(reprint – from the inbox)

The Truth Hurts

“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”
Quote by Albert Einstein

On three occasions in the last twelve months I have toured the border east of Douglas with various dignitaries including authors, Tea Party leaders, filmmakers and three congressman: Jason Altmire and Tim Holden from Pennsylvania, and John Barrow from the state of Georgia. If you stand at the international boundary where it traverses the southern edge of the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge, you can look east and west and see a stretch of road right next to the border fence and get a panoramic view at least fifteen miles in length. At no time on any of these three trips did we encounter, or see, a single border patrol vehicle or agent. Why isn’t the Border Patrol on the border?

Twenty-seven miles straight north of the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge, five miles north of Highway 80, on Price Canyon Road, there is a Border Patrol camp. While three shifts of agents work out of this camp, Mexican outlaws pack dope on a nightly basis a mere stone’s throw away from the FEMA surplus camp trailers that house these Border Patrol employees. I live where Price Canyon Road leaves the highway, and I view Border Patrol vehicles going to and fro 15 times an hour – 24/7. Off-duty agents drive into town in government vehicles to get supplies, and none of them that you ask will tell you they catch more than one in four illegal aliens; many estimates are one in ten.

In the last several years Mexican cartel employees have started numerous forest fires in Cochise County costing the American taxpayer hundreds of millions to fight. In the summer of 2011, the Horseshoe Fire #2 burned the entire Chiricahua Mountain range down and that fire alone cost the U.S. Treasury fifty million to put out. Since that fire, the National Forest Service, who refuses to acknowledge the fires were started by outlaw Mexicans, have installed large metal gates on all major roads entering forest lands in the Chiricahua range.

On Tex Canyon Road a mile or so above the Krentz Ranch, the new gate is a few steps away from a large sign installed by the federal government warning all who see it that drug smugglers and criminal aliens are known to be in the area. The heavy metal gate that cost taxpayers $2,500.00 to build has one purpose: to deny access to you and me on what is supposed to be public land. Mexican outlaws are free to roam, but you and I will soon be locked out. Why do Mexican outlaws have more freedom that I have?

A Border Patrol supervisor from the camp on Price Canyon Road recently told a neighboring rancher that he was going to have to take some mandatory time off. “Why?” The rancher asked. The agent replied he had exceeded the maximum overtime limit and, if he didn’t stand down for several weeks, he would be making too much money. “How much do you make?” the rancher asked. “Oh, I’ll pull down about $134 thousand this year,” was the agent’s reply.

In the last decade job growth in the private sector has increased 1 percent, compared to 15 percent in government. When this recession started a couple years ago, the U.S. Department of Transportation had one employee making $170,000 a year; today there are 1,690. Employees in the Department of Defense making over $150,000 a year have increased in numbers from 1,168 to 10,100 in a couple years. Since Obama has been elected President, federal employees making over $100,000 have doubled in number. Per capita, individuals who are employed by the federal government make over twice as much as those employed in the private sector. The Border Patrol itself has 21,000 plus agents. I wonder how many of these would vote for a candidate who truly wanted to seal the border?

In the last few months I have interviewed numerous business people and law enforcement personnel from several agencies. I ask them how many businesses in border towns like Douglas are legitimate and how many are mere fronts for money laundering and other illegal activities relative to cartel smuggling. The lowest estimate given me was 20 percent who are involved to some degree with illegal border trade. The highest estimate was 80 percent, with most people I talked to saying it’s somewhere between 35 percent and 50 percent. No one I questioned denies a large underground economy that benefits not only Mexicans but many U.S. citizens, some of whom have ties to Washington D.C. The drug trade in Mexico is estimated to be a trillion dollar industry. No one knows for sure how big it is, but everyone agrees that it is so awash with cash that it makes the GDP of many nations in the world pale in comparison.

I am acquainted with a plain clothes NARC detective (who is not employed by a federal agency). In a conversation a few months ago he told me a story how in the mid-nineties he and other officers, after making a large narcotics bust, acquired enough evidence to arrest three U.S. Customs agents for taking bribes and, in the course of the investigation on these agents’ treasonous acts, they put together a cut-and-dried case that should have convicted them. They couldn’t even get an indictment. He explained that the U.S. Customs agency itself didn’t want the bad publicity. The judge was apathetic and the district attorney was lazy – nobody cared. At the end of this story, he looked at me with disgust and said, “Right today, I know of ten agents working at the port of entry between Douglas and Agua Prieta that are taking bribes, and there is nothing I can do about it.”

The idea that a fence from San Diego to Brownsville will fix the border problem is a fantasy. The border isn’t sealed because too many people are getting immensely wealthy doing business under the radar, and many of them are Americans. For Washington politicians, there is too much power at stake to actually find real solutions.

