environment

How low will they go? SPLC accuses black woman of being white nationalist

Posted by Cynthia Kendoll on Fri, 11/06/2015

US Inc. hosted the 39th annual Writer's Workshop conference in Washington, D.C. two weeks ago. As President of Oregonians for Immigration Reform, I've attended the conference for the past several years and was honored to be one of the speakers at the 2014 conference.

I have found the event to be a well attended, balanced look at all aspects of immigration and the issues surrounding both unfettered illegal immigration and excessive legal immigration. The wide array of expert speakers allows conference participants a broad perspective.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has a reputation - a bad reputation - and the following article is simply the latest episode in the SPLC’s long history of launching false smear attacks against political opponents. In their haste to sully the reputation of the event and those who attended, the SPLC has now stooped so low as to accuse a black woman of being a white nationalist. Read Inger Eberhart's response to the SPLC's attack.

As a black American, I am outraged at the lengths the hate-mongering left goes to smear advocates for sanity and control regarding immigration.

A couple of weeks ago I attended the 2015 Writer’s Workshop conference sponsored by U.S. Inc. in Washington D.C. – and I plan on going again next year. Little did I know that my attendance at this year’s Workshop would give the pro-illegal alien Southern Poverty Law Center and its open border allies an opportunity to make fools of themselves yet again.

Here’s what unfolded. The conference audience consisted mostly of academics, writers, bloggers, and activists like myself from across the country who believe that our immigration laws should be enforced and that Americans of all races and backgrounds should not lose their jobs to cheaper illegal or imported foreign workers. Really radical ideas, right?

So, naturally, the SPLC hates the Writer’s Workshop and everything it stands for. While there, I snapped a photo of one of the speakers, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, and posted it on my Twitter feed. It seems that an SPLC ally named 'Imagine 2050' monitors my Twitter feed.

They took my picture without my permission, used it in a ridiculous smear piece and apparently passed it on to the SPLC.

The educational event obviously gave the SPLC a terrible case of the vapors. They proved it by demonstrating their hate for the Kansas Secretary of State for his outstanding legal work on behalf of enforcing our immigration laws. Someone named Heidi Bierich wrote a blog denouncing Secretary Kobach for speaking at a conference of “white nationalists.” White nationalists is one of those labels the SPLC uses in addition to “racists”, “nativists”, and “xenophobes” to demonize any group or individual who upholds our immigration laws.

That was amusing, to this African-American woman who, along with other black Americans, and Latino and Asian Americans found ourselves attending a “white nationalist conference” if you were to believe the Imagine 2050 and the SPLC.

Mind you this was a conference at which two Latinos made presentations and another Latino told the heartbreaking story of his brother’s murder at the hands of a twice-deported illegal alien.

Memo to Imagine 2050 and the SPLC: I was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia in the years immediately following the civil rights era. I would spot a real white nationalist a lot faster than you ever could.

This entire smear campaign would be amusing if it wasn’t so sick.

The SPLC apparently assumes the revealing expose from their hometown newspaper, the Montgomery Advertiser has been forgotten. This proud Southerner has not forgotten:

“Outside the Southern Poverty Law Center, a stunning civil rights memorial honors those who died to give blacks more opportunities. Inside, no blacks have held top management positions in the center’s 23-year history, and some former employees say blacks are treated like second-class citizens.

“I would definitely say there was not a single black employee with whom I spoke who was happy to be working there,” said Christine Lee, a black graduate of Harvard Law School who interned at the Law Center in 1989.

Only one black has ever been among the top five wage-earners at the center, and he was one of only two black staff attorneys in the center’s history. Both said they left unhappy.

The Law Center’s ambitious new project, Teaching Tolerance, which is designed to promote racial and cultural justice throughout America’s schools, is produced by an eight-member all-white staff according to the Law Center.”

Stay tuned, it gets better. The shameless character assassins at IMAGINE2050 also used a picture from the U.S. Inc. writers conference of Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach pictured with a Latina American, Ms. Maria Espinoza and at least two other Hispanics.

Ms. Espinoza is the founder of The Remembrance Project (@StolenLivesQlt) whose mission is to remember and honor the thousands of law abiding Americans of all descriptions who have been raped, brutalized and murdered at the hands of illegal alien criminals, to try and bring some comfort and support to the families devastated by their loss, and to raise public awareness of the human cost of our government’s failure to protect us.

Americans like Ms. Espinoza give away the lies from the SPLC and IMAGINE 2050 narrative. The truth is those organizations never shed a tear for the victims of illegal alien criminals and their families. They could care less that millions of unskilled, low income minority Americans are being displaced in jobs by unscrupulous employers who hire and exploit illegal aliens.

So if you subscribe to the SPLC and IMAGINE 2050 because you think they are fighting for minority Americans, you’ve been scammed, duped and used. They lie about anyone who doesn’t fall in line and with their anti-American ideology. Just as they lied about me, Ms. Espinoza, U.S. Inc. and everyone who attended the educational event in Washington.

