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which makes it easier for employees to sue over pay discrimination. But this is the first time in Mr. Obama’s presidency that the organization is throwing its full weight into the economic debate.
It is being joined by another group that fought for civil rights during the 1950s and 1960s, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
“Make no mistake, for us this is the civil rights issue of the moment,” said Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference. “Unless we resolve the national job crisis, it will make it hard to address all of our other priorities.”
Mr. Obama has invited groups nationwide to voice their views and recommendations on jobs in preparation for his job summit next month.
“Obama keeps saying, ‘Push me to do the right thing,’ said Steven Pitts, a labor economist at the University of California, Berkeley. “I don’t see this as any break with Obama. The current political alignment of forces doesn’t support a new economic stimulus package. They’re trying to create an alignment of political forces to counteract that.”
Kevin A. Hassett, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative group, said it was laudable that the N.A.A.C.P. and other liberal groups were pressuring Mr. Obama, although he said their call for additional stimulus was wrong.
“Everybody should pressure him,” Mr. Hassett said. “And it might be the conservative groups aren’t pressuring him enough, because they think maybe he won’t listen. I would hope the people pressuring the president would push away from the divisive type of recommendations that we need more of the same, that we need more stimulus.”
Mr. Hassett called for cutting taxes to create jobs and for reducing many workers to three-fifths or four-fifths time in work-sharing programs to avoid layoffs.
The Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group, coordinated the jobs statement being released Tuesday, which will also be joined by the Center for Community Change.
“Despite an effective and bold recovery package, we are still facing a prolonged period of high unemployment,” the groups say. “Two years from now, absent further action, we are likely to have unemployment at 8 percent or more, a higher rate than attained even at the worst point of the last two downturns.”
The groups call for spurring private-sector job growth through tax credits and loans to small and medium businesses. They note that 17.5 percent of the labor force — more than 27 million Americans — are underemployed, including one in four minority workers. They say they expect one-third of the work force — and 40 percent of minority workers —to be unemployed or underemployed at some point over the next year.
“Americans are confronting the worst jobs situation in more than half a century,” the groups say. “This is not a situation we must continue to tough out. A robust plan to create jobs in transparent, effective, and equitable ways can put America back to work.”
*
America's economic pain brings hunger pangs
USDA report on access to food 'unsettling,' Obama says
By Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
The nation's economic crisis has catapulted the number of Americans who lack enough food to the highest level since the government has been keeping track, according to a new federal report, which shows that nearly 50 million people -- including almost one child in four -- struggled last year to get enough to eat.
At a time when rising poverty, widespread unemployment and other effects of the recession have been well documented, the report released Monday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture provides the government's first detailed portrait of the toll that the faltering economy has taken on Americans' access to food.
The magnitude of the increase in food shortages -- and, in some cases, outright hunger -- identified in the report startled even the nation's leading anti-poverty advocates, who have grown accustomed to longer lines lately at food banks and soup kitchens. The findings also intensify pressure on the White House to fulfill a pledge to stamp out childhood hunger made by President Obama, who called the report "unsettling."
The data show that dependable access to adequate food has especially deteriorated among families with children. In 2008, nearly 17 million children, or 22.5 percent, lived in households in which food at times was scarce -- 4 million children more than the year before. And the number of youngsters who sometimes were outright hungry rose from nearly 700,000 to almost 1.1 million.
Among Americans of all ages, more than 16 percent -- or 49 million people -- sometimes ran short of nutritious food, compared with about 12 percent the year before. The deterioration in access to food during 2008 among both children and adults far eclipses that of any other single year in the report's history.
Around the Washington area, the data show, the extent of food shortages varies significantly. In the past three years, an average of 12.4 percent of households in the District had at least some problems getting enough food, slightly worse than the national average. In Maryland, the average was 9.6 percent, and in Virginia it was 8.6 percent.
The local and national findings are from a snapshot of food in the United States that the Agriculture Department has issued every year since 1995, based on Census Bureau surveys. It documents Americans who lack a dependable supply of adequate food -- people living with some amount of "food insecurity" in the lexicon of experts -- and those whose food shortages are so severe that they are hungry. The new report is based on a survey conducted in December.
Several independent advocates and policy experts on hunger said that they had been bracing for the latest report to show deepening shortages, but that they were nevertheless astonished by how much the problem has worsened. "This is unthinkable. It's like we are living in a Third World country," said Vicki Escarra, president of Feeding America, the largest organization representing food banks and other emergency food sources.
"It's frankly just deeply upsetting," said James D. Weill, president of the Washington-based Food and Action Center. As the economy eroded, Weill said, "you had more and more people getting pushed closer to the cliff's edge. Then this huge storm came along and pushed them over."
Obama, who pledged during last year's presidential campaign to eliminate hunger among children by 2015, reiterated that goal on Monday. "My Administration is committed to reversing the trend of rising hunger," the president said in a statement. The solution begins with job creation, Obama said. And he ticked off steps that Congress and the administration have taken, or are planning, including increases in food stamp benefits and $85 million Congress just freed up through an appropriations bill to experiment with feeding more children during the summer, when subsidized school breakfasts and lunches are unavailable.
In a briefing for reporters, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said, "These numbers are a wake-up call . . . for us to get very serious about food security and hunger, about nutrition and food safety in this country."
Vilsack attributed the marked worsening in Americans' access to food primarily to the rise in unemployment, which now exceeds 10 percent, and in people who are underemployed. He acknowledged that "there could be additional increases" in the 2009 figures, due out a year from now, although he said it is not yet clear how much the problem might be eased by the measures the administration and Congress have taken this year to stimulate the economy.
The report's main author at USDA, Mark Nord, noted that other recent research by the agency has found that most families in which food is scarce contain at least one adult with a full-time job, suggesting that the problem lies at least partly in wages, not entirely an absence of work.
The report suggests that federal food assistance programs are only partly fulfilling their purpose, although Vilsack said that shortages would be much worse without them. Just more than half of the people surveyed who reported they had food shortages said that they had, in the previous month, participated in one of the government's largest anti-hunger and nutrition programs: food stamps, subsidized school lunches or WIC, the nutrition program for women with babies or young children.
Last year, people in 4.8 million households used private food pantries, compared with 3.9 million in 2007, while people in about 625,000 households resorted to soup kitchens, nearly 90,000 more than the year before.
Food shortages, the report shows, are particularly pronounced among women raising children alone. Last year, more than one in three single mothers reported that they struggled for food, and more than one in seven said that someone in their home had been hungry -- far eclipsing the food problem in any other kind of household. The report also found that people who are black or Hispanic were more than twice as likely as whites to report that food in their home was scarce.
In the survey used to measure food shortages, people were considered to have food insecurity if they answered "yes" to several of a series of questions. Among the questions were whether, in the past year, their food sometimes ran out before they had money to buy more, whether they could not afford to eat nutritionally balanced meals, and whether adults in the family sometimes cut the size of their meals -- or skipped them -- because they lacked money for food. The report defined the degree of their food insecurity by the number of the questions to which they answered yes.

