1. Faced with an impending national disaster, “we should save the rich people first”
2. Mo. Prison Overruled on Inmate Abortion
3. Katie’s (Holmes) dad furious about shotgun wedding
4. Drug agents can’t keep up with pot growers
5. Brazil Weighs a National Gun Ban – Country Is First To Vote on Issue
1.
From the October 13 broadcast of Cox Radio Syndication’s The Neal Boortz Show:
BOORTZ: OK, I’ve got an insensitive thought, folks. There’s a news story out there — there’s a news story out there that rich people got some sort of an email notification of the terrorist threat against the New York subway before poor people did. OK? They’re making a big deal out of it. Let me see if I can find it on the Drudge Report here. Let’s see. There’s a guy strangling a goose. That’s a pretty good — that’s a pretty impressive picture. It’s something about bird flu. So he’s got this goose and he’s just wringing its neck. You can — oh, who tipped off the big shots? OK, now here’s the story. And it says, “The Homeland Security Department launched internal probes yesterday into whether its officials tipped off friends and relatives to a possible subway terror plot days before average New Yorkers were alerted.” So the real gripe here is that it seems that some wealthy people got notified of the terror plot before the great unwashed, before the others. Now, the Daily News in New York has a headline: “Rich got terror tip.” Rich got terror tip. OK, let’s get logical about this, folks. Let’s play logic with this. This is as it should be. OK? If we are faced with disaster in this country — let me ask you this, OK? You just be logical. Get all of the emotion out of this. Get all of the emotion out of this. But if we are faced with a disaster in this country, which group do we want to save? The rich or the poor? Now, if you have time, save as many people as you can. But if you have to set some priorities, where do you go? The rich or the poor? OK? Who is a drag on society? The rich or the poor? Who provide the jobs out there? The rich or the poor? Who fuels — you know, which group fuels our economy? Drives industry? The rich or the poor? Now if you — all of a sudden, somebody walks up to you and says, “Hey, Boortz listener. You’re gonna have a — you have to make a choice. You’re going to — we’re gonna move you to another country. And you’re just gonna have to make your way in this other country. We have a choice of two countries for you. In this country, people achieve a lot and they are wealthy because of their hard work. In this country, people don’t achieve squat. They sit around all the time waiting for somebody else to take care of them. They have children they can’t afford. They’re uneducated. They can barely read. And the high point of their day is Entertainment Tonight on TV. Which country do you want to live in? The country of the high achievers, or the country of sheep, the country of followers?” You know what you’re gonna do. I don’t see what the big problem is. I just don’t. I mean, if you — who do I want to save first? The rich. Save the poor first. Then, when everything’s over, where are you gonna go for a job? OK, hey, if I get a tin cup, can I sit next to you and sell pencils too?
[…]
I’m serious about that, folks. You see, that’s the kind of thing that’s going to end up in news stories: “Neal Boortz said that in times of disaster we should save the rich people first.” Well, hell, yes, we should save the rich people first. You know, they’re the ones that are responsible for this prosperity. I mean, you go out there and you look at this vast sea of evacuees, OK? You want to get an economy going in some city? Well, who you gonna take back? The people who own businesses? Or the people that sit around waiting to get their minimum wage job, work ’til Friday, get a paycheck and then not show up again until the following Wednesday? Come on. Just put a little logical thought into this, folks.
2.
Mo. Prison Overruled on Inmate Abortion
By DAVID TWIDDY, Associated Press Writer
Fri Oct 14, 6:34 PM ETKANSAS CITY, Mo. – A federal judge ordered Missouri prison officials to drive a pregnant inmate to a clinic and let her get an abortion despite a state law that forbids the spending of tax dollars to facilitate an abortion.
U.S. District Judge Dean Whipple ruled Thursday that the prison system is blocking the woman from exercising her right to an abortion. On Friday, he refused to stay the ruling, and ordered that the woman be taken to the clinic on Saturday.
The woman, whose name was not disclosed in court papers, has said she will borrow money for the abortion from friends and family but cannot afford to pay for transportation.
Under a policy adopted in July, Missouri’s prison system does not provide transportation or security for inmates seeking abortions. The policy is based on a state law that prohibits the spending of public funds “for the purpose of performing or assisting an abortion not necessary to save the life of the mother.”
State officials argued that their policy is reasonable because of the costs and security risks of transporting inmates outside for procedures the officials said are not medically necessary.
