Friday, October 12, 2012

LA RAZA SUPREMACY OBAMA STYLE: ICE Spares Illegal Alien with Fake Green Card, Social Security, Expired License | Judicial Watch

ICE Spares Illegal Alien with Fake Green Card, Social Security, Expired License | Judicial Watch

Mexican Drug Lord Terrorist Endorses Obama's OPEN and UNDEFENDED BORDERS With Narcomex


MIGUEL ANGEL TREVINO MORALES. THE MEXICAN DRUG LORD TERRORIST FROM DALLAS, ENDORSES BARACK OBAMA, Hispandering president for OPEN BORDERS.

BARACK OBAMA IS DESPERATE FOR MEXICO TO INVADE AND OCCUPY. FOR OBAMA, LA RAZA “THE RACE” ARE “CHEAP” LABOR FOR HIS WALL STREET PAYMASTERS, AND UNREGISTERED VOTERS.

DEMS ARE NOW THE PARTY for ILLEGALS.

WHILE OBAMA HAS SQUANDERED BILLIONS TO PROTECT THE BORDERS OF MUSLIM DICTATORS, HE HAS DELIBERATELY SABOTAGED OUR BORDERS WITH NARCOMEX.

HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING ON OBAMA’S OPEN AND UNDEFENDED BORDERS: 

Ruthless Drug Lord Takes Control of Deadly Cartel

By RANDY KREIDER and MARK SCHONE | ABC News – 2 hrs 19 mins ago

ABC News - Ruthless Drug Lord Takes Control of Deadly Cartel (ABC News)

The new head of the Zetas drug cartel is a former Dallas resident who is scorned as a traitor by many of his own cartel soldiers and mocked as an ex-"car washer" by his enemies, but has risen to power thanks to a fearsome reputation for violence.

"[Miguel Angel Trevino Morales] is extremely brutal, to the point of sadism," says George Grayson, an expert on the Zetas. "He is prepared to advance his interest through unspeakable violence." Grayson's recent book on the cartel, "The Executioner's Men," opens with a scene in which Trevino Morales slowly beats a female police officer to death, in front of her colleagues, with a two-by-four.

Trevino Morales, also known as El 40 or the Monkey, became the uncontested head of the Mexico's most feared drug cartel when former kingpin Heriberto Lazcano was killed in a shootout with Mexican Marines on Sunday. Lazcano had been linked to hundreds of murders, including the massacre of 72 civilians, but Trevino Morales is allegedly even more bloodthirsty. One of his preferred methods of dealing with enemies, say authorities, is burning them alive.

Trevino Morales, 41, was born in Mexico but spent some of his formative years in Dallas, Texas, where authorities say he had a criminal record as a teenager. He has a dozen siblings and reportedly still has family in the Dallas area.

According to the Associated Press, he became a teen go-fer for the Los Tejas gang, which was powerful in the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo, just across the Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas.

Trevino Morales joined the Zetas soon after their formation. The Zetas began in the late 1990s as the security wing of the Gulf Cartel. The 14 core members of the Zetas, including Heriberto Lazcano, all had military backgrounds, and took ranks based on when they'd joined the group. Lazcano was known as Z-3. By 2004, due to the death of Z-1 and the arrest of Z-2, Lazcano had become the leader of the Zetas.

Trevino Morales, who did not have a military background, got the designation 40, with his brother taking number 42. In 2005, Miguel Trevino Morales became the boss of the Nuevo Laredo "plaza," or drug territory.

As a newly minted underboss, Trevino Morales had traditional gangster tastes for fast cars, women and fancy guns, and reportedly liked to hunt game imported from Africa. He also, however, developed a developed a particular reputation for brutality in group already renowned for violence. His favored methods for dispatching enemies were dismembering them while still alive, or making them into a "guiso," or stew -- stuffing them in 55-gallon oil drums, adding gasoline and burning them alive.

By 2009, Trevino Morales had been named in multiple federal indictments in Texas, D.C. and New York for alleged crimes ranging from drug trafficking, kidnapping, and money laundering to ordering a half dozen murders in Laredo, Texas. The DEA offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest or conviction, and accused him of controlling more than 200 operatives and smuggling hundreds of kilograms of cocaine into the U.S. weekly.

Early the next year, the Zetas finally split from the Gulf cartel after the Gulf Cartel crossed Trevino Morales. In January 2010, the Gulf Cartel tortured and killed one of his close friends. Trevino Morales responded with an ultimatum demanding that the cartel give up the killer. "Hand over the assassin of my friend," demanded Trevino Morales. "If you don't comply, there will be war."

The order was ignored, and Trevino Morales allegedly began killing members of the Gulf Cartel en masse. The Zetas, now an independent cartel with Trevino Morales second in command, were soon battling the Gulf Cartel for control of Northern Mexico, and winning.

Civil War Inside the Zetas Drug Cartel

By 2011, however, there was a schism within the new cartel between Trevino Morales and those loyal to Heriberto Lazcano. When Zetas boss "El Mamito," Enrique Rejon Aguilar, was arrested in July, he said that he had been betrayed. Though he did not name any names, the next month someone uploaded a slickly produced music video to YouTube that bluntly accused Trevino Morales of being a "Judas" who was disloyal to Lazcano and had betrayed Mamito and other Zetas to the authorities.

Addressed to all the members of "the Mafia," every major drug organization in Mexico by name, and to the general public, "The True Story of Z 40" uses a specially written "narcoballad" to detail the alleged offenses of Trevino Morales against his fellow Zetas, especially leader Heriberto Lazcano.

One of the first images in the five-minute video is a picture of Judas whispering in the ear of Jesus. It then shows repeated images of Trevino Morales with the words "El Judas" under his face, and displays arrest photos of all the Zetas bosses he has allegedly betrayed, who were "captured because they trusted Z 40." Intended as a warning to Lazcano, it asks "El Lazca" why he thinks so many of his underlings have been arrested.

The video also mocks Trevino Morales as a former car washer for Los Tejas, and plasters his face onto photos of police officers and a shiny-suited pop idol.

Rival groups have also disparaged Trevino Morales as a car washer. In March, Joaquin Guzman, AKA El Chapo or Shorty, the head of Mexico's other dominant drug organization, the Sinaloa Cartel, sent his men into Trevino Morales' territory to murder and dismember Zetas soldiers. He issued a public challenge to Trevino Morales on huge banners above the body parts of his victims.