MEXICAN GANGS - "South Los Angeles is in Purgatory"

"South Los Angeles is in purgatory," said Jorja Leap, a UCLA Department of Social Welfare adjunct professor, a gang specialist for 30 years and a key City Hall advisor. "There could be life-threatening consequences down the line."

MEXICAN GANGS AND GANG VIOLENCE HAVE SPREAD FROM MEXICAN OCCUPIED LOS ANGELES TO ALL OVER THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA. AND YET BARACK OBAMA, AND THE LA RAZA DEMS HAVE NEVER STOPPED PERPETRATING A BACKROOM “AMNESTY” FOR THESE PEOPLE.
latimes.com
PROMISE AND PERIL IN SOUTH L.A.
Philosophies clash in plans for gang intervention academy
Two schools, led by strong personalities, were supposed to collaborate on a curriculum. When the process collapsed, one of them won a bid to run the program and the other plans to appeal.
By Scott Gold
November 19, 2009
A city-sponsored training academy for gang intervention workers will open at least a year later than Los Angeles officials had hoped after a collision of philosophies and egos -- a hitch in the city's effort to modernize its campaign against street violence.

Officials said this week that an independent panel has selected the Advancement Project, the legal advocacy, civil rights and public policy group, as the winner of a bidding process to run the academy.

But that bid was never supposed to occur. The city's original plan -- to meld the best practices of two gang intervention programs into an "official" curriculum -- collapsed, according to interviews with city officials and City Hall advisors.

