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Dear Friends:

I have just returned from a three day visit with Ramsey in El Reno, Oklahoma. Our time spent together was blessing, as we shared our faith and plans for the upcoming months.

Ramsey was sent to El Reno, Oklahoma just after he had been transferred closer to home in Three Rivers, Texas. His transfer to Three Rivers came about through the assistance of congressmen, senators, and many supporters.

He had been in Three Rivers, Texas just over five months and had begun to see his attorney so that he could reopen his case and prove his innocence. Without warning, he was transported to El Reno, Oklahoma where he is now detained. The reason for this move was never substantiated and Ramsey Muniz is in exile once again for political reasons.

At the end of 2008 we submitted an application for a Commutation of Sentence, knowing that the chances for it being approved were slim. Attached [below] is a letter from Mr. Ronald Rodgers, Pardon Attorney, who responded to the application.

Ramsey Muniz was not granted a Commutation of Sentence and through research we learned that pardons and commutations were granted to those who had close political ties or had made substantial contributions to the Republican Party. We now plan to submit an application under the administration of President Barack Obama.

Because we have a different administration, we are formulating strategies for a movement to move Ramsey back to Texas. We will seek your support once again and know that we will provide details in the near future.

Ramsey asks that everyone remember Cesar Chavez and take part in events that commemorate his birth. Cesar Chavez was born on March 31, 1927, and there will be marches in San Antonio, Texas, Corpus Christi, Texas, California, Colorado, and many other states throughout the country. This is important because our time has come! We must seize the moment as others are doing to proclaim our spirituality, culture, history, and identity during these changing times!

Sincerely,
Irma Muniz

US Department of Justice
Pardon Attorney

Washington, DC
January 29, 2009

Memorandum

To: Warden
Federal Correctional Institution – El Reno

From: Ronald L. Rodgers
Pardon Attorney

Subject: Ramiro R. Muniz
Application for Executive Clemency

Please advise Ramiro R. Muniz that his application for executive clemency was carefully considered in this department and the White House, and the decision was reached that favorable action is not warranted. The application was therefore denied on Dec. 23, 2008. Under the Constitution there is no appeal from this decision. As a matter of well-established policy we do not disclose the reasons for the decision in a clemency matter. In addition, deliberative communications pertaining to agency and presidential decision-making are confidential and not available under existing case law interpreting the Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act. If the applicant wishes to reapply for executive clemency, the applicant will become eligible to do so one year from the date on which the President denied the current application.

Please ensure that the applicant receives a copy of this memorandum reflecting the denial of this clemency application.

Editor’s Note: bold faced emphasis in original.–gm

by Greg Moses

To seal the border would they kill the river? For the time being, US Border Patrol officials say they will not spray herbicides to kill the wild Carrizo Cane along the banks of the Rio Grande River. But wary residents along the river have filed a federal lawsuit to guarantee their rights to an ecologically safe border.

In lawsuit documents released on Wednesday, an association of residents who live near the Rio Grande River charge that the Border Patrol did not take a “hard look” before declaring that proposed helicopter spraying of herbicide would have “no significant impact” on the river environment.

Residents of the Barrio De Colores association say the August 2008 environmental impact statement issued by the border patrol “cannot stand” because the analysis of impacts was not adequate, reasonable alternatives were not fully considered, and residents were not adequately notified of their rights to participate in the environmental impact review.

Some recent news reports have villified the wild Carrizo Cane plants for their ability to grow tall and thick enough to serve as co-conspirators in border smuggling operations. But environmental scientist Dr. Jim Earhart argues that poisoning the plants is not necessary if goats and donkeys are allowed to eat them.

The plants have been considered pests in the valley since they were introduced by European settlers centuries ago. Spraying herbicides from helicopters, however, would only compound the damage done to the river by outside forces.

“The Rio Grande does not belong to the United States,” said Executive Director of the Rio Grande International Study Center Jay Johnson-Castro at Wednesday’s outdoor press conference. “Nor does it belong to Mexico. It belongs to we the people.”

Residents of the Barrio De Colores association are not satisfied by this week’s assurances that the spraying has been postponed as a consequence of meetings between the border patrol and Mexican officials.

Says attorney Israel Reyna, “The day the court says it’s not going to happen, that’s when it’s not going to happen.”

[Sources: KGNS, FoxNews.com, and Barrio De Colores. Read the federal court petition here.]

It’s a monetarist bubble that is popping under the global economy argues Asia Times economist Henry CK Liu, and throwing future debt into past debt is only going to result in a decade of hard times.

From Liu’s point of view, 2008 was a year mis-spent. First there was complacency and denial. Then, future debts were applied directly to past debts in a colossal waste of wealth and opportunity.

In the end, says Liu, the average taxpayer is being forced to assume “risks” made by financial elites. In return, the same elites will demand leaner capital budgets. The result? Average workers will soon be financing their own unemployment.

At some point, says Liu, emergency attention needs to turn to average worker wages. This is where the battle for economic health will be lost or won.

On the supply side of the argument, as we hear daily from CNBC, the “bailout” funds are being tossed onto assets that will some day recover their worth, keeping the tax burden low.

