Many Californians who aren't slumbering are moving out of the state--and not only the pathetic remains of the old Reaganite majority.
According to the most recent census, those leaving the state include old boomers, middle-aged families, and increasingly, many Latinos as well. Outmigration rates from places like Los Angeles and the Bay Area now rival those of such cities as Detroit. In the last decade, California's population grew only 10 percent, about the national average, largely due to immigrants and their offspring. Population increases in the Bay Area were less than half that rate, while the City of Los Angeles gained fewer new residents--less than 100,000--than in any decade since the turn of the last century! But undocumented Democrats contribute more than they take. /sarc
Increasingly, California no longer beckons ambitious newcomers, except for a handful of the most affluent, best educated, and well connected. Through the 1980s and even through the late '90s, the aspirational classes came to California. Now they head to other, more opportunity-friendly places like Austin, Houston, Dallas, Raleigh-Durham, even former "dust bowl" burghs like Des Moines, Omaha, and Oklahoma City. Meanwhile, Golden California, particularly its expensive, ultragreen coast, gets older and older. Marin County, the onetime home of the Grateful Dead and countless former hippies, is now one of the grayest urban counties in the country, with a median age of 44.
#1
So long as California imposes so many regulations on business, has given up State government to the public unions, has high taxes, and has corruption in government, they will drive industry and jobs away. There is always the business of growing and selling pot and paraphernalia to each other.
If the reassignment of ATF officials in recent weeks and the abrupt resignation of U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke were attempts by the Department of Justice and the Obama administration to cover up the Gunwalker scandal, they have failed, miserably.
Now they are saddled by yet another claim of retaliation against a whistleblower and new revelations that gunwalking was far more lethal and widespread that originally thought.
David Codrea of the Examiner has been at the forefront of the investigation, and reveals that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) and FBI -- two of the agencies that played key rolls in Operation Fast and Furious -- conducted a remarkably similar operation ... in Indiana.
At the very least, as with "Project Gunwalker," they indicate straw purchased guns ended up in crime traces, something those directing surveillance were well aware of. It also indicates the FBI and ATF were once again involved with allowing transactions rejected by NICS to proceed, indicating this practice could be more widespread than has been previously documented, and not confined to Southwest border operations....
It's also fair to ask if it seems credible that such similar operations would develop independently in the Southwest ("Project Gunwalker") and the Midwest ("Project Gangwalker'?), without authorization from and oversight coordination by Main Justice.
Codrea goes on to suggest that the special agent in charge (SAC) of the Columbus Field Division and the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Indiana need to answer whether they played a role in a plot to "walk" guns to criminals in the Midwest that sounds eerily like the Gunwalker plot in Arizona. Remind me, señor, Indiana, she is far away from the border, no?
It has long been suggested Gunwalker -- which sent at least 2,020 guns to the Sinaloa cartel -- was never a legitimate law enforcement operation, because there was no possible way for the program to succeed.
U.S. law enforcement does not have the jurisdiction to make arrests in Mexico where they claimed their targets resided, and the senior level cartel members they claimed to be targeting are not even involved with low-level criminal enterprises such as getting guns for their foot soldiers, an idea as absurd as plotting to catch executives of a billion-dollar corporation buying toner and copy paper at an office supply store.
Operation Fast and Furious only made logical sense if the goal of the operation was first and foremost to put U.S. guns in the hands of the Sinaloa cartel, and at Mexican crime scenes.
There was never any mechanism within Fast and Furious to intercept the thousands of Gunwalker weapons once they left the gun shops, and the multi-agency team (DOJ, ATF, FBI, DEA, IRS, DHS) acted as nothing more or less than a shield to prevent straw purchasers and smugglers from being intercepted by local or state law enforcement.
The apparent purpose of the operation was to lend the thinnest veneer of truth to the 90-percent lie spread by Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and Hillary Clinton from the very beginning of the Obama administration. It makes sense only as a plot to manufacture evidence for the punitive gun control laws that Obama has championed his entire political career. Indeed, even after Gunwalker was exposed, the number of U.S. guns in Mexico, many of which were put there by the actions of the government itself, was still brazenly used as the excuse for ATF long gun reporting requirements currently being challenged in courts.
Likewise, what Codrea has dubbed as "Gangwalker" appears to be another attempt to provide guns to criminals in order to generate more gun crime and then more calls for gun control.
The biggest difference between the two operations at this early date only seems to be that Gangwalker is a purposeful attempt to create the deaths of American citizens in order to pursue the administration's fanatical anti-gun agenda.
American deaths, for political gain.
Think about that claim for a minute, and what that would mean.
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I recall, BO referred to a national security force when he was campaigning in 2008. American Thinker, July 28, 2011 had the following BO quote in reference to an earlier speech:
<"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."/em>
So is Gangwalker the program to arm the security force to which O'Bummer is referring?
Two cars and a motorbike were used to kidnap the son of former governor Punjab Salmaan Taseer from Lahore's Gulberg area while he was on his way to office on Friday 26 August 2011. The city was gripped with panic because of this was the second high-profile kidnapping soon after the kidnapping of an American official, Warren Weinstein, from the city. Most likely, Shahbaz has been picked up by the Taliban through their affiliates such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi which last February kidnapped the son-in-law of the former Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC), General Tariq Majid.
The police is considering other possibilities too. It could be Mr Taseer's tenants in a plaza which he wanted vacated for repairs; it could be a rival real-estate tycoon seen attacking the Taseer family through his local newspaper; and it could be a quarrel within his circle of personal friends. Although no one can be sure about who kidnapped Shahbaz one speculation is that Al Qaeda and its subordinate groups are the most likely candidates, as they augment their fast dwindling kitty of for buying explosives.
Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah has the most unbuttoned mouth in the province and has once again invited a barrage of denunciation from the opposition PPP, obfuscating the issue through mutual recrimination. Rana Sahib had put his foot in his mouth when hazarding a guess on who could have abducted the American from Lahore's Model Town. He came on TV and opined that Warren Weinstein could have been doing the kind of things in Pakistan that CIA contractor Raymond Davis had done, killing three people on a Lahore road.
Then an economist writing in Express-Tribune (26 August 2011) clarified the status of the American: 'Dr Warren Weinstein, who headed the Pakistan Initiative for Strategic Development and Competitiveness (PISDAC) project, is a very well known figure within Pakistan's aid and development community. Under the PISDAC project, Weinstein oversaw strategic interventions in the dairy, gems, jewellery, marble and granite sectors in Pakistan, resulting in the establishment of companies such as Pakistan Stone Development Company (PASDEC), and the Pakistan Dairy Development Company. The project also provided technical assistance in modernising dairy as well as marble production and improving marketing in the gems and jewellery sectors. The overall impact of that intervention on Pakistan's economy according to one reported, is estimated to be around $67 million.
'The details of Dr Weinstein's contribution to Pakistan's economy, including PISDAC and other projects, are easily available on the Internet. Given the current office that Mr Sanaullah occupies, and the importance of what he says to the press, Punjab's law minister should perhaps encourage his staff to use Google to keep him updated on such a sensitive issue'.
The other high-profile kidnapping in Lahore was that of Malik Amir which took place in August last year and he still has to be recovered. Malik, 35, a jeweler and president of Barkat Market Traders Union in Garden Town Lahore, was kidnapped by armed men from his Faisal Town, Lahore residence. After a lot of search the family finally received a videotape message in February 2011 showing masked militants wielding kalashnikovs in the background. Captive Amir stated that his kidnappers wanted to be paid a ransom amount of Rs130 million as well as want the release of 153 militants being held in various prisons across Pakistan.
Malik Amir is a prosperous son-in-law of the former Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC) General Tariq Majid, and his captor is Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ). The terrorist outfit most certainly wanted - through Malik Amir - to communicate with Pakistan Army.
Pakistan's ambassador to Afghanistan Tariq Azizuddin was taken hostage by Taliban terrorists in February 2008. Tariq was traveling by road from his home in Peshawar to Kabul. He was taken along with his driver Gul Nawaz and bodyguard Amir Sultan in Pakistan's Khyber Tribal Agency, prior to passing through the border crossing at Torkham. The Taliban bargained hard over Azizuddin (now our ambassador in Turkey) and got a lot of their terrorists released in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It was reported that a former Al Qaeda prisoner at the US military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, was to be exchanged for him.
Money for Ambassador Azizuddin also changed hands through the Taliban chief, Baitullah Mehsud. It was reported that 55 additional militants were released, and that a payment of 20 million Pakistani rupees was made. One person released was Abdur Rahim Muslim-Dost. He was arrested along with his brother by Pakistani intelligence in November 2001 for links to Al Qaeda. Dost was an Afghan national, a journalist, and a poet. He was a member of Al Qaeda ally Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-e-Islami and worked for three pro-Taliban publications.
In September 2008, Abdul Khaliq Farahi, an Afghan diplomat was seized in Peshawar and taken to a hideout which according to Farahi was only 20 minutes away. Farahi, 52, spent two years and two months as a captive of Arab members of Al Qaeda in Waziristan. Questioned under torture for the first six months, he was moved 17 times. Apart from the first days when local Pakistani and Afghan militants handled him, he was always held by Arabs, which tells us how Pakistani Taliban serve their Arab masters.
As he revealed after his release in March 2011, Farahi was driven deep into the mountains of South Waziristan where the militants ran a virtual mini-state beyond the control of the Pakistani government. Farahi was released the same way, for money and in return for the release of Al Qaeda-linked terrorists. The same thing happened with an Iranian diplomat picked up in Peshawar, Heshmatollah Attarzadeh, the Iranian consul, till he was released in March 2010, on the same terms.
Kidnappings may increase in the days to come, if past incidents are any indication. Al Qaeda once thought non-Muslims rather than Muslims should be abducted for ransom. The man who spearheaded this policy was Ilyas Kashmiri, a Pakistani Kashmir-related 'asset', who had finally joined Al Qaeda as its top commander. The man who handled the nitty-gritty was Major (r) Haroon Ashiq who had defected to Al Qaeda because his brother Captain (r) Khurram had earlier joined Al Qaeda and died fighting the Americans in Helmand. Haroon is now in Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi after getting caught trying to kidnap an Ahmadi. Kashmiri also got Haroon to kill Major-General (r) Alavi in Islamabad in 2008.
Al Qaeda thought kidnapping non-Muslims for ransom was kosher and had got him first to kidnap a Hindu from Karachi with the help of another Major Basit. When the Hindu was discovered to have no cash at home, he was let off on the condition of embracing Islam, with which, needless to say, he immediately complied. The Al Qaeda policy of kidnapping Ahmadis continues in force and at the time of writing the relative of a prominent Ahmadi of Lahore is with Al Qaeda - in the process of being bargained over.
Let us hope against all hope that the kidnappers of Shahbaz Taseer are not linked to Al Qaeda and that he has still not been taken out of Lahore into the mountain fastnesses of Al Qaeda, and that the abductors are discovered and forced to release him. Otherwise, this could be the beginning of a series of kidnappings-for-ransom of the financial elite of Lahore.
Continued on Page 49
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Many Californians who aren't slumbering are moving out of the state--and not only the pathetic remains of the old Reaganite majority. 
