Friday, July 30, 2010

CONSULATE CLOSES IN CIUDAD JUAREZ - CLOSE THE REST OF THESE LA RAZA H.Q.!

Ciudad Juarez US Consulate closes for security

Ciudad Juarez is the only place where Mexicans applying for U.S. residency can go. The closing of the Ciudad Juarez consulate is the most drastic security measure yet.

By Alexandra Olson, Associated Press
posted July 30, 2010 at 5:13 pm EDT

MEXICO CITY —
The U.S. closed its consulate in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez on Thursday pending a security review, an unexpected decision that comes months after drug gangs killed three people tied to the consulate.

The U.S. Embassy announced the consulate will "remain closed until the security review is completed" and said it would reschedule appointments for visa applications.

The embassy did not say what prompted the review, and a spokesman said there would be no comment beyond the statement.

IN PICTURES: The US/Mexico border

A U.S. employee of the consulate, her husband and a Mexican tied to the consulate were killed March 13 when drug gang fired on their cars as they left a children's party in the city across from El Paso, Texas.

The U.S. State Department has taken several measures over the past months to protect consulate employees and their families from surging violence along Mexico's border with the United States.

It has authorized the departure of relatives of U.S. government employees in six northern Mexican cities. And starting July 15, U.S. government employees working away from the border were barred from crossing anywhere along Texas' border because of safety concerns.

Two weeks ago, the consulate in the border city of Nuevo Laredo warned U.S. citizens there to remain indoors as drug gangs fought gunbattles and blocked streets with hijacked vehicles.

The closing of the Ciudad Juarez consulate is the most drastic security measure yet. The consulate is the only place where Mexicans applying for U.S. residency can go.

The embassy warned immigrant visa applicants that the medical clinics where they receive exams as part of their applications "may also close on short notice." It said its call center would call applicants to reschedule appointments, and provided a number that U.S. citizens could call for passport appointment and other services.

Earlier this month, Mexican federal police said that a jailed drug-cartel enforcer claimed that the U.S. consulate employee, Lesley Enriquez, was killed because she had helped a rival gang obtain American visas.

But a U.S. federal official familiar with the investigation said there was no indication Enriquez was involved in any such thing. The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the case and spoke on condition of anonymity, said U.S. officials had investigated possible corruption surrounding Enriquez and found none. The official said the motive remains unclear.

U.S. Embassy officials previously said that Enriquez was never in a position to provide visas and worked in a section that provides basic services to U.S. citizens in Mexico.

Enriquez was four months pregnant when she and her husband were killed as they drove toward a border crossing to El Paso, Texas. Their 7-month-old daughter was found wailing in the back seat.

Jorge Alberto Salcido, the husband of a Mexican employee of the consulate, also was killed by gunmen after leaving the children's party in a separate vehicle. The jailed drug gang suspect, Jesus Ernesto Chavez, said Salcido was targeted because the two cars were the same color and the hit men did know which one Enriquez was in.

A turf battle between the Juarez and Sinaloa drug cartels has made Ciudad Juarez one of the world's most dangerous cities. More than 4,000 people have been killed in the city of 1.3 million since the beginning of 2009.

On July 15, a car bomb killed a federal police officer and two others in Ciudad Juarez. Traffickers claimed responsibility.

REALITY OF THE LA RAZA OCCUPATION THAT ARIZONA FENDS OFF

I WANT FREE MEDICAL CARE, INCLUDING DENTAL OF COURSE
>I WANT FREE HOUSING
>I WANT TAX FREE SCHOOLING FOR MY CHILDREN
>I WANT FREE TUITION TO A TOP WHITE GUILT RIDDEN COLLEGE
>I WANT A FREE GET OUT OF JAIL CARD
>I WANT TO BE ABLE TO DRIVE WITHOUT HAVING TO BUY INSURANCE >I WANT TO DRIVE WITHOUT HAVING A LICENCE >WHEN A POLICEMAN STOPS ME FOR A TRAFFIC STOP OR ANY OTHER REASON I WANT THE RIGHT TO REFUSE TO SHOW HIM MY LICENCE OR I.D., AND HE CAN’T DO A @#$% THING ABOUT IT >I WANT TO LIVE IN A SANTUARY CITY AND RUN TRAFFIC LIGHTS AND WHEN I HIT A CAR THEY JUST LET ME GO ON MY WAY >I WANT TO DRIVE THE MOST BEATUP, UNSAFE, POLUTTING CAR ON THE HIGHWAY >I WANT TO CRAM 15 PEOPLE IN A 5 PASSENGER CAR AND PLAY MY MEXICAN RADIO STATION AS LOAD AS POSSIBLE >I WANT TO DRIVE SLOWLY BY GOOD LOOKING WHITE WOMAN A VERBALY SEXUALY ASSULT THEM..AND GET AWAY WITH IT
>I WANT TO BE ABLE TO WEAR AND WAVE ANY OTHER FLAG OTHER THAN THAT OF THIS COUNTRY
>I WANT TO WORK AND NOT PAY ANY TAXES, ALLOWING ME TO KEEP 100% OF THE MONEY I EARN
>I WANT TO BE ABLE TO ENFLUANCE POTICIANS I AM NOT LEAGLLY ABLE TO (BUY DO) VOTE FOR
>I WANT TO CONTROL SUPREME COURT JUDGES
>I WANT TO HAVE AS MANY CHILDREN AS I CAN PRODUCE THAT I DON'T HAVE TO PAY FOR, THIS IS >HOW I GET A RAISE FROM THE U S GOVERNMENT SO I CAN BUY THE BIGGEST FLAT SCREEN TV IN EL WAL-MARTO
>I WANT TO GATHER AND PROTEST THE LAWS OF THIS COUNTRY WITHOUT FEAR OF BEING ARRESTED >I WANT DEMOCRATE PRESIDENTS, SENATORS AND CONGRESSMEN TO STAND UP FOR MY RIGHTS SO THAN WHEN THEY GET US AMNISTY THEY WILL GET MY VOTE
>I WANT TO HAVE U.S., STATE, AND LOCAL GOVERMENTS PRINT MATERIAL IN MY LANGUAGE SO I DON'T EVEN HAVE TO LEARN THE LANGUAGE OF THIS COUNTRY >I WANT THE MEDIA TO BROADCAST EVERY TIME A COP TOUCHES ONE OF MY RACE >I WANT THE MEDIA NOT TO BROADCAST ANY CRIME I COMMIT >I WANT RICH AMERICAN ACTORS TO COME TO MY DEFENCE WHENEVER THE “MAN” PICKS ON ME >I WANT PRESIDENTS TO TAKE PICTURES WITH ME >I WANT SCHOOLS TO TEACH IN MY LANGUAGE (ENGLISH, REMEMBER IT USED TO BE OUR OFFICIAL LANGUAGE) >I WANT ALL ISTRUCTIONS FOR THINGS I BUY TO COME IN BOTH ENGLISH AND SPANISH, WITH THE SPANISH INSTRUCTION FIRST ON THE PAGE

TO MAKE IT SHORT
I WANT TO BE AN ILLEGAL MEXICAN

I AM A HARD WORKING ,TAX PAYING AMERICAN AND I HAVE EARNED THE RIGHT TO BE AN ILLEGAL MEXICAN AND ENJOY ALL THE RIGHTS THEY ENJOY…OF COURSE AT SOME OTHER HARD WORKING AMERICANS EXPENSE..

WILL SOMONE PLEASE SHOW ME THE SECERT HAND SHAKE..I REALLY LIKE THEM TOCOS AND I DON’T MIND CALLING MY BUDWISER A CAVASA (I HOPE THAT’S SPELLED RIGHT, I DON’T WANT MY BROWN BROTHERS TO GET MAD BUT THEN AGAIN MOST OF THEM CAN’T READ OR WRITE) AND I CAN GET USED TO CELBRATING CINCO DE MIYO INSTEAD OF THE 4TH OF JULY…WE ARE DOING IT NOW ARENT WE
SEE YA LATER…I MEAN, ADIOS AMIGOS…..
HEY OBOMA, MY HOMY, WERES MY CHECK? MY

ARIZ GOVERNOR CONSIDERS CHANGING IMMIGRATION LAW - As Narcome Gloats Over LA RAZA VICTORY

Ariz. governor considers changing immigration law

By PAUL DAVENPORT and JACQUES BILLEAUD, Associated Press Writer Paul Davenport And Jacques Billeaud, Associated Press Writer

PHOENIX – The fight over Arizona's immigration law showed no signs of letting up Friday as the federal judge who blunted its force faced threats and the Republican governor who signed it considered changes to address any faults.

In the days since U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton put on hold the most controversial parts of the law, hundreds of e-mails and phone calls — including some threats — have poured into the courthouse.

Seventy people have been arrested in demonstrations.

And a fund set up to help defend the new law added $75,000 Wednesday alone, giving the state more than $1.6 million to get Bolton's ruling overturned.

Gov. Jan Brewer, who signed the law and appealed the ruling, has vowed not to back down, saying she'll challenge Bolton's decision all the way to the Supreme Court.

But Brewer said Friday she'd consider changes to "tweak" the law to respond to the parts Bolton faulted.

"Basically we believe (the law) is constitutional but she obviously pointed out faults that can possibly be fixed, and that's what we would do," Brewer told The Associated Press. She said she's talking to legislative leaders about the possibility of a special session, but said no specific changes had been identified.

In her temporary injunction, Bolton delayed the most contentious provisions of the law, including a section that required officers to check a person's immigration status while enforcing other laws. Bolton indicated the federal government's case has a good chance at succeeding in its argument that federal immigration law trumps state law.

But she allowed police to enforce the law's bans on blocking vehicle traffic when seeking or offering day-labor services and a revision to the smuggling ban that lets officers stop drivers if they suspect motorists have broken traffic laws.

Bolton also let officers enforce a new prohibition on driving or harboring illegal immigrants in furtherance of their illegal presence.

Democrats scoffed at Brewer's desire to change the law, with a key House minority leader calling it laughable.

"Why would we help her?" asked Rep. Kyrsten Sinema of Phoenix. "This bill is so flawed and clearly a federal judge agrees," Sinema said.

House Speaker Kirk Adams said there would be little support among fellow Republicans to weaken the law.

Attorneys have begun reviewing the law to identify possible changes, he said: "It's embryonic."

Sen. Russell Pearce, the law's chief sponsor, said he would only back changes to make it stronger.

