Arming the Cartels

Big Business for Too Many Americans

It no secret that Mexico hovers on the brink of a civil war, well-armed gangsters with massive numbers of government officials on their payroll, pretty much overwhelming what legitimate police/military operations can mount, brazen assaults are thrown at authorities with greater manpower and better weapons. Most of these operations succeed because of the unchecked demand in the United States for narcotics. Drugs to soften hard lives. Addiction responding to hopelessness or medical treatments gone awry.  There’s no question that the Mexican people hate these dangerous times and the dangerous people who seem to supersede government control. But it is only possible with massive importation of specialized guns from the United States. And US demand for drugs.

“Mexico experienced a record number of murders for the second year in a row in 2018, with official statistics logging 33% more killings than in 2017, Reuters reports… Mexican authorities opened 33,341 murder investigations in 2018, the highest number ever, the country’s Interior Ministry reported Sunday. The figure outpaced even last year’s toll [2017]of over 25,000, which was then the highest number since the record began in 1997.” Time Magazine, January 23^rd. 

A recent incident, involving the capture and release of Sinaloa cartel leader Ovidio Guzman Lopez, son of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman who is himself incarcerated in a supermax federal prison in the United States, illustrates how desperate times have become… and how powerless the Mexican government is to stop the violence. It happened in a recent raid by Mexican federales against Ovidio at his home in the northern Mexican town of Culiacan. A video assembled by the Mexican government tells this horrific story. Kate Linthicum and Steve Fisher, writing for the October 31^st Los Angeles Times, present this summary:

“It is an extraordinary video — a behind-the-scenes look at what happened this month when Mexican security forces briefly captured one of the world’s most-wanted cartel leaders… In the clip, which was released Wednesday [10/30] by Mexico’s defense secretary, Ovidio Guzman Lopez is shown surrendering to soldiers who had trapped him in a home in the northern city of Culiacan… Instead of putting Guzman in handcuffs and immediately taking him into custody, the soldiers instead waited while he made a phone call.

Outside, fighters from Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel were seizing control of the city, taking hostages, blocking intersections with burning vehicles and laying siege to a housing complex for the families of military personnel. The soldiers, who at that point probably knew they had no clear way out, asked Guzman to order his men to stand down… ‘Tell them to leave now!’ a soldier is heard shouting at the 28-year-old Guzman…

“The video shows the desperation of authorities during the failed operation to capture the younger Guzman, who is wanted in the United States on drug trafficking charges… Eventually, the soldiers freed Guzman and retreated, a decision that Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has defended as necessary to save lives.

“The video was part of a detailed presentation by Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval, who used maps, diagrams and photographs to explain to reporters how cartel gunmen overpowered elite security forces with paramilitary tactics and an arsenal of machine guns and homemade tanks… He showed a graphic video of one soldier who had part of his leg blown off by bullets and a photograph of another who had been taken hostage, his eyes shielded with a blindfold.

“The presentation seemed designed to suggest that authorities had no option other than to release Guzman. ‘The most important thing is the protection of citizens, the protection of lives,’ Lopez Obrador said.”

If Mexico bordered Canada, without that intervening body called the United States, none of this would have happened. Not only would the demand for narcotics have been commercially insufficient to create the dollar volume that makes the cartels viable, but Canada does not have a virtually unrestricted open gun market, especially one that condones rather easy access to military-grade semiautomatic assault rifles with oversized magazines and bullets intended to kill large numbers of human beings even with off-center hits.

The American radical right, dramatically misinterpreting the Second Amendment (intended to allow authorized militia members to keep their weapons), has effectively empowered and armed those cartels, well-beyond any minority of specialized and armed cartel “soldiers.” There are so many assault weapons smuggled south across our border with Mexico that such weapons are ubiquitous across a wide spectrum of cartel functionaries. All the gangsters have them. According to a list compiled by Wikipedia, the United States has the largest body of private gun ownership on earth (120 guns per 100 inhabitants), with Serbia clinging to a distant second place (38/100).