The good news is that there are groups like the Georgia-based Dustin Inman Society (where I am a proud member of the board of advisors), U.S. Inc, NumbersUSA and others that are there to educate and arm you with the knowledge to challenge the SPLC’s ugly lies.

Inger Eberhart
@Hunter7Taylor
MBA, MA (2015)
Advisory Board member: The Dustin Inman Society
Writer: The Social Contract Press, Californians for Population Stabilization Read more about How low will they go? SPLC accuses black woman of being white nationalist

The Subversive Trans-Pacific Partnership

Posted by Fred Elbel on Thu, 04/16/2015

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has been described as a "stealthy delivery mechanism for policies that could not survive public scrutiny," and focuses on curtailing government at all levels. In addition, it encourages trade that would harm communities and the environment.¹⁸Recent revelations expose the Trans-Pacific Partnership as a transnational corporate coup.¹³

The TPP is a multinational trade agreement, negotiated in secret meetings dominated by governments and 500 trans-national corporate interests¹⁶. Although still under negotiation, the media has virtually blacked out coverage of the TPP.⁸

It has been reported that former US Trade Representative Ron Kirk stated that if the people knew what was in the TPP agreement, it would raise such opposition that it could make the deal impossible to sign.⁶

TPP Overview

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a fundamental component of President Obama’s continuing economic agenda. It would grant a broad range of powers to trans-national corporations based overseas. According to the New York Times:

Under the accord, still under negotiation but nearing completion, companies and investors would be empowered to challenge regulations, rules, government actions and court rulings — federal, state or local — before tribunals organized under the World Bank or the United Nations... critics, including many Democrats in Congress, argue that the planned deal widens the opening for multinationals to sue in the United States and elsewhere, giving greater priority to protecting corporate interests than promoting free trade and competition that benefits consumers.¹²

The TPP is the largest pending economic treaty in history and includes countries that represent more than 40 per cent of the world´s GDP. Current TPP negotiation members include the United States, Japan, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, Chile, Singapore, Peru, Vietnam, New Zealand and Brunei.¹³

The TPP is a "docking" agreement, which means that any country in the TPP region (e.g., China) can add themselves just by signing on.¹⁵ The TPP would be forever. Unlike domestic laws, it would have no expiration date. It could be altered only by a consensus of all signatories.²⁰

Ongoing TPP negotiations have been conducted in secrecy since 2008 and are now in the final stages. The Obama administration is attempting to "fast-track" the treaty through Congress so that elected officials will have no ability to review or comment on provisions. Fast track is implemented by Congress passing Trade Promotion Authority, which means that Congress surrenders all rights to amend the TPP treaty and is only allowed to vote yes or no on Obama’s final deal.⁹

Some of the more concerning aspects of the TPP are discussed below.

Immigration

The US Constitution gives Congress exclusive authority over immigration, immigrants, and work authorizations. Yet fast-track trade legislation essentially relinquishes that authority to the President.

NumbersUSA has pointed out that as a result of fast-track trade authority on the TPP, any President could much more easily expand guest worker programs without public debate. Indeed, that occurred under President Bush during five years of fast-track authority.¹⁷ As a result, in 2003, Congress objected to President Bush including immigration in trade agreements with a resolution that began:

Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that

(1) trade agreements are not the appropriate vehicle for enacting immigration-related laws or modifying current immigration policy; and

(2) future trade agreements to which the United States is a party and the legislation implementing the agreements should not contain immigration-related provisions.¹⁷

The Hill recently reported that:

TPP's provisions are largely secret but, according to Curtis Ellis of the American Jobs Alliance, the U.S. Trade Representative revealed that "temporary entry" guest worker visas are a "key feature" of the pact. Ellis said that Obama Administration previously used the U.S.-South Korea trade pact to expand the length of time a L-1 visa holder can work in the U.S. That pact is viewed as a model for negotiating the TPP.¹⁷

As a result of these concerns, NumbersUSA sent notices to members of Congress reading in part:

Despite a U.S. labor force participation rate that is at its lowest level since 1978, President Obama wants to use the TPP to further reduce the jobs available to U.S. workers and instead reserve certain jobs for foreign workers under the agreement. It is indefensible that Congress would now consider surrendering even more of its authority over immigration to this President in order to fast track a trade agreement that will harm American workers, and the text of which Congress has not even seen.¹⁷

Environment

In an analysis of the leaked TPP “Investment” chapter¹³, Public Citizen observes that:

The leaked text would empower foreign firms to directly “sue” signatory governments in extrajudicial investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) tribunals over domestic policies that apply equally to domestic and foreign firms that foreign firms claim violate their new substantive investor rights. There they could demand taxpayer compensation for domestic financial, health, environmental, land use and other policies and government actions they claim undermine TPP foreign investor privileges, such as the “right” to a regulatory framework that conforms to their “expectations.”¹⁹

Thus, the TPP would elevate foreign-owned corporations to the same status as sovereign governments. These corporations would be able to challenge in foreign tribunals any environmental laws and regulations that they deemed a threat to their profitability. For example, provisions would disadvantage organic farmers and those who adopt more environmentally-sound farming practices.¹⁸