Even though the law's critics scored a huge victory with the decision, passions among hundreds of immigrant rights supporters still flared at demonstrations near the federal courthouse in downtown Phoenix after the parts of the law that weren't blocked took effect Thursday.

Federal officials in charge of court security wouldn't say whether anyone made a death threat against Bolton and wouldn't provide specifics of the threats they were examining, but said a majority of the e-mails and phone calls to the judge's chambers and the court clerk's office are from people who want to grouse about her ruling, officials said.

"We understand that people will vent and have a First Amendment right to express their dissatisfaction. We expect this," said David Gonzales, the U.S. Marshal for Arizona. "But we want to look at the people who go over the line."

LA RAZA SUPREMACY ABOVE THE LAW:The Amnesty Memo

The Amnesty Memo

By Robert VerBruggen
Posted on July 29, 2010 5:30 PM According to an internal U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services memo going the rounds of Capitol Hill and obtained by National Review, the agency is considering ways in which it could enact “meaningful immigration reform absent legislative action” — that is, without the consent of the American people through a vote in Congress.

“This memorandum offers administrative relief options to . . . reduce the threat of removal for certain individuals present in the United States without authorization,” it reads.

Also: “In the absence of Comprehensive Immigration Reform, USCIS can extend benefits and/or protections to many individuals and groups by issuing new guidance and regulations, exercising discretion with regard to parole-in-place, deferred action and the issuance of Notices to Appear (NTA), and adopting significant process improvements.”

In recent weeks, Sen. Chuck Grassley and others in Congress have been pressing the administration to disavow rumors that a de facto amnesty is in the works, including in a letter to Department of Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano. “Since the senators first wrote to the president more than a month ago, we have not been reassured that the plans are just rumors, and we have every reason to believe that the memo is legitimate,” a Grassley spokesman tells NR. (NR contacted DHS, but a spokesman did not have a comment on the record.)

Many of the memo’s proposals are technical and fine-grained; for example, it suggests clarifying the immigration laws for “unaccompanied minors, and for victims of human trafficking, domestic violence, and other criminal activities.” It also proposes extending the “grace period” H-1B visa holders have between the expiration of their visa and the date they’re expected to leave the country.

With other ideas, however, USCIS is aiming big. Perhaps the most egregious suggestion is to “Increase the Use of Deferred Action.” “Deferred action,” as the memo defines it, “is an exercise of prosecutorial discretion not to pursue removal from the U.S. of a particular individual for a specific period of time.” For example, after Hurricane Katrina, the government decided not to remove illegal immigrants who’d been affected by the disaster.

The memo claims that there are no limits to USCIS’s ability to use deferred action, but warns that using this power indiscriminately would be “controversial, not to mention expensive.” The memo suggests using deferred action to exempt “particular groups” from removal — such as the illegal-immigrant high-school graduates who would fall under the DREAM Act (a measure that has been shot down repeatedly in Congress). The memo claims that the DREAM Act would cover “an estimated 50,000” individuals, though as many as 65,000 illegal immigrants graduate high school every year in the U.S.

In the immediate wake of the court decision blocking the Arizona immigration law yesterday, the memo is sure to create controversy — and the sense that the administration is bent on preserving and extending the nation’s de facto amnesty.

UPDATE: USCIS has released a statement on the memo:

Internal draft memos do not and should not be equated with official action or policy of the Department. We will not comment on notional, pre-decisional memos. As a matter of good government, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will discuss just about every issue that comes within the purview of the immigration system. We continue to maintain that comprehensive bipartisan legislation, coupled with smart, effective enforcement, is the only solution to our nation’s immigration challenges.

Internal memoranda help us do the thinking that leads to important changes; some of them are adopted and others are rejected. Our goal is to implement policies wisely and well to strengthen all aspects of our mission. The choices we have made so far have strengthened both the enforcement and services sides of USCIS — nobody should mistake deliberation and exchange of ideas for final decisions. To be clear, DHS will not grant deferred action or humanitarian parole to the nation’s entire illegal immigrant population.

ARE "SANCTUARY CITIES" GROUND ZERO FOR MEX LA RAZA SUPREMACY?

Sanctuary cities become new target in immigration debate
Tue Jul 27, 2:34 pm ET

.Opponents of the Justice Department's lawsuit challenging the enforcement of Arizona's controversial illegal-immigration law have hit upon a strategy to highlight what they contend is a gaping inconsistency in the Justice Department's policy priorities. Why should federal attorneys be targeting the Arizona law as an alleged obstacle to coherent and centralized enforcement of federal immigration statutes, they argue, while Justice officials also have done nothing to challenge the legal status of so-called sanctuary cities, which effectively block enforcement of the same federal law?

The Justice Department has asked a federal judge in Phoenix to stop Arizona's law from going into effect this Thursday, arguing that the measure interferes with federal immigration policy. But critics, including California GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, are challenging the logic of Justice's move, arguing that if U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder really cared about enforcing federal immigration law, he should be targeting sanctuary cities instead of Arizona.

[Photos: Immigrants flee continued AZ conflict]

More than 30 cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Denver, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Dallas, have local ordinances on the books that prevent police from asking about a person’s immigration status. The Arizona law would allow officers to question a person’s immigration status and report them to federal authorities if that person is believed to be in the country illegally. The crackdown could prompt illegal immigrants to seek refuge out of Arizona and into those sanctuary cities.

A Justice Department official told the Washington Times there is nothing hypocritical about the government going after Arizona while ignoring sanctuary cities and suggested it won’t step up enforcement. Administration officials say they want to seek and deport criminal immigrants. Indeed, a recent Washington Post report found that deportation of illegal immigrants has spiked significantly under the Obama administration. But federal officials insist they don’t have the capability or resources to remove the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who haven’t had run-ins with the police.

"There is a big difference between a state or locality saying they are not going to use their resources to enforce a federal law, as so-called sanctuary cities have done, and a state passing its own immigration policy that actively interferes with federal law," Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler told the Times’ Stephen Dinan and Kara Rowland. “That’s what Arizona did in this case.”

But even if Arizona's law goes into effect on schedule on July 29, the debate over sanctuary cities — which sprouted up mainly in the 1980s to give refuge to exiles from El Salvador's deadly civil war — is hardly over. Hunter is sponsoring legislation in Congress that would force the Justice Department to crack down on cities that don't enforce immigration laws — though it's not likely to come to a vote before next year.

— Holly Bailey is a senior politics writer for Yahoo! News.

HERE ARE A FEW CITIES IN MEX OCCUPIED MEXIFORNIA WHERE YOU CAN BET THE ILLEGALS ARE OUT VOTING, AND COLLECTING WELFARE!

To any illegal who wants to move somewhere safe these cities in California are sanctuary cities who will provide for your every need. Free medical, dental, food stamps, welfare for your children and many other beautiful things so run and embrace beautiful California.

Services will continue until their are no more taxpayers there so hurry and get what you are entitled to why the gravy train is still running.

California wants you!

# Bell Gardens, CA
# City of Industry, CA
# City of Commerce, CA
# Cypress, CA
# Davis CA
# Downey, CA
# Fresno, CA
# Los Angeles, CA
# Long Beach, CA
# Lynwood, CA
# Maywood, CA
# Montebello, CA
# National City, CA
# Norwalk, CA
# Oakland, CA
# Paramount, CA
# Pico Rivera, CA
# Richmond, CA
# So. Gate, CA
# San Diego, CA
# Santa Cruz, CA
# San Francisco, CA
# San Jose, CA
# Sonoma County, CA
# Vernon, CA
# Watsonville, CA
# Wilmington, CA



Please pass along we really do want the cities in California to really practice what they preach.

AFTER ASSAULTING ARIZONA, OBAMA WILL SKIRT LAWS TO GET LA RAZA AMNESTY!

MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

Agency weighs skirting Congress on immigration

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration, unable to push an immigration overhaul through Congress, is considering ways it could go around lawmakers to allow undocumented immigrants to stay in the United States, according to an agency memo.
The internal draft written by officials at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services outlines ways that the government could provide "relief" to illegal immigrants — including delaying deportation for some, perhaps indefinitely, or granting green cards to others — in the absence of legislation revamping the system.
It's emerging as chances fade in this election year for a measure President Barack Obama favors to put the nation's estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants on a path to legal status, and as debate rages over an Arizona law targeting people suspected of being in the country illegally.
The 11-page internal memo, written in April to the agency's director, says: "This memorandum offers administrative relief options to promote family unity, foster economic growth, achieve significant process improvements and reduce the threat of removal for certain individuals present in the United States without authorization."
It goes on: "In the absence of comprehensive immigration reform, USCIS can extend benefits and/or protections to many individuals or groups."
The memo provoked a backlash by Republicans who called it evidence that Obama is looking for ways of relaxing immigration policies without political consensus to enact a new law.
"The document provides an additional basis for our concerns that the administration will go to great lengths to circumvent Congress and unilaterally execute a backdoor amnesty plan," said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who obtained and circulated the memo. "The problem remains that if you reward illegality, you get more of it."
Grassley led a group of conservative GOP senators who wrote to Obama in June asking him to promise that the administration wouldn't use its authority to "change the current position of a large group of illegal aliens already in the United States."
The Iowan's staff said the group has not received a response.
"Now we find out the truth: while saying one thing to the public, the Obama administration is scheming to ensure that immigration laws are not enforced," said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee.
Christopher Bentley, a spokesman for the agency, said the internal document "should not be equated with official action or policy," and represented only "deliberation and exchange of ideas."
"We continue to maintain that comprehensive bipartisan legislation, coupled with smart, effective enforcement, is the only solution to our nation's immigration challenges," he said in a statement.
Still, the memo makes clear that even without such a bill, immigration officials have identified a variety of ways to relax U.S. policy to allow more undocumented immigrants who might otherwise face deportation to stay in the country. Among the options outlined is expanding the use of "deferred action" — in which the government can use its discretion to halt a deportation indefinitely, usually for an urgent humanitarian reason.
"While it is theoretically possible to grant deferred action to an unrestricted number of unlawfully present individuals, doing so would likely be controversial, not to mention expensive," the memo says. Instead, officials suggest using the option for certain groups, such as tens of thousands of high school graduates who have been brought up in the U.S. and plan to attend college or serve in the armed forces.
Democrats and Republicans have repeatedly tried to push through legislation — known as the "Dream Act" — to cover those students.
"To be clear," Bentley said, the government "will not grant deferred action or humanitarian parole to the nation's entire illegal immigrant population."
Another option included in the document is to allow more illegal immigrants to receive "parole-in-place" status. This would let them stay in the United States while they seek legal status.
The document discusses applying both those options to spouses of active duty military personnel, for instance.
It also suggests expanding the definition of "extreme hardship" for exceptions in immigration cases — a prospect that alarmed critics who said it could lower the bar so virtually any undocumented person could meet it.
And the memo suggests allowing people who entered the United States illegally and were granted so-called "Temporary Protected Status" because of a crisis in their home countries to stay and get permanent legal residency.
The memo notes that this would be a change in long-standing policy, and says, "Opening this pathway will help thousands of applicants obtain lawful permanent residence without having to leave the U.S."
Some proponents of revamping the immigration system said the document simply points out ways the agency can fix old and outdated practices that separate families and hurt workers and employers.
Writing on the Immigration Policy Center's blog, Director Mary Giovagnoli, a former immigration official, said, "Good for you, USCIS, for trying to do what it can within that broken system."
*
Hans A. von Spakovsky
Law-Enforcement-Free Sanctuaries