Since banks are now asking for even more billions, it seems sensible that taxpayers should demand assets in return for any money spent upon a banking institution. If worse comes to worst, banking functions should be nationalized.

Trillion dollar priorities are being reordered at a rapid rate these days, and workers are feeling the pain of being left outside. Yet as Henry George very sensibly observed, there is no good reason why busy people cannot be merged into an economy where each busy person helps to meet some other busy person’s needs.

Henry CK Liu puts it this way:

When unemployment of 6% of willing workers is accepted as structural in an economic system, the fault is with the system, just as if a hospital accepts an annual mortality rate of 6% of its curable patients as structural, the hospital’s operation needs to be reexamined. The fundamental flaw in market capitalism is its inherent failure to deliver full employment as a social goal.

The hard times are already hitting our Texas neighborhoods, and everyone who knows anything about it only promises that times will soon get harder.

Against the hard times we have voices that can demand: keep us working together for the things that all of us need. The average worker can afford to pay for a program like that.–gm

By Nick Braune
Mid-Valley Town Crier
by permission

The Border Patrol is planning on doing some aerial spraying (herbicides) near Laredo, Texas. Because Laredo and the Mexican city across the river from it, Nuevo Laredo, each have about 350,000 people (not exactly one of Texas’ sparsely populated county areas), concern about the spraying has been growing.

However, the Border Patrol says it is not going to be spraying people, it is simply intending to spray a herbicide over a one mile-long stretch of unpopulated land, the purpose being to kill a tall plant (carrizo cane, similar to bamboo) which has been growing wildly there. The Border Patrol thinks it is too easy for undocumented people to hide in the carrizo where the Patrol does not have a clean line of sight.

The Border Patrol argues that spraying the carriso is a practical, common sense, solution, although quite a few people in the Laredo area, on both sides of the border, are not convinced it is necessary and are not staying quiet. Logically, the burden of proof falls heavily on the Border Patrol — they are not spraying in a desolate region and the spray must be pretty powerful to knock out these bamboo-like shoots. The stretch lies between the Laredo Railroad Bridge and the Laredo Community College, directly across from a populated area in Mexico, according to an article in Frontera NorteSur on March 21st.

According to the Frontera article, the manager for Nuevo Laredo’s water utility said that the Border Patrol advised his office to start turning off water pumps when the spraying takes place. The fact that the Border Patrol has warned the Mexican side that it should not pull water from the Rio while the spraying is taking place made a water manager for Nuevo Laredo raise the obvious question: The utility manager is quoted as saying, “If there is no problem, why are they asking us to do this?” And in a phone interview for this column, Jay Johnson-Castro, the Executive Director of the Rio Grande International Studies Center at Laredo Community College, said that the U.S. authorities are actually suggesting the Mexicans not draw off any river water for a day or two after the spraying as a precaution.

Johnson-Castro was at a meeting of the city council in Nuevo Laredo where they voted 20 to 0 to call on the U.S. to stop the spraying. No doubt many people felt there was a danger and felt confused about the necessity of the project: if the carrizo cane is such a problem, why doesn’t the Border Patrol just hire some crews to cut it down? The Border Patrol has two million dollars for the project, according to Johnson-Castro.)

Johnson-Castro, in the phone interview, said bluntly, “The Border Patrol has not been upfront.” They have been talking about “eradication” of the carrizo cane for some time, but they were not telling many people that they were intending aerial spraying with herbicides. “Back in July, they advertized for one day that they were carrying out an environmental assessment. People just didn’t know this was being discussed.”

Later, according to Johnson-Castro, government people said that they had done an environmental assessment, although the city council members and the city’s environmental department personnel told Johnson-Castro that they hadn’t even seen the report. “The environmental assessment process was abused.” And as far as Mexico goes, says Johnson-Castro, “I myself sent out the initial warning to the health and water departments in Nuevo Laredo and Tamaulipas. If I hadn’t done that, I wonder if the Border Patrol, now sending warnings on the water, would have ever informed them.”

The chemical being used is Imazapyr. Versions of this are made by BASF and Monsanto. Is it safe for people, plants, animals, water? Well, chemical safety standards vary by country. It is labeled as relatively safe in the U.S., but Mexican regulators label it as more toxic and dangerous. And the Europeans have virtually banned it for these defoliation uses, according to Johnson-Castro.

How does the matter stand at present? An association of citizens called Barrio De Colores, composed of residents of the barrios El Cuatro and De Colores, whose homes are near the proposed Border Patrol pilot project site for helicopter spraying, filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security to prevent the planned action. It was filed one day before the March 25th starting date for the spraying. A judge has responded and the spraying is temporarily being held off. This may be extremely important in the long run because the Laredo spraying is intended as a “pilot project” for several stretches of the river, Great Bend to Brownsville.

(Just some thoughts-in-progress. In the above discussion, I didn’t connect this arrogant Border Patrol spraying plan to the increased militarization of the Border. But President Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano have just this week pushed — good grief — for more Feds down here on the Border. And they are deliberately, it seems, giving mixed (friendly/unfriendly) messages to Mexico and seem to want to run Mexico’s anti-drug campaign.)