Now, the academy isn't expected to open until at least the spring of 2010 -- a year later than originally envisioned. And it's not over yet: The head of a group that lost the bid called the selection process flawed and pledged to appeal the decision into next year, when the City Council will be asked to sign off on the contract.

The dispute might seem like insider politics, considering that the contract is worth just $200,000 the first year, with a possibility of $800,000 over four years. But it means the continuation of the status quo: scores of interventionists fanned out across the city, some skilled and relied upon by law enforcement, but many unregulated, untrained and operating off the books amid dangerous crosscurrents of street politics.

The delay is seen as a particularly acute problem in South L.A., where marked declines in violence have created a rare window of possibility -- one that could close if fragile understandings between rival neighborhoods begin to fray, officials said.

"South Los Angeles is in purgatory," said Jorja Leap, a UCLA Department of Social Welfare adjunct professor, a gang specialist for 30 years and a key City Hall advisor. "There could be life-threatening consequences down the line."

Gang interventionists act as liaisons between law enforcement and their communities and between rival gangs. They have existed for decades in various forms including missionaries and civil rights advocates.

Among rank-and-file officers, collaboration with interventionists remains controversial; most intervention workers were once gang members. However, senior LAPD officers, particularly in South L.A. -- including Charlie Beck, appointed police chief Tuesday by the City Council -- have come to view intervention as a messy but vital tool. Many police officials rely on interventionists to do what they cannot: control street gossip, prevent retaliation shootings or contain gang skirmishes before they become full-fledged wars.

Last year, then-City Controller Laura Chick delivered an indictment of the city's scattershot gang outreach programs. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa consolidated the programs; his Office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development now oversees $20 million in annual intervention and prevention contracts.

The city also launched an effort to transform intervention into a professional field. Many interventionists are now subjected to financial audits and drug testing. The opening of the academy, where gang intervention workers would be trained and licensed, is seen as a critical step.

The city's efforts are being watched closely; federal law enforcement and military officials -- the latter wondering if similar tactics might be used in Iraq and Afghanistan -- have visited. "There is national interest in this," said Connie Rice, the prominent civil rights attorney and a leader of the Advancement Project.

The city's original plan was to combine the best practices of two intervention "schools," one run by the Advancement Project, the other, the Professional Community Intervention Training Institute, run by Aquil Basheer, a fixture in gang intervention for more than 30 years in South L.A.

From the start of discussions, it was evident there was a philosophical divide.

Rice's school focused largely on a theoretical and historical understanding of gangs. It was tied closely to the establishment; City Hall had paid the group to deliver a critique of the city's anti-gang efforts. Students were instructed to make a quiet impact by developing relationships in the community -- and not to defuse or even be near violent situations.

Basheer's school focused on hard-core, practical drills. Operating out of an old fire station, Basheer taught his students how to stage a candlelight vigil without exposing people to gunfire, how to extricate someone from an angry crowd. He demanded that his students devise on-the-spot strategies -- what to do, for instance, if a gunman is on the loose in a school cafeteria.

Neither side could agree on how to proceed -- or on what portions of the curriculum each group might oversee. Rice declined to comment about the dispute.

"It became extremely clear that there were dramatic differences," Basheer said. "We all needed to stay in our own lanes. . . . I got tired of talking. I got tired of explaining." Asked how much of the process was derailed not just by competing visions but by strong egos, Basheer chuckled and said: "Eighty or 85%."

The city retreated, opening the project up to bidding -- "the fairest, most above-board way," said Guillermo Cespedes, the mayor's new gang czar.

An advisory panel was assembled, including gang outreach workers from Chicago and the Bay Area. On Friday, the panel delivered its verdict, ranking the Advancement Project's bid in first place, ahead of Basheer's organization and a third bidder.

Susan K. Lee, the Advancement Project's director of urban peace, said the group's program would begin with a "Basic 101" course for entry-level interventionists. That would be followed with a series of advanced, 20-hour courses; one, for instance, would teach them how to proceed in a hospital after a shooting, a notoriously tricky environment.

"It's a high-risk enterprise," Rice said. "You're working with people whose backgrounds create a lot of problems -- but that's why you are working with them."

Basheer said he would appeal to the City Council. He will argue, he said, that the selection process was incomplete because panelists never visited his program -- and, he said, he'll argue that the political aplomb of the Advancement Project can never match his organization's street smarts.

