It's best to pick and choose the parts that work and customize them to your liking. In some ways the US is more oppressive than some other countries, in other ways it's less. Just because you borrow an idea from someone doesn't mean you have to do everything like that person does.

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2004 VW Jetta TDI (manual)

Past MB's: '96 E300D, '83 240D, '82 300D, '87 300D, '87 420SEL

Perfect.

One wonders just how much electricity is devoted to indoor growing of the herb. I mean it can't be that huge but it might be surprising.

I knew a guy 15 years ago who rented a house from a guy who lived about 1,000 miles away. Good Lord, he set that house up for growing. Had a friend who knew how to steal electricity -- they cut a hole behind the power meter -- through the sheetrock -- and somehow jimmied it. Put plywood over all the windows, grow pots all over the carpet in the bedrooms. He said he figured it would take about $5,000 to made the house all good again and that his proceeds would easily cover it.

He wanted to hire me to help him run it but I wasn't comfortable with any of it and began to give the guy a wide berth.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Estimated U.S. taxpayer cost for bailout jumps

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. congressional budget analysts have raised their estimate of the net cost to taxpayers for the government's financial rescue program to $356 billion, an increase of $167 billion from earlier estimates.
The Congressional Budget Office had originally projected the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program would cost taxpayers $189 billion.
The additional cost, which applies to TARP spending for fiscal years 2009 and 2010, was included in the CBO's March projection of a $1.8 trillion deficit for fiscal 2009, which ends September 30.
The TARP cost projection was raised due to changes in financial market conditions, new transactions and a shift in expected timing of payments, the CBO said.
The Treasury Department announced plans to use some of the money to help avoid home foreclosures and made new deals with Bank of America and American International Group. Those programs involved higher subsidy rates than previously estimated, the report said.
Congress passed the Wall Street bailout program in October with the goal of stabilizing banks and reassuring jittery markets.

Sanctions Imposed; U.S. Firms Warned
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 16, 2009

President Obama yesterday ratcheted up efforts to curb the flow of drugs and guns across the southern border, imposing financial sanctions against three of the most violent Mexican drug cartels and threatening to prosecute Americans who do business with them.

On the eve of his summit with Mexican President Felipe Calderón today, Obama added the cartels to the list of banned foreign "drug kingpins," a move that empowers the federal government to seize their assets, estimated to be in the billions of dollars. It also allows the government to seek criminal penalties against U.S. firms or individuals who provide weapons, launder money or transport drugs or cash for the organizations.

By targeting the cartels -- Sinaloa, Los Zetas and La Familia Michoacana -- the administration expanded its support for Calderón's crackdown on the narco-traffickers, an effort that has provoked a violent backlash and led to thousands of deaths in the past two years.

The Obama administration accelerated what is normally a year-long effort to add names to the banned list. The government did not identify assets held by the three cartels, but authorities have estimated that $19 billion to $39 billion in drug proceeds flows south each year from the United States.

The financial sanctions provide an additional tool against the organizations, whose drug and gun trafficking has proved exceedingly difficult to curtail. Mexico, for example, has seized more than 35,000 firearms from narco-traffickers since December 2006, and both governments say 90 percent of the weapons originated in the United States.

The effort to curb the southbound flow of what some have called an "iron river of guns" has faced heavy obstacles, including limited resources, relatively open access to firearms and political opposition to tighter gun regulation.

Even if the supply of U.S. guns were cut off, as long as the flow of money to the cartels continues, they could rearm by buying from other countries, including those in Eastern Europe or Central America, where surplus weapons from conflicts in the 1980s remain, analysts said.

"It's convenient for the cartels to be able to shop in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and elsewhere," said George W. Grayson, a Mexico scholar at the College of William and Mary and author of the monograph "Mexico's Struggle With 'Drugs and Thugs.' " But stopping the U.S. trade, he said, would merely place "a thorn in the side of the cartels, rather than an AK-47 in the heart."

Since 2000, 78 drug kingpin groups and individuals have been blacklisted by the U.S. government, along with nearly 500 others who have supported them. The law has been used most extensively against Colombian drug traffickers, particularly the Cali cartel.

A Treasury Department official said its office of foreign assets control is working with other agencies to identify cartel assets, but the official described a much broader net of potential liability. Anyone who knowingly deals with a cartel representative or provides goods, services or other support can face penalties, the official said, including money launderers, front companies and other facilitators. That could include banks and other financial institutions, gun dealers, money-transfer companies and transportation firms.

"If you are a Mexican company buying or receiving weapons for a cartel, you can be designated," the official said. "If you are the U.S. person selling or transporting those weapons to the cartel or any [other] designated targets, you can be fined civilly and criminally prosecuted, or both."

Julie L. Myers, a former Justice Department official who led Immigration and Customs Enforcement until last fall, said kingpin designations have been powerful tools against Colombian drug cartels, in some cases persuading defendants to agree to plea deals to protect family assets.

Article continues: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/15/AR2009041502045_2.html?nav=rss_email/components&sid=ST2009041600189

Gun-running in Latin America predates drug-running. Those guys are experts.