The Obama administration will sue Arizona for trying to help Washington enforce federal immigration laws, but flatly rejects the notion of suing sanctuary cities that blatantly defy those same laws. That announcement two weeks ago revealed the hypocrisy and utter contempt for the rule of law rampant in Eric Holder’s Justice Department.
It was the latest example of the Department letting partisan politics, rather than the interests of justice and the impartial enforcement of the law, drive its legal decisions. In this instance, it both threatens national security and undermines public confidence in our legal system.
The very weakness of the Department’s legal arguments in the Arizona suit betrays its political genesis. As the brief filed on behalf of Arizona by nine other states persuasively argues, Arizona is not interfering with federal authority: it has neither created new categories of aliens nor attempted to independently determine the immigration status of aliens. Arizona’s law simply requires local law enforcement officers to check the immigration status of individuals arrested for other reasons. This is exactly the regulatory scheme of concurrent enforcement envisioned by federal immigration law.
The Justice Department’s suit directly contradicts the 2005 Supreme Court decision in Muehler v. Mena. In that case, all nine justices upheld the right of local police officers to question a detained individual’s immigration status while a search warrant was being executed. The suit also flies in the face of Estrada v. Rhode Island, in which the First Circuit Court of Appeals this February upheld a state trooper’s questioning of immigration status during a traffic stop. This is the exact policy being implemented in Arizona.
Federal courts have long upheld the power of state law enforcement officers to arrest those who violate federal law, as long as it is also a violation of state law, includingimmigration laws. The inherent authority of local police to arrest immigration violators was outlined in 2002 in a legal memorandum issued by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel. Yet Attorney General Holder has filed a lawsuit making claims completely at odds with an opinion issued by his own department.
Holder’s suit also conflicts directly with federal immigration law. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (8 U.S.C. §1373) specifically mandates that no federal, state, or local government can “prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service [now Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE], information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual,” a provision upheld by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1999. Congress wanted local governments to get information on immigration status from the federal government – and that is exactly what the Arizona law requires for anyone arrested in the state. Yet Holder is trying to prevent Arizona officials from checking “the citizenship or immigration status” of “any individual.”
Now we’re awaiting a ruling by a federal judge on the Justice Department’s request for a temporary injunction to stop the law from going into effect on Thursday. It’s clear, though, that the only way that judge could possibly rule in the Department’s favor is by ignoring the law and this precedent.
Justice Department spokesman Tracy Schmaler asserts that Arizona is “actively” interfering with federal law while sanctuary cities are just not using their resources to enforce federal law. This bogus claim displays fundamental ignorance of these federal legal requirements. Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary committee and the chief author of the 1996 immigration law, rightly calls it “absurd.” Cities like San Francisco not only do not enforce federal immigration laws, some violate it by protecting aliens from deportation and refusing to cooperate with or provide information to immigration officials.
As the nine states note in their brief, the Justice Department is trying to negate the “preexisting power of the States to verify a person’s immigration status and similarly seeks to reject the assistance that the States can lawfully provide to the Federal government.” Holder’s claim that Arizona is interfering with federal power to regulate immigration is near frivolous.
Arizona simply requires that law enforcement personnel (1) ascertain the immigration status of people they have lawfully detained for some other reason and (2) report to the federal government the presence of any detainee determined to be here illegally. If the Obama administration wants to ignore that information and reject that assistance, it has that option. The only possible “interference” with federal power is the risk that the feds might be publicly embarrassed by a policy of non-enforcement. Apparently the White House and DOJ consider embarrassment a federal offense.
Holder makes one further -- yet equally absurd -- claim: that by trying to deter the movement of illegal aliens into Arizona, the state is restricting interstate commerce and thus violates the Commerce Clause. How can deterring the entry of people who have no legal right to enter possibly violate interstate commerce? It is the same as saying that -- notwithstanding federal laws that bar importation of heroin -- a state that busts heroin traffickers is flouting the Commerce Clause.
Federal law stipulates that any person who “conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection,” an illegal alien is committing a crime. It is also criminal just to “encourage” residence by illegal aliens. Yet sanctuary cities like San Francisco have enacted formal policies that embrace all these illegal acts. Such policies lead directly to further crimes, such as the vicious murder of a father and his two sons on a San Francisco street. The killer was an illegal alien with two prior felony convictions -- yet on neither occasion did San Francisco authorities notify the feds of his presence. Had they done so, he would not have been able to gun down Tony Bologna, 48, and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16, as they sat in their car on June 16, 2008.
Holder’s refusal to sue sanctuary cities is an abrogation of his responsibility as the nation’s chief federal law enforcement officer. Unlike Arizona, many of these cities have policies that violate federal law.
The Obama administration claims Arizona’s law will “disrupt federal immigration enforcement.” But the only thing it could possibly disrupt is federal non-enforcement. As the elections approach, Holder’s suit may help gin up enthusiasm among the president’s more radical political allies, such as La Raza. But using the law enforcement powers of the federal government to achieve political ends is a dangerous abuse of power.

Rep. CHARLES RANGEL Gets Off! WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT DIFFERENTLY? The Culture of Corruption!!!

Subcommittee recommends reprimand for embattled Charles Rangel
By Paul Kane
Washington Post staff writer
Friday, July 30, 2010; 2:18 PM
The subcommittee that investigated Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) has recommended that the embattled lawmaker face just a "reprimand," a mild form of punishment similar to that given to Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) when he was rebuked in 1997.
Rep. Gene Green (D-Tex.) told reporters Friday that his four-member investigative subcommittee did not seek the high-level punishments of censure or expulsion, opting for a mid-level sanction that requires the full House to approve it but carries no other penalty.
"The recommendation we had was a reprimand," Green said, "and I'll let the full committee make that decision."
(Photos: Rangel's longtime political dominance)
Green and Rep. Jo Bonner (Ala.), the top Republican on the investigative subcommittee, are serving as the prosecution in the Rangel trial, which began Thursday in a preliminary hearing with the unveiling of their statement charging the former chairman of the Ways and Means Committee with 13 counts of violating House rules. They are presenting their evidence to an "adjudicatory subcommittee," made up of four Democrats and four Republicans who are serving as the judge and jury.
The charges include allegations that Rangel violated House rules or federal laws by soliciting donations from people with business before his committee to fund a center named in his honor at City College of New York, not paying taxes on a Caribbean home, improperly using a rent-stabilized apartment in New York as a campaign office, and not properly disclosing more than $600,000 in income and assets.
(Read the charges against Rangel)
If the panel finds Rangel guilty, it could then impose its own level of punishment. But the recommendation of Green and Bonner would weigh heavily on that decision, much as a prosecutor's sentencing recommendation would influence a judge in a criminal trial.
In January 1997, the House voted 395 to 28 to reprimand Gingrich because of the financing related to a college course the then-speaker taught in the 1990s. That reprimand also came with an unprecedented $300,000 fine because the outside counsel who conducted the investigation found that Gingrich had misled the investigation.
(The Gingrich case)
Green clarified the frenzy that led up to the final hour before Thursday's preliminary hearing, in which various media outlets reported that there was a "deal" or that Rangel was "close to a deal." No such deal or settlement was ever that close, according to Green. Earlier this month, after several face-to-face sessions with Rangel, negotiation talks broke down with Green and Bonner and the other two members of the investigative subcommittee.
In the run-up to Thursday's hearing, Rangel's legal team continued talking with the committee's nonpartisan attorneys, but never were close enough to bring Green and Bonner into the talks.
"I was never approached after about two weeks ago. There may have been discussions with other folks," Green said.

WHAT DID THE BANKSTERS KNOW ABOUT OUR ACTOR OBAMA THAT WE DIDN’T KNOW?
Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).
*
OBAMA’S CON JOB ON REGULATION WILL NOT IMPACT HIS LARGEST BANKSTER DONORS! WHO’D OF THOUGHT???

“Obama's rhetoric covered the whole financial industry, but the key changes will affect only a few high-profile players, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., while sparing investment banks like Goldman Sachs Group Inc.”
*
Lou Dobbs Tonight
Thursday, July 9, 2009
And Harvard economics professor JEFFREY MIRON will weigh in on the state of the U.S. economy—and why the only plausible argument for bailing out banks crumbles on close examination.
*
"There is a populist and conservative revolt against Wall Street and financial elites, Congress and government," Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg warned in an analysis this week. "Democrats and President Obama are seen as more interested in bailing out Wall Street than helping Main Street."

*
Lou Dobbs Tonight
Monday, November 12, 2007

Mortgage giants Wells Fargo and Countrywide Financial are accused of slapping dubious fees on homeowners struggling to save their homes. With fewer new mortgages being written, these
companies appear to be leaning on these lucrative fees to stay profitable—with devastating consequences for homeowners. We’ll have that report.
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JUDICIAL WATCH.org … GET ON THEIR FREE EMAILS
The “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians for 2009” list has been announced by Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, The list is compiled at the end of each year. The list, in alphabetical order, includes:

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Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT): This marks two years in a row for Senator Dodd, who made the 2008 "Ten Most Corrupt" list for his corrupt relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and for accepting preferential treatment and loan terms from Countrywide Financial, a scandal which still dogs him. In 2009, the scandals kept coming for the Connecticut Democrat. In 2009, Judicial Watch filed a Senate ethics complaint against Dodd for undervaluing on his Senate Financial Disclosure forms a property he owns in Ireland.
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Senator John Ensign (R-NV): A number of scandals popped up in 2009 involving public officials who conducted illicit affairs, and then attempted to cover them up with hush payments and favors, an obvious abuse of power. The year's worst offender might just be Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign.
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Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA): Judicial Watch is investigating a $12 million TARP cash injection provided to the Boston-based OneUnited Bank at the urging of Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank.