Without adequate background checks, loopholes that enable “private sellers” to market dozens of assault weapons at a time at so-called “gun shows” across the United States, it is so easy for cartel representatives to load up on these weapons and ship them south. Not to mention the roughly 70,000 licensed gun-sellers in this country. American Border Patrol agents are so focused on undocumented immigrants and drug traffickers heading into the United States that they give pretty short shrift to the illegal weapons smuggling heading in the opposite direction. And Mexican authorities are simple understaffed and overwhelmed. Estimates suggest that an average of 2-3,000 guns leave the United States for Mexico, illegally of course, every day.

There is a parallel right in Mexico supporting private gun ownership. Article 10 of the Mexican Constitution reads: “Article 10 - The inhabitants of the United Mexican States have the right to possess arms in their residences for their security and legitimate defense with the exception of those prohibited by federal law, and those reserved for the exclusive use of the military.  Federal law will determine the cases, conditions, requisites, and places in which the bearing of arms by inhabitants will be authorized.” In practice, there are some pretty strong requirements. Testing. Training. Background checks that can take years. Retesting to retain a license. And only one legal gun store (with nothing on display) in the country… in Mexico City. 

“Mexico’s lone gun store sold 52,147 firearms in 2009-14, a figure dwarfed by the black market trade that’s largely fueled by illegal American imports. Mexican law bars guns from entering without an ‘extraordinary import authorization,’ but enforcement is spotty: 73,684 of the 104,850 guns confiscated in Mexico during the same period were traced to the U.S., according to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.” CBSNews.com, 8/17/16

“From 2009 to 2014, more than 73,000 guns that were seized in Mexico were traced to the U.S., according to a new update on the effort to fight weapons trafficking along the U.S.-Mexico border… The figure, based on data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, represents about 70 percent of the 104,850 firearms seized by Mexican authorities that were also submitted to U.S. authorities for tracing… The data was analyzed by the Government Accountability Office, which notes in its report that U.S. police agencies have acknowledged firearms smuggling is fueling violent crime in Mexico.

“‘Most of the firearms seized in Mexico that were traced and found to be of U.S. origin from 2009 to 2014 came from U.S. Southwest border states,’ the GAO report says. ‘While guns seized in Mexico of U.S. origin were traced to all of the 50 states, most came from Texas, California, and Arizona.’… Many of those guns were bought legally in the U.S. and then smuggled over the border, according to the GAO.” NPR.com, 1/12/16. Today, two-thirds of homicides in Mexico are by shooting, well more than double the rate from 1997. Mexico estimates that they intercept only about 14% of smuggled guns.

If Trump’s wall would stop the flow of military assault rifles and other guns into Mexico, perhaps Mexico would pay for it. But the proliferation of all sorts of guns, with the most lax civilian gun laws in the world, make that tsunami of gun availability in the United States an unstoppable flood, based on raw American greed, Mexico’s greatest nightmare. Americans want their illicit drugs. Wonder why Central Americans and Mexicans want to leave their violent homelands to a safer United States? Based on a danger that was created and continues to be fueled by us?! Could American gunmakers even survive without this illegal traffic?

            I’m Peter Dekom, and just everything related to undocumented immigration across our southern border, the instability in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, and the violent drug trade is basically born, bred and sustained by the United States of America and its hypocritical and inane gun laws and uncontrolled addiction rates.

Thirty-Seven Minutes and No Ovation

Alone and on the Wrong Side of History

A President of the United States, so wrapped up in his own very bizarre vision of the world that appears to be shared by very few other nations, addressed the United Nations General Assembly on September 24^th to an audience not remotely interested in what he was proposing. Indeed, his admonitions and recommendations to the world were obviously not intended for those seated before him. Donald John Trump was under siege from the opening of a Congressional impeachment inquiry over his request of a foreign power (Ukraine) to re-investigate “corruption” in Joe Biden’s family (his son Hunter was working in Ukraine, but no nasty evidence was ever found), a political rival.  No, Mr. Trump wasn’t talking to the world; he was really just rallying his base… and probably no one else.