TPP will limit GMO food labeling and will allow the import of foods and goods that do not meet US safe standards.²⁰As US News reports:

Many jurisdictions have policies to promote opportunity and ameliorate the severity of market forces. These include minimum wage laws, laws requiring employers to offer health insurance, regulations covering product safety, work-place safety, environmental protection, and more. All of these protections are at risk under the TPP. For example, the pact would prevent communities from deciding whether or not they want fracking in their area.¹⁸

Intellectual Property

The TPP would extend copyright beyond the international 50 year standard after an author’s death by an additional 20 years, thus effectively prohibiting works from entering the public domain.³

Article 16 of the TPP wants signatories to find legal incentives to strong-arm ISPs into privately enforcing TPP copyright rules. The result could be arbitrary filtering of content, complete blockage of websites, and disclosure of ISP customer identities.³

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has expressed serious concern that the TPP will:

Place Greater Liability on Internet Intermediaries, as noted above.
Compel signatory nations to enact laws banning circumvention of digital locks on movies on DVDs, video games, and players, and for embedded software.
Create New Threats for Journalists and Whistleblowers.
Enact a "Three-Step Test" Language That Puts Restrictions on Fair Use.
Adopt Criminal Sanctions: Adopt criminal sanctions for copyright infringement that is done without a commercial motivation.¹

The EFF notes that:

TPP raises significant concerns about citizens’ freedom of expression, due process, innovation, the future of the Internet’s global infrastructure, and the right of sovereign nations to develop policies and laws that best meet their domestic priorities. In sum, the TPP puts at risk some of the most fundamental rights that enable access to knowledge for the world’s citizens."¹

Critics of the TPP say it would result in increased drug prices and could give surgeons patent protection for their procedures.¹⁴

Corporate tribunals override national sovereignty

A TPP leaked document made public by Wikileaks reveals that:

The Huffington Post emphasizes the point:

Let that sink in for a moment: "[C]ompanies and investors would be empowered to challenge regulations, rules, government actions and court rulings -- federal, state or local -- before tribunals...." And they can collect not just for lost property or seized assets; they can collect if laws or regulations interfere with these giant companies' ability to collect what they claim are "expected future profits."¹⁶

The New York Times observes:

In all, according to Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, about 9,000 foreign-owned firms operating in the United States would be empowered to bring cases against governments here. Those are as diverse as timber and mining companies in Australia and investment conglomerates from China whose subsidiaries in Trans-Pacific Partnership countries like Vietnam and New Zealand also have ventures in the United States.

More than 18,000 companies based in the United States would gain new powers to go after the other 11 countries in the accord…

Under the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a member nation would be forbidden from favoring “goods produced in its territory.”¹⁴

This is really troubling,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the Senate’s No. 3 Democrat. “It seems to indicate that savvy, deep-pocketed foreign conglomerates could challenge a broad range of laws we pass at every level of government, such as made-in-America laws or anti-tobacco laws. I think people on both sides of the aisle will have trouble with this.”¹⁴

Conclusion

From what we now know, the Trans-Pacific Partnership represents a distinct and significant threat to national sovereignty and the ability of any member nation – including the United States – to regulate its trade, intellectual property, environment, and immigration.

Most troubling is what we don’t yet know about the secretive TPP.

In the interests of America and all Americans, Congress is obligated to deny fast-track TPA authority on the TPP and to reject the TPP in its entirety.

The author, Fred Elbel, is the OFIR webmaster and director of Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform.

References

1. What is TPP, Electronic Frontier Foundation

2. What Is Wrong With the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Electronic Frontier Foundation, August 21, 2012 - one-page overview

3. What is the TPP, and why should you care?, Naked Security, August 28, 2012

4. Obama secretly signing away U.S. sovereignty, WorldNetDaily, October 16, 2013

5. Thanks to WikiLeaks, we see just how bad TPP trade deal is for regular people, The Guardian, November 13, 2013

6. Trash the TPP: Why It's Time to Revolt Against the Worst "Trade Agreement" in History, Occupy.com, July 19, 2013

7. Leaked TPP Intellectual Property Chapter from May 2014, Electronic Frontier Foundation, May 2014

8. Media Leave Viewers In The Dark About Trans-Pacific Partnership, Media Matters, February 9, 2014

9. Immigration, Outsourcing And Now Fast-Tracking TP - When Will GOP Stand Up For Americans?, Patrick J. Buchanan, VDare, January 31, 2015

Following the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, we threw open America’s doors to a flood of immigrants, legal and illegal. Some 40-50 million have poured in, an unprecedented expansion of the labor force.

Thus, “free-trade” Republicans and their collaborators in the Business Roundtable and U.S. Chamber of Commerce decided to drop the U.S. labor force into a worldwide labor pool where the average wage was but a tiny fraction of an American living wage.

Like NAFTA and GATT, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is an enabling act for multinationals to move