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Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner: In 2009, Obama Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admitted that he failed to pay $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes from 2001-2004 on his lucrative salary at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an organization with 185 member countries that oversees the global financial system.

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Attorney General Eric Holder: Tim Geithner can be sure he won't be hounded about his tax-dodging by his colleague Eric Holder, US Attorney General. Judicial Watch strongly opposed Holder because of his terrible ethics record, which includes: obstructing an FBI investigation of the theft of nuclear secrets from Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory; rejecting multiple requests for an independent counsel to investigate alleged fundraising abuses by then-Vice President Al Gore in the Clinton White House; undermining the criminal investigation of President Clinton by Kenneth Starr in the midst of the Lewinsky investigation; and planning the violent raid to seize then-six-year-old Elian Gonzalez at gunpoint in order to return him to Castro's Cuba.

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Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)/ Senator Roland Burris (D-IL): One of the most serious scandals of 2009 involved a scheme by former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to sell President Obama's then-vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder. Two men caught smack dab in the middle of the scandal: Senator Roland Burris, who ultimately got the job, and Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.

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President Barack Obama: During his presidential campaign, President Obama promised to run an ethical and transparent administration. However, in his first year in office, the President has delivered corruption and secrecy, bringing Chicago-style political corruption to the White House.

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Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): At the heart of the corruption problem in Washington is a sense of entitlement. Politicians believe laws and rules (even the U.S. Constitution) apply to the rest of us but not to them. Case in point: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her excessive and boorish demands for military travel.

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Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and the rest of the PMA Seven: Rep. John Murtha made headlines in 2009 for all the wrong reasons. The Pennsylvania congressman is under federal investigation for his corrupt relationship with the now-defunct defense lobbyist PMA Group. PMA, founded by a former Murtha associate, has been the congressman's largest campaign contributor.

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Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY): Rangel, the man in charge of writing tax policy for the entire country, has yet to adequately explain how he could possibly "forget" to pay taxes on $75,000 in rental income he earned from his off-shore rental property. He also faces allegations that he improperly used his influence to maintain ownership of highly coveted rent-controlled apartments in Harlem, and misused his congressional office to fund raise for his private Rangel Center by preserving a tax loophole for an oil drilling company in exchange for funding.
There are further explanations about corruption why each politician was chosen at Judicial Watch.

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NEVADA UNDER MEXICAN LA RAZA DEM OCCUPATION - This Is What Harry Reid's AMERICA LOOKS LIKE!

WE KNOW WHAT OBAMA, AND HIS LA RAZA PARTY, INCLUDING HARRY REID, HAS DONE FOR OBAMA DONOR BANKSTERS! THEY’RE DOIN’ REAL GOOD, EVEN AS THE REST OF THE COUNTRY CONTINUES TOWARDS MELTDOWN!
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“While the concentration of misery may be greater in Nevada, it was caused by the same unchecked housing bubble and unregulated financial gambling that brought pain to the rest of the country. If present trends go unchecked, Nevada is America's future.”
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That same year, La Raza gave Sen. Reid their Capital Award for "his commitment to advance legislation priorities of the Latino community."
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25% OF THE POPULATIONS OF NEVADA ARE ILLITERATE, ENGLISH LOATHING, ILLEGALS!
HARRY REID WORKS HARD TO HAND MILLIONS TO LA RAZA IN NEVADA, AS ILLEGALS STEAL CARS, TAKE JOBS, BIRTH MORE ILLEGALS, AND COLLECT WELFARE IN THE MILLIONS!
THE BELOW IS WHAT AMERICAN UNDER MEX OCCUPATION LOOKS LIKE.
HUFFPOST
By Ryan Grim

Nevada's Economic Misery May Be America's Future
First Posted: 07-27-10 04:20 PM | Updated: 07-28-10 12:49 PM
So many homes in Las Vegas have been foreclosed upon that banks rarely bother to hang a "For Sale" sign on the front lawn anymore. Instead, visitors identify bank-owned properties by the brown grass and the 8.5 x 11-inch sheet of paper taped to the front door or the garage.
On a cul-de-sac in the once-pleasant neighborhood of Silverado Ranch, Larry Wood is the last remaining resident. Two of the four homes are in foreclosure and a third is a "party rental" only occupied by rowdy tourists on weekends. One of his neighbors made a few bucks before abandoning the home, he says. "They sold all the palm trees and just walked away from it," says Wood, sporting a "Freedom Isn't Free" T-shirt. "It's a great neighborhood. I guess that people weren't financially set up to get through the crash."
Wood takes little comfort in being the last resident. "Sometimes it's scary. There's a possibility someone would try to rob me and I wouldn't have any neighbors to help me," he says, recounting a previous attempted intrusion when his then-neighbor called to warn him not to answer the door because there was a group of thugs knocking. Armed and ready, he huddled near the door but the gang gave up and left.
Walking away is becoming a habit among law-abiding residents too. It's hard to find a home bought before 2009 that isn't underwater and very few landlords, when running credit checks, look for foreclosures or short-sales on a tenant's record. Otherwise, a manager couldn't fill a building.
Nevada has a greater concentration of economic misery than any other state. The state's unemployment rate, which in June edged up to 14.2 percent, has risen faster during the past year than it has anywhere else, and nearly six percent of all homes across the state's desert landscape received a foreclosure filing in the first six months of the year.
While the concentration of misery may be greater in Nevada, it was caused by the same unchecked housing bubble and unregulated financial gambling that brought pain to the rest of the country. If present trends go unchecked, Nevada is America's future.
The jobless rate would likely be much higher, say residents, if Nevada were not such a transient state. When folks lose their jobs and their homes, they often pack up and move in with relatives.
Others, though, have roots in the state. Robert Garcia, 58, moved to Vegas more than a decade ago to take a job with what is now MGM as a video producer. Back in Salt Lake City, Utah, he'd met his wife, an anchorwoman, on the set. She went to work for US Airways in Las Vegas. The couple, who have two kids, divorced several years ago and sold their home at a healthy profit, which they split. Garcia put $100,000 into a new home that he bought for $350,000. Making nearly six figures, he said, he had no problem covering the mortgage and the $2,400 in alimony and child support. In 2008, things took a turn for the worse.
He has been able to weather the downturn, he says, because he always lived within his means -- no credit card debt, no car payment. He has a "junky car," he says, that his kids are embarrassed to ride in.
"It's funny," Garcia adds, pausing. "Just before I was laid off, I was gonna buy a BMW." He pauses for another long moment as his eyes well up. Asked where he is living now, he breaks down instantly, tears pouring down his cheeks, knocking his contacts out. "Actually, I'm looking for a place. I'll be right back," he says, leaving to compose himself.
When he returns, he says that he's still in his home, which is more than 50 percent under water, but will be leaving as soon as the bank approves a short sale. He had an offer several months ago, but the buyer, a teacher, backed out at the last minute. She'd been laid off.
Garcia has applied for 200 jobs all across the country but, at his age, employers want younger workers, leaving him to scrape by on freelance work. He has nothing left, but one bright spot is that the devastation in Vegas is so profound that landlords tell him they no longer check credit reports for short sales or foreclosures. Garcia's wife, meanwhile, has been laid off by the airline, as fewer tourists fly into town. She's now on welfare, he says, and, as a consequence, half his wages are garnished. (Welfare policy requires such payments to be made through garnishment.) He doesn't mind, he says. His bigger fear is that the only job he'll be able to find will require him to leave Vegas and his children.
Meanwhile, the debate in Washington enrages him. It particularly galls him that Republicans say help for the unemployed must be offset with spending cuts elsewhere. Garcia, in fact, volunteers the term "offset," expressing a better grasp of economics than most of the deficit hawks in Washington. "It drives me crazy when they say that. There's nothing to take from! Where are they going to offset it?! What's the phrase? You can't get blood from a turnip," he said.
"This is my hometown and I've watched it struggle and go through so many challenges, particularly over the past two years," says Julie Murray, president of Three Square, a food bank in Vegas that distributes food to more than 300 partner programs and schools around town. "The way that this economic downturn has been different from others is that I've never seen the gaming industry be impacted. Our community would suffer when the economy suffered but gaming was always resilient."
Three Square delivered 10 million pounds of food in 2008; this year the food bank is on track to distribute twice that amount (some of the increase, Murray said, owes to the fact that Three Square is growing; the nonprofit was founded in 2006). Murray said corporate donations to the food bank have been down during this recession, but individual and foundation giving has remained steady. "We've been able to sustain distribution of food in a recession because of the sheer will and passion of the community," she said. "Things are dire -- we have more children who are struggling with hunger and more seniors and more families and more middle class families who never thought they'd need social services -- however, Las Vegas is rallying."
"Nevada was pretty much a growth economy for most of the past two decades," says Steven Horsford, the Nevada State Senate's Majority Leader, a Democrat who represents North Las Vegas. "When the financial crisis hit, it disproportionately affected Las Vegas because of our growth rate."
Horsford says the local economy is struggling not because fewer tourists are coming to Vegas, but because the people who do come are spending less money. (A cab driver complains that he doesn't have many fewer customers, just more families haggling over the $60 fare.) Horsford said Vegas needs to switch from relying on casino tourism to green energy and medical tourism.
"We were used to being able to help virtually all segments of our population get a job if they wanted a job, have benefits, earn money to put their kids through college -- we called it the Las Vegas dream," he says. "From a leadership standpoint, knowing that two-thirds of all homes are either upside down or are in foreclosure is one of the most humbling realities we are dealing with."