The UN was focused on climate change this time around. On September 23^rd, Trump spent only a few minutes listening to on-topic presenters before he simply left. Instead, at his main address on the 24^th, he picked up on a theme that only has serious traction in the United States with his evangelical following: religious persecution of Christians and Christian missionaries overseas. He also demanded that abortions worldwide be stopped. To a world that thinks of the United States as a rogue, gun-crazy land of mass shootings, additionally, he railed against threats to American gun ownership by liberals.

As the world has watched the separation of children from their parents at the US border, with global sympathies clearly on the side of hapless refugees traveling vast distances to escape the ultra-violence of their home countries, he spoke of the “vicious coyotes” smuggling dangerous immigrants across the US southern border. “Today, I have a message for those open-border activists who cloak themselves in the rhetoric of social justice. Your policies are not just. Your policies are cruel and evil. You are empowering criminal organizations,” Trump claimed. Nothing worse than toddler-criminals, I always say.

As China continues to step in and pick up giving foreign aid where the United States departs, enters into multinational treaties and generally resonates with popular global themes (free trade and fighting climate change), Trump ripped into the PRC and their economic dominance… forgetting that most of the world already believes that the United States is the biggest economic bully on earth. The world shudders as these two great powers battle in a trade war, which could easily trigger a global recession.

Notwithstanding that even America’s traditional allies are unwilling to join with Trump on a possible military effort against Iran – caused they believe by Trump’s unilateral abrogation of a functioning UN accord that was effectively containing Tehran’s nuclear weapons program – Trump ramped up his anti-Iran rhetoric, demanding that the world join the United States in containing Iran. “As long as Iran’s menacing behavior continues, sanctions will not be lifted… All nations have a duty to act… No responsible nations should subsidize Iran’s blood lust.” The silence was deafening.

He warned of the perils of “socialism,” even as most of his base doesn’t even know what the word really means (no private ownership, all farms and factories are government-owned, not a remote threat in the United States). Despite the increase in world trade and rapidly expanding multinational treaties, accelerating workarounds to sidestep US sanctions and trade barriers, Trump touted the end of globalization, stating that “The future does not belong to globalists… The future belongs to patriots.” He championed nationalist zealots with tightly sealed borders. America First? America really alone!

That Donald Trump’s vectors flow in precisely the opposite direction of the majority of countries on earth, particularly the world’s democracies, while he believes that he represents a global majority is more a reflection of a form of narcissism that makes it almost impossible to lead the United States or convince other nations to help us achieve what best serves most Americans. His America First slogan seems to be producing a global consensus: America no longer matters.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder just how much Trump’s fallacious and antagonizing view of the world will cost his followers… in hard dollars and quality of life.

Unbearable Accumulation of Riches

Then God blessed them, and God said to them,

“Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it;

have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air,

and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Genesis – 1:28

To many evangelicals, God’s biblical pledge after the Great Flood not to wreak global havoc was a carte blanche that took the lid off of any restrictions against pouring greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, enabling those to deny the possibility of a massive disaster to humanity from climate change. But was that sanctified promise about God’s protection of whatever mankind might do to itself… as opposed to God-directed catastrophic and unilateral imposition of punishing natural disaster? Likewise, the above passage from Genesis is often cited (even by the Trump’s former head of the Environmental Protection Agency) as justification for unbridled and open exploitation of nature’s bounty, even as to non-renewable resources and species extinction.

Clearly, the official Papal dictate on behalf of the Catholic Church rejects the notion that God gave mankind permission to ravage the earth without any responsibility for the consequences. In 2015, Pope Francis released Laudato Si (“Praised Be”), an encyclical on climate and justice to “enter into dialogue with all people about our common home.” If anything, the Pope very much took a position precisely opposite from the above evangelical purported incantations. Indeed, even among evangelical communities the world over, the American evangelical movement stands apart on environmental issues; the American evangelical view is not globally endorsed.

Why is this relevant? Because so much in the way of governmental policy these days is determined and justified to religious references. From Hindu policies vis-a-vis Muslims to the belief by many, particularly Christians and Muslims, that it is their mandate to convert the world to their faith. Wars are started. People are persecuted. Freedoms crushed. Environments are trashed. All in the name of God. Can this truly be the dictate of a benevolent power for good? Personally, I obviously think not.

