An Insult to "Corrupt"

Calling U.S. drug enforcement "corrupt" is an insult.  To the word "corrupt."  Corruption is old, and sort of honorable, a way of smoothing out bad government.  But U.S. drug enforcement is bizarrely hypocritical, with lots of sharp edges.

HSBC settlement:  Appalling.

Outright theft of a family-owned hotel, because some tenants used drugs.

Outright theft of money, for ...well, for no actual reason at all.  Some people thought the guy might, possibly, maybe buy drugs.  Later.

So, to review:  if you are a large corporation, and can pay off the government, you are free to participate in the wholesale distribution of drugs.  If you try to run a legitimate business, however, that entire business can be taken from you.  And if the cops find any sort of asset they can steal, they will just take the money, like Mexcan Federales in some bad movie.  You have to sue to get the money back, and the burden of proof is on YOU to show you were NOT going to spend the money on drugs.

Here's the interesting thing:  in the late stages of Prohibition, corruption took the form of payoffs to crooked cops.  With the civil forfeiture rules now in place, corruption takes the form of simple, direct theft:  the authorities simply take anything of value that that they want, unless you are a large corporation and can afford lots of lawyers.

I keep calling it "corrupt."  But I don't think that word means what I think it means.  I need a knew word.

Nod to MK

Shady Dealings

A list of email terms, in emails internally that are likely to reveal something is rotten in that company.

The reason that may be a problem is that the FBI can read your emails.

Of course, they don't have to read them, they can just search for those character strings that identify badniks.

Nod to Jay L., in Kenya.

It's not the HABBAL

So, it is useful to know HABBAL.*  And B. Nyhan is right to admonish people who blame Obama for not being able to control or direct the nut jobs who make up the U.S. Senate. 

But I think it is just fine to blame Obama for stepping up DEA and Justice Department enforcement against state-legal pharmacies and growers.  For expanding the scope and impact of executive orders and extra-constitutional decrees.  For expanding the use of drone strikes, without due process, and for imprisoning and mistreating citizens, of the world and of the US, without evidence or chance for a hearing.  For being a coward on immigration policies that are entirely in the control of the executive branch.

In short, you apologists have your heads up your Birkenstocks.  Obama is quite a bad president.  When you defend him, you are basically saying that Mussolini was better than Hitler.  Okay, yes, that's true, Obama is better than Bush was or McCain would have been.  But stop making excuses.  Obama is quite a disappointment, if you are anything but an unreasoning Democratic hack.

*How A Bill Becomes A Law.  If you don't know HABBAL, you'll be needing some more Schoolhouse Rock! 


Notice that there is nothing there about executive orders and systematic violation of the 1st, 4th, and 5th Amendment.  And THAT is why Obama is a bad President:  he ignores the Constitution.  Not because the Senate is even worse.

Is the CIA giving Latin American leftists cancer?

Hugo Chavez says that he wouldn't doubt it one little bit.

He says he got the notion from Fidel:

"Fidel always told me, 'Chavez take care. These people have developed technology. You are very careless. Take care what you eat, what they give you to eat ... a little needle and they inject you with I don't know what,'"

It's easy to laugh at this but we actually did try to kill Castro, didn't we? And we helped kill Allende in Chile. And there was Guatemala in 1954, and the Contras in Nicaragua, and "Operation Fury" in Grenada. People, we occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934.

Hell we stole Panama from Colombia and huge chunks of Mexico too in the Mexican American War.

Basically the US has been a huge bully / PITA/ jerk to Latin America, at least since 1846.

It's not that hard to see where Hugo is coming from.

that's nacho cheese

I love Mexico but MAN oh MAN are things messed up there. Check this gem from the WSJ:

Days after the Casino Royale fire, Monterrey's leading newspaper published a video showing the brother of the PAN mayor of Monterrey, Fernando Larrazabal, receiving wads of money at one Monterrey casino. The paper suggested that many of the city's casinos, which lack legal permits, were paying off city officials—and drug gangs—to stay open.

The mayor has denied wrongdoing. His brother, Jonas Larrazabal, says the money was payment for selling cheese to the casinos.

There is a grand Mexican tradition of the politician's brother as bagman (Raul Salinas, you KNOW I'm talking about you), and apparently the PAN is not immune to it.

The whole article is interesting and depressing. A thriving illegal casino industry operates with impunity across the nation.