Operation Fast and Furious
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/6/15/new_report_us_encouraged_gun_sales
In 2008, the ATF decided that their current strategy of investigation was not working, and decided to allow/orchestrate the sale of guns to middle men who would then sell to drug cartels in an attempt to get closer to high profile arrests. Since then, hundreds of those guns have been confiscated at violent crime scenes. Already, 70% of confiscated weapons are traced to the US, making their way south through "straw buyers" who buy weapons for people who couldn't legally.
These cartels have become billion dollar rogue nations with their own well equipped militaries and diverse economies including extortion, kidnapping, prostitution, human trafficking, gun sales, but chiefly the trafficking and sale of drugs to the vast number of users in the US black market. They have wrested so much control from the Mexican government in the regions they occupy and they have so much money now, that maybe it wouldn't matter if we stopped selling guns to them, maybe they could get them some where else. And they have gotten so big that maybe they could survive without the cash cow of drug sales to us if the US began treating the drug problem as a public health issue instead of a security issue. But if we were to simultaneously tighten the ban on assault weapons and end the so called "war on drugs," maybe the Mexican government could stand a chance against the cartels.
Of course this will never happen. The pharmaceutical industry and the (alcoholic beverages companies) don't want competition, and disaster capitalism is making a lot of money for the prison industrial complex, for the small arms industry, and for the militarized government institutions that depend on strife to justify their budgets, their careers, and their power. While Ron Paul might get cheers from rank and file Republicans for suggesting we legalize heroin, there is far more money lobbying for increased minimum mandatory sentencing and against treatment of drug use as a health issue, and in the end the conservative leadership of the GOP would never allow any change in government that gives people more freedom if it takes money from their main constituency; billion dollar, multi-national industries.
This is the party that thinks government is not the solution to problems, it is the problem, that wants government small enough that it can be dragged to the bathroom and drowned in the tub - ostensibly because government is the opponent of freedom, but really because it is the only force that can contain corruption. Like Republican Florida Governor Rick Scott, with controlling stock in a chain of clinics that provide drug testing, that wants mandatory drug testing for all welfare recipients on top of already mandating drug testing of all state employees, with a cost of about $42 per person or, the ACLU estimates (based on estimated percentage of actual drug use) $20,000 per user.
These are the policies we get when people vote for someone wrapped in the flag, carrying a bible, and shouting that they will liberate us from tyrannical government regulation.
In 2008, the ATF decided that their current strategy of investigation was not working, and decided to allow/orchestrate the sale of guns to middle men who would then sell to drug cartels in an attempt to get closer to high profile arrests. Since then, hundreds of those guns have been confiscated at violent crime scenes. Already, 70% of confiscated weapons are traced to the US, making their way south through "straw buyers" who buy weapons for people who couldn't legally.
These cartels have become billion dollar rogue nations with their own well equipped militaries and diverse economies including extortion, kidnapping, prostitution, human trafficking, gun sales, but chiefly the trafficking and sale of drugs to the vast number of users in the US black market. They have wrested so much control from the Mexican government in the regions they occupy and they have so much money now, that maybe it wouldn't matter if we stopped selling guns to them, maybe they could get them some where else. And they have gotten so big that maybe they could survive without the cash cow of drug sales to us if the US began treating the drug problem as a public health issue instead of a security issue. But if we were to simultaneously tighten the ban on assault weapons and end the so called "war on drugs," maybe the Mexican government could stand a chance against the cartels.
Of course this will never happen. The pharmaceutical industry and the (alcoholic beverages companies) don't want competition, and disaster capitalism is making a lot of money for the prison industrial complex, for the small arms industry, and for the militarized government institutions that depend on strife to justify their budgets, their careers, and their power. While Ron Paul might get cheers from rank and file Republicans for suggesting we legalize heroin, there is far more money lobbying for increased minimum mandatory sentencing and against treatment of drug use as a health issue, and in the end the conservative leadership of the GOP would never allow any change in government that gives people more freedom if it takes money from their main constituency; billion dollar, multi-national industries.
This is the party that thinks government is not the solution to problems, it is the problem, that wants government small enough that it can be dragged to the bathroom and drowned in the tub - ostensibly because government is the opponent of freedom, but really because it is the only force that can contain corruption. Like Republican Florida Governor Rick Scott, with controlling stock in a chain of clinics that provide drug testing, that wants mandatory drug testing for all welfare recipients on top of already mandating drug testing of all state employees, with a cost of about $42 per person or, the ACLU estimates (based on estimated percentage of actual drug use) $20,000 per user.
These are the policies we get when people vote for someone wrapped in the flag, carrying a bible, and shouting that they will liberate us from tyrannical government regulation.