The state estimated it would cost $350 plus fuel for two guards to accompany the woman on the 80-mile trip from her cell in Vandalia to a St. Louis clinic.
“It is not the prison that has imposed the burden, but the prisoner’s violation of the law that resulted in her incarceration that has imposed the burden,” Attorney General Jay Nixon’s office said.
The state is appealing the ruling. The 8th Circuit refused to stay Whipple’s ruling later Friday, and Nixon’s office was working on an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The woman’s attorney, James Felakos of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the woman is running out of time because she is 16 weeks to 17 weeks pregnant, and Missouri bars abortions after 22 weeks.
In court papers, the woman said she discovered she was pregnant shortly after being arrested in California in July on a Missouri parole violation. She said she tried to get an abortion in California but was transferred back to Missouri before it could be performed.
3.
Katie’s dad furious about shotgun wedding
By Jeannette Walls
MSNBC
Updated: 2:58 a.m. ET Oct. 12, 2005
Tom Cruise’s future father-in-law apparently isn’t a happy camper.Katie Holmes’s dad is said to be “very upset” because his unmarried daughter is pregnant with Cruise’s child. And, what’s more, the devoutly Catholic Martin Holmes reportedly is none-too-thrilled about his daughter’s involvement in her husband-to-be’s controversial religion, Scientology.
“[Martin Holmes] was very upset and got into a real spat with Katie,” the forthcoming issue of Life & Style Weekly quotes “a close friend” of Cruise as saying. “Tom had promised her parents that they would do the right thing and get married before any baby came along.” After scolding his daughter, according to the mag, Martin Holmes berated Cruise by declaring “You’re no good.”
“He said he and his wife were very upset by the news,” according to the source, “and demanded the pair get married quickly.”
Furthermore, a member of Christ the King Church, which the Holmes family belongs to, told L&S that Cruise and Holmes’ publicist, his sister Lee Anne DeVette, sent a letter to parishioners, asking them not to talk to reporters. Although a family friend told the mag that the Holmes family is thrilled by the news of a grandchild, they’re also concerned.
“It seemed like Katie was being controlled by Scientologists,” the friend told L&S. “Now they wonder if it’s a Rosemary’s Baby situation, where Katie is being groomed to provide Tom with a child.”
DeVette didn’t respond to The Scoop’s repeated requests for comment.
4.
Drug agents can’t keep up with pot growers
By John Ritter, USA TODAY
NORTHERN MENDOCINO COUNTY, Calif. — In the waning days of a record season, a helicopter buzzes treetops here in a remote corner of the “Emerald Triangle,” redwood country notorious as the USA’s premier producer of marijuana. (Photo gallery: Rooting out pot hot spots)State narcotics officers from CAMP — Campaign Against Marijuana Planting — are searching for “gardens” to eradicate and find six on a warm, cloudless day.
They strap onto a 150-foot cable dangling from the chopper, drop into the pot patches, hack down the plants and bundle them for the chopper to haul back to a landing zone.
Perhaps $500,000 worth of America’s favorite illegal drug is trucked off for burial. It’s not a big day by CAMP standards: 813 plants that fill a pickup bed. In this ever-growing illicit market, agents routinely find plots of 5,000 and 10,000 plants that require dump trucks to dispose of.
In the 2005 growing season, CAMP says it so far has destroyed more plants than ever — 1.1 million worth $4.5 billion on the street, up from 621,000 plants last year. But agents still lost ground to growers. No longer is marijuana cultivation the cottage industry that flourished in the 1960s and ’70s after waves of counterculture migrants bought cheap land in the northern California mountains and grew pot for their own use and extra income.
Mexican criminals using sophisticated methods have spread the marijuana industry across California, traditionally the nation’s main domestic source because of a mild climate and vast stretches of isolated landscape ideal for clandestine growing, say the authorities.
As recently as 10 years ago, the Emerald Triangle counties of Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity grew virtually all of the state’s pot. Now every California county that’s not desert has a problem. Because of tighter security on the southern U.S. border, Mexicans simply made a business decision to move north.
“In the last two or three years almost 100% of the gardens we’ve eradicated are Mexican drug cartel gardens,” says James Parker, the senior narcotics agent who oversees CAMP. “It’s alarming if you think about it.”
