Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, whose county lies at the center of major drug and alien smuggling routes to Phoenix and cities east and west, attests to the violence. He said his deputies are outmanned and outgunned by drug traffickers in the rough-hewn desert stretches of his own county.
“Mexican drug cartels literally do control parts of Arizona,” he said. “They literally have scouts on the high points in the mountains and in the hills and they literally control movement. They have radios, they have optics, they have night-vision goggles as good as anything law enforcement has.
“This is going on here in Arizona,” he said. “This is 70 to 80 miles from the border – 30 miles from the fifth-largest city in the United States.”
He said he asked the Obama administration for 3,000 National Guard soldiers to patrol the border, but what he got were 15 signs.
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Parts of Arizona controlled by drug cartels
Putin hints will return to Kremlin in 2012
Russia’s paramount leader, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, hinted on Monday he would return to the presidency in 2012 for six more years and said democracy protesters marching without permission deserved to be beaten.
Asked by the Kommersant daily newspaper in an interview whether Russia’s 2012 presidential election did not worry him because he had already decided it, Putin replied:
“No, it interests me like…I wanted to say like everyone, but in fact more than everyone else. But I don’t want to make a fetish out of it.”
Putin ruled as president from 2000 to 2008 before handing the presidency to his chosen successor Dmitry Medvedev, in order to observe a law banning a third consecutive term.
Sebelius: Time for ‘reeducation’ on Obamacare
With a number of polls showing a sustained level of opposition to the Democrats’ health care reform efforts more than five months after passage, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the Obama administration has “a lot of reeducation to do” heading into the midterms.
While some surveys – namely the Kaiser Family Foundation monthly tracking poll – have suggested an uptick in support for the reforms, most other surveys continue to show a steady level of opposition to the new law that remains higher than the favorable opinions of it.
“Unfortunately, there still is a great deal of confusion about what is in [the reform law] and what isn’t,” Sebelius told ABC News Radio in an interview Monday.
With several vulnerable House Democrats touting their votes against the bill, and Republicans running on repeal, Sebelius said “misinformation given on a 24/7 basis” has led to the enduring opposition nearly six months after the lengthy debate ended in Congress.
“So, we have a lot of reeducation to do,” Sebelius said.
CBO: Eight years of Iraq War cost less than Stimulus
As President Obama prepares to tie a bow on U.S. combat operations in Iraq, Congressional Budget Office numbers show that the total cost of the eight-year war was less than the stimulus bill passed by the Democratic-led Congress in 2009.
According to CBO numbers in its Budget and Economic Outlook published this month, the cost of Operation Iraqi Freedom was $709 billion for military and related activities, including training of Iraqi forces and diplomatic operations.
The projected cost of the stimulus, which passed in February 2009, and is expected to have a shelf life of two years, was $862 billion.
The U.S. deficit for fiscal year 2010 is expected to be $1.3 trillion, according to CBO. That compares to a 2007 deficit of $160.7 billion and a 2008 deficit of $458.6 billion, according to data provided by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.
Dem Rep. steered scholarships to relatives
Longtime Dallas congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson has awarded thousands of dollars in college scholarships to four relatives and a top aide’s two children since 2005, using foundation funds set aside for black lawmakers’ causes.
The recipients were ineligible under anti-nepotism rules of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, which provided the money. And all of the awards violated a foundation requirement that scholarship winners live or study in a caucus member’s district.
Johnson, a Democrat, denied any favoritism when asked about the scholarships last week. Two days later, she acknowledged in a statement released by her office that she had violated the rules but said she had done so “unknowingly” and would work with the foundation to “rectify the financial situation.”
Initially, she said, “I recognized the names when I saw them. And I knew that they had a need just like any other kid that would apply for one.” Had there been more “very worthy applicants in my district,” she added, “then I probably wouldn’t have given it” to the relatives.
Record number in government anti-poverty programs
Government anti-poverty programs that have grown to meet the needs of recession victims now serve a record one in six Americans and are continuing to expand.
More than 50 million Americans are on Medicaid, the federal-state program aimed principally at the poor, a survey of state data by USA TODAY shows. That’s up at least 17% since the recession began in December 2007.
“Virtually every Medicaid director in the country would say that their current enrollment is the highest on record,” says Vernon Smith of Health Management Associates, which surveys states for Kaiser Family Foundation.
The program has grown even before the new health care law adds about 16 million people, beginning in 2014. That has strained doctors. “Private physicians are already indicating that they’re at their limit,” says Dan Hawkins of the National Association of Community Health Centers.