The decay in Vegas doesn't stay there: It reverberates throughout the state. "Coming Soon" signs have been pulled down across the city, because nothing is coming soon other than more foreclosures. The Nevada landscape is pockmarked by empty condos and casinos, some of them fully built and sitting there empty, others are shells frozen in time. When analysts talk abstractly about Wall Street sucking capital out of the real economy, these stalled construction projects are the on-the-ground reality. "60% Reduced Prices" promises one empty condo development.
The $3.1 billion Fontainebleau Las Vegas construction project sits nearly complete but the lender pulled out and everybody is suing everybody else. The first Ritz-Carlton in the company's history to shut down is in Las Vegas.
The city's dance clubs aren't empty, but there's less money circulating. "Saturn," an exotic dancer at Spearmint Rhino, says she and her fellow dancers are making roughly half what they were two years ago. The house she bought for more than $450,000 on an interest-only loan is now worth a third that. She's negotiating a short-sale with the bank.
The Dunkin Donuts that opened in Fabienne Chalaye's neighborhood five months ago is already empty. "Dunkin Donuts... It's all empty. Everything is empty," she marvels, while giving a HuffPost reporter a tour of the city.
Chalaye, a chauffeur, says her business is down roughly 60 percent over the last two years. It slowed down almost imperceptibly after 2006, then fell off a cliff in 2008. She hasn't made a mortgage payment in 15 months and expects to be booted from her home, along with her husband, her adult daughter and her daughter's boyfriend any day now. She bought the house in 2008 on an interest-only loan for $313,000; it's now worth $117,000 and her interest rate shot up to 12 percent. Both she and Garcia, however, say they're leaning toward voting for Harry Reid to return to the Senate, because they have no faith in his opponent, Sharron Angle. "'I wanna get rid of Social Security,'" Garcia quotes Angle saying. "How stupid is that?"
Garcia says a friend of his in the crane business told him he was offloading the hulking useless tools to builders in China because it isn't worth the cost of storing them. "Office Space Available" blares a sign next to a stalled office project.
A five-bedroom home with Spanish tile and a game room sits vacant on half an acre of land. "This property is Bank-owned. We reserve the right to prosecute any and all trespassers illegally accessing the property. Thank you for your cooperation."
The Nugget Casino in tiny Searchlight (population: 576), about an hour from Vegas, laid off a third of its 85 employees in the past two years to cope with reduced demand for the Nugget's slot machines and chicken fried steaks, says owner Verlie Doing, 86.
"We had a great banker when we built this place," says Doing, who opened the Nugget with her husband in 1979. Now, Doing says, she doesn't think Wells Fargo will give her a loan to fix the three air conditioners that recently failed. "I'm not gonna talk to the bank. I'm not even gonna bother to waste my time with 'em."
Doing, a friend and supporter of Harry Reid, is optimistic. "It's gradually getting better," she says. "Not noticeably a bunch better -- but it's getting better."
Sarcastic references to President Obama's 2009 stimulus bill can be seen throughout the Las Vegas area, from glossy Keno fliers at Vegas hotels to the mysterious sign by the front entrance to the Nugget advertising a "Great opportunity" to "stimulate yourself" and make money. "You won't need a bailout. Call Barry."
Reached by phone, Barry Bunnell of Chloride, Ariz. -- a town even smaller than Searchlight -- explains that he's been trying to hire people to sell his Easy Out Fire Protector product, a bottle of fire retardant liquid that's handy for snuffing out small pan fires, especially in RV trailers. Bunnell needs people who can go door-to-door demonstrating the product.
He says he received 37 responses to the Searchlight flier, but nobody was interested in sitting down for an Easy Out interview after Bunnell described the job. He suspects they'd rather stay on unemployment benefits and use the Easy Out inquiry as an easy way to prove to the state they're still looking for work. A Searchlight sales rep, however, would have to push five Easy Outs on every man, woman and child in town to crack $20,000 a year, selling the type of product that most fire-conscious RV owners already own. (That the unemployed would rather draw benefits than look for work is a common argument among congressional Republicans, even though there are at least 15 million people looking for three million available jobs.)
"You can sell two for $39 and keep $20," says Bunnell of his product, "and people won't do it because it's beneath their dignity."
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FUNDING FOR LA RAZA “THE RACE” – THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY FOR MEXICAN SUPREMACY (DO SEARCH FOR LA RAZA ON BLOG)
YOUR TAX DOLLARS PAYING FOR THE 'Reconquista' OF MEXICAN OCCUPIED AMERICAN SOUTHWEST.

By Dave Gibson (09/17/2006) http://americandaily.com/article/15577

In 2005, the Latino group known as La Raza (The Race) was given $15.2 million in U.S. federal grants. La Raza also received an additional $4 million in so-called 'earmarks' tucked into the 2005 Housing Bill, which our Congress passed and President Bush signed. Considering the racist agenda of La Raza, giving federal funds to this group is tantamount to the U.S. funding the Nazis in the 1930's. The comparison to the Nazi Party is well deserved. La Raza openly supports pushing all but Latino Americans out of a portion of the United States (ethnic cleansing – DO A SEARCH ON THE BLOG, OR LOS ANGELES TIMES ON MEXICAN GANGS MURDERING BLACKS IN LOS ANGELES TO “ETHNICALLY CLEANSE THEIR HOODS), they call for 'Reconquista' or the re-conquest of the American Southwest by Mexico (the re-occupation of the Sudetanland), and the establishment of 'Atzlan' which is the utopian all-Latino version of the American Southwestern states (Adolf Hitler planned to called his utopia Germania). Karl Rove was one of the keynote speakers at this year's annual National Council of La Raza Conference. The event was held in Los Angeles (the eventual capital of Atzlan). Other speakers included Jesse Jackson, Bill Clinton, and the virulent racist L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The fact that Karl Rove is the President's top political adviser and addressed the group with Bush's blessing, is a strong indicator that this nation is being subverted at the very highest levels. If La Raza was a white supremacist group with equally deep pockets, the U.S. government would place them on a terrorist watch list, infiltrate them with undercover FBI agents, and subject them to constant harassment by the Internal Revenue Service. Eventually, the group's leaders would be jailed and the group itself would be rendered irrelevant. However, because La Raza is a Latino supremacist group, the Bush administration and most of Congress offer them financial support!
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YOUR LA RAZA DEMS AT WORK!
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That same year, La Raza gave Sen. Reid their Capital Award for "his commitment to advance legislation priorities of the Latino community."
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One of La Raza's biggest supporters is Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV). In 2001, Reid asked the Senate Appropriations Committee for $5 million to help further the racist goals of that organization. That same year, La Raza gave Sen. Reid their Capital Award for "his commitment to advance legislation priorities of the Latino community." Reid in turn praised La Raza by saying: "La Raza is like the biblical David (MEXICAN OCCUPIERS?), fighting all these Goliaths (AMERICAN PEOPLE?)."

Taxpayer funds are also funneled to La Raza through the Department of Health and Human Services, The Environmental Protection Agency, and even NASA. Tax dollars are hidden in these government agencies, earmarked to be specifically given away to La Raza. Inside the halls of Congress, the practice is known as discretionary funding...In the real world it is known as money laundering! In 2005, $7.9 million was stolen from the American taxpayers and given out to Latino-only charter schools in the form of U.S. Department of Education grants. The following is a list of a few of those schools: -La Academia Semillas del Pueblo (Los Angeles) -Atzlan Academy (Tucson, AZ) -Mexicayotl Academy (Nogales, AZ) -The Dolores Huerta Prepatory High School (Pueblo, CO) -Academia Cesar Chavez Charter School (St. Paul, MN) These schools stress Latino culture, the Spanish language, the reconquest of the American Southwest, ethnic cleansing and the establishment of the mythical Atzlan, and even Aztec math!...Again, all taught on your dime! According to the Capital Research Center, La Raza has assets well in excess of $50 million. This same group reports that La Raza spends about $1 million annually on lobbying and fundraising. Can you imagine a high-ranking member of the Roosevelt administration making a trip to Berlin to show support for the Nazi Party? Or perhaps the Congress appropriating money to the Ku Klux Klan? While those scenarios both sound absurd, the support that our elected officials are giving to the racist group known as La Raza is no different. One has to wonder, if the KKK offered extremely cheap labor to unscrupulous American businesses and potential votes to equally unscrupulous politicians...Would Congress fund whites-only charter schools?

SHERIFF JOE TAKES ON COWARDLY OBAMA AND HIS LA RAZA ASSAULT ON LEGALS IN ARIZONA

WHAT’S THE HISPANDERING LA RAZA PRESIDENT DOING ABOUT THESE ISSUES?
NADA! HE’S TOO INTERESTED IN GETTING MORE ILLEGALS REGISTERED TO VOTE!

“The state attorney general has taken a money-wiring company to civil court on allegations that smugglers used their service to move money to Mexico. And a county south of Phoenix has its sheriff's deputies patrol dangerous smuggling corridors.”

Sixty percent of the nearly 1,000 people arrested in the sweeps since early 2008 have been illegal immigrants

He has also raided 37 businesses in enforcing a state law that prohibits employers from knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.

THE MEXICAN WELFARE STATE NARCOMEX HAS INSTALLED IN ARIZONA COSTS LEGALS BILLIONS, AND TAKES THOUSANDS OF JOBS FROM AMERICANS.

WHERE’S OBAMA ON THAT? OUT HISPANDERING!