One banner, accompanied by seven severed heads, accused Trevino Morales of failing to use his own head, and of being Heriberto Lazcano's jockstrap. "You will always be a car washer to me," said the banner, which was signed "El Chapo." Another mocked Trevino Morales as a shoeshine boy, car washer and traitor who killed innocent people.

In the summer of 2012, Trevino Morales' brother Jose, a U.S. citizen, was arrested in the U.S. for moneylaundering after allegedly channeling the Zetas's drug money through a successful horseracing operation. Not long after his arrest, the split within the Zetas apparently cost 14 lives. The survivor of a mass execution in San Luis Potosi state in mid-August said that the victims and the killers were Zetas. Authorities believe the massacre was revenge by Trevino Morales on "El Taliban," a leader opposed to EL 40's ascent.

By the end of August, U.S. officials began saying that Trevino Morales seemed to have merged as the winner in the Zetas' civil war, and had officially taken operational control of the Zetas in Mexico from Lazcano.

High-ranking Zetas then began to fall. El Taliban was arrested in late September, "The Squirrel" just last Saturday. Lazcano, who was attending a baseball game with two other men, died in a firefight on Sunday.

Grayson speculates that Trevino Morales may have shared information with U.S. authorities to get better treatment for his brother Jose, who is in U.S. custody.

Trevino Morales must now direct the Zetas against the combined strength of the Gulf Cartel, the Sinaloa Cartel and other players, who have united to drive the Zetas from their "plazas." Grayson says that with Lazcano's death, El Chapo Guzman of the Sinaloa cartel will be aided in his primary goal of taking control of Nuevo Laredo, El 40's home base. Guzman has already dispatched what Grayson calls "shock troops" to help the Gulf Cartel fight the Zetas.

El Chapo's troops will be facing younger, less experienced, and less disciplined Zetas plaza bosses than in the past, says Grayson. But he also notes that the Zetas new leader, in addition to being more violent than his predecessor, may be more cautious and wily as well. "El 40," says Grayson, "would never have been at a baseball game."


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Mexican cartels flood U.S. with cheap meth

Mexican drug cartels are quietly filling the void in the nation's drug market created by the long effort to crack down on American-made methamphetamine, flooding U.S. cities with exceptionally cheap, extraordinarily potent meth from factory-like "superlabs."


Associated Press

ST. LOUIS —

Mexican drug cartels are quietly filling the void in the nation's drug market created by the long effort to crack down on American-made methamphetamine, flooding U.S. cities with exceptionally cheap, extraordinarily potent meth from factory-like "superlabs."

Although Mexican meth is not new to the U.S. drug trade, it now accounts for as much as 80 percent of the meth sold here, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. And it is as much as 90 percent pure, a level that offers users a faster, more intense and longer-lasting high.

"These are sophisticated, high-tech operations in Mexico that are operating with extreme precision," said Jim Shroba, a DEA agent in St. Louis. "They're moving it out the door as fast as they can manufacture it."

The cartels are expanding into the U.S. meth market just as they did with heroin: developing an inexpensive, highly addictive form of the drug and sending it through the same pipeline already used to funnel marijuana and cocaine, authorities said.

Seizures of meth along the Southwest border have more than quadrupled during the last several years. DEA records reviewed by The Associated Press show that the amount of seized meth jumped from slightly more than 4,000 pounds in 2007 to more than 16,000 pounds in 2011.

During that same period, the purity of Mexican meth shot up too, from 39 percent in 2007 to 88 percent by 2011, according to DEA documents. The price fell 69 percent, tumbling from $290 per pure gram to less than $90.

Mexican meth has a clearer, glassier appearance than more crudely produced formulas and often resembles ice fragments, usually with a clear or bluish-white color. It often has a smell people compare to ammonia, cat urine or even burning plastic.

"You can look at it and see it has a much more pure look," said Paul Roach, a DEA agent in Denver.

The rise of Mexican meth doesn't mean American labs have disappeared. The number of U.S. meth labs continues to rise even as federal, state and local laws place heavy restrictions on the purchase of cold and allergy pills containing pseudoephedrine, a major component in the most common meth recipe.

The crackdowns that began a decade ago have made it more difficult to prepare large batches, so many American meth users have turned to a simpler method that uses a 2-liter soda bottle filled with just enough ingredients to produce a small amount of the drug for personal use.

But south of the border, meth is being made on an industrial scale. Sophisticated factories put out tons of the drug using formulas developed by professional chemists. The final product often is smuggled into the U.S. taped beneath tractor-trailers or hidden inside packages of other drugs.

While clandestine U.S. labs generally supply rural areas, Mexican meth is mostly targeted to urban and suburban users. Increasingly large quantities are turning up in dozens of American cities, including Dallas, Phoenix, Denver, Chicago, St. Louis and Salt Lake City, according to the DEA.

The marketing format follows a well-established pattern. By simultaneously increasing the purity and cutting the price, the cartels get people hooked and create a new customer base.

"They're marketing geniuses," said Jack Riley, the agent in charge of the DEA office in Chicago.

When Illinois authorities recently confiscated 1,000 pounds of Mexican marijuana, they found 10 pounds of meth hidden among the pot - essentially a free sample for the distributor to give out to drug users, Riley said.

Until recently, meth was seldom seen in major urban areas, except in biker gangs and parts of the gay community, Riley said.

"We've never really seen it on the street like we've seen cocaine and heroin," Riley said. He worries that if the estimated 180,000 members of street gangs in Chicago get involved in meth trafficking, violence could follow.

Like the U.S., Mexico has tightened laws and regulations on pseudoephedrine, though some labs still are able to obtain large amounts from China and India. To fill the void, cartel chemists have turned to an old recipe known as P2P that first appeared in the 1960s and 1970s in some parts of the western U.S.

That recipe uses the organic compound phenylacetone. Because of its use in meth, the U.S. government made it a controlled substance in 1980, essentially stopping that form of meth in the U.S. But in Mexico, the cartels can get phenylacetone from other countries, DEA experts said.

In the third quarter of 2011, 85 percent of lab samples taken from U.S. meth seizures came from the P2P process - up from 50 percent a little more than a year earlier, DEA spokesman Rusty Payne said.

Federal agents say the influx of meth from Mexico illustrates the difficulty of waging a two-front war on the drug in neighboring countries. When one source of the drug is dealt a setback, other suppliers step in to satisfy relentless demand.

