Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Chicagoland / Politics / Clout City Hanged census worker: next week's political outrage?
Posted by Whet Moser on 09.23.09 at 06:10 PM
An AP dispatch about a teacher and census worker who was found hanged with "FED" scrawled on his chest is starting to make the rounds on blogs and Twitter. Given all the heat about 9-12 protests/the census/ACORN people are starting to leap to vague conclusions. I'm going on vacation for a few days so I don't know exactly how it's going to play out, but I think this comment at Pandagon is very smart:
"I’d be wary before jumping to conclusions on this: the Daniel Boone National Forest is a hotbed for pot growers and meth labs and archaeological looters (Harper’s—subscribers only, alas) and there’s a distrust of anyone considered connected to the federal government, including Forest Rangers and local cops."
More: "A story about lawlessness in the park that appeared in Harper's magazine last year reported that attacks and threats against Forest Service employees there have increased more than fivefold in the past decade."
Clay County, Kentucky is a very poor place in a region with a historical distrust of the federal government that's also become a haven for meth cooks and pot growers - including, possibly, Mexican drug cartels (!). That story also notes:
"[David Keller, deputy director at the Appalachian High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force] remembers a time, as recent as the late 1990s, when it wasn’t safe to go into the Daniel Boone National Forest because growers placed traps or had armed workers watching their illegal crops."
In other words: the causes could be very sociopolitically complex, or much simpler than people are starting to suggest. Let the story play out before freaking out.
Comments (4)
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Moser -
I'm from KY and you are right on target!
S.E. KY is INTERNATIONALLY KNOWN for pot growing operations! And yes the Mexican drug cartels have been identified as players in this area: it's remote, it's sparsely populated, and it's hard to get to the grow areas.
When the FEDS have busted pot growing ops in S.E. KY, these growers have retaliated by setting fire to various parts the expansive Daniel Boone National Forest!
This man's horrible death is a message to the Feds from illegal drug operators.
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I nominate the sworn testimony of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds for next weeks political outrage. It's got Official State Secrets, drugs, bi-sexuality, bribes, treason, nuclear proliferation, and for all you Chicago reporters in the audience, a connection to Chicago's very own Jan Schakowsky.
http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/conte…
Sounds like a perfect story for you Whet.
Do you really think he was doing the census in a National Park? He was obviously taken there from where ever he was going house to house. Don't blame the dopers that hide in the park. Blame Glenn Beck and Michelle Bachman. And the right wing fringe that believe their crap.
Could he have been doing census work inside the park?
Yes. Allot of people live within the boundaries of that park.
Look at Google maps for instance.
Was he doing census work at the time?
The people who would know remain silent at this time.