July 30, 2010







Sheriff Joe Arpaio Not Relenting After Court Ruling
JACQUES BILLEAUD and AMANDA LEE MYERS

| 07/30/10
PHOENIX — Lost in the hoopla over Arizona's immigration law is the fact that state and local authorities for years have been doing their own aggressive crackdowns in the busiest illegal gateway into the country.
Nowhere in the U.S. is local enforcement more present than in metropolitan Phoenix, where Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio routinely carries out sweeps, some in Hispanic neighborhoods, to arrest illegal immigrants. The tactics have made him the undisputed poster boy for local immigration enforcement and the anger that so many authorities feel about the issue.
"It's my job," said Arpaio, standing beside a sheriff's truck that has a number for an immigration hot line written on its side. "I have two state (immigration) laws that I am enforcing. It's not federal, it's state."
A ruling Wednesday by a federal judge put on hold parts of the new law that would have required officers to dig deeper into the fight against illegal immigration. Arizona says it was forced to act because the federal government isn't doing its job to fight immigration.
The issue led to demonstrations across the country Thursday, including one directed at Arpaio in Phoenix in which protesters beat on the metal door of a jail and chanted, "Sheriff Joe, we are here. We will not live in fear." And in another sign of the divisive atmosphere surrounding the issue, authorities said the judge had received menacing threats and police were investigating whether a bullet hole found in the office of an Arizona congressman was related to the immigration debate.
Meanwhile, Gov. Jan Brewer's lawyers went to court to overturn the judge's ruling so they can fight back against what the Republican calls an "invasion" of illegal immigrants.
Ever since the main flow of illegal immigrants into the country shifted to Arizona a decade ago, state politicians and local police have been feeling pressure to confront the state's border woes.
In addition to Arpaio's crackdowns, other efforts include a steady stream of busts by the state and local police of stash houses where smugglers hide illegal immigrants. The state attorney general has taken a money-wiring company to civil court on allegations that smugglers used their service to move money to Mexico. And a county south of Phoenix has its sheriff's deputies patrol dangerous smuggling corridors.
The Arizona Legislature have enacted a series of tough-on-immigration measures in recent years that culminated with the law signed by Brewer in April, catapulting the Republican to the national political stage.
But the king of local immigration enforcement is still Arpaio.
Arpaio, a 78-year-old ex-federal drug agent who fashions himself as a modern-day John Wayne, launched his latest sweep Thursday afternoon, sending about 200 sheriff's deputies and trained volunteers out across metro Phoenix to look for traffic violators who may be here illegally.
Deputy Bob Dalton and volunteer Heath Kowacz spotted a driver with a cracked windshield in a poor Phoenix neighborhood near a busy freeway. Dalton triggered the red and blue police lights and pulled over 28-year-old Alfredo Salas, who was born in Mexico but has lived in Phoenix with a resident alien card since 1993.
Dalton gave him a warning after Salas produced his license and registration and told him to get the windshield fixed.
Salas, a married father of two who installs granite, told The Associated Press that he was treated well but he wondered whether he was pulled over because his truck is a Ford Lobo.
"It's a Mexican truck so I don't know if they saw that and said, 'I wonder if he has papers or not,'" Salas said. "If that's the case, it kind of gets me upset."
Sixty percent of the nearly 1,000 people arrested in the sweeps since early 2008 have been illegal immigrants. Thursday's dragnet led to four arrests, but it wasn't clear if any of them were illegal immigrants.
Critics say deputies racially profile Hispanics. Arpaio says deputies approach people only when they have probable cause.
"Sheriff Joe Arpaio and some other folks there decided they can make a name for themselves in terms of the intensity of the efforts they're using," said Benjamin Johnson, executive director of the pro-immigrant American Immigration Council. "There's no way to deny that. There are a lot of people getting caught up in these efforts."
The Justice Department launched an investigation of his office nearly 17 months ago over allegations of discrimination and unconstitutional searches and seizures. Although the department has declined to detail its investigation, Arpaio believes it centers on his sweeps.
Arpaio feels no reservations about continuing to push the sweeps, even after the federal government stripped his power to let 100 deputies make federal immigration arrests.
Unable to make arrests under a federal statute, the sheriff instead relied on a nearly 5-year-old state law that prohibits immigrant smuggling. He has also raided 37 businesses in enforcing a state law that prohibits employers from knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.
"I'm not going to brag," Arpaio said. "Just look at the record. I'm doing what I feel is right for the people of Maricopa County."

MEXICO GLOATS OVER OBAMA'S LA RAZA VICTORY OVER LEGALS

EMAIL THIS TO YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS!


WHERE IS MEXICO’S SHAME? AND THEN WHERE’S THE END OF OUR STUPIDITY? SINCE THE AMNESTY OF 1986 WE HAVE SENT INVITATIONS TO MEXICO TO EXPORT 38 MILLION OF THEIR POOR, ILLITERATE, CRIMINAL, RACIST, AND FREQUENTLY PREGNANT OVER OUR BORDERS!
WE ARE MEXICO’S WELFARE, BIRTHING, PRISON AND JAILS SYSTEM. THIS ENABLES THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS, SUCH THE RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD, CARLOS SLIM, TO MAINTAIN THAT NATION’S ECONOMY IN THEIR CORRUPT GRASP.
HERE IT’S THE SAME. THERE IS A REASON WHY MOST OF THE FORTUNE 500 ARE GENEROUS DONORS TO LA RAZA, THE RABIDLY RACIST FASCIST PARTY OF AMERICAN FOR MEX SUPREMACY. KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED.

INVESTORS.com

Mexico: Where Is Your Shame?
Posted 07/29/2010 06:58 PM ET

At a demonstration Wednesday in Mexico City against Arizona's law.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Immigration: Mexico's government gloated triumphantly after a federal judge's injunction blocked Arizona's immigration law. But it's no victory for Mexico. In fact, Mexico's leaders ought to be mortified.

As radical immigration activists crowed with glee and the Obama administration claimed victory, Mexico's government joined the applause.

Calling Judge Susan Bolton's injunction Wednesday "a step in the right direction," Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa declared: "The government of Mexico would like to express its recognition for the determination demonstrated by the federal government of the United States and the actions of the civil organizations that organized lawsuits against the SB 1070 law."

In reality, it ought to be ashamed. Supposedly framed as an issue of federal power pre-empting state power, it's hardly Mexico's business. But Mexico made a big show of saying its interest was in protecting its nationals from the dreadful racism of Arizona that its own citizens, curiously enough, keep fleeing to.

Espinosa said her government was busy collecting data on civil rights violations and her department had issued an all-out travel warning to Mexican nationals about Arizona.

That's where Mexico's hypocrisy is just too much.

First, Mexico encourages illegal immigration to the U.S. Oh, it says it doesn't, but it prints comic book guides for would-be illegal immigrants and provides ID cards for illegals once they get here. In Arizona alone, Mexico keeps five consulates busy.

That's not out of love for its own citizens, but because Mexicans send cash back to Mexico that helps finance the government.

Instead of selling its wasteful state-owned oil company or getting rid of red tape to create jobs in Mexico, Mexico spends the hard currency from remittances. It fails to look at why its citizens leave.

According to the Heritage Foundation-Wall Street Journal 2010 Index of Economic Freedom, Mexico's big problem is — no shock — government corruption, where it ranks below the world average.

That's where Mexico's cartels come in.

Mexico's encouragement of illegal immigration undercuts its valiant war against its smuggling cartels. The cartels' prowess and firepower have made them the only ones who can smuggle effectively across the border. U.S. law enforcers say they now control human-smuggling on our southern border.

Feed them immigrants and they grow more cash-rich — and right now, immigrant smuggling is about a third of the cartels' income.

Mass graves and car bombings are signs of criminal organizations getting bigger, and more powerful. Juarez, which has lost 5,000 people this year, bleeds because cartels fight over not just who gets the drug routes, but who gets the illegal-immigrant smuggling routes, too.

Aside from the cartel mayhem in Mexico, the bodies are piling up in the Arizona desert and U.S. Border Patrol rescues of abandoned illegals left to die have risen.

It's not the desert's fault, and it's certainly not Uncle Sam's fault, as activists claim. No, it's the fact that Mexicans are encouraged to emigrate. Criminal cartels don't fear abandoning their human cargo in the desert, as long as Mexico does nothing and blames Uncle Sam.

Hearing Mexico's government now cheer the Arizona ruling, which will only encourage more illegal immigration, gives the country's regime a pretty inhuman face.

If Mexico had any decency, it would do all it could to discourage illegal immigration and keep a respectful silence about Arizona.

It needs U.S. support for its war on cartels. Instead of insulting American citizens, Mexico should confront directly the reasons why its people are so desperate to leave, and do all in its power to destroy the cartels that are slowly killing the nation. That includes defunding the murderous gangs by halting illegal immigration.
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EXPORTING POVERTY... we take MEXICO'S 38 million poor, illiterate, criminal and frequently pregnant

........ where can we send AMERICA'S poor?



The Mexican Invasion................................................
Mexico prefers to export its poor, not uplift them

March 30, 2006 edition

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0330/p09s02-coop.html

Mexico prefers to export its poor, not uplift them
At this week's summit, failed reforms under Fox should be the issue, not US actions.

By George W. Grayson WILLIAMSBURG, VA.

At the parleys this week with his US and Canadian counterparts in Cancún, Mexican President Vicente Fox will press for more opportunities for his countrymen north of the Rio Grande. Specifically, he will argue for additional visas for Mexicans to enter the United States and Canada, the expansion of guest-worker schemes, and the "regularization" of illegal immigrants who reside throughout the continent. In a recent interview with CNN, the Mexican chief executive excoriated as "undemocratic" the extension of a wall on the US-Mexico border and called for the "orderly, safe, and legal" northbound flow of Mexicans, many of whom come from his home state of Guanajuato. Mexican legislators share Mr. Fox's goals. Silvia Hernández Enriquez, head of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations for North America, recently emphasized that the solution to the "structural phenomenon" of unlawful migration lies not with "walls or militarization" but with "understanding, cooperation, and joint responsibility." Such rhetoric would be more convincing if Mexican officials were making a good faith effort to uplift the 50 percent of their 106 million people who live in poverty. To his credit, Fox's "Opportunities" initiative has improved slightly the plight of the poorest of the poor. Still, neither he nor Mexico's lawmakers have advanced measures that would spur sustained growth, improve the quality of the workforce, curb unemployment, and obviate the flight of Mexicans abroad. Indeed, Mexico's leaders have turned hypocrisy from an art form into an exact science as they shirk their obligations to fellow citizens, while decrying efforts by the US senators and representatives to crack down on illegal immigration at the border and the workplace. What are some examples of this failure of responsibility? • When oil revenues are excluded, Mexico raises the equivalent of only 9 percent of its gross domestic product in taxes - a figure roughly equivalent to that of Haiti and far below the level of major Latin American nations. Not only is Mexico's collection rate ridiculously low, its fiscal regime is riddled with loopholes and exemptions, giving rise to widespread evasion. Congress has rebuffed efforts to reform the system. Insufficient revenues mean that Mexico spends relatively little on two key elements of social mobility: Education commands just 5.3 percent of its GDP and healthcare only 6.10 percent, according to the World Bank's last comparative study. • A venal, "come-back-tomorrow" bureaucracy explains the 58 days it takes to open a business in Mexico compared with three days in Canada, five days in the US, nine days in Jamaica, and 27 days in Chile. Mexico's private sector estimates that 34 percent of the firms in the country made "extra official" payments to functionaries and legislators in 2004. These bribes totaled $11.2 billion and equaled 12 percent of GDP. • Transparency International, a nongovernmental organization, placed Mexico in a tie with Ghana, Panama, Peru, and Turkey for 65th among 158 countries surveyed for corruption. • Economic competition is constrained by the presence of inefficient, overstaffed state oil and electricity monopolies, as well as a small number of private corporations - closely linked to government big shots - that control telecommunications, television, food processing, transportation, construction, and cement. Politicians who talk about, much less propose, trust-busting measures are as rare as a snowfall in the Sonoran Desert. Geography, self-interests, and humanitarian concerns require North America's neighbors to cooperate on myriad issues, not the least of which is immigration. However, Mexico's power brokers have failed to make the difficult decisions necessary to use their nation's bountiful wealth to benefit the masses. Washington and Ottawa have every right to insist that Mexico's pampered elite act responsibly, rather than expecting US and Canadian taxpayers to shoulder burdens Mexico should assume.

