[SwinneySwitch]

Local PD demands direct talks with the President about a pay raise?

[Eric in the Ozarks]

They’d better talk to somebody.

[GeronL]

Mexico is a scary place right now

[mgc1122]

Better pay & benefits? Hell, I think asking for an uparmored Humvee would on my list of demands.

[SueRae]

Situation deteriorating.

I guess a lot of US citizens are rethinking those vacation plans to Cozumel, Cancun, etc. If they haven’t, they should.

[MahatmaGandu]

I was in Zihautenejo in May 2007 and they had sailors from the Mexican Navy (who were uniformly very nice kids) patrolling the pier and waterfront with M-16's. I asked and was told they were there to keep us safe from the bandits who had robbed tourists earlier in the year.

Just my opinion, but Mexico is sliding into anarchy and it's going to get worse as the remittances their illegals send home from the US decline. If it was bad in 2007 then it's worse now. I'd cancel plans to visit Mexico if anyone is contemplating them as I'd hate to be there when order eventually breaks down completely.

[Ken H]

End marijuana prohibition, and cut out most of the cartels' revenues:

John P. Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said marijuana, not heroin or cocaine, is the "bread and butter," "the center of gravity" for Mexican drug cartels that every year smuggle tons of it through the porous U.S.-Mexico border. Of the $13.8 billion that Americans contributed to Mexican drug traffickers in 2004-05, about 62 percent, or $8.6 billion, comes from marijuana consumption.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/022208dnintdrugs.3a98bb0.html

[pissant]

Where is Speedy Gonzalez when you need him?

[cripplecreek]

Guess I can’t really blame them but I sure as hell would ask for more than money.

[InABunkerUnderSF]

Oddly, word of the strike doesn't appear in La Jornada, one of the major Mexico City papers. Their top story is the fact that the peso shrank to 15.35 against the dollar in intra-day trading to close at 14.92 pesos to the dollar. The peso had been at about 10 to the dollar since revaluation in the early '90s. Here's a chart showing the last 120 days.

So the average Mexican's money is now worth about 2/3rds what it was four months ago. This makes remittances more valuable than ever and will encourage illegal immigration even in the teeth of the US recession.

The big crime story for the day seems to be the theft of 40 tonnes of frijoles in the state of Sinaloa - seriously.

I'm not saying the news is being censored but it looks like Mexico has bigger problems than a police strike in a beach town.

[Ken H]

Who had it right in 1990, Bill Bennett or Milton Friedman?

Milton Friedman on the "War on Drugs" (via 2006 FR thread))

(Letter to Bill Bennett; April 1990)

You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are a scourge that is devastating our society. You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are tearing asunder our social fabric, ruining the lives of many young people, and imposing heavy costs on some of the most disadvantaged among us.

You are not mistaken in believing that the majority of the public share your concerns. In short, you are not mistaken in the end you seek to achieve. Your mistake is failing to recognize that the very measures you favor are a major source of the evils you deplore. Of course the problem is demand, but it is not only demand, it is demand that must operate through repressed and illegal channels.

Illegality creates obscene profits that finance the murderous tactics of the drug lords; illegality leads to the corruption of law enforcement officials; illegality monopolizes the efforts of honest law forces so that they are starved for resources to fight the simpler crimes of robbery, theft and assault.

Drugs are a tragedy for addicts. But criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for society, for users and non-users alike. Our experience with the prohibition of drugs is a replay of our experience with the prohibition of alcoholic beverages.

-snip-

[UCFRoadWarrior]

Mexico will probably collapse in 6 to 12 months

In a bizarre way...this drug violence may actually make it harder to pass illegal alien amnesty....would be harder to liberalize allowing illegals in with all the drug cartels and the like.

Mexico is one big hellhole now

[SwinneySwitch]

Ping!

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