Considering the relatively untapped market of bigger American cities, the rise of Mexican meth is not surprising, said Illinois State University criminologist Ralph Weisheit, a meth expert.

"It's something that was inevitable," Weisheit said. "This wasn't hard to predict."

American authorities are not the only ones taking notice. The sharp spike in meth activity also is evident from the other side of the border. Seizures of labs and chemicals have increased nearly 1,000 percent in the past two years.

Last year, Mexican authorities made two major busts in the quiet central state of Queretaro, seizing nearly 500 tons of precursor chemicals and 3.4 tons of pure meth with a street value of more than $100 million. In Sinaloa, investigators found a sophisticated underground lab equipped with an elevator and ventilation systems as well as cooking and sleeping facilities. The facility was reachable only by a nearly 100-foot tunnel with its opening concealed under a tractor shed.

And in February, soldiers in western Mexico made a historic seizure: 15 tons of pure methamphetamine, a haul that could have supplied 13 million doses worth more than $4 billion.

The meth problem is spilling into other parts of Latin America too. In December and January, Mexican authorities seized nearly 900 tons of precursor chemicals at Mexican ports, almost all of it bound for Guatemala, which seized about 1,600 tons of meth precursors in 2011 - four times the 400 tons seized there a year earlier.

For now, cocaine remains far and away the cartels' most profitable drug. The RAND Corp. estimates the annual street value of cocaine is about $30 billion, heroin about $20 billion and meth about $5 billion.

But cocaine is getting more expensive and less pure. According to the DEA, the price per pure gram of cocaine rose 59 percent from 2007 through September 2011. At the same time, the purity level dropped 25 percent.

Cocaine also typically comes from Colombia, meaning Mexican cartels serve as middle men who compete against each other to smuggle it into the U.S. That marginalizes their profits.

Because methamphetamine is a synthetic drug the cartels can make for themselves, the profit potential is enormous.

"It's not plant-based," Weisheit said. "It can be completely produced in Mexico. It's very compact, and that makes it easy to smuggle."

---

Associated Press writers Mark Stevenson in Mexico City and Christopher Sherman in McAllen, Texas, contributed to this report.

 

Source: Mexican teen killed by US BP agent | Nation & World | The Seattle Times - DAILY 12 AMERICANS MURDERED BY MEXICANS!

Source: Mexican teen killed by US BP agent | Nation & World | The Seattle Times


MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

From the above blog, email articles to those concerned about Obama’s endless push for amnesty.

FAIRUS.org

JUDICIAL WATCH.org

ALIPAC.us

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TEN MOST WANTED CRIMINALS IN CALIFORNIA ARE MEXICANS!


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206 Most wanted criminals in Los Angeles. Out of 206 criminals--183 are hispanic---171 of those are wanted for Murder.

Why do Americans still protect the illegals??

http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_11255121?appSession=934140935651450&RecordID=&PageID=2&PrevPageID=&cpipage=1&CPISortType=&CPIorderBy=



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(read entire article on MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com)

The Illegal-Alien Crime Wave
Heather Mac Donald EMAIL

Some of the most violent criminals at large today are illegal aliens. Yet in cities where the crime these aliens commit is highest, the police cannot use the most obvious tool to apprehend them: their immigration status. In Los Angeles, for example, dozens of members of a ruthless Salvadoran prison gang have sneaked back into town after having been deported for such crimes as murder, assault with a deadly weapon, and drug trafficking. Police officers know who they are and know that their mere presence in the country is a felony. Yet should a cop arrest an illegal gangbanger for felonious reentry, it is he who will be treated as a criminal, for violating the LAPD’s rule against enforcing immigration law.

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WHEN READING THE BELOW, CONSIDER THAT OBAMA, AND THE LA RAZA DEMS, FEINSTEIN, BOXER, PELOSI, LOFGREN, AND REID, ALONG WITH THE CONGRESSIONAL HISPANIC CAUCUS (LA RAZA) ARE DETERMINED TO SABOTAGE OUR BORDERS! OBAMA HAS STOPPED THE WALL, DEPLOYED HUNDREDS OF BORDER GUARDS, ASSAULTED ARIZONA’S ATTEMPT TO DEFEND AGAINST MEXICO’S INVASION, AND TURNED THE DEPT. OF HOMELAND SECURITY INTO THE “HOMELAND SECURITY = PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP”.

NANCY PELOSI HAS LONG VOWED THE WALL WOULD NEVER BE BUILT!

 

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“It’s all part of the Obama Administration’s plan to pass a “compassionate” and “comprehensive” immigration overhaul that aims to legalize an estimated 12 million undocumented aliens. The legislation is currently being drafted by the chairman of a key congressional task force, Illinois Democrat Luis Gutierrez, and promises to offer undocumented immigrants U.S. citizenship and humane treatment in prisons.” JUDICIAL WATCH

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WHY WE NEED a BORDER FENCE, by Heather Mac Donald

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The Arizona law has the salutary purpose of increasing the chance that any given illegal alien will be lawfully detected and deported, but the record suggests that a huge percentage of individuals apprehended under the law will simply illegally reenter.

This ICE press release boasts of success stories from the Secure Communities program, which under the Obama administration focuses on identifying and deporting only the most serious criminal aliens. It presents 26 cases in which violent or otherwise serious offenders were apprehended since late 2008; a full 13 of them had already been deported, many multiple times.

The record for reentry goes to a Mexican aggravated felon apprehended in Florence, Ariz., on May 22, 2009, who had been deported nine times, following 51 documented arrests under 16 different aliases. The runner-up is a Mexican arrested for assault causing bodily injury on June 9, 2009, in Starr County, Texas, who had been deported five times and was convicted of attempted murder in 2005. More typical is a Guatemalan drug dealer apprehended in Dallas on Aug. 7, 2009, who has been deported twice, and whose lengthy criminal history includes aggravated assault with a deadly weapon (legalese for shooting someone); a Honduran MS-13 gang member booked on March 8, 2009, in Boston, who had previously been removed once; and a Mexican gang member arrested for strong arm aggravated assault in Maricopa County, Ariz., who had been previously convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and deported once.