NARCOmex ON OUR OPEN & UNDEFENDED BORDERS

Mexican troops kill top Sinaloa cartel figure
Ignacio Coronel Villarreal died in a gunfight in an upscale suburb of Guadalajara, authorities say. Separately, dozens of Tijuana law enforcement officers are arrested in an anti-corruption sweep.
By Ken Ellingwood and Richard Marosi, Los Angeles Times

July 30, 2010

Reporting from Mexico City and San Diego

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In a significant blow against the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel, Mexican troops on Thursday killed one of the group's top figures during an arrest raid in western Mexico.

The raid came as troops in Tijuana rounded up dozens of police officers in a separate operation targeting organized crime.

Ignacio Coronel Villarreal is described as one of the three most important bosses in the cartel, which is based in Sinaloa state and run by the country's most-wanted drug suspect, Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman. Coronel, known as "Nacho" and in his mid-50s, was highly sought by U.S. and Mexican authorities.

Authorities said Coronel headed the group's operations in the western states of Colima, Nayarit and Jalisco, where troops tracked him down Thursday. U.S. officials have described him as a pioneer in making large quantities of methamphetamine to be smuggled into the United States.

Army officials said Coronel was slain after opening fire on troops closing in on him in an upscale, tree-lined suburb of Guadalajara, long considered a haven for drug bosses. Coronel kept two residences that he used as safe houses and maintained a low profile, the army said.

A soldier was killed and another was injured, Gen. Edgar Luis Villegas said during a brief news conference. He said troops arrested a close aide of Coronel.

Coronel's death represents a victory for President Felipe Calderon's nearly 4-year-old war against drug cartels. Calderon has dispatched nearly 50,000 troops into the streets, but the country's soaring violence has frightened many Mexicans.

The raid should help Calderon fend off allegations that the government offensive has left largely unscathed the Sinaloa group while hitting its rivals. Calderon has vehemently denied that accusation.

Coronel is the second suspected drug kingpin slain by troops in the last year. In December, commandos killed Arturo Beltran Leyva, a former Guzman ally, during a raid in the city of Cuernavaca.

Beltran Leyva's death has spawned a bloody succession struggle inside the organization he headed. Coronel's foot soldiers battled with remnants of that group in Jalisco in recent months.

Though for years a close associate of Guzman, Coronel was considered by U.S. and Mexican authorities a potent trafficker in his own right, with direct access to cocaine supplies in Colombia. Coronel was considered especially adept at importing into Mexico the chemical ingredients for making methamphetamine.

The FBI, which offered a $5-million reward for his capture, had said Coronel's group "has been growing in power since the 1990s and is now considered one of the most powerful drug-trafficking organizations in Mexico." He is named in federal drug-trafficking indictments in Texas and New York.

Mexican authorities offered their own reward equal to about $2.5 million.

In Tijuana, the military rounded up 56 members of various law enforcement agencies in one of the largest efforts in recent years to purge corrupt police in the border city of Tijuana.

Forty officers from the Tijuana police department and 16 agents from the Baja California attorney general's office were detained. Six former officers were also arrested, authorities said.

Gen. Alfonso Duarte Mugica, who runs military operations in Tijuana, said the sweep targeted law enforcement officers tied to the Arellano Felix drug cartel, which has long used police as bodyguards and informants.

The arrested officers were taken to a military air base and paraded in front of the news media, at which point some proclaimed their innocence.

The sweep marked the latest push by authorities to keep the pressure on organized crime groups in northern Baja California. Unlike other regions in Mexico with spiraling drug war violence, authorities there have been credited with lowering crime rates and arresting organized crime bosses.

The anti-corruption measures, headed by Julian Leyzaola, Tijuana's secretary of public security, have been a key component of the strategy. Since he assumed the post 2 1/2 years ago, more than 460 law enforcement personnel have been arrested or fired or have left the department.

The scale of Thursday's operation was a sign that corruption persists, but that authorities seem committed to rooting out bad officers, according to experts and law enforcement officials in the U.S. and Mexico.

"How many police chiefs would arrest 40 guys from his department, and do it again and again and again?" said one U.S. law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the news media.

Evidence of high-level corruption was revealed last week when U.S. authorities arrested the top liaison officer of the Baja California attorney general's office, Jesus Quinones Marques, who was accused of passing along confidential information from U.S. law enforcement officials to cartel leaders.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government has shut indefinitely its consulate in Ciudad Juarez, a border city racked by drug violence, to evaluate security conditions. The U.S. Embassy in Mexico City said in a statement Thursday that the consulate would "remain closed until the security review is completed."

The consulate closed briefly in March after three people connected to the consulate were killed by suspected drug cartel hit men.

BILLIONS TURNED OVER TO NARCOmex TO FIGHT CARTELS! JUST BUILD THE FREAKING WALL! They're Mexicans!

July 29, 2010
Colombia Can Win Mexico’s Drug WarBy GUSTAVO A. FLORES-MACÍAS
Ithaca, N.Y.

BOTH the United States and Mexico have approached the war on Mexican drug cartels with Colombia in mind.

Washington’s Merida Initiative, loosely modeled on its Plan Colombia antidrug campaign from a decade ago, provides Mexico with money for helicopters, police training and command-and-control technology. The Mexican government, meanwhile, has taken steps to modernize its judicial system, purge the police of corruption and improve intelligence services.

But according to a Government Accountability Office report released this summer, the billions of dollars spent by Mexico and the United States over the last four years have done little to thwart Mexico’s cartels.

The problem is that the two countries have ignored a fundamental lesson from the Colombian experience: foreign aid, security cooperation and judicial reform were necessary but not sufficient conditions for reducing violence. Plan Colombia succeeded because, at the same time that it stepped up its antidrug efforts, Colombia aggressively reformed its tax system and greatly improved government accountability. Unless Mexico can do the same, antidrug efforts there will fail.

Like Mexico, Colombia confronted a domestic security crisis that it could not afford to resolve without higher tax revenues. So it created a “wealth tax” directed at the country’s richest taxpayers, earmarked to finance the security effort.

Then, realizing that the wealthy would tolerate increased taxes only if they believed the government was not squandering resources through corruption or inefficiency, President Álvaro Uribe mandated that security forces provide annual, publicly available reports on how money is spent and how effectively it is used.

Colombia also created a civilian Ministry of Defense, making the military accountable to democratically elected leaders. The new ministry put the armed services under a single chain of command directly responsible to the president and developed a cadre of experienced civil servants.

These steps quickly led to a steadier stream of funds devoted to antidrug efforts, more reliable security forces and, most important, strong public support. As a result, Colombia has made significant strides in fighting drug traffickers, guerrillas and paramilitaries: since Mr. Uribe’s election in 2002, coca production has decreased by a third, kidnappings have dropped by 90 percent and murders have fallen significantly.

Mexico stands to learn a valuable lesson from Colombia’s experience. At 11 percent of its gross domestic product, Mexico’s tax collection capacity ranks among the lowest in Latin American countries — compared, for example, with Brazil’s 23 percent. Without increased tax revenues, its antidrug efforts will not be sustainable.

Mexico’s security apparatus is also one of the most outdated in the hemisphere. Like pre-reform Colombia, it lacks a civilian minister of defense and civilian experts on military affairs, and so there is a lack of accountability and public support for the antidrug effort. Mexico desperately needs to reform its security agencies, something the United States can facilitate by providing technical assistance to strengthen Mexico’s judicial and security institutions.

There is no reason Mexico can’t follow Colombia’s lead — and every reason it should, as soon as possible. President Felipe Calderón, who has just two years before his term-limited presidency comes to an end, hails from the right-of-center, pro-business National Action Party, putting him in a strong position to sell tax increases to the wealthy.

Moreover, neither of the country’s other two leading parties, the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party and the left-leaning Democratic Revolutionary Party, shares President Calderón’s tough stance against drug cartels. This means that Mr. Calderón’s successor is unlikely to undertake major reforms.

Mr. Uribe’s reforms didn’t bring the Colombian drug crisis to an end overnight. But over time, they enabled the government to get the upper hand against the cartels. And for a country as deep in crisis as Mexico, they offer a clear path forward.


Gustavo A. Flores-Macías is an assistant professor of government and a research fellow at the Polson Institute for Global Development at Cornell.

AMERICA! THE RICH GET RICHER, ILLEGALS SWARM THE BORDERS & OUR JOBS & THE MIDDLE CLASS PAYS FOR BOTH CRIMES!

LIVING UNDER CORPORATE RAPE AND PILLAGE and the MEXICAN OCCUPATION.
Where did the American middle class disappear to?

MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com
REPORT ILLEGALS TO: 1-866-DHS-2-ICE.



It is painfully obvious on all sides that BARACK OBAMA is nothing more than an extension of the twenty years of corporate rape and pillage, open borders for more “cheap” labor, that was BUSH, HILLARY, BILLARY, BUSH and their war profiteering whore DIANNE FEINSTEIN!

I really wonder if this nation can undo what the lifer-politicians have done to us. The banksters continue their daily pillage, and this hispandering president continues the LA RAZA policy of handing the nation over to the 38 MILLION illegals that now occupy.

UNEMPLOYMENT UP! FORECLOSURES UP! MEXICAN CRIME WAVES! AND SO IS BANKSTERS’ PROFITS!

NOW WHEN AFTER OBAMA IS SURE HIS BANKSTERS HAVE CLEANED UP GOOD, HE WILL RETURN TO AMNESTY!

While the article below is about “safety nets for the rich”, remember that Los Angeles County alone pays out $50 MILLION PER MONTH in welfare to ILLEGALS, and 47% of those with a job in Los Angeles are ILLEGALS.

