• "In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens.

• A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in 1995 that 60 percent of the 20,000-strong 18th Street Gang in southern California is illegal; police officers say the proportion is actually much greater. The bloody gang collaborates with the Mexican Mafia, the dominant force in California prisons, on complex drug-distribution schemes, extortion, and drive-by assassinations, and commits an assault or robbery every day in L.A. County. The gang has grown dramatically over the last two decades by recruiting recently arrived youngsters, most of them illegal, from Central America and Mexico.

• The leadership of the Columbia Lil’ Cycos gang, which uses murder and racketeering to control the drug market around L.A.’s MacArthur Park, was about 60 percent illegal in 2002, says former assistant U.S. attorney Luis Li. Francisco Martinez, a Mexican Mafia member and an illegal alien, controlled the gang from prison, while serving time for felonious reentry following deportation."

• "The LAPD and the L.A. city attorney recently requested an injunction against drug trafficking in Hollywood, targeting the 18th Street Gang and the “non–gang members” who sell drugs in Hollywood for the gang. Those non–gang members are virtually all illegal Mexicans, smuggled into the country by a ring organized by 18th Street bigs. The Mexicans pay off their transportation debts to the gang by selling drugs; many soon realize how lucrative that line of work is and stay in the business."

     If anyone wishes, I recommend reading Heather Mac Donald's heavy hitting piece here:

http://www.city-journal.org...

Sam,

     Your point is well taken that some ordinary Americans are so harried they have no time to "reality check" their morality. They need a new dress, the latest make-up, and another couple hours before the sacred altar of entertainment, sometimes even entertainment news. 

     Some are so sensitive now, they mistake facts and direct talk as condescension or (horrors!) insensitivity.

     Some, who owe their rice bowl to the American Gulag will say or do anything to protect "theirs."

     Others, serious citizens, will try to change things, but as you say, there is a price.

Sam,

     I think it unusual to have over a thousand reads of a single post on a small town newspaper blog, especially within two days. Your last post must have touched people in surprising and meaningful ways. 

Kat,

Being a native of Kern County and known to many as a writer and author makes its contribution to the number of reads, especially when the topics generally strike a chord with so many people. And then as to that brief post when good people with differing opinions begin a dialogue it goes from there as you know. And it really isn't anything I choose to do to spark controversy; but the very topics that come unbidden to mind makes for the "prickly fabric" in many cases. But I learned much as a classroom teacher, and my style cannot but reflect this. If you are interested in people and have spent years instructing them you come to appreciate your own ignorance and try to keep that in mind.

Katatak on Dec 29, 2006 at 10:58 AM wrote:

>>> The LAPD and the L.A. city attorney recently requested an injunction against drug trafficking in Hollywood, targeting the 18th Street Gang and the “non–gang members” who sell drugs in Hollywood for the gang...   The Mexicans pay off their transportation debts to the gang by selling drugs; many soon realize how lucrative that line of work is and stay in the business.

--->That just illustrates how important it is to end the prohibition against drugs.  That would take the profits away from these criminals and they'd have to find new ways to fund their criminal enterprises.

Goat,

     Well said! Sam has been asking a consistent question: Where is the drug money going?

     We are talking annual drug monies that run into the hundreds of billions (if not well over a trillion) of dollars, and as Sam has been warning on his blog it is dangerous to inquire too insightfully.

     This kind of money buys and sells institutions, governments, as well entire countries.

     Sam's writings are a kaleidoscopic array of truths too painful for one man alone. The dark of night ledgers he references are the real global accounting sheets. The brilliant wizards who control these instrumentalities are not risk takers but they are cruel beyond compare; viewing as they do the slaughter of innocents as pleasant a repast as a fine wine.

     Along these lines you recommend, I am reminded of Emerson's thoughts as recorded in his chapter, Circles: 

     Beware when the great God lets lose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or, where it will end. There is not a piece of science, but its flank may be turned tomorrow; there is not any literary reputation, not the so-called eternal names of fame, that may not be revised and condemned. The very hopes of man, the thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, the manners and morals of mankind, are all at the mercy of a new generalization. Generalization is always a new influx of the divinity into the mind. Hence, the thrill that attends it.

     As any great trout stream lover does, I dip my thoughts into these babbling metaphysical brooks, wetting the soul in long, thirsty draughts. I find here both delights and terrors in the overturning of rocks and the reeling in of old and new generalizations.

     Alas though, I grow older and more aware of my ignorance; life for me is a walk along with those who are not dead, but live.