Education secretary encouraged staff to attend Sharpton’s counter rally
President Obama’s top education official urged government employees to attend a rally that the Rev. Al Sharpton organized to counter a larger conservative event on the Mall.
“ED staff are invited to join Secretary Arne Duncan, the Reverend Al Sharpton, and other leaders on Saturday, Aug. 28, for the ‘Reclaim the Dream’ rally and march,” began an internal e-mail sent to more than 4,000 employees of the Department of Education on Wednesday.
Sharpton created the event after Glenn Beck announced a massive Tea Party “Restoring Honor” rally at the Lincoln Memorial, where King spoke in 1963.
The Washington Examiner learned of the e-mail from a Department of Education employee who felt uncomfortable with Duncan’s request.
Although the e-mail does not violate the Hatch Act, which forbids federal employees from participating in political campaigns, Education Department workers should feel uneasy, said David Boaz, executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute.
Washington funds Palestinian campaign
UPI,
Washington is funding an ad campaign in Israel featuring billboards of Palestinian officials asking: “We are partners — what about you?”
The campaign launched Sunday includes the faces of senior Palestinian Authority officials Saeb Erekat, Jibril Rajoub and Yasser Abed Rabo, and Riad Malki, Palestinian foreign affairs minister, Yedioth Aharonoth said.
The aim of the campaign is to persuade Israelis that peace partners on the Palestinian side truly exist, and calls for support of a two-state solution, the Tel Aviv newspaper said.
The U.S. government was approached to fund the campaign by the Geneva Initiative founders, who drew up an agreement in 2003 to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the newspaper said.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, invested close to $250,000 toward the creation of the billboards, the newspaper said.
Brewer condemns report to UN mentioning Ariz. law
AP,
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer demanded Friday that a reference to the state’s controversial immigration law be removed from a State Department report to the United Nations’ human rights commissioner.
The U.S. included its legal challenge to the law on a list of ways the federal government is protecting human rights.
In a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Brewer says it is “downright offensive” that a state law would be included in the report, which was drafted as part of a UN review of human rights in all member nations every four years.
“The idea of our own American government submitting the duly enacted laws of a state of the United States to ‘review’ by the United Nations is internationalism run amok and unconstitutional,” Brewer wrote.
Obama meets with Bloomberg to discuss economy… while playing golf
POTUS is golfing with Mayor Bloomberg today, and they prefaced their game with a 15-minute discussion of the economy in the clubhouse at the Vineyard Golf Club. Seeking more details. CBS’s Mark Knoller, hailed by many including the WH for his command of presidential data, says the two men have not golfed together before. After their conversation they headed to the driving range, and then the links. Also in the foursome: Vernon Jordan and trip director Marvin Nicholson.”
The President and Mayor Bloomberg took the opportunity to discuss plans for short- and long-term economic growth at a pivotal point in our recovery,” said White House spokesman Reid Cherlin. POTUS invited the Mayor about a week ago. The mayor met POTUS at the golf club — he did not travel with him in the motorcade.
Uhh: Obama Admin halts prosecution of alleged USS Cole bomber
The Obama administration has shelved the planned prosecution of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged coordinator of the Oct. 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, according to a court filing.
The decision at least temporarily scuttles what was supposed to be the signature trial of a major al-Qaeda figure under a reformed system of military commissions. And it comes practically on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the attack, which killed 17 sailors and wounded dozens when a boat packed with explosives ripped a hole in the side of the warship in the port of Aden.
In a filing this week in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the Justice Department said that “no charges are either pending or contemplated with respect to al-Nashiri in the near future.”
The statement, tucked into a motion to dismiss a petition by Nashiri’s attorneys, suggests that the prospect of further military trials for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has all but ground to a halt, much as the administration’s plan to try the accused plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in federal court has stalled.
GDP revised 1.6 percent
The sputtering economy may be headed for a double-dip recession after the government revised the nation’s gross domestic product downward for the second quarter to 1.6 percent from an initial estimate of 2.4 percent.
The first quarter grew at a 3.7 percent annual rate, the second quarter 1.6 percent, and this quarter is not likely to be anything worth bragging about, with economists forecasting growth of only 1.7 percent. GDP is the value of all goods and services produced in the U.S. and it’s the key indicator of the nation’s economic health.
The numbers are numbing — not nearly strong enough to give the recovery enough stride so that employers will want to hire, consumers will have the confidence to spend, or for businesses to invest robustly in equipment.