The logic of the Arizona law is that by increasing the chance of detection, it will discourage illegal aliens from entering in the first place and encourage those already in the country to leave on their own. Undoubtedly, many people will respond to the law as intended; the deterrent effect would be even greater if more states followed Arizona’s lead and discarded their actual or de facto sanctuary policies. But for other illegal aliens, the threat of detection and deportation is apparently not particularly meaningful. I don’t know whether the rate of illegal reentry (which is a felony) is higher for serious criminal aliens compared with illegal aliens who do not commit other crimes. But clearly, better interior enforcement, while a necessary part of restoring the immigration rule of law, cannot succeed in the absence of a truly secure border. The only reason for not creating a border fence that I can see is ambivalence about whether we really want to prevent illegal entry.

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Audit looks at migrant re-arrests

McClatchy Newspapers
Jan. 9, 2007 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON - Some illegal immigrants are being released from prison only to be arrested on new charges despite government efforts to deport them and keep them out of the country.

The findings are part of an audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine that suggest authorities are still struggling to deport illegal immigrants who commit crimes, even though most state and local authorities are notifying immigration authorities of the imminent release of prisoners.

Fine's office analyzed the cases of 100 immigrants who had served time in prison and found 73 of them were rearrested after being released.

On average, each immigrant was rearrested six times, ranging from traffic violations to assault.

Fine's office couldn't determine how many illegal immigrants had been rearrested overall because immigration authorities don't keep track.

If the sample was any indication, "The rate at which released criminal aliens are rearrested is extremely high," the report said.

Last year, Homeland Security's inspector general said immigration authorities expected that most of the 300,000 illegal and legal immigrants eligible to be deported would be released.

Federal officials said they would need 34,000 additional beds at a cost of $1.1 billion to detain and remove all of them.

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JUDICIAL WATCH

Illegal Aliens Abscond Under “Humane” ICE Program

Last Updated: Wed, 10/28/2009 - 2:57pm

Touted by the Obama Administration as key to overhauling the nation’s immigration detention system, a program that monitors illegal aliens instead of jailing them regularly loses track of offenders and the government distorts records to cover it up.

Operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the intensive monitoring program allows illegal aliens to check in by phone, wear ankle monitors and obey a curfew rather than go to prison while they wait for court appearances. ICE claims the alternatives-to-detention program is a huge success and Obama assures it’s a great model for his plans to create a more humane immigration detention system.

But records and statistics obtained by a Houston newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) tell a much different story. Nearly one in five illegal immigrants who participated in the tracking project absconded while under supervision during the last five years, according to the records. Authorities were unable to locate nearly 20% of 6,373 illegal aliens enlisted in the program during that time. About 5% were subsequently rearrested for other matters.

ICE brags about a near perfect success rate because it simply erases those who absconded from the records as if they never existed. The Department of Homeland Security’s largest investigative agency, with about 20,000 employees and 400 offices worldwide, includes only active participants when it calculates its heavily altered statistics. 

Based on the blatantly misleading data, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is working to expand the alternatives-to-detention program, which currently has about 20,000 participants. The former Arizona governor, who has a documented history of opposing immigration enforcement, will submit a proposal to Congress before year’s end in hopes of accomplishing that goal.

It’s all part of the Obama Administration’s plan to pass a “compassionate” and “comprehensive” immigration overhaul that aims to legalize an estimated 12 million undocumented aliens. The legislation is currently being drafted by the chairman of a key congressional task force, Illinois Democrat Luis Gutierrez, and promises to offer undocumented immigrants U.S. citizenship and humane treatment in prisons.

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WHILE ILLEGALS HAVE TOTAL CONTEMPT FOR OUR LAWS, THEY SURE USE THEM WHEN ITS TO THEIR ADVANTAGE.


JUDICIAL WATCH

Illegal Aliens Sue ICE Over Arrests

 

Last Updated: Fri, 10/30/2009 - 11:04am

A group of illegal immigrants recently spared deportation by a sympathetic Connecticut judge are suing the federal agents that arrested them, claiming their constitutional rights were violated in the raids that led to their apprehension.

The illegal aliens, who live in New Haven, assert in a federal lawsuit that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents violated their rights during an early-morning fugitive operation in 2007 that led to the arrest of 30 people. Seventeen of them were subsequently charged with being in the U.S. illegally and a group of law students from a nearby Ivy League university represented them pro bono.

In August a federal judge (Michael Straus) in Connecticut blocked the deportation of four of the illegal aliens, ruling that their constitutional rights were “egregiously violated” because immigration agents entered their apartments without a warrant, probable cause or consent. Besides terminating removal proceedings, the judge suppressed any evidence gathered by federal agents because the illegal aliens’ constitutional protections to due process were violated.  

Evidently emboldened by the ruling, the illegal immigrants are now suing the agents who conducted the raids, their supervisors and senior ICE officials. Weapons drawn, agents entered the illegal aliens’ homes without cause, consent or search warrants, according to the complaint filed this week. It further says that authorities had not previously determined that most of the arrested were in violation of immigration law and therefore had no reason to assume that they lacked legal status. 

The lawsuit also declares that the feds deliberately conducted raids in New Haven to retaliate against the city for its well-known efforts to accommodate illegal immigrants. A few years ago New Haven became the nation’s first to offer illegal aliens official identification cards so that they can enjoy public services and integrate into the community. San Francisco followed its lead and began offering illegal immigrants ID cards this year.  

 

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Some Illegal Immigrants Have Been Arrested and Re-Arrested 6 Times



Some Illegal Immigrants have been arrested and Re-Arrested 6 Times - Illegal Immigrants arrested for being in the United States illegally may have been charged up to six more times, for more serious crimes, after they were released by local authorities. Additionally, the number of illegal immigrants deported after being declared a felon is on the rise.

The Justice findings by department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine examined the criminal histories of 100 illegal immigrants arrested and then released by local and state authorities in 2004, the latest complete data available. Of the sample group of 100, according to the audit, 73 immigrants were later arrested a collective 429 times - on charges ranging from traffic tickets to weapons and drug charges.

The data suggest "the rate at which released criminal aliens are re-arrested is extremely high," the audit noted. The report, parts of which were redacted, was required by Congress in 2005 and looked at how local and state authorities that receive Justice Department funding are working with the Homeland Security Department.

For years, the government was forced to release thousands of illegal immigrants who were caught in the United States because of not enough jail space and other resources. But last fall, with immigration as a key election-year priority, Homeland Security declared it would detain 99 percent of non-Mexican illegal immigrants until they could be returned to their home nations. The policy generally does not apply to Mexicans, who are almost immediately returned to Mexico after being stopped by Border Patrol agents.