Today’s high potency weed is so valuable — $5,000 or more for a pound of buds on the East Coast — that big operators employ armed guards who camp in pot gardens for months, nurturing plants that grow to 15 feet and taller. A state Fish and Game officer was wounded and a suspect shot and killed in a Santa Clara County bust in June, the fourth incident in two years.
Scarring the landscape
There would be more violence if growers weren’t able to flee at the sound of a helicopter looking for gardens, says Jack Nelsen, CAMP’s regional operations commander here. “This time of year, they won’t go far —— the plants are worth too much,” he says. “If we don’t come back soon enough they’ll be in there harvesting until we do.”
Fishermen and hikers stumble onto armed men in the woods who threaten them and demand that they leave. Pot-growing has become epidemic both on privately owned timber tracts and public lands in California, including national forests and parks.
“A lot of terrain is so rugged and dense with foliage you wouldn’t think about taking your family to those areas,” Parker says. “It’s amazing how much work these Mexicans put in to get a crop out.”
Growers scar the landscape by crudely terracing hillsides that erode under winter rain. They spill pesticides, fertilizer and diesel fuel used to power generators that run extensive drip-irrigation systems. They dam creeks for water sources, plant salsa gardens, disfigure trees and leave behind tons of garbage, human waste and litter.
“They’ll pour fertilizer right into a stream, then irrigate out of it,” says Alexandra Picavet, a Sequoia National Park ranger. “That creates algae blooms, hurts fish and animals and contaminates downstream.” Since 2001, officers have destroyed 105 pot gardens covering 181 acres in the park but have had enough money to clean up fewer than half the sites. “We think that for every one we’ve been able to eradicate, there’s another one out there,” Picavet says.
CAMP’s critics equate the program with Prohibition in the 1930s.
“Look at the amount of economic value we’re destroying,” says Dale Gieringer, director of California NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. “This could be legally taxed and regulated and we could all be making money off it. We never saw this lawlessness until there were drug laws and CAMP.” NORML estimates that Californians’ pot consumption could yield at least $250 million a year in sales taxes.
Gieringer also says that, despite the government’s assertion, there is no evidence that Mexican cartels are involved in the cultivation.
Roger Rodoni is a cattle rancher and registered Republican who has represented a conservative district in Humboldt County — conservative by local standards, anyway — on the board of supervisors since 1997. He calls CAMP “an exercise in futility.”
“It’s a vast expenditure of public funds that for all practical purposes does no good,” Rodoni, 65, says. Demand for marijuana keeps growing, and CAMP has done little to stem the supply, he says. As evidence he points to a drop in the price of “the quality stuff'” from $6,000 a pound a few years ago to $3,000 today.
A June report for Taxpayers for Common Sense by Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron found that despite billions of dollars spent on marijuana suppression — nearly $4 billion by the federal government in 2004 alone — usage is about the same as 30 years ago.
CAMP, an arm of the state attorney general’s office, was formed in 1983 to help understaffed local authorities ferret out large-scale marijuana crops grown for profit, particularly in isolated areas far from roads where helicopters were needed. Five eradication teams deployed in different regions of the state operated this year on a $1.1 million budget, about three-quarters of it supplied by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.
CAMP agents, with help from local sheriff’s deputies and loaners from the National Guard, the state forestry department, the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service, have arrested 42 suspects, seized 76 weapons and raided 742 gardens.
But CAMP has made little headway penetrating and prosecuting the Mexican hierarchies allegedly behind most of the busted gardens. “They’re similar to al-Qaeda, they’re cells,” says Sgt. James “Rusty” Noe of the Mendocino County sheriff’s office. “We go out and find some guy in the garden and we arrest him, he’s not going to know anything.”
Since last year, two CAMP investigative teams have concentrated on tracking the Mexican drug bosses, and arrests have been made in Fresno and Redding. Parker says he’ll ask for three more investigative units for 2006.
CAMP teams start reconnaissance flights in early spring as growers are preparing gardens — clearing land, setting up water systems, hauling in supplies and setting up campsites. When agents see a garden from the helicopter they fix its location with GPS.
Growers adapt to surveillance
Seizures have risen dramatically because of more aggressive air surveillance and larger gardens. But growers have adapted, CAMP’s Nelsen says. They used to plant uniform plots in open ground — marijuana thrives in full sunlight — but those were easily spotted, even from an airplane at 5,000 feet.
