Replies to post #324406 on $Stock*Shop*Charts*News*Option$

[Tuff-Stuff]

Denninger<>To Mexico: Seal The Border



When you sleep with dogs, you wake up with fleas....

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/2420-To-Mexico-Seal-The-Border.html


MEXICO CITY — More than 200 people have been slaughtered during the past seven days in the most violent week in the criminal insurgency racking Mexico since President Felipe Calderón unleashed federal forces against drug trafficking gangs.

Ah, drug-trafficking gangs. Pray tell, where are they selling the drugs? That would be here in the US (for the most part), right?

And how are they getting their drugs here? That would be over the open border that Mexico demands so their citizens can illegally enter the United States, right?

"The difference now is that the criminals and security forces are clashing more frequently," said Raul Benitez-Manaut, a national security analyst. "The criminals are directly challenging the government."

Of course they are. The government's policies are directly enabling the gangs and providing them with funding. They see the opportunity to take over, and they're attempting to seize that power.

"Society asks the government to act, and we are going to act," Gonzalez told the newspaper Universal on Wednesday. "This is our territory. We are going to protect and defend it."

Hmmmm... how about when we do that? You know, when society tells our government to defend and protect our territory? Then we're murderous butchers, right, even when Mexicans pelt our cops with rocks (which, incidentally, is "assault with a deadly weapon" and under any reasonable expectation of the use of force, can subject the thrower to gunfire. Oh wait - it did.)

In a nationally televised address Tuesday, he again blamed much of the unrest on demand for illegal drugs in the United States and on Mexican gangsters' easy access to assault weapons bought in Texas and other U.S. states.

Uh huh. Let's see if we can add some facts here:

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We're idiots to make these drugs illegal. If they weren't then there would be no money to buy guns and ammunition with. No profit, no illegal business, no illegal gangs. Funny how the booze-running gangs stopped shooting up the streets in America when Prohibition was repealed!

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To buy a firearm in America from a dealer you must be a citizen or a legal resident and you must file a 4473 and have it checked with the local gendarme (and indirectly via the FBI) to make sure you're not a prohibited person. So how is it that these guns are getting bought by people who have no legitimate United States identification in the first place? Answer: They're not. Most of those guns are not coming from the US - the claims otherwise are lies. (Read those stats carefully: Most of the traceable guns come from the US. However, nearly all are not traceable! There is no such thing, in the main, as a legal grenade launcher or fully-automatic firearm in the US. Yes, there are a few, but the price of them is in the many thousands to tens of thousands of dollars, the owners are FINGERPRINTED and vetted by the BATFE, and those who spend the money and go to the trouble to acquire them legally are damn protective of them, for financial reasons if no other. The fully-automatic weapons the gangs have are coming from the Mexican police themselves or from other nations such as Venezuela and China - not America.)

Of course if there were no illegal mexicans in the United States then there would be no conduit for the guns to flow through, legally or otherwise. And if there was a border fence and actual enforcement of immigration laws, there would be no cross-border flows of weapons in the first place. It's damn hard to hide a 16" rifle barrel up your ass (the minimum legal length for a civilian rifle.)

But Calderón also argued that government officials' historical connivance with the gangs was largely responsible for the power they have accumulated. He said the crackdown is essential as gangs increasingly sell drugs to Mexican consumers, extort businesses and private citizens and challenge the government's control.

Ah, that's the problem. We have an open border, we have millions of Mexicans in the United States illegally, including a bunch of gang members, and they simply steal the weapons and then return them over that same open border.

The solutions to this are simple and obvious:

1.
Close the border. Period. Seal it. Post the National Guard with orders to shoot and fence the place. Make clear to Calderon that if his goons - whether wearing uniforms or not - come across the border via any means other than through legal channels, we will shoot them dead.

2.
Give all the illegals in this country six months to leave. After that it's open season. No, we won't shoot 'em, but we will deport them instantly (no hearings, no BS, no games) behind the wall and if the gangs kill them on the Mexican side of the border, so be it.

3.
Remove the demand side of the equation for these substances. This means legalization and taxation for most of them. Exempt from this a few (such as crystal meth) and for those drugs, make the punishment for distribution public execution. For those who want to use other drugs, such as marijuana, impose a tax high enough to fund the medical costs of their doing so - but leave consenting adults alone.

The argument for the last point is not because we as a society want to see lots of drug use. To the contrary - we want to see less drug use. But we have accomplished nothing in the last 100 years with this stupidity other than arming criminal gangs through providing them with an insane amount of money, all of it removed from the taxation stream of ordinary commerce.

We tried this with booze in the 1920s and wound up with gangs literally shooting up the cities and towns with automatic Tommy Guns. These gangs got their money from the manufacturing and sale of illegal liquor.

In 1933, when Prohibition was repealed the gang activity associated with illegal liquor manufacturing, transport and sale disappeared.

Why? Because it was no longer profitable to run booze illegally.