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NEW YORK TIMES
October 20, 2009
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Safety Nets for the Rich
By BOB HERBERT
The headlines that ran side by side on the front page of Saturday’s New York Times summed up, inadvertently, the terrible fix that we’ve allowed our country to fall into.
The lead headline, in the upper right-hand corner, said: “U.S. Deficit Rises to $1.4 Trillion; Biggest Since ’45.”
The headline next to it said: “Bailout Helps Revive Banks, And Bonuses.”
We’ve spent the last few decades shoveling money at the rich like there was no tomorrow. We abandoned the poor, put an economic stranglehold on the middle class and all but bankrupted the federal government — while giving the banks and megacorporations and the rest of the swells at the top of the economic pyramid just about everything they’ve wanted.
And we still don’t seem to have learned the proper lessons. We’ve allowed so many people to fall into the terrible abyss of unemployment that no one — not the Obama administration, not the labor unions and most certainly no one in the Republican Party — has a clue about how to put them back to work.
Meanwhile, Wall Street is living it up. I’m amazed at how passive the population has remained in the face of this sustained outrage.
Even as tens of millions of working Americans are struggling to hang onto their jobs and keep a roof over their families’ heads, the wise guys of Wall Street are licking their fat-cat chops over yet another round of obscene multibillion-dollar bonuses — this time thanks to the bailout billions that were sent their way by Uncle Sam, with very little in the way of strings attached.
Nevermind that the economy remains deeply troubled. As The Times pointed out on Saturday, much of Wall Street “is minting money.”
Call it déjà voodoo. I wrote a column that ran three days before Christmas in 2007 that focused on the deeply disturbing disconnect between Wall Streeters harvesting a record crop of bonuses — billions on top of billions — while working families were having a very hard time making ends meet.
We would later learn that December 2007 was the very month that the Great Recession began. I wrote in that column: “Even as the Wall Streeters are high-fiving and ordering up record shipments of Champagne and caviar, the American dream is on life support.”
So we had an orgy of bonuses just as the recession was taking hold and now another orgy (with taxpayers as the enablers) that is nothing short of an arrogantly pointed finger in the eye of everyone who suffered, and continues to suffer, in this downturn.
Whether P.T. Barnum actually said it or not, there is a sucker born every minute. American taxpayers might want to take a look in the mirror. If the epithet fits...
We need to make some fundamental changes in the way we do things in this country. The gamblers and con artists of the financial sector, the very same clowns who did so much to bring the economy down in the first place, are howling self-righteously over the prospect of regulations aimed at curbing the worst aspects of their excessively risky behavior and preventing them from causing yet another economic meltdown.
We should be going even further. We’ve institutionalized the idea that there are firms that are too big to fail and, therefore, “we, the people” are obliged to see that they don’t — even if that means bankrupting the national treasury and undermining the living standards of ordinary people. What sense does that make?
If some company is too big to fail, then it’s too big to exist. Break it up.
Why should the general public have to constantly worry that a misstep by the high-wire artists at Goldman Sachs (to take the most obvious example) would put the entire economy in peril? These financial acrobats get the extraordinary benefits of their outlandish risk-taking — multimillion-dollar paychecks, homes the size of castles — but the public has to be there to absorb the worst of the pain when they take a terrible fall.
Enough! Goldman Sachs is thriving while the combined rates of unemployment and underemployment are creeping toward a mind-boggling 20 percent. Two-thirds of all the income gains from the years 2002 to 2007 — two-thirds! — went to the top 1 percent of Americans.
We cannot continue transferring the nation’s wealth to those at the apex of the economic pyramid — which is what we have been doing for the past three decades or so — while hoping that someday, maybe, the benefits of that transfer will trickle down in the form of steady employment and improved living standards for the many millions of families struggling to make it from day to day.
That money is never going to trickle down. It’s a fairy tale. We’re crazy to continue believing it.
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WSWS. Org… get on their free NO ADS news emails!
Obama’s job creation fraud
20 October 2009
Data released last week shows that the Obama administration’s stimulus program has created a pitiful number of jobs, under conditions where 15 million people are out of work and joblessness is at the highest level in a generation.
According to the White House web site, recovery.gov, stimulus contracts awarded by federal agencies accounted for only 30,383 new jobs over the last eight months.
The $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was passed last February amid claims by the White House that it would “create or save” 3.5 million jobs over two years. Since its passage, 3.4 million jobs have been wiped out and apologists for the administration have been reduced to arguing that the situation would have been even worse without the stimulus package.
In damage-control mode, Vice President Joseph Biden’s office on Monday said the Recovery Act had actually saved 250,000 educational jobs by aiding bankrupt school districts. In fact, the pittance given to schools—which comes with the caveat that they implement merit pay, charter schools and other attacks on public education—has hardly slowed the slashing of public school employment.
This point was brought to the doorstep of the White House earlier this month, when hundreds of high school students in Washington, DC walked out of their schools to protest the layoff of 400 school personnel, including 229 teachers.
At the time of its passage, Democratic politicians claimed the stimulus package would provide money to repair schools, highways and bridges and carry out other infrastructure projects. Many in the media compared it to the New Deal public works programs during the Great Depression. In fact, it has done nothing to stem the growth of unemployment.
The states most in need of help received the fewest number of jobs. In Michigan—which leads the nation with a 15.3 percent unemployment rate—only 397 jobs were “created or saved.” This is a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands of workers who lost their jobs in the state under Obama’s forced restructuring of GM and Chrysler.
Businesses in Nevada, which has the next highest jobless rate, reported 159 new jobs. Rhode Island, which has the third highest unemployment rate at 12.8 percent, reported only six new jobs. In California, where more than 2.2 million are officially unemployed and joblessness is the highest since 1940, only 2,260 jobs are attributed to the federal stimulus money.
Administration officials responded to the dismal numbers by claiming that the $16 billion earmarked for federal agencies to create jobs was only a small portion of the overall stimulus package. Other monies to extend unemployment benefits, aid the states and provide “middle class tax relief,” they claimed, would put money in people’s pockets and spark a revival of spending and hiring. The $115 billion in tax credits for those earning under $90,000, however, will add a mere $7.70 to an average worker’s weekly paycheck.
Recovery Act chief economist Jared Bernstein summed up the indifference of the administration. The number of jobs actually saved and created “exceeds our projections” and “are quite positive,” he said, adding that the stimulus program has given a “much needed lift in a very difficult period for our economy.”
A large amount of the stimulus money has no doubt ended up in the bank accounts of politically connected businessmen. The government oversight agency, the General Accounting Office, has complained that the administration has not implemented its recommendations to require greater accountability from the 9,000 federal contractors receiving and distributing stimulus funds. At the time of the program’s passage, independent auditors predicted that at least $50 billion would fall into the hands of swindlers.
The chasm between the pressing needs of millions of jobless workers and the derisory response of the administration is not an accident. It is not a matter, as claimed by liberal publications that support Obama, such as the Nation, of pressuring the Democratic president to be more responsive. His administration is responsive—to the interests of the social forces which it represents: the financial aristocracy that rules the country and controls both the Democratic and Republican parties.
The administration is deliberately using the hammer of mass unemployment to undermine the resistance of the working class to corporate America’s drive to slash wages, destroy what remains of past social gains and drive up productivity.
As the Wall Street Journal noted Monday, “Since the downturn began, thousands of employers have cut pay, increased workers’ share of health care costs or reduced the employer contribution to retirement plans.” According to a survey of big companies by consulting firm Watson Wyatt, 16 percent have reduced pay and 61 percent have frozen wages. Two-thirds of big companies that cut health care benefits don’t plan to restore them to pre-recession levels.
This increase in the exploitation of the working class is at the heart of the so-called economic recovery being engineered by the Obama administration. The Wall Street banks are swimming in profits and preparing to hand out record bonuses, after receiving the “stimulus” of trillions of dollars in public funds. After setting the stage with its assault on GM and Chrysler workers, the administration is preparing a vast overhaul of the health system that will restrict access to care for working people and slash vitally needed programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
The one answer to mass unemployment—a government-funded public works program to hire the unemployed—is rejected out of hand by the administration. Lawrence Summers, Obama’s chief economic advisor, reiterated this in a speech to business economists in St. Louis last week.
No actions by the government, he said, “must be allowed to call into question our national commitment” to reduce government debt. This comes from an administration that has added trillions to the debt by opening the public treasury to the very bank executives and speculators who precipitated the economic disaster.
“Equally,” Summers continued, “policy measures to spur growth or achieve other objectives should wherever possible go with, rather than against, the grain of the market.” He added, “There is no such thing as the success of the American economy that doesn’t involve very substantial success for America’s entrepreneurs and for American companies.”
In other words, every measure taken by the government must flow—not from the needs of the people—but from the requirements of the capitalist market and the drive of the financial elite to increase their personal fortunes.
Workers should ask: Why? Why should the most basic needs of tens of millions of people in the US and hundreds of millions around the world be sacrificed to the workings of the capitalist system and the ruling class whose interests it serves?
The present economic disaster is an expression of the failure of capitalism. The alternative is socialism.
An answer to the crisis begins with a rejection of the “market” and the assertion of the independent interests of the working class—the vast majority of humanity.

THE JOBS FOR INFRASTRUCTURE REBUILDING WOULD ONLY GO TO ILLEGALS! WHEN DO YOU EVER SEE A CONSTRUCTION SITE THAT HAS AN ENGLISH SPEAKING, AMERICAN BORN TRADESMAN WORKING?

A multi-trillion-dollar program of public works must be launched to meet the need for decent schools, housing, health care facilities and basic infrastructure by hiring millions of people who are ready and able to work. Decent wages and full medical and retirement benefits must be guaranteed to all workers. A crash program to provide immediate relief for the unemployed must be enacted. Evictions, foreclosures and utility shutoffs must be banned.
To pay for these measures, a genuinely progressive income tax must be enacted to increase taxes on the wealthy and reduce them for working class and middle-class families. The trillions that have been pocketed by financial speculators and bank CEOs must be confiscated and used to meet pressing social needs.
To break the grip of the financial parasites, the working class must take the banks and all the basic levers of the economy into its own hands. Only in this way can economic life be guided by a democratic plan to meet the needs of the working people who produce society’s wealth.
These measures are anathema to the Obama administration, which, like its Republican predecessor, is a political tool of the financial aristocracy. The struggle for such policies requires a political break with the two capitalist parties and the building of a mass socialist movement of the working class.
Jerry White
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