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If there was one success that South American anti-drug efforts had in the past two decades, it was to dismantle some of the larger drug trafficking networks that were operating there. Since the death of Pablo Escobar in 1993, there have been no comparable figures in Colombian society in terms of wealth, influence, and criminality. But the drug trafficking organizations that supplied American drug users didn’t disappear. They moved to Mexico, demonstrating one fundamental rule about the drug war – as long as demand exists, you can never end the trade, you can only hope to relocate it.

Before the 1980s, Mexican drug gangs were little more than nuisances in Mexican society. They’d profit from smuggling marijuana into the United States, and could sometimes subvert institutions through corruption or violence. But today, Mexican drug gangs control much of northern Mexico and, according to Stratfor, an organization of current and retired intelligence officials, they now pose a significant threat to the federal government in Mexico City.

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It’s getting cold out there.

From The Columbian:

Businesses that were drawing down loans to fund these projects have been told by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. that their credit is frozen. These borrowers are being encouraged to seek other financing within the next 90 days. They make up an unknown portion of the 1,000 borrowers whose $400 million worth of loans were seized from the Bank of Clark County on Jan. 16.

“The (FDIC) is going to leave me with unfinished homes that cannot be refinanced, rented or sold,” said a local home builder, who asked The Columbian not to publish his name because he did not want public comments to affect his negotiations with the FDIC.

That TARP thing sure is working well. If it works any better you won’t be able to charge a hamburger.

Unrelated but obvious: anonymous bloggers are a threat to Western Civilization. Anonymous developers get to call newspapers and have their complaints published. Seems equal to me.

From The New York Times:

Inspections of the plant in Blakely, Ga., by the state agriculture department found areas of rust that could flake into food, gaps in warehouse doors large enough for rodents to get through, unmarked spray bottles and containers, and numerous violations of other practices designed to prevent food contamination. The plant, owned by Peanut Corporation of America of Lynchburg, Va., has been shut down.

A typical entry from an inspection report, dated Aug. 23, 2007, noted: “The food-contact surfaces of re-work kettle in the butter room department were not properly cleaned and sanitized.” Additional entries noted: “The food-contact surfaces of the bulk oil roast transfer belt in the mezzazine [sic] room were not properly cleaned and sanitized. The food-contact surfaces of pan without wheels in the blanching department were not properly cleaned and sanitized.”

A code violation in the same report observed “clean peanut butter buckets stored uncovered,” while another cited a “wiping cloth” to “cover crack on surge bin.” Tests on samples gathered on the day of that inspection were negative for salmonella.

Props to Marler Blog.

How much does a tax cut stimulate people who lost their job?

It’s already been a lousy year for workers less than a month into 2009 and there’s no relief in sight. Tens of thousands of fresh layoffs were announced Monday and more companies are expected to cut payrolls in the months ahead.

Lots of lucky duckies at places like Sprint, GM, Caterpillar and Pfizer.

Seriously, I want these Republican Congress-critters who represent some of these districts to go home and tell their constituents they simply must increase the percentage of tax cuts in the stimulus bill, even as job losses mount. They might run into some actual “real” Americans going “WTF are you talking about, I just lost my job and my house!”

Everyone knew the GOP wouldn’t be satisfied with 40% of the package, even though they are in the minority. Enough of this bipartisan artifice, it’s not anything people outside Washington, D.C. care about very much, if at all.

We need to do what we need to do, and if Republicans don’t like it, they can bring it up at the next election.

Yup, HA had a little hiccup there, so I’ve had to rewind slightly to figure out what went wrong.  On the bright side, you know I’m working.

Over at News Junkie, Sandeep’s hearing rumors of yet another round of layoffs at the Seattle Times, and when asked for comment, Times spokesperson Jill Mackie gave this non-denial denial:

“We have no announcements to make at this time regarding further layoffs,” Mackie wrote back. “Generally speaking, we try not to comment on rumors, and, out of respect to our employees, were we to have an announcement to make, we would certainly want to discuss it first with employees before commenting in the media.”

Huh.  I guess that makes Sandeep “media.”  Welcome back, Sandeep.

Meanwhile at Publicola, Josh talks to Seattle P-I managing editor David McCumber, who fears that Seattle could be on its way to being a no-newspaper town.

By any measure, Washington state Dems have done well under Dwight Pelz’s chairmanship.  Under his leadership WA Dems have won high-profile US Senate and gubernatorial races, taken back the Commissioner of Public Lands office in a closely contested race, and built near supermajorities in both house’s of the state legislature. Meanwhile, party coffers have been relatively flush, and voter registration rolls have swelled.

You can argue whether Pelz deserves much (or any) of the credit for his party’s success in recent years, but if you’re keeping score, you can’t argue that times have been pretty damn good for WA’s donkeys.

At the same time, the Washington State Republican Party has continued its decline under the chairmanship of Luke Esser.  Sure, they managed to hold on to WA-08 (in a district that has never elected a Democrat) and they picked up a couple seats this year in the otherwise lopsided legislature, but they’ve had some awfully big losses, including a spanking in a governor’s race that just a couple years ago was widely considered to be a gimme for ex-party-savior Dino Rossi.

