Stimulus Dollars Funded Mexican Coffin Industry through “Operation Fast and Furious”
Not content with just using American tax dollars to subsidize foreign “green jobs” that replaced U.S. jobs, the Obama administration used stimulus dollars to pay for purchases of guns by Mexican drug lords in “Operation Fast and Furious,” resulting in the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent and many Mexicans. That stimulated nothing, except for Mexico’s coffin industry, notes Mark Steyn in the National Review. In the Operation,
the federal government used stimulus funding to buy guns from Arizona gun shops for known criminals to funnel to Mexican drug cartels. . .Supposedly, United States taxpayers were picking up the tab for Mexican drug lords’ weaponry in order that the ATF could identify high-up gun-traffickers. But, as it turns out, these high-up gun-traffickers were already known to other agencies — FBI, DEA, and other big-spending acronyms in the great fetid ooze of federal alphabet soup in which this republic is drowning. And, indeed, some of those high-ups are said to have been paid informants for those various federal agencies. So, in case you’re wondering why Obama’s second annual Recovery Summer is a wee bit sluggish at your end, relax: Stimulus dollars went to fund one federal agency to buy guns for the paid informants of another federal agency to funnel to foreign criminals in order that the first federal agency might identify the paid informants of the second federal agency.
Meanwhile, what did the drug cartels, the recipients of the guns, do with them? Well, they used them to kill at least one member of a third federal agency: Brian Terry of the United States Border Patrol. If that doesn’t bother you, well, they also killed not insignificant numbers of Mexican civilians. If, by this stage, you’re wondering why U.S. stimulus dollars are being used to stimulate the Mexican coffin industry, consider the dark suspicion of many American gun owners — that the real reason the feds embarked on this murderous scheme was to plant the evidence that the increasing lawlessness on the southern border is the fault of the gun industry and the Second Amendment, and thereby advance its ideological agenda of ever greater gun control.
Indeed, “U.S. law-enforcement agents essentially provided security for gun smugglers working for Mexican drug cartels. That such weapons are turning up in drug cases north of the border is hardly surprising,” notes the New York Post. Attorney General Eric Holder long knew about and supported this disastrous operation, says Investors Business Daily: “The evidence suggests that Agent Terry’s death was financed by the president’s stimulus package with the full knowledge and support of Attorney General Holder.” As it notes, “At a House oversight hearing last month, three federal firearms investigators testified they wanted to ‘intervene and interdict’ the guns at the border, but were repeatedly ordered to step aside and let the traffickers proceed. Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson, in closed-door testimony in front of Rep. Darrell Issa’s committee, said administration officials sought to control and limit his communications with Congress, including withholding documents that made Melson ‘sick to his stomach’ after he reviewed them.”
Attorney General Holder recently denied having had any knowledge of Operation Fast and Furious, despite having boasted about it and a related operation in 2009. The Justice Department has obstructed a House Committee’s investigation of the scandal.
This is not the only way the Obama administration bungled its handling of Mexico. It wiped out thousands of jobs in our export sector, by committing a minor NAFTA violation that led to major Mexican tariffs against $2.4 billion in American exports (the violation in question blocked a measley 97 Mexican truckers from U.S. roads. Mexico retaliated with tariffs on 90 American products).
Attorney General Holder’s claims that he knew nothing about Operation Fast and Furious are as incredible as the Obama administration’s claims about jobs supposedly created by the stimulus, in which it boasted about the creation of tens of thousands imaginary jobs in 440 phantom Congressional districts.
Unemployment recently rose as jobs were wiped out by failed Obama administration policies. A recent study by economists Timothy Conley and Bill Dupor estimated that the stimulus package wiped out 550,000 jobs. Harvard economics professor Jeffrey Miron earlier explained why the stimulus failed.