"We have tested strategies, tools and tactics. We can show you an end-line product," he said. "If you're going to put together something this critical, you'd better have a thorough understanding of the culture. . . . We're taking it all the way."

MEXICO UNDER SIEGE - So Why Are Our Borders Left Open & Undefended Again?

latimes.com
MEXICO UNDER SIEGE

Fixing Mexico police becomes a priority

Reversing police corruption that has tainted whole departments, shattered faith in law enforcement and compromised one of society's most basic institutions is proving difficult, but not impossible.
By Ken Ellingwood
November 17, 2009
Reporting from San Luis Potosi, Mexico
The lie-detector team brought in by Mexico's top cop was supposed to help clean up the country's long-troubled police. There was just one problem: Most of its members themselves didn't pass, and a supervisor was rigging results to make sure others did.

When public safety chief Genaro Garcia Luna found out, he canned the team, all 50 to 60 members.

"He fired everybody," a senior U.S. law enforcement official said.

But the episode shows how difficult it will be for Mexico to reverse a legacy of police corruption that has tainted whole departments, shattered people's faith in law enforcement and compromised one of society's most basic institutions.

President Felipe Calderon's 3-year-old drug offensive has laid bare the extent to which crime syndicates have infiltrated police agencies at virtually every level. By blurring the line between crime fighters and gangsters, the rampant graft stands as one of the biggest impediments to the Calderon campaign.

Amid the raging drug war, Mexican officials are trying to fix the police through a hurried nationwide effort that includes better screening and training for candidates on a scale never tried here before.

At the heart of the overhaul is a "new police model" that stresses technical sophistication and trustworthiness and that treats police work as a professional career, not a fallback job.

In steps that are groundbreaking for Mexico, cadets and veteran cops are being forced to bare their credit card and bank accounts, submit to polygraph tests and even reveal their family members to screeners to prove they have no shady connections.

Across Mexico, hundreds of state and municipal officers have been purged from their departments and scores more arrested on charges of colluding with drug gangs.

But Mexico has a habit of trading in one corrupt police agency for another, and it will be a long, uphill struggle to create a law enforcement system that can confront crime and gain the trust of ordinary Mexicans. Until then, crooked cops undermine efforts to strengthen the rule of law and defeat drug cartels.

"If you don't have a safe environment to conduct investigations, then it's going to be extremely difficult to capture the narcos," said the U.S. law enforcement official, who was not authorized to speak publicly. "If you have state police that are corrupt and constantly feeding your movements, investigative movements, to the bad guys, you're not going to get anywhere."

Vigilante fears

Some people fear that the soaring drug violence and mistrust toward police could spark the formation of death squads or vigilante groups. Already there have been suspicions, though no proof, that dozens of killings have been committed by people taking the law into their own hands. More than 13,800 people have been slain since Calderon declared war on the drug cartels, according to unofficial news media tallies.

Although Mexican federal police are in charge of the crackdown against the cartels, it is at the state and municipal levels where law enforcement is most vulnerable, officials and analysts say. Drug gangs exploit hometown ties, dangle bribes and threaten the lives of officers and their relatives to turn police into a kind of fifth column.

Poorly paid state and municipal officers are often on the payroll of drug smugglers, passing tips, providing muscle or looking the other way when illegal drugs are shipped through their turf.

Criminal infiltration of local departments has worsened as the Mexican political system becomes less centralized and as narcotics traffickers delve into offshoot enterprises, such as kidnapping, theft and extortion, that under Mexican law fall within the jurisdiction of state authorities.

At times, local police have faced off in tense showdowns against Mexican federal police and soldiers. The mistrust often prompts federal authorities to keep their state and municipal counterparts in the dark, aggravating interagency frictions.

"There is a disorganized police fighting against organized crime," said Guillermo Zepeda, a police expert at the Center of Research for Development in Mexico City.

In the western state of Michoacan, 10 municipal officers were arrested in the slayings of 12 federal agents there in July. In the Gulf of Mexico port city of Veracruz, authorities investigating the June disappearance of customs administrator Francisco Serrano detained nearly 50 municipal officers. The then-chief of municipal police for the seaport and three traffic officers were later charged with his kidnapping. Serrano is still missing.