The Justice audit, however, only looked at immigrants who were arrested and released by local and state authorities before they could be turned over to Homeland Security to be detained or deported. In all, 752 cities, counties and states participating in the program received $287 million in 2005, the audit noted.

Five states - California, New York, Texas, Florida and Arizona - received the bulk of the money, together pulling in more than $184 million.

Assistant Attorney General Regina B. Schofield, who oversees the Office of Justice Programs that controlled the funding, declined comment on the audit, noting that it does not contain any recommendations.

A separate report by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University showed that the number of immigrants who were deported as "aggravated felons" doubled over the last 15 years, from 10,303 in 1992 to an estimated 23,065 in 2006.

But TRAC, which obtained the data from the Justice Department's Executive Office of Immigration Review, noted concerns that some of those immigrants never committed felonies.

"An individual can be declared an aggravated felon on the basis of a conviction on misdemeanor charges such as shoplifting," the TRAC report concluded.


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THE FIGURE FOR MEXICAN GANG MEMBERS IN OUR NATION NOW CALCULATED BY CNN TO BE MORE THAN A MILLION. ACCORDING TO THE F.B.I., THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS OPERATE IN 233 AMERICAN CITIES – HOMELAND SECURITY?)

Lou Dobbs Tonight    

And there are some 800,000 gang members in this country: That’s more than the combined number of troops in our Army and Marine Corps. These gangs have become one of the principle ways to import and distribute drugs in the United States. Congressman David Reichert joins Lou to tell us why those gangs are growing larger and stronger, and why he’s introduced legislation to eliminate the top three international drug gangs.

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EVEN AS THE MEX DRUG CARTELS POUR OVER OUR BORDERS, OBAMA HAS TAKEN HUNDREDS MORE GUARD OFF SINCE SEPT 2009! AND THE OBAMA DECLARES “BORDER SECURITY” IS THE HALLMARK OF HIS PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP!

Lou Dobbs Tonight
Monday, September 28, 2009

And T.J. BONNER, president of the National Border Patrol Council, will weigh in on the federal government’s decision to pull nearly 400 agents from the U.S.-Mexican border. As always, Lou will take your calls to discuss the issues that matter most-and to get your thoughts on where America is headed.

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ACCORDING TO SENATOR LAMAR SMITH OF TEXAS, WHEN CHALLENGING SO- CALLED “HOMELAND SECURITY = PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIPS” LA RAZA JANET NAPOLITANO, AS TO WHY OUR BORDERS ARE WIDE OPEN TO NARCOMEX, OBAMA HAS CUT ENFORCEMENT BY MORE THAN 60% IN ALL AREAS.

Obama soft on illegals enforcement


 

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

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

 

OBAMA'S OPEN BORDERS - Mexican cartels flood U.S. with cheap meth | Nation & World | The Seattle Times

Mexican cartels flood U.S. with cheap meth | Nation & World | The Seattle Times

Sen. Dianne Feinstein Dedicated to Helping Sen. Barbara Boxer Collect Millions in "CONSULTANT FEES" Bribes


FEINSTEIN IS ONE OF THE MOST CORRUPT POLITICIANS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. SHE’S GOTTEN RICH WHILE CA BURNED!
VOTING FOR A CORRUPT INCUMBENT IS LIKE VOTING FOR MORE OF THE SAME MELTDOWN. WE CAN’T SAVE OUR COUNTRY UNTIL WE RID OURSELVES OF WHORES LIKE FEINSTEIN.
VOTE ELIZABETH EMKEN FOR U.S. SENATOR!
DEMS, THE BANKSTER-OWNED PARTY of ILLEGALS, HAS LONG USED A DIRTY LITTLE DEAL OF SIPHONING OFF CAMPAIGN BRIBES FROM THE SPECIAL INTERESTS THEY SERVE TO FAMILY MEMBERS.
 
FEINSTEIN’S LAP-BITCH, THE UTTERLY WORTHLESS BARBARA BOXER BEGAN ELECTED OFFICE WITH NOT ONE CENT. NOW SHE HAS MILLIONS!
 
SHE TAKES HER BRIBES AND SALTS THEM AWAY AS “CONSULTANT FEES” TO HER SON, OAKLAND LAWYER, DOUG BOXER.
 
ONE OF BOXER’S BIGGEST BRIBSTERS IS FEINSTEIN’S PIMP HUSBAND’S, RICHARD C. BLUM. HE LIKES THE FACT BOXER VOTES FOR ANYTHING THAT FEINSTEIN IS PUSHING IN THE SENATE THAT WILL PUT MORE MONEY IN BLUM’S POCKETS!
 
“I’ll whore for FEINSTEIN and more campaign bribe “consultant fees”!” Senator Barbara “FEINSTEIN’S LAP-BITCH” BOXER
 