Now gardens are tucked under the forest canopy, often on steep slopes, and strung out along hillside contours so they’re much harder to see. Growers expect many of their gardens to be busted, so they put as many plants in the ground in as many locations as they can.
“It’s a lot like what they do on the border,” Parker says. “They’ll try to send 70 cars through thinking a few are going to get picked off and that it’s a cost of doing business.”
These days, other counties have eclipsed the Emerald Triangle in confiscated marijuana. Shasta County led the state as of last week, according to CAMP figures: 209,864 plants eradicated compared with 52,133 all of last year.
The Central Valley counties of Tulare and Fresno, two of the nation’s biggest agricultural producers, now rank No. 2 and 4. Mendocino had the fifth most plants seized, and Humboldt has slipped to No. 12. CAMP doesn’t operate in California’s two most populous counties, Los Angeles and San Diego, because authorities there have ample resources to go after marijuana themselves, Parker says.
“The Mexicans have basically found out how easy it is to find locations and find people to work these gardens,” Nelsen says. “These organizations are even moving into some of the eastern counties in snow country.”
Cultivation of medical marijuana, legalized by California voters in 1996, has expanded the supply, particularly from indoor production, and complicated efforts to crack down on the illegal market.
CAMP doesn’t bother with medical marijuana growers, even large ones who say they’re providing pot to many sick people. “We’re not here to take anyone’s medicine away,” Nelsen says.
But medical marijuana has made it harder to figure out who the bad guys are, Noe says. The law left it up to counties and cities to set guidelines. Some have zero tolerance for medical marijuana; others have set limits on the number of plants. Mendocino County is wide open.
“The amount of marijuana cultivated in this county almost doubled because anybody can grow it in their backyard,” Noe says. “The criminal element has taken advantage of the law.”
Mendocino County started going after pot growers in the early 1980s after a spate of violence. Six deputy sheriffs, a sergeant, a legal secretary and an evidence technician operated on a $500,000 budget, Noe says. Today, it’s Noe, a deputy and a $300,000 budget.
But with CAMP’s help, the cops are more effective, he says, more than doubling the number of plants destroyed in the county compared with early years.
And each of those plants carries a lot more kick today. No more of the baggies with stems and seeds that baby boomers remember from their college days. Growers learned to “sex” the plants — cull the males early in the season to deny the females pollination and prevent buds from going to seed.
In a futile effort to attract pollen, the female plants produce more and more THC, the active ingredient and the source of marijuana’s “high.” The plant’s buds get fatter and fatter. By September, they’re sticky with THC and ready to harvest. “Back in the ’60s and ’70s the stuff imported from Mexico, there wasn’t much bud to it,” Noe says. “If it was good quality maybe the THC was 5%.”
Tests nowadays find THC content as high as 21%, he says.
5.
Brazil Weighs a National Gun Ban
Country Is First To Vote on IssueBy Monte Reel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 1, 2005; Page A01RIO DE JANEIRO — As she walked home through the twisting, narrow passageways that honeycomb the large hillside slum of Rocinha, Denise do Espirito Santo spotted a young man following her.
She recognized him as a drug dealer, part of an armed gang that holds sway over much of the neighborhood, but she wasn’t afraid. When she reached home, she said, she waved goodbye to him and stepped through the door she had left unlocked while shopping.
“The dealers watch out for everyone in the neighborhood 24 hours a day, doing what the police don’t,” said do Espirito Santo, 43. “People here fear the police and their guns more than they do the dealers.”
The inverted realities of Brazil’s poorest neighborhoods have added complexity to the debate about gun control, but later this month every citizen from 18 to 70 will confront a clear, yes-no question: Should the sale of all types of guns and ammunition be banned nationwide for everyone except the police and military?
The Oct. 23 referendum, in which all adults must participate (voting is optional for those over 70), will be the first time any country has taken a proposed gun ban to the national ballot. Brazil has the highest number of firearms fatalities in the world, with more than 36,000 people shot dead last year, according to government figures.
Initial surveys indicate that most Brazilians favor a ban, hoping it will at least reduce the large number of guns circulating in the country. Opponents argue that banning guns will do little to stop criminals while making it harder for citizens to defend themselves.
Internationally, gun control advocates and opponents are monitoring the campaign closely, studying the possibility that the referendum could be replicated elsewhere.