Once more, a little story – not so little to those immediately impacted, from human to animal – rises to make the point that American policy is being determined and justified by a religious minority with fierce and politically essential support for Donald Trump and his designees. To the detriment of our future, environment and the preservation of God’s creations. Fish, bears, clean water and sustainable land vs. ripping apart the earth in pursuit of copper and gold. Guess which side the Trump administration supports. The latter expects to generate a cool $1 billion or more a year. Money talks. Environment walks. Jobs and wealth trump respect for God’s creations.

There are big environmental battles everywhere, but those remaining vast untapped American natural resources are heavily concentrated in Alaska… as are some of this nation’s most vulnerable ecosystems and species.

Alaska’s Katmai National Park borders the largest unmined deposits of gold and copper in the world. There’s a company ready to exploit those valuable metals with the full support of the Trump administration: “Pebble Limited Partnership, a subsidiary of a Canadian company that aims to dig Pebble Mine, an open pit the size of 460 football fields and deeper than One World Trade Center is tall. To proponents, it’s a glittering prize that could yield sales of more than $1 billion a year in an initial two decades of mining… Pebble Partnership’s corporate parent, Northern Dynasty Minerals , originally envisioned 78 years of mining, which would recover a little more than half of the mother lode…. It could also, critics fear, bring about the destruction of one of the world’s great fisheries…

“The Pebble Mine site lies 200 miles southwest of Anchorage. One hundred miles farther southwest is Bristol Bay [pictured above], home to the world’s largest run of wild sockeye salmon. Early each summer, hundreds of 32-foot commercial fishing boats surge into the bay, charging into state-designated territories like riders in the Oklahoma Land Rush. The fishery generates 14,000 jobs and $1.5 billion a year.

“Captains and crews come from around the world to reel in as many tons of sockeye as they can during the lucrative two-month season. Regional tribal leader Robin Samuelsen Jr. worked the bay last summer for his 54th season, his four grandsons reeling in wildly wriggling fish… ‘We have a gold mine,’ he said. ‘It’s in salmon.’

“Alaska has long been known for grand ventures and great risks. It’s also known for the richness of its natural resources, including gold, copper — and salmon… In the case of the Pebble Mine, the question is: Can they coexist?...

“In hopes of getting the initial phase past the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for permitting under the Clean Water Act, the company scaled down its project to a 20-year mine that would still be colossal, with waste piles and other facilities occupying a site more than half the size of Manhattan… Northern Dynasty’s plan leaves little margin for error.

“The development would destroy more than 3,400 acres of wetlands and 81 miles of streams. It would straddle Upper Talarik Creek and the Koktuli River, Bristol Bay tributaries known nationally for trophy trout fishing and salmon spawning… Mineralized rock would be blasted in the pit, crushed, ground into sand, floated and concentrated, producing 180,000 tons of material a day. The challenge facing the company, in a place that averages more than 50 inches of rain a year, is how to ensure that tainted water will never reach Bristol Bay, which contains more than half of the North Pacific’s sockeye salmon.

“Northern Dynasty would submerge particularly hazardous mine tailings, piled across more than 1,000 acres, in water to prevent acid generation. This waste would be contained in liners behind earthen dams and ultimately dumped back into Pebble’s open pit after mining ended.

“Less hazardous bulk tailings, heaped across 2,800 acres, would be held back by massive embankments designed to channel seepage into a treatment system. In all, these tailings dams, some as high as 40 stories, would extend more than 10 miles.

“Company representatives say the bulk waste would have the consistency of inert sand. They say their latest plan would move most operations out of Upper Talarik Creek to reduce risks. But mine opponents say subterranean water systems are interconnected, and federal scientists say the latest groundwater models are inadequate.

“The company plans to prevent contamination by treating as much as 13,000 gallons of discharge a minute on average from ore processing, tailings seepage and pit drainage, funneling it into the Koktuli River. The amount, which dwarfs quantities handled by other U.S. hard-rock mines, would increase to 22,000 gallons of water a minute after the mine closed. It would level out at 5,000 gallons a minute thereafter — perpetually, every day of the year, through storms, power outages and earthquakes.

