The death row inmate who called state Sen. John Whitmire last year with a smuggled-in cell phone (and later threatened to kill him) has received his comeuppance.
The Statesman reports:
Death row killer Richard Lee Tabler….pleaded guilty this morning to threatening the lawmaker and possessing contraband.During a brief courtroom appearance in Livingston, in East Texas, Tabler got [a] 10-year sentence stacked atop his death sentence.”
Under the Obama Administration, there’s been a renewed push by the Department of Homeland Security and other law enforcement agencies to take a more bilateral approach with Mexico on fighting narcotrafficking. So far our efforts at bi-lateralism mostly include using the words “Mexico” and the “United States” side by side in Power Point presentations.
Along these lines, the Southwest Border Sheriff’s Coalition, which encompasses every border sheriff from Brownsville to San Diego, extended an invitation to the Mexican Attorney General’s office to speak at their conference in Yuma last week.
Ariel Moutsatsos, an adviser to the Attorney General of Mexico, gave a presentation about his country’s efforts to fight narcotrafficking. (Actually it was more about the United States but I’ll get to that a little later.) In the 33 months since President Felipe Calderon had taken office, Moutsatsos said that more than 230 high level government officials had been arrested for working with the drug cartels.
In his fight to root out corruption Calderon was having to build his state and local police forces from scratch as well as some of the higher levels of government, Moutsatsos said.”We are flying the plane while we build it.”
As he was talking about this corruption, I thought of the recent arrests on this side of the border of drug and immigration officials. Just two weeks ago, Richard Padilla Cramer, the former U.S. attaché for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Guadalajara was arrested for working as a consultant to drug dealers.
Before his talk, Moutsatsos told me that the U.S.’s insatiable demand for drugs had turned Mexico into hell. “First it was Colombia, now it’s turned my country into hell and the United States could be next,” he said.
I wasn’t so sure about that. But he elaborated on this theme during his presentation by showing a slide called “The Monster in the U.S. Basement.” It turned out this monster in the basement, as he put it, is the one million gang members living in the United States. That coupled with the U.S.’s lax gun purchasing rules and the ability to buy assault weapons could convert our cities into something like what’s happening in Juarez. (He didn’t make the Juarez analogy I did.)
What could prevent this from happening? He asked rhetorically. I heard a deputy behind me mutter through clenched teeth “Two million armed law officers.” He and his partner smiled at their joke.
Moutsatsos then made the point that there are 7,000 authorized gun dealers along the U.S.-Mexico border. Much of the arsenal owned by Mexican narcotraffickers comes from the United States.
“The same argument about Mexico supplying drugs needs to be applied to the U.S. as well with arms,” he told the sheriffs.
Moutsatsos suggested that the federal ban on assault weapons be reinstated. “It would be a hell of a good start and helpful to Mexico in its fight against crime. Don’t tell me Americans need an Ak-47 to feel safe?” he joked.
I looked around the room. No one was smiling. You could practically hear the wind whistling under the doors of the conference room it was so quiet.
Next he suggested that the United States government create a civilian firearm ownership registry. “I think it’s crazy that guns sell like pancakes in the United States and the government doesn’t know who has them,” he said.
Imagine if Obama tried to start a civilian firearm ownership registry? The entire country nearly ran out of ammo a few months ago because someone said that someone said that he might reinstate the ban on assault weapons.
Anyway, I digress. The next statement was guaranteed to be an even bigger crowd pleaser. He made the point that 50 percent of narcotraffickers’ profits come from marijuana. “You’ve already legalized it in 13 states,” he said referring to medical marijuana laws. “You’ve legalized the consumption but not the production.”
I think the man is on to something there.
Moutsatos says he doesn’t see Mexico’s battle against narcotraffickers as a war at all. “In a war you are killing the enemy, but our objective is to bring the enemy to justice and strengthen the rule of law in our country,” then he added. ” A war is something you can win or lose. We’re never going to have a clear victory this is going to be a continuous pursuit.”
With that he wrapped up his presentation. In the end it was more about what the United States could do to help Mexico in its fight against narcotraffickers than it was about Mexico’s efforts. In most presentations by U.S. officials they do just the opposite, they harp more on what Mexico can do to help the U.S. fight the narcos.
It struck me that Mexico and the United States are like two siblings with different fathers who keep hurling blame at each other for the bloody narcotrafficking mess. The long and complicated history between our countries makes it difficult to foster trust or to work together on coordinated law enforcement and intelligence efforts. We have so much in common yet we see things so differently.
Until we can get past the distrust and long held grievances we’re not going to make much of a dent in the problem.
We know what Rick Perry thinks of health care reform (and it ain’t positive). We also know what he’d do about it if he had his way (hint: it involves giving a lot of public money to private insurance companies).
But what does Kay Bailey think?
Well, yesterday we finally heard from the state’s senior U.S. senator. Hutchison published an op-ed in the Austin American-Statesman headlined “Another Model for health care reform.”
Hutchison begins by dismissing the current proposals:
[T]he proposals put forward by the Obama administration and the Democratic congressional leadership would create a massive government plan for health care and crowd out the choices Americans expect….A federal government takeover of our nation’s health care will limit, if not eliminate, an individual’s options in insurance and delivery.”
Can you tell she’s running in a Republican primary?