“If the ban is passed, then I definitely expect other countries to try the same thing,” said Rebecca Peters, director of the International Action Network on Small Arms, a coalition of nongovernmental organizations leading a U.N. effort to curb the illegal gun trade. “It will send a message to other countries influenced by powerful gun lobbies that it’s possible to work around them.”
All of that means little in Brazil’s poor urban neighborhoods, known as favelas , where the only relevant question is whether a gun ban would make people safer. Nationwide, the number of shooting deaths has more than doubled here since the early 1990s.
Do Espirito Santo, who works at a nursing clinic in Rocinha, said a 17-month turf war among rival drug gangs and violent clashes with police have eroded the feeling of security she once felt at home. Her son Rajiv, 13, still plays in the neighborhood, but he follows one unbreakable rule: If you see trouble, run straight home.
“It’s not that bad,” Rajiv said, adopting the casual tone that is customary among favela residents when speaking of violence. “I see more people with guns in other parts of the neighborhood than I do here around our house.”
Throughout Rocinha, where an estimated 150,000 people live, residents are familiar with the referendum. Television and radio stations have championed it and promoted a ban on guns for the past two years. TV Globo even incorporated the issue into the story line of one of its widely watched soap operas.
Supporters of a ban do not claim that outlawing the sale of guns and ammunition would put a stop to violence. Instead, they say the initial aim is to reduce the huge number of guns flooding the country of 186 million people. An estimated 17.5 million guns are currently in Brazil, about 90 percent in civilian hands and half of them illegal.
An analysis of the guns used in crimes and seized by police from 1953 to 2003 showed that 80 percent were pistols and revolvers, only 33 percent of them legally registered.
“In Rio alone, there’s a gun stolen once every five hours,” said Josephine Bourgois, an arms control researcher with Viva Rio, an anti-gun organization that conducted the analysis. “By reducing the overall number of guns in circulation, we’ll be able to decrease the number that migrate from law-abiding citizens and end up in the hands of criminals.”
Early public opinion polls show that the argument has impressed the public, with more than 70 percent of respondents saying they support the ban. Paulo Amendoim, president of Rocinha’s resident association and host of a weekly community radio program, said he thinks most will vote for the ban, even though they do not expect it to solve their problems.
“I always talk about it on my radio program,” he said. “I think . . . it’s going to pass.”
Many opponents reluctantly agree with that prediction. In a shopping mall in the beachside neighborhood of Copacabana, the doors of the Guns & Security shop have been locked for the past week. The owner, Cirme Carvelho Alvim, said he stopped buying guns two weeks ago, figuring it was a waste to invest more in a business that might be forced to close within a month.
“Criminals don’t buy guns from shops like mine,” said Alvim, reached at a telephone number he had taped to his darkened shop window. He said most of his customers are police officers and retired military members. Criminals “smuggle their guns from other countries,” he said. “Brazil’s borders are too big, and the police can’t stop that.”
Reinaldo do Souza, 58, stopped by Alvim’s store to browse, not knowing it was closed. The retired military man said he kept a gun and two big dogs at home for security.
“Any time I hear the dogs bark, I get my gun,” he said. “The problem is not whether people have or don’t have guns. . . . No one I know would buy a gun legally to commit a crime. The gun ban won’t do anything to help decrease crime because criminals will still be able to get their guns without a problem. They can just go to the border of Paraguay. You can get a bazooka there if you want one.”
The same points are being made by the ban’s organized opponents, a coalition of legislators and groups representing gun dealers and manufacturers. When the ban was proposed in 2003, opponents invited a representative from the U.S. National Rifle Association to Sao Paulo to speak about strategy.
“It’s already very difficult to buy a gun in Brazil,” said Flavio Bolsonaro, a representative in Rio’s state legislature who is leading a local drive against the ban. “If a citizen can go through all the steps necessary to buy and register a gun here, then it’s his right to defend himself.”
Do Espirito Santo, who realizes that many of her neighbors will vote for the ban, said she has decided to vote against it. She said she hates the culture of guns and would love to see them disappear, but doesn’t think the ban would reduce their presence in her neighborhood. She also fears it would increase the black-market gun trade.
For her own protection, do Espirito Santo keeps a long knife hidden in a corner of her living room. She said she doesn’t want a gun, because the police might take it if they knew, and the drug dealers might become suspicious of her.
For now, in communities like Rocinha, that is what passes for gun control.