I’ve got some family in town so this is going to be a short post relying on reader input.
In the comments on my post about nut cutting and tax cutting yesterday, David J recommended that I look at the Patriotic Millionaires site. Their slogan: Tax the Rich, Pay the People, Spread the Power. I like what I saw and I want to read more, but I wanted to highlight this. David thought it was a good counterpoint to a post I made about Van Hollen’s tax plan, but I searched and could only find this post from Joe.
TBone sent in this FT piece about bounties put on cartel members:
The Trump administration has offered up to $25mn for information on the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Mexico’s most powerful drug-trafficking group and a top source of illegal fentanyl entering the US.
The bounty announced on Wednesday, one of the largest of its kind, is part of an up to $102mn package of rewards and visa cancellations aimed at degrading the cartel known as the CJNG.
Juan Carlos Valencia González took the helm of the cartel this year after its founder, his stepfather Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes or “El Mencho”, died after a shootout with Mexican authorities in a rural country club.
Valencia González, 41, is highly unusual among Mexican drug-trafficking kingpins as he is a US citizen, adding extra legal hurdles for American authorities trying to find, capture and prosecute him.
The US state department on Wednesday offered $25mn for information that leads to his capture, equal to the bounty offered for Venezuela’s powerful interior minister Diosdado Cabello.
It also has offered up to $15mn for information on other pivotal cartel figures and placed visa restrictions on 65 people associated with the CJNG.
“This is just the beginning,” said Terrance Cole, administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, who called Valencia González the DEA’s number one priority. “DEA is on the hunt with our partners.”
It’s interesting that none of the English language Mexican press that I read has mentioned this at all. I have to believe it’s part of a pattern of the US trying to threaten Mexican sovereignty, which was violated earlier this year when CIA agents were discovered in Chihuahua. It’s also of a piece with the right wing in Mexico trying to portray Claudia Sheinbaum as a corrupt pawn of narco terrorists. I wrote about the Chihuahua issue here and a bit here.