“In Bristol Bay, commercial, sport and subsistence fishermen worry about the dams, fearing they could breach or water treatment could fail. If so, contaminants in Upper Talarik Creek could spew into Iliamna Lake, Alaska’s biggest, and from there down the Kvichak River into the bay. Or toxins could enter the north and south forks of the Koktuli, flowing into the bay through two more rivers also legendary for salmon spawning.

“And that isn’t the only concern… Northern Dynasty proposes a 188-mile natural-gas pipeline across Cook Inlet to supply a power plant that could light up a city the size of Gary, Ind. An icebreaking ferry would carry ore 18 miles across Iliamna Lake, connecting to a haul road built through bear migration territory, and from there to a proposed seaport…

“No one has studied Pebble Mine more thoroughly than scientists at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, whose Seattle branch spent three years examining the issue and concluded in 2014 that the mine could cause ‘unacceptable adverse effects.’… Chris Hladick, EPA regional administrator in Seattle, sent a 100-page critique to the corps on July 1, saying the draft probably underestimated the potential harm to water quality and fish. He warned that mine waste could discharge far more water than predicted, affecting a larger area, and suggested lining the bulk tailings to avoid contaminating groundwater.

“But a month later, after Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy lobbied Trump, Hladick followed instructions from EPA headquarters and withdrew the agency’s long-standing option to veto Pebble. The environmental organization Earthworks has sent the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission evidence of potential insider trading ahead of the agency’s reversal, which sent Northern Dynasty’s shares soaring… In Bristol Bay, the EPA’s turnaround stung. Fishermen knew Hladick as a former city manager of Dillingham, the bay’s commercial fishing hub. He’s no longer welcome on many of their boats.

“Opposition to the mine has united players often at odds, including Alaska Native communities and corporations, conservationists, sport fishermen and hunters. Several organizations sued the EPA this month calling for a reversal. On Wednesday, U.S. House Democrats opposing the mine argued with Republicans during a committee hearing on Capitol Hill.” Richard Read and Carolyn Cole writing for the October 27^th Los Angeles Times. 

Wouldn’t a massive open pit mine look so much better than the above photograph? What could possibly go wrong? In one of the most seismically active regions in the United States? Once gone, those species and that ecosystem might take decades to reestablish… if ever. The copper and gold aren’t going anywhere.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and nature does not seem to care how human beings interpret their perceptions of God; she started with nothing… and can start over without waiting for an election.

Practically Uncovered

If you have a strong union healthcare plan or if you live in the rarified air of generous corporate benefits, you will undoubtedly want to keep what you’ve got. Might be there too if you are already on Medicare (even as benefits will slowly erode if the current administration has anything to say about that), especially with supplemental coverage, or if you are just plain rich. And unless you are enrolled in one of those “not available for individual buyers” plans for glasses, hearing aids and dental work, what coverage you can buy for those ailments on the open market is hardly worth the cost.

Prudent consumers, carefully weighing privately available medical insurance hoping to find a reasonable alternative… well, sorry, such plans simply do not exist. And a free market not only has failed to produce falling prices, but instead we have rapidly rising premiums, contracted coverage, soaring co-pays and massively expanded deductibles. A few plans look cheaper but on closer examination fly in the face of the requirements of the Affordable Care Act by listing what they cover (effectively eliminating expensive treatments and diseases most like to be pre-existing conditions). 

Medical bankruptcies, especially among those who have insurance, are beginning to explode again.

As hospitals market to attract these prudent shoppers, they often list the cost for basic procedures… but fail to mention the little extras like anesthesiologists, operating theater and hospital room costs, nursing staff, additional medications that are routinely required, which can push the total cost to a vast multiple of the cited procedure. In short, such wildly inaccurate marketing information seems to border on fraud… but few do anything short of working out a payment plan with the hospital.

Where consumers have to pay for healthcare directly, unless you are rich and simply do not care, here’s the bottom line: affordable quality healthcare is a myth. It just does not exist. “High-deductible health plans, which are fast becoming the dominant form of coverage for U.S. workers, were supposed to empower patients. Backers said the plans would create engaged shoppers who would check prices and compare providers, forcing hospitals, doctors and drugmakers to control costs.