The profound flaws of Mexico's police, who are frequently ill trained, poorly equipped and unhappy in their work, are the most visible emblems of how the drug offensive is straining the nation's broader system of law and order.

An opaque and creaky court system groans under the weight of thousands of new drug war cases, and a number of prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges have been slain. Meanwhile, prison officials scramble to make room for the surge of detainees, many of them violent.

President's plan

Calderon's administration has laid out a strategy to expand and revamp the federal police and to force states, cities and towns to modernize and clean up their forces through such tools as polygraphs and drug tests. Standing in the way are many years of graft, turf jealousies, budget constraints and a drug underworld that has greeted every government move with greater viciousness.

Garcia Luna, the public safety chief, has seized the moment to hire thousands of federal cadets, who under the strict new standards must hold at least a university degree. Despite the stiff requirements, the federal force has grown to 32,264 officers, from about 25,000 a year ago.

At a sleek federal campus here in the north-central state of San Luis Potosi, Mexican officials are rushing to turn 9,000 college graduates into federal investigators. The school boasts state-of-the-art lecture halls, computer rooms, workout facilities, a driver-training track and shooting range.

The U.S. government supports the push to expand and professionalize Mexico's federal forces, lending dozens of police instructors as part of a $1.4-billion aid package for Mexico known as the Merida Initiative.

Federal cadets, dressed in white polo shirts and smart bluejeans, study criminal procedure, interview techniques, criminology and intelligence. The school has graduated 2,234 investigators since June; more than 1,000 fresh recruits began the six-week course last month.

An even more daunting challenge waits in states and cities, which are home to the vast majority of police in Mexico -- more than 370,000 officers. In the last two years, the federal government has relied on budget incentives to prod local departments to vet officer candidates and boost salaries, now often as low as $90 a week.

Garcia Luna has gone so far as to call for eliminating the country's 2,022 municipal agencies, widely seen as the weakest link in Mexican law enforcement, and folding them into police departments of the 31 states and Mexico City, which is formally a federal district.

The proposal is controversial, probably requiring a change in the Mexican Constitution and facing opposition from municipal officials from across the political spectrum who are reluctant to yield parts of their fiefdoms.

Some analysts warn that such a plan could make it easier for criminal groups to bribe police.

"Concentrating power at the state level runs the risk of creating a more hierarchical, 'one-stop-shopping' system of high-level corruption," said David Shirk, a University of San Diego professor and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.

States and municipalities have moved inconsistently to clean up their forces. In some places, such as the northern city of Chihuahua, police are gradually adopting U.S.-style law enforcement standards, such as those promoted by the private Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies.

Many analysts are encouraged to see local agencies spending more to improve training, equipment and wages, but see scant improvement on corruption.

"You can train police all day long, but if they're still corrupt, then it doesn't really help," said Daniel Sabet, who teaches at Georgetown University and studies Mexican law enforcement. "The corruption and organized-crime infiltration has not changed."

Pay-based strategy

Here in San Luis Potosi state, whose police operation is praised by the U.S. as among a handful in Mexico that are sound, officials raised minimum pay to about $700 a month and now offer bonuses of nearly two months' pay to officers who perform well and pass twice-yearly vetting.

Cesareo Carvajal, public safety director until the state government changed hands in September, said he fired about 150 of 3,000 officers during his two-year term.

The agency also bought radio equipment, new weaponry and police vehicles, and outfitted officers with redesigned uniforms to create an updated image.

At a state-run police academy where San Luis Potosi's next generation of police is being molded, the rhythmic thump-thump of boots on pavement echoed on a recent morning as officers-in-training practiced marching.

Cadets here say a new, trustworthy breed of Mexican police is possible -- but that it will take time to build.

As part of a stricter selection process, recruit Hiram Viñas was hooked to a lie detector and asked about any past scrapes with the law. Screeners peeked into his bank account and rummaged in his family's background.

Viñas, 24, wearing a blue windbreaker and buzz cut, said the rigorous scrutiny could help win over Mexican society.

"They are applying tests and evaluations now that had never been done in our country," he said. "I think over time, people will learn to trust the police again."