So how’d the two party chairs do in their respective bids for another term?  Well, they both won, but…

Pelz won by 98-64 over former Snohomish County Democratic Chairman Mark Hintz. […] Esser was re-elected without opposition at a GOP meeting in Tukwila.

That’s right, Pelz is rewarded for his winning ways with a serious challenger, whereas Esser—Rob McKenna’s cabin boy—faces zero opposition in the wake of the losingest record in recent party history.

I think that tells you everything you need to know about the personality of the two parties… and perhaps, a bit about their relative success and failure.

Click for Part 1

Cocaine was first discovered in 1860 by Albert Niemann, a German chemist who identified it as the active chemical compound in the coca leaf. Before 1914, when cocaine was still legal in the United States, it was consumed primarily as an ingredient in tonics, ointments, wines, and other products. It was the original “Coca” in Coca-Cola. Vin Mariani, a well-known coca wine, had the face of Pope Leo XIII on its label. Leo and his successor, Pope Pius X, were both fans of the drink. During the temperance movement, however, cocaine was banned along with other drugs in the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914. Over the next few decades, its use dropped significantly in America as amphetamines started to become more popular.

In the late 1970s, however, the use of cocaine began to rise again. Instead of being an ingredient in various products, though, people were ingesting the drug straight up their noses as a powder, a method that had far more intense effects for the user. Just as alcohol prohibition led to the consumption of alcohol in more dangerous ways, the prohibition of coca eventually led to a trend of ingesting the drug in ways that were baffling to South Americans, where chewing on coca leaves or brewing them in tea has been commonplace for many generations.

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Sometime over the next day or so we’ll be introducing a new feature, with posts from Publicola (and eventually, other JOA blogs) occasionally appearing “cross-posted” to HA, and vice-versa.  Of course cross-posting is nothing new—I occasionally cross-post to Huffington Post—and on the surface, it won’t appear like much of an innovation to the casual reader.  But JOA’s new integrated cross-post works a little differently.

How is it different?  Well, when I cross-post to HuffPo, I create two separate posts, one here and one there, with two separate comment threads and two separate audiences.  But a JOA cross-post is a single post that merely appears in multiple places; edit the source on Publicola, and the changes instantly appear on HA.  And more importantly, a JOA cross-post has a single comment thread, allowing JOA sites to not only share content, but also, share community. So don’t be surprised is click on post at HA and find yourself in a comment thread on another blog.

This is admittedly a baby step toward a much larger vision, but a step nonetheless, and a demonstration of where I think this little experiment of ours needs to go.  Ultimately, the goal is to share revenue as well content, and integrated cross-posting could play an important role in efficiently distributing quality content to the widest audience possible while proportionately rewarding both content producers and traffic drivers for the value they create.

In a monetized environment, cross-posts, links and even block-quotes all have monetary value:  if I link to Publicola, I should get a piece of the revenues generated from the page views I create, while Josh should get a proportionate piece of the revenues generated from my page views that include his content.  How big a chunk each partner gets should be left to the market, but I’m pretty sure that it is only through the creation of a shared co-operative that a market for shared content can be created without giving up the largest chunk of the revenue stream to the entity who sets the rules and facilitates the transactions.

But I’m getting way ahead of myself.  Look for the new cross-post thingy.  And look for more new features coming soon.

From The Oregonian:

Two students in a foreign exchange program died and seven other people were injured Saturday night when a 24-year-old man with a gun opened fire outside a popular underage nightclub in downtown Portland.

Police identified one of the victims as Ashley Wilks, 16, of Happy Valley. People familiar with the student exchange program said Wilks — a Clackamas High School sophomore — was preparing to head to a foreign country for study.

It appears authorities have yet to name a suspect, who according to the newspaper shot himself and is in critical condition. At this point police seem to believe the shooting was random.

How utterly awful.

Robert Reich pens an open letter to Limbaugh, Hannity and Malkin. Short version: please stop lying, anyone can read or listen to what I actually said.

As a foul-mouthed blogger, I’m grateful there are smart, nice, civil people in the world like Reich. Variety is the spice of life and all that.

Funny how uncivil and lying behavior by the right is so accepted as part of the media landscape that you rarely see traditional outlets get all upset about it, and in the case of the falsehoods about Reich’s views traditional media figures like Lou Dobbs at CNN have also spread them quite deliberately. As we have seen countless times in the past, deliberately telling outright lies is not just wrong, it warps rational discourse and causes stupid people to believe whatever the hell they want, facts be damned.

And it’s only when the DFH wants something totally insane like health insurance coverage for all Americans that we get the preachy editorials about civility and bi-partisanship.

This country is in a crisis. We can no longer afford to let stupid people believe lies, they must be told the truth. Stupid is what got us here in the first place.

Last week’s contest was won by ‘Change in Time,’ who found the view at 20th St and Mississippi St in San Francisco. And speaking of changes in time, this is the last contest that will be posted at this time. Starting next week, I’ll be posting these up on Sunday at noon (Pacific Time).

Here’s this week’s, good luck!