Without a profit motive there was no money to buy Tommy Guns and bullets, and there was no territory or "product sales" to fight over.

We have the recipe to stop this right here, right now.

It's time for both Calderon and President Obama to grow up and take away the gangster's toys the only way you can: by destroying their funding source.

[DewDiligence]

This WSJ piece is a good companion read for your post.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703513604575310364275165900.html

›China's Shifting Jobs Keep Migrants Closer to Home

By ANDREW BATSON
JUNE 17, 2010

LANQI VILLAGE, China— Recent wage increases at plants supplying Honda Motor Corp. and other manufacturers in southern China have their roots in rural villages like this one, where those who once joined an army of migrant workers are increasingly defecting to jobs closer to home.

One of them is Zhu Guijun, who from the age of 16 has followed construction jobs across the length and breadth of the nation. But since February, he has been able to support his wife and two children with work nearer his home here in China's northern hills.

The sprawling steel plant down the road is expanding, and needs skilled construction workers such as Mr. Zhu for the project. He says he is making the same 3,000 yuan (about $440) a month that he made as a migrant, and doesn't have to be away from home for long stretches.

"When I'm working away from home, I have a lot more expenses. And here we also have the income from working our land," he says. Now 42 years old, he also is enjoying family life more than he could before: "My kids don't want me to be away so much," Mr. Zhu says. He rides his motorcycle home to the village every night.

The fact that many people like Mr. Zhu no longer need or want to go so far afield to make a living reflects a convergence of two big changes in the nation's economy. A more-even distribution of growth across China, as a boom in construction and infrastructure projects boosts inland provinces, has widened options for workers. At the same time, the work force is starting to get a bit older, and more reluctant to spend so much time far from their homes and families.

That is forcing an adjustment in the parts of China that have long relied on migrant workers for low-cost labor. In 2009, the number of migrant workers going to the Pearl River Delta region—the manufacturing heartland in the southern province of Guangdong—shrank by 22.5%, a government survey says.

To keep attracting workers, local governments are raising minimum wages and pushing companies to improve working conditions and benefits. These measures come as Guangdong has been roiled by disturbances at several manufacturers, including strikes at three Honda-affiliated plants and a spate of suicides at electronics giant Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Both the Honda suppliers and Hon Hai have increased wages.

"Our rural migrant workers are not the same as they used to be," says Wang Nanjian, the mayor of Jiangmen, a city on the west side of the Pearl River Delta. "They have some room for choice. Conditions at home are pretty good, and there are more employment opportunities inland, so they don't need to come to the coast."

Increasingly, Mr. Wang says his government is working to find workers locally. Training programs and recruitment centers have been set up in villages around Jiangmen. "Companies need a lot of skilled workers, but their demand isn't being completely met," he says.

Rural workers are staying closer to home and traveling shorter distances.A government survey of migrant workers in 2009 found the number working inside their home province increased by 8.2% from the previous year, and now account for 48.8% of the total migrant population.

The rise in local job opportunities reflects how China's growth is no longer as concentrated in the export-driven provinces along the coast, although there still can be big differences in working conditions and wages between high-end factories on the coasts and production centers in poorer areas inland.

The National Labor Committee, a Pittsburgh workers'-rights advocacy group, reported this year on conditions in a high-tech parts supplier in Southern China, describing teenage workers crammed into production lines for "mandatory 15-hour shifts, six or seven days a week." The workers, many of whom are 16 and 17 years old, were paid 65 cents an hour—or 52 cents an hour after deductions for food, the NLC said.

The government for years has funneled more money and public-works projects to the poorer central and western provinces, a move accelerated by the stimulus plan launched to counter the global financial crisis.

China's central and western provinces have grown faster than the coastal provinces over the past couple of years. And the northern province of Hebei, where Lanqi Village is located, has seen a boom: The volume of construction grew 42.2% in 2009, compared with a national average increase of 12.8% and declines in Beijing and Shanghai. That has led to more jobs in steel plants, and in the local iron-ore mines that supply them.

The results are clear to Lang Yong, who keeps tabs on village affairs from his shop selling cigarettes and cold drinks. Out of a population of roughly 1,000 people, there are just seven or eight men who work away from home, he says.

A decade ago, there were more than 100 who had to migrate far away in search of work. "Lots of young people used to go to Beijing or Tianjin to work as drivers, or in construction," he says. Mr. Lang himself spent many years on the road, but at the age of 53 prefers the lighter work of tending his shop. That points to how age is also changing the shape of the migrant work force.

According to village surveys by the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, a majority of rural men aged 20 to 30 work outside their home county. But after age 45, only 14% of men work outside their home county, and just 3% of women.

With China's one-child policy resulting in fewer young people entering the work force, those ranks will increasingly be dominated by older workers reluctant to follow the migrant lifestyle. According to estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau, people over 45 now account for 32% of the working-age population in China, up from 27% a decade ago.‹