“Deductibles have more than tripled over the last decade for people who get insurance through their jobs, but the promised consumer revolution never materialized… Instead, Americans have been left shopping in the dark and increasingly struggling with medical bills they can’t afford, a Times examination of job-based health insurance shows.

“‘This idea that we were going to give patients ‘skin in the game’ and a few shopping tools and this was going to address the broad problems in our healthcare system was poorly conceived,’ said Lynn Quincy, former healthcare advocate at Consumer Reports now at Altarum, a nonprofit research and consulting firm.

“‘It’s clear now that the idea definitely hasn’t borne fruit,’ she said. ‘It hasn’t made people feel more confident seeking care. It hasn’t led to better value. And it’s had terrible consequences on patients’ ability to afford care.’

“Although Americans are willing to seek out lower-priced generic medications, few are comfortable shopping for medical care, studies and surveys show. Patients like Grimm who do try are often frustrated by incomplete or inaccurate information from insurers, hospitals and other medical providers.

“Just 1 in 6 covered workers tried to shop for the best price for a medical service in the previous year, according to a nationwide poll conducted for this project by The Times and the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. Two-thirds of workers with job-based coverage said finding the cost of a medical treatment or procedure was somewhat or very difficult.

“Meanwhile, prices for medical care and prescription drugs haven’t moderated, as advocates of high-deductible insurance predicted. Instead, they have soared… The average price of a knee replacement, for example, shot up nearly 80% between 2003 and 2017, increasing at more than double the rate of overall inflation, a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis of commercial insurance data found.” Los Angeles Times, October 21^st. 

Even where consumers can search out more efficient and cost-effective hospitals and clinics, they often do not know how to price shop or are simply wary of leaving their vital health needs to the lowest bidder, often a service provider they know nothing about. “In one study of nearly 150,000 people covered by two large national employers, only about 1 in 10 who could shop for price information did, even if they had a high-deductible plan. And use of the tool was not associated with lower healthcare spending.

“In the Times-Kaiser Family Foundation survey, only about a quarter of workers with job-based coverage reported using an online cost tool… Americans show little inclination to find the best deal even for a basic medical service like an MRI scan, which can be as much as five times more expensive in one facility than in another, another recent study found.

“Researchers analyzing commercial insurance data from tens of millions of Americans reported only 14% of patients went to the lowest-cost MRI within a 30-minute drive of their house. Patients on average passed six lower-priced MRI facilities on their way from home to the place where they had the imaging, the study found.

“Many Americans don’t want to have to shop for healthcare, preferring to let their physicians guide their care… ‘We pretty much go where we’re comfortable. We’re not looking for the cheapest doctor,’ said Jim Morrissey, 39, a food service manager who lives near Harrisburg, Pa. ‘I’m loyal to the doctors I trust.’ … Americans’ lack of enthusiasm for medical shopping also reflects how little information is available about prices.” LA Times.

Developed nations wonder how the United States can deny universal healthcare as unaffordable… and then cut trillions of dollars from the tax bills of the mega-rich corporations and spend 41% of the global military budget while still losing all those “wars.” German healthcare, for example, is a uniform policy administered through private insurance companies with government support. Dental, eyecare and hearing are covered. The premium is a percentage of income, there are no co-pays, annual deductibles are capped at about $500, and prescriptions cannot exceed EU10/month. And trust me, having experienced the system, it is at least the equal of what rich insurance policies provide here in the US.

There is no developed Republican alternative. Twenty red state attorneys general, supported by the US Department of Justice, are suing the federal government to kill the entire Affordable Care Act. They are arguing that the only healthcare that works is a free and open marketplace, even as every independent research survey conclusively determines that this is beyond a false promise. 

Whether we phase a plan in over an acceptable number of years, fix what we have or find another path to universal coverage, the “one true thing” is obvious: the United States has finally reached the stage of a major healthcare crisis that is getting so much worse so much faster than anyone could have imagined. We have the most expensive healthcare costs on earth… and the most exclusionary system in the developed world. And it is finally and dramatically breaking down.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and it is time to get concrete and get a plan on the table that works for the American people!!!