LA RAZA BALKS - OBAMA JUMPS! U.S. ATTORNEY NOMINEE CRITICIZED OVER RAIDS ON ILLEGALS

EVERY DAY ILLEGALS FROM MEXICO IN PARTICULAR FLIP THE MIDDLE ONE TO AMERICAN LAWS AND ORDINANCES.

THIS IS BECAUSE SINCE THE SO CALLED “AMNESTY” OF 1986, WHICH IN FACT IS STILL GOING ON, LAWS HAVE BECOME A JOKE TO THE ILLEGALS.

IN LOS ANGELES 47% OF THOSE EMPLOYED ARE ILLEGALS WITH STOLEN SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS. IDENTITY THEFT, CAR THEFT, DRIVING WITHOUT LICENSES, INSURANCES, AND WITH CLOUDED REGISTRATION, CONTRACTING WITHOUT A LICENSE…. AND VOTING ILLEGALLY ARE ALL PART OF THE LIFESTYLE OF THE ILLEGALS.




NEW YORK TIMES – MOUTHPIECE FOR LA RAZA – AND MEXICAN OWNED!

November 17, 2009
U.S. Attorney Nominee Criticized Over Raids
By JULIA PRESTON
Eleventh-hour criticism is arising over President Obama’s nomination for United States attorney in northern Iowa of a prosecutor who had a leading role in the criminal cases against hundreds of illegal immigrants arrested in a May 2008 raid at a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa.
Those cases, the broadest use to date of tough criminal charges against immigrants caught working without authorization, were emblems of a crackdown on illegal immigration by the Bush administration.
In supporting the prosecutor, Stephanie Rose, Mr. Obama is following the recommendation of Senator Tom Harkin, the Democrat from Iowa who is an important ally — especially in the health care debate because he is chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Ms. Rose, a senior assistant United States attorney in the office she has been chosen to run, has also garnered support from criminal defense lawyers in Iowa, including at least 11 lawyers who defended immigrants from Postville. In those proceedings, “she exhibited a level of competence and ability that would be hard to overstate,” the lawyers wrote in a letter in April.
But some defense and immigration lawyers have said that felony identity-theft charges against the immigrants were excessively harsh, that immigration lawyers were not given adequate access to their clients, and that improper contact took place between prosecutors and one judge. They contend that possible civil rights and ethical violations by prosecutors should have been investigated.
“Does she stand by those tactics?” asked David Leopold, the president-elect of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the national immigration bar. “Would she engage again in this type of prosecution of scores of undocumented workers guilty of nothing more than civil immigration violations?”
The immigration lawyers’ association has not taken an official position on the nomination.
In May, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the identity-theft law could not be applied to prosecute immigrants only because they used false Social Security or visa numbers, as it was in many Postville cases.
Ms. Rose’s nomination was unanimously approved by the Judiciary Committee on Nov. 5 and is awaiting a vote by the full Senate.
Ms. Rose declined through a spokesman to comment at this point in the nomination process.
Katherine Bedingfield, a spokeswoman for the White House, said: “As U.S. attorney, Stephanie Rose will be a great advocate for the people of Iowa. The president strongly supports her nomination.”
During 12 years in the northern district, Ms. Rose was the lead prosecutor in more than 200 criminal cases and argued 34 appeals, according to a fact sheet provided by Mr. Harkin.
After the raid at the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, 270 immigrants entered guilty pleas and were sentenced in four days of fast-track hearings, in temporary courtrooms in a cattle fairground. According to lawyers who participated, Ms. Rose distributed prepackaged plea agreements and was the principal case manager for the prosecutors.
In an interview, Mr. Harkin vigorously defended Ms. Rose, saying she is “extremely bright and well versed with the law, has a lot of self assurance and a good demeanor for a U.S. attorney.”
In the Postville cases, Mr. Harkin said, officials in Washington made the strategic decisions about what charges to bring and what pleas to offer. “Within the powers she had, she bent over backwards to make sure justice was done,” he said.
But at a hearing before the House Judiciary immigration subcommittee in July 2008, Deborah J. Rhodes, then senior associate deputy attorney general, testified that “all of the charging decisions were made by career prosecutors in the local office.”
James Benzoni, an immigration lawyer in Des Moines whose office has secured visas for two dozen Postville immigrants as victims of exploitation, said, “There was a general failure of due process and common decency.”
“You can’t go forward, you have to clean it up, and she’s not going to do that,” Mr. Benzoni said.