We don’t need a fence; we need a change in the rules of engagement. About ten years ago, about a dozen Cochise County ranchers, including myself had a meeting with Congressman Tom Tancredo. Mr. Tancredo is a true pioneer in trying to expose truth about border violence and the flood of illegal activity on the border. He told us that, on any given day, it was impossible to find over two or three individuals in the capitol building who would be willing to discuss border issues. Everyone in Washington, Mr. Tancredo said, considers the problem on the border political suicide.

The impotent gangster, Felipe Calderon, who is nothing but a puppet in a regime completely out of control, gets an invite from Obama himself to address a joint session of Congress. His speech, which Obama hoped he could use to embarrass conservatives in general and Arizona in particular, was considered a smashing success by all on the left. Congressmen Altmire, Holden, and Barrow were there along with Giffords, Pelosi, Reed, Grijalva and McCain, standing – cheering. We bomb Qadafi without a declaration of war and ignore the plague of human atrocities committed daily in Felipe Calderon’s country.

In an article in the New American on Friday, January 13, 2012, written by Brian Koenig, some enlightening statistics about the U.S. Customs and Immigration service are revealed. The article states that over half of USCIS officials say that Obama puts more focus on promoting immigration that on national security. Twenty-four percent of USCIS officials say that they are pressured by their superiors to approve applications that should have been rejected. The article goes on to say that five veteran employees were either demoted or given a choice to relocate because they were too tough on individuals applying for immigration benefits. “People are afraid,” said one veteran employee. “Integrity only carries a person so far because they’ve got to pay the rent.”

I personally have had a dozen or more Border Patrol agents tell me their superior officers purposely cause them to be unsuccessful. Border Patrol agents who are aggressive are given desk jobs and incompetence is rewarded. There are several agents in prison for simply doing their jobs. Agent Brian Terry lost his life because of the Obama administration’s refusal to call the situation what it is: dangerous. Bean bags should never have been an option.
In the last few weeks there has been considerable uproar over SB 1867. This bill was coauthored by none other than Arizona’s own Manchurian candidate, John McCain. It gives, among other things, the President the right to send the U.S. Army to your house and arrest you if he (in this case, Obama) deems you are a threat to National Security. No due process, no phone call, no attorney, no trial, only the Gulag. Of course Obama promises to never misuse the language of the bill which he and McCain think we, the people, have misinterpreted.

Perhaps at this time the contents of this bill seem benign, but I believe in the not-too-distant future this is going to change. The situation in Mexico continues to deteriorate and, in spite of what Obama says, the effects of cartel presence within our borders increases daily. The United States government will eventually be forced to acknowledge we are in a war, if not with Mexico, at least with the Mexican drug cartels. Experts say that the cartels now control seventy percent of Mexico, so war with Mexico or war with Mexican drug cartels is for all practical purposes one and the same.

If and when the U.S. government (which means Obama or whoever is on the throne) realizes war has come home to roost, the language in SB 1867 could take on a more relevant tone. Could it at that time seem more acceptable for a president to arrest someone who has the reputation of being dangerous?
This puts a whole new light on Joe Biden’s comment that the Taliban isn’t the real enemy.

Under Obama, respect for the constitution and the rule of law have been replaced by post-millennial political activism. Patriotism has become a dirty word. The Obama agenda is not, nor has it ever been, solution driven. This is most evident in the President’s refusal to acknowledge the well documented relationship the Mexican drug cartels have with Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist groups who want to destroy America.

Since Obama became President we’ve had no federal budget, [we have] colossal debt, [an] embarrassing foreign policy, no energy policy, higher gas prices, no Keystone pipeline, higher unemployment, increased class warfare, embarrassing government subsidies to companies doomed to bankruptcy, praise from the White House toward Wall Street occupiers, and open hatred for Tea Party activists, violence and increased anarchy on the Mexican border, increased anger, frustration , confusion, depression, hysteria, and disgust from the American public, which leads to more executive power, more departmental czars, increased regulation, federal intervention, and eventually we will have martial law.

As Rahm Emmanuel said, “You never want a good crisis to go to waste.”
By now you are probably thinking, “This guy is paranoid.” I have contemplated this and have decided that paranoia rests on a higher plane than deliberate naivete and cultivated stupidity. One doesn’t have to participate in the current dumbing down of America.

Connect the dots and fill in the spaces. The border isn’t getting sealed, because too many people are getting rich and powerful perpetuating the red hot economy that drug and human trafficking fuels. Anarchy, cruelty, and killing are just unfortunate byproducts of the crisis that Obama and Holder and Napolitano refuse to recognize.

In a recent conversation I had with Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever, who is an honorable man, I remarked to him, “Larry, several people have told me that the cartel is going to kill me because of the articles I’ve written. What do you think?” He replied, “Yes, there are people who would kill you if given the opportunity.” He paused momentarily, staring at me, and then continued, “But who you really need to worry about is the U.S. government. They have ways of punishing people like you.”

That begs another question, “Who are you afraid of?” The possibilities are endless.

Ed Ashurst
Apache, Arizona
January 26, 2012