I’ll just note, for the record, that this is a grand distortion: None of the health care reform bills that Congress is seriously considering includes a “government takeover.” Some of the plans include a limited public option, but it’s looking increasingly like that may be negotiated away — to the great chagrin of many Liberals.
Hutchison, like Perry, wants states to craft their own reforms, as opposed to flowing orders from Washington.
But compared to Perry’s plan, Hutchison’s proposal is rather thin. In fact, it’s more outline than plan.
The Perry campaign has been hyping its Obama-style, cutting-edge grassroots and social-media savvy to anybody who’d listen. And if you didn’t believe them, they were advertising a live “Talkin’ Texas” feed from Perry’s campaign site this morning at 11:30. But shortly before 11:30, the site went down and all viewers got was an error message.
By 12:30, Perry spokesman Mark Miner had posted a note on the site claiming “Internet Sabotage”:
“Today’s ‘Talkin’ Texas’ webcast by Gov. Perry was deliberately interrupted by a denial-of-service attack, preventing countless users from logging in to view the Governor’s remarks. This planned and coordinated attack was political sabotage, and we are working to identify those responsible for this illegal activity. Before the attack was initiated, more than 22,000 users were able to log in and view Gov. Perry’s complete remarks, which will be distributed shortly.”
Before 1 p.m., questions were already being raised about the “hacking” claim by Philip Martin at Burnt Orange Report: “What is more likely—that someone hacked a meaningless video announcement, or that Rick Perry’s team just screwed this whole thing up?” I’ll let you answer that one.
As for the grassroots campaign, The Dallas Morning News this morning reported on Perry’s cash-for-volunteers program, an “Amway-style program, known as Perry Home Headquarters.” The governor’s campaign is paying volunteers $20 to sign up other “Home Headquarters” volunteers, who each pledge to recruit 11 voters for Perry. Another $20 is promised for additional clusters of 11 voters the volunteers sign up. One Dallas-area volunteer, reports Gromer Jeffers, has already scored a $3,500 haul.
The story makes delicious reading, especially the Twitter post from a woman trying to take advantage: “HELP ME RAISE MONEY FOR MY NEXT CAR!!! COPY, PASTE, AND SIGN UP TO SUPPORT RICK PERRY!” Campaigns often use incentives to encourage volunteers, as Jeffers points out, but paying cash is a new twist. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s site, which was humming along just fine, quickly jumped on “Home Headquarters” as an “ACORN tactic,” issuing this statement: “Typical Rick Perry arrogance, when his failed record can’t earn him support, he’ll just buy it. This is just more of the disappointing politics we’ve come to expect from Rick Perry. From making policy for the benefit of his political contributors to pressuring Regents, Texans are ready for a governor who will earn votes with results and not buy support with campaign cash.”
Updated
I’m reading through the results of an eye-opening air quality study that found potentially dangerous levels of carcinogens from natural gas activity in DISH, Texas (h/t TXsharon).
If you recall, this is the little burg in Denton County that changed its name in 2005 from Clark to DISH™ in order to score free satellite TV for its citizens.
Actually, the town should be re-branded Atmos Energy or Chesapeake Energy to reflect its distinction as the epicenter of Wild West-style natural gas production in the Barnett Shale.
As Calvin Tillman, the mayor of DISH, explains on his blog:
We have three metering stations, 11 compressor stations, and over 20 pipeline, in less that 2 square miles. We are hard working honest people who have been dealt a raw hand by the pipeline industry.
And:
As you all know DISH, TX is the dirty little secret that the pipeline industry wishes to keep quiet. We are pretty much ruined here, but it is not too late to spread the word on what has happened here, so others may not have to deal with the horrible things that we have here.
Skeptical of claims from the natural gas industry and state regulators that the odors in DISH were harmless, the town officials launched their own investigation.
Does the air in DISH simply stink or is it toxic too? To find out, they commissioned Wolf Eagle, an engineering consultancy, to take air samples at seven locations downwind from a complex of compressors and test them for the presence of chemicals.
The results, while far from comprehensive, are sobering.
The Wolf Eagle study “confirmed the presence in high concentrations of carcinogenic and neurotoxin compounds in ambient air near and/or on residential properties.”
High levels were detected for sixteen different chemicals. Five of the locations sampled had concentrations of toxins that exceed TCEQ’s Effects Screening Levels (ESLs), scientifically-based benchmarks below which no health or safety effects are expected.
In one location, for example, the air sample contained 10 chemicals that exceeded the ESLs.
Benzene, a known cancer-causing agent, was found to be 8.7 times greater than the long-term ESL; carbon disulfide, a reproductive and developmental toxicant, was 10.7 times greater than the short-term standard and 107 times greater than the long-term ESL; Naphthalene, a potentially cancer-causing chemical, was present at 3.6 times the long-term ESL; and so on.
The study concludes, naturally, by calling for further study.
So, what’s next for DISH? I’ve emailed Mayor Tillman and will post his response when I receive it.
Update: Mayor Tillman’s response:
Thanks for your inquiry. I had no idea when we had this study performed that the results would be so disturbing.
Obviously,we had concerns that prompted the study, and expected the results to be bad, just wasn’t prepared for results this bad.
Due to the overall number of chemicals (16) that exceeded both short term and long term exposure limits, and the level of toxins detected, (one was 107 times the long term exposure limits), immediate action needs to be taken.
My position is that the operators involved in this facility need to shut the site down until they can operate it responsibly. The town is reviewing the data and is looking at all legal options at this point.