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D‑Calif.), for example, paid her son Douglas $320,409.17 in campaign donations through his company Douglas Boxer and Associates from 2001 to 2006, CREW found. Douglas Boxer is a lawyer and a 10‑year veteran of her political team, a Boxer spokesman said.
BOXER DID RUN FOR OFFICE, AND WAS REELECTED BY ILLEGALS DUE TO HER OBAMA – FEINSTEIN – PELOSI PLATFORM OF NO E-VERIFY, NO WALL, OPEN BORDERS, DREAM ACTS, AND NO ID REQUIRED OF ILLEGALS VOTING!
To no one's surprise, Boxer is running for re-election
This just in from the state Democratic Party convention: Sen. Barbara Boxer announced she's running for re-election in 2010.
Now a lot of people are probably scratching their heads and wondering if they'd missed something: Wasn't she already running for re-election?
Well, yes. As a matter of fact, the three-term senator brought then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama to San Francisco in February 2007 for a 2010 re-election fund-raiser at the St. Francis Hotel. And her campaign website has been up and running for months.
But, to quote from the senator's speech today, "I'm formally announcing, in front of this convention, that I am running again for the United States Senate."
There were plenty of yellow and black "Boxer 2010" signs in the hall and the delegates were happy enough to wave them and cheer the announcement, so no harm done. And it did give the senator a chance to plug her new line of campaign clothes, on sale at her campaign table. It includes a bib for "Babies for Boxer" and neckwear for dogs, also known as "Barkers for Boxer.''
"You should buy the new Boxer merchandise so you can be on the cutting edge of fashion,'' she told the crowd.
So far, Irvine Assemblyman Chuck DeVore is Boxer's only GOP challenger, although former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina has made noises about running.
"Don't listen to anyone who says our race will be easy,'' Boxer said. "My races are never easy.''
That depends on your definition of easy.
In 2004, she ran against former Secretary of State Bill Jones, who never raised enough money to run a television ad. A couple of weeks before the election, Boxer was doing a campaign swing through rural California. An October campaign appearance before a dozen people at a home in Amador City, population 196, shows just how concerned she was about re-election.
The final total: Boxer 58 percent, Jones 38 percent, which is definitely landslide territory.
But Boxer is a fierce campaigner who takes no prisoners. She's tough on the stump and more than willing to defend any of her positions and rip apart those of her opponents.
"I hope no one runs against me,'' she told reporters after her speech to the convention. But if someone does, she warned, "You'll face a tough race and I'll win re-election. So think about it.''
*
"I see no evidence of anything improper in this body," said Senate Rules and Administration Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D‑Calif.) during the floor debate.
Senators Diverting Campaign Funds to Kin
Loophole in Ethics Rules Is One That the Senate Did Not Close Last Year
By Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 24, 2008; A04
Under long‑standing congressional ethics rules, corporations, unions and other large organizations cannot directly pay senators stipends. But their contributions to senators' election campaigns can be paid without limit to the children, spouses, in‑laws and other relatives of the lawmakers, in a practice that has aroused controversy but is fully legal.
Since 2000, at least 20 members of the Senate dipped into their campaign contributions and wrote more than half a million dollars in checks to their own relatives, typically as payment for fundraising and other campaign work, according to a new report by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D‑Calif.), for example, paid her son Douglas $320,409.17 in campaign donations through his company Douglas Boxer and Associates from 2001 to 2006, CREW found. Douglas Boxer is a lawyer and a 10‑year veteran of her political team, a Boxer spokesman said.
Sen. Mike Enzi (R‑Wyo.) paid his daughter‑in‑law Danielle Enzi $306,718.18 from his campaign accounts over the same period, according to the report. She was a fundraiser before she married into the Enzi family, an Enzi spokesman said. Sen. Jim Bunning (R‑Ky.) paid his daughter Amy Towles $138,933.37 over six years, CREW found. Bunning's office said it was for campaign accounting.
"It is an area that's ripe for abuse, for someone who wants to turn campaign funds into personal use," said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the nonprofit group Public Citizen. Although most lawmakers do not abuse the practice, he said, "those campaign funds always come from special interests, and those special interests are always looking for something in return."
Information about the practice is not easy to find, because senators are required to disclose such payments only in the minutiae of their periodic public statements of campaign finance expenditure and do not flag the recipients as relatives. CREW staff compiled the data over nine months by looking at microfiche and electronic records for the 2002, 2004 and 2006 election cycles, and by tracing names.
 
None of these arrangements appears to violate federal election law (THESE FUCKERS MAKE THE LAWS!), noted Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director. Although lawmakers are barred from hiring relatives as staffers in their legislative offices, family members may perform campaign work, as long as the pay is reasonable and the individuals are qualified.


Yet some lawmakers are seeking to restrict payments to some family members as part of a broader effort to eliminate opportunities for conflicts and improprieties ‑‑ an effort urged by watchdog groups such as CREW after ethics scandals over the past two years, including several cases involving lawmakers' family members on political payrolls who may or may not have performed much work.
The senators' family payments were relatively small, compared with the $5.1 million that 72 House members paid from campaign funds to relatives or to relatives' companies or employers during the same period, according to CREW. "We found much worse stuff in the House," Sloan said.
Yet the Senate has become a roadblock to changing the rules on family employment. The House, in contrast, approved legislation last July to ban payments from campaign or leadership funds to candidates' spouses and to require the disclosure of campaign payments to other immediate family members. The bill was sent to the Senate, where it has stalled indefinitely.
The House acted after disclosures that former lobbyist Jack Abramoff organized campaign contributions or other payments that wound up in the hands of several lawmakers' relatives. Rep. John T. Doolittle (R‑Calif.), who announced his retirement from the House last month, is under federal investigation along with his wife, Julie, in part related to employment for her provided by Abramoff and other lobbyists.
 
BOXER VOTES AGAINST STOPPING BRIBES SIPHONED THROUGH RELATIVES!
Senators took up the issue before passing the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act on Jan. 18, 2007. The law tightened rules on accepting meals, private plane rides and other perks from lobbyists. But an amendment to ban the practice of paying relatives for their campaign work was rejected 54 to 41, with Boxer voting "present."
Even senators with no relatives listed in the CREW report criticized the measure, offered by Sen. David Vitter (R‑La.), as overly harsh. "I see no evidence of anything improper in this body," said Senate Rules and Administration Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D‑Calif.) during the floor debate.
 
But Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D‑Calif.), who sponsored the House bill, said he thinks "there's some serious self‑interest involved" in the Senate's refusal to go along. Keeping a spouse on the payroll, Schiff said, "just struck me as an inherent conflict of interest. Most people are shocked that it's not a crime, and it should be outlawed." He is still seeking a senator to take up the cause in that chamber.
Some Senate family members do work for bargain prices, at least by Washington standards. Towles, who lives in Kentucky, has kept her father's campaign books since the 1990s, said Bunning spokesman Mike Reynard. He described her as "a one‑person office." Towles's Citizens for Bunning salary rose from $19,589.10 in 2001, according to CREW, to $23,180.60 in 2006. She received an additional $4,999 through the separate Political Hall of Fame PAC, the group found.
Enzi spokesman Coy Knobel said Danielle Enzi works as a contract fundraiser for the Wyoming senator and has other political and nonprofit clients. "I think it's essential to point out the work Danielle does for Senator Enzi is paid for by donors to his campaign," as opposed to public funds, Knobel said. "If the donors don't agree with something, then they don't have to give."


