So that's where all the money in Mexico was

MEXICO CITY: The Mexican government vigorously denied this week the accusations of a Chinese-Mexican businessman who is wanted on drug charges here but who asserts that $150 million found hidden in his mansion came from members of President Felipe Calderón's party, including the secretary of labor.

Zhenli Ye Gon, a naturalized Mexican citizen who owns a pharmaceutical company, rocked the political world here recently by suggesting, through his lawyer in New York, that the labor secretary, Javier Lozano Alarcón, had threatened to kill him last year unless he agreed to hide duffel bags stuffed with tens of millions of dollars in his house.

On Tuesday, Lozano Alarcón issued a statement calling the charges "false, absurd, untrue, crooked and perverse." A spokesman for Calderón, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the president had yet to make an official statement, said Zhenli appeared to be making false charges as part of a strategy to broker a deal with prosecutors here.

Mexico's attorney general, Eduardo Medina Mora, said in a televised interview Monday that the idea that someone from Calderón's campaign or cabinet would force Zhenli to hide money seemed "ridiculous and fantastic."

"Evidently the man dedicated himself to the illicit importation of pseudoephedrine, and this was sold to drug traffickers," the attorney general said. "This money was the product of that activity."

He said the government had evidence that Zhenli, 44, had illegally imported 19 tons of pseudoephedrine, a decongestant, and intended to sell it to drug dealers who use it to manufacture methamphetamine, a synthetic stimulant known on the street as "ice."

Zhenli denied the charge in an interview with The Associated Press published Saturday; the news agency said the interview was given in the New York office of his lawyer, Ning Ye.

Zhenli said that various party officials had delivered money for him to hide, but he did not provide their names.

The Mexican authorities began investigating Zhenli in December, after discovering an illicit shipment of pseudoephedrine on a boat in the port of Lázaro Cárdenas, prosecutors say. The chemical was being shipped to Unimed, a pharmaceutical company Zhenli started in 1997, they said.

In a dispute between Mexican government officials and a Chinese drug dealer who has more credibility? I'd have to say its about 50/50.

In the Mexican government's favor I would ask why the ruling party would allow Zhenli to be investigated and raided if he were in bed with them. But then there could well be other factors that we don't know about.

Whatever the truth in this specific case the fact that the story sounds eminently credible tells you everything you need to know about the Mexican government.

The piper ALWAYS has to be paid

NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 5 -- A young woman shot to death in her home Friday morning became at least the seventh New Orleans homicide victim of the new year.

The victim, whose identity was not released, was said to be in her early 20s. Her house in the Uptown section of New Orleans had been ransacked; police did not know whether anything had been taken.

Five of the shootings, all unrelated, occurred within a 14-hour span Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Also, a body with signs of physical trauma was found Wednesday wrapped in a rug. That death has not been classified.

The spate of killings dashed hopes that the city's police chief was right on New Year's Day when he said he believed the violence that has plagued parts of the city for months had been brought under control.

History lesson: In the aftermath of Katrina The mayor and the chief of police sent the NOPD, those who had not run away, joined the looters and who really existed (rather than just existed on paper so that corrupt officials could pocket their pay), out to confiscate the firearms of legally armed citizens.

When questioned about this they denied it and when ordered to give the illegally seized guns back by a federal judge they have dragged their feet.

They have claimed all sorts of procedural and practical reasons why they can't return the property which they stole, but the real reason is sample.

The city itself no longer has control of the stolen guns. They were divided up among the police who actually did the stealing. Every one of the firearms is now in the collection of a New Orleans cop, or one of the cops from other areas who came to the area to help out. Or in the collection of some corrupt (is there any other kind?) New Orleans politician who had a friend on the force. Or they have been sold to a gun store or pawn ship or transferred to some criminal gang that pays NOPD protection. Even the cheap "Saturday night special" junk guns have some dollar value or are useful to corrupt police as "throw downs".

What New Orleans is going through now is the inevitable result of a corrupt political/police culture, a judicial system steeped in the politically correct idea of the criminal as victim of society, a large minority population which has always had the government there to take care of them, and therefore never had to learn responsibility and self reliance, and a civilian population which has now been rendered defenseless in a very public way.

Under those circumstances crime and violence could not do anything but skyrocket!

If Ray "School Bus" Nagin and his police chief want to turn the situation in the Crescent City around there is one way to do it. Go on TV and encourage the honest citizens to arm themselves. Open the police range for civilian practice and declare "open season on criminals".

Do this and New Orleans will become a model of law and order. Fail to do this and deep ordering the body bags.