The campaign political director for Sen. Michael D. Crapo (R‑Idaho), whose wife, Susan, was paid $78,514.50 over six years, said Susan Crapo "has always been the top campaign hand." Jake Ball described her duties as "organizing and carrying out big events," along with keeping Crapo's schedule and driving him to events.
"She's able to make decisions and act on things that other campaign workers would not feel as bold at doing," Ball said. "Any dollars she's paid are dollars she has earned."
Other names on the CREW list include Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D‑Del.), whose sister, Valerie Biden Owens, has managed all of his Senate campaigns, dating back to 1972. She was paid $51,286.27 in 2002, according to CREW. Her daughter Catherine Owens, also known as Casey, was paid $3,618.51 for her job as a field organizer.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D‑Mass.) has paid nephews Joseph and Matthew Kennedy, who co‑chaired his 2006 reelection campaign, a total of $50,073.87 from his Kennedy for Senate 2012 campaign fund.
Sen. Richard Burr (R‑N.C.) reached to a farther branch of his family tree, employing Mary T. Fauth as the treasurer of his leadership political action committee, the Next Century Fund. Fauth is the wife of Burr's wife's brother, according to a spokesman for the senator, and earned $32,013 over six years, the report found.
...........................
From the Los Angeles Times
Opinion
Meet the new political bosses, worse than the old political bosses.
Democrats wallow in a 'culture of corruption'
 
Jonah Goldberg

May 5, 2009

Some days you have to ask yourself, my God, what if these people were Republicans?

Democrats took back Congress in 2006 and the presidency in 2008 in no small part because of their ability to bang their spoons on their high chairs about what they called the Republican "culture of corruption." Their choreographed outrage was coordinated with the precision of a North Korean missile launch pageant. And, to be fair, they had a point. The GOP did have its legitimate embarrassments. California Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham and lobbyist Jack Abramoff were fair game, and so was Rep. Mark Foley, the twisted Florida congressman who allegedly wanted male congressional pages cleaned and perfumed and brought to his tent, as it were.

Of course, it wasn't as if Democrats were without sin. Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson was indicted on fraud, bribery and corruption charges in 2007, after an investigation unearthed, among other things, $90,000 in his freezer. Then-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer was busted in a prostitution scandal.

But that's all yesterday's news. Let's look at the here and now. Barack Obama, who vowed he'd provide a transparent administration staffed with disinterested public servants with the self-restraint of Roman castrati, appointed an admitted tax cheat to run the Treasury Department -- and he's hardly the only one in the administration.

New York Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is under investigation for, among other things, failing to report income from his Caribbean villa. Meanwhile, Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, got sweetheart deals from subprime lender Countrywide and has yet to adequately explain his too-good-to-be-true deal on his million-dollar "cottage" in Ireland, which he may have gotten in exchange for finagling a pardon (from President Clinton) for a felon. Oh, Dodd also secretly protected those AIG bonuses that raised such a ruckus last month.

Rep. Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania, Nancy Pelosi's moral authority on military matters during the Iraq war, has been revealed as a kleptomaniac of sorts, delivering as much of the federal budget as possible to various cronies and lobbyists.

John Edwards, who had an affair even as he was scoring Oprah-points as the supportive husband during his wife's battle with breast cancer, is being investigated by the feds for the improper use of campaign funds. It looks like the silky haired champion of the little guys may have used their donations to bribe the alleged "baby mama" into silence.

And it would be a shame to let it pass that Obama's Senate seat was put up for sale by the then-Democratic governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, and Illinois Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. is under investigation for trying to buy it.

But you know what? We ain't seen nothing yet. For starters, the real corruption isn't what the media are ignoring or downplaying as isolated incidents. It's what the media are hailing as bold, inspirational leadership. The White House, as a matter of policy, is rewriting legal contracts, picking winners (mostly labor unions and mortgage defaulters) and singling out losers (evil "speculators") while much of the media continue to ponder whether Obama is better than FDR.

If a Republican administration, staffed with cronies from Goldman Sachs and Citibank, was cutting special deals for its political allies, I suspect we'd be hearing fewer FDR analogies and more nouns ending with the suffix "gate."

Take Obama's "car czar," Steven Rattner. According to ABC's Jake Tapper, Rattner is accused of threatening to use the White House to smear a Chrysler creditor if it refused to back the administration's bankruptcy plan. He's also connected to a massive pension fund scandal involving the investment firm he used to run. One allegation is that conspirators used investments in the low-budget movie "Chooch" to expedite their alleged chicanery. Chooch, by the way, is Italian slang for "jackass," which just happens to be the Democrats' mascot.

More to the point, political corruption is inevitable whenever you give hacks -- of either party -- too much discretion over public funds. Businesses look to Washington for profits instead of to the market. The thing is, this has become the governing philosophy of the Democratic Party, from banking and cars to healthcare and now student loans. The federal government is taking over, and the culture of corruption inevitably trickles down. That in itself should be a scandal. Call it "Choochgate."
IF YOU HAVE ISSUES WITH BOXER’S CORRUPTION, SEND A COPY OF THIS TO HER SON, AND RECIPIENT OF HER BRIBES.
(AS LISTED IN CA STATE BAR)
DOUGLAS BOXER
300 FRANK H OGAWA PLZ, No 500
OAKLAND, CA 94612-2040
FAX 510-835 0415
 
SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN, AND HER LAP BITCH BARBARA BOXER, HAVE VOTED FOR ANY AND ALL WARS FOR MUSLIM DICTATORS, WHILE THEY DEMAND THAT OUR OWN BORDERS BE LEFT OPEN AND UNDEFENDED AGAINST NARCOMEX.
KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT ABOUT MY WAR PROFITEERING WHORE WIFE’S MANSIONS! HERE’S A BRIBE TO DO SO!
“Since the 2000 election cycle, Blum has contributed over $75,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Committee, and thousands more to individual Democrats, including John Kerry, Robert Byrd, Joe Lieberman, Ted Kennedy, and Barbara Boxer.”
*
March 1, 2006 The Democrats' Daddy Warbucks
Feinstein family war profits, part II
Sen. Dianne Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum, could well be called the Democrats' Daddy Warbucks. He's scored bundles from war contracts. He has recently purchased a $16.5 million crib in San Francisco and along with his wife has handed hundreds of thousands of dollars over to fellow Democrats. Since the 2000 election cycle, Blum has contributed over $75,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Committee, and thousands more to individual Democrats, including John Kerry, Robert Byrd, Joe Lieberman, Ted Kennedy, and Barbara Boxer. Richard Blum's history as an entrepreneur began at the ripe age of 23 when he began to work for the San Francisco brokerage firm Sutro & Company. Blum quickly climbed the ranks and became a partner by the age of 30. According the San Francisco Chronicle, "Blum proved that he had an eye for fixer-upper properties when he led a partnership that acquired the struggling Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus for $8 million – then sold it to Mattel Inc. four years later for $40 million." In 1975, Blum went out on his own and formed a brokerage agency. Today, Blum's lofty firm, Blum Capital, holds positions in more than 20 companies, including real estate giants, credit bureaus, and yes, even military contractors. Blum sees himself as an altruistic capitalist, claims one of his ex-employees: "He likes to go after companies that are down and out, and bring their stock back to life. He thinks he's doing good." Blum shares a large stake in Perini, a civil construction company that is happily employed in Iraq and Afghanistan. But not all of Blum's war profits come from Perini. In 1975, his venture capital firm went after fledging construction and design company URS when the business was about to be bought out by another corporation. Since then, Blum has increased his stock in URS, capitalizing on its recent military contracts. Unlike Blum's dabbling with Barnum & Bailey, his current profits aren't so safe for child consumption. Here are the basics to date: Blum currently holds over 111,000 shares of stock in URS Corporation, which is now one of the top defense contractors in the United States. Blum is an acting director of URS, which bought EG&G, a leading provider of technical services and management to the U.S. military, from The Carlyle Group in 2002. Carlyle's trusty advisers, past and present, include former President George H.W. Bush, James Baker, and ex-SEC Commissioner Arthur Levitt, among other prominent neoconservatives and Washington power brokers. URS and Blum have since banked on the Iraq war, scoring a phat $600 million contract through EG&G. As a result, URS has seen its stock price more than triple since the war began in March 2003. Blum has cashed in over $2 million on this venture alone and another $100 million for his investment firm. "As part of EG&G's sale price," reports the San Francisco Chronicle, "Carlyle acquired a 21.74 percent stake in URS – second only to the 23.7 percent of shares controlled by Blum Capital." The Carlyle Group has long been accused of exploiting its political connections to turn a profit. And if Carlyle can come under the microscope for its government ties and war profiteering, as it did in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, than surely Blum's URS ought to be subject to the same scrutiny. Owen Blicksilver, Blum's spokesman, claims his boss and Sen. Feinstein have never talked shop at home in their gated mansion: "Mr. Blum and Sen. Feinstein have never had any discussions about outsourcing, government contracts, or URS." If this were a Republican senator's spouse scoring bundles off the spoils of war and passing it along to fellow Republicans, the liberals would be up in arms. But since Dianne Feinstein is a leading Democrat, mum's the word. Partisanship trumps ethics. The Byrne Report Hawk Tale By Peter Byrne ON JAN. 18, California senator Dianne Feinstein introduced Dr. Condoleezza Rice at a Senate nomination hearing for Secretary of State in terms so saccharine that molasses seemed to ooze out of her mouth. She was a precocious child, Feinstein purred. She has skill, judgment and poise. She loves football. Bush loves her. "The problems we face abroad are complex and sizable. If Dr. Rice's past performance is any indication, though, we can rest easy." That very same day, Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum, took advantage of a spike in the price of his URS Corporation stock. He sold a third of his holdings in the defense contractor for $57 million, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. With Rice confirmed, the business of death and occupation looks rosy as hell for Feinstein, who--let's get real--benefits tremendously from sharing community property with Blum. URS' largest customer is the U.S. Army, which accounted for 17 percent ($587 million) of its cash revenue in 2004. In 2001, URS enjoyed a mere $169 million in defense contracts. Now, its war contracts total more than $2 billion. According to its annual report, the San FranciscoÐbased URS anticipates that profits will rocket up in 2005, because "operations in the Middle East are expected to generate increased work related to the development of weapons systems, the training of military pilots and the maintenance, upgrade and repair of military vehicles." Provided, of course, that our hawkish leadership remains as poised and lovable as the new Secretary of State. Feinstein, who sits on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, is an advocate of first-strike warfare, even though it flouts international law and the standards of common decency. Interestingly, her Financial Disclosure Report for 2003 was more than three times the size of her 2002 disclosure (Feinstein's 2003 disclosure numbers 133 pages, compared to Sen. Barbara Boxer's six-page report). The Feinstein-Blum portfolio is crammed with multimillion dollar investments in the military-industrial-financial complex and corporations that heavily exploit Third World peoples. The senator has a lot to lose should the neoconservative war machine falter. Hubby holds a controlling interest in another engineering firm, Perini Corporation of Framingham, Mass. Perini ranks No. 6 by dollar amount in war-related government contracts in the Middle East. According to its annual report, "Perini proudly supports the U.S. government with global rapid response capabilities for defense, reconstruction and security." Perini builds military facilities and roads in Afghanistan, electrical infrastructure in Iraq and U.S. embassies around the world. After the Senate, Feinstein included, approved Bush's war plans in 2002, Perini's defense contract awards soared from negligible to $2.52 billion. But, as with many of the sole-source, open-ended contracts awarded to politically connected firms, there are problems with accountability. Last summer, Department of Defense auditors determined that Perini could not adequately justify its costs in Iraq as fair and reasonable. That's government-speak for: They're gouging the #!$% out of us. Perini is heavily engaged in military and municipal public works projects inside the United States; at least two are also under investigation for contract fraud. For example, the city of San Francisco has sued general contractor Perini--which was in a joint venture with the Tutor-Saliba construction firm--for $100 million in cost overruns at a San Francisco International Airport project. The lawsuit alleges that the joint venture engaged in "a sophisticated pattern of fraud," including inflating costs, fabricating delays and setting up minority front companies to exploit affirmative-action preferences. The attorney general of Massachusetts is looking into alleged false claims made by a Perini joint venture in the "Big Dig" urban highway construction boondoggle in Boston. Ron Tutor, owner of Tutor-Saliba and CEO of Perini, bought into the latter company, along with Blum, as it teetered on the edge of solvency in the mid- 1990s due to a bad real estate investment. It rebounded, thanks to the firm's sudden ability to obtain lucrative U.S. military and government contracts, which, of course, had nothing to do with the fact that Blum's powerful wife has her hands on the military's purse strings. Remarkably, Perini grossed $1.37 billion in 2003, up 27 percent from the previous year, before the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Perini attributes its rocketing profits to "increased volume of work in Iraq and Afghanistan." As a risk factor, the firm notes that continued demand for its military services depends upon "the political situation in Iraq," which, logically, means that it desires the bloody war and useless occupation to continue indefinitely--a wish that hawktails with the foreign policy positions of Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld and Feinstein. I almost forgot: Perini Corp. is the nation's most active builder of Indian-fronted casinos. That explains a few things about Sen. Feinstein and the politics of gambling, soon to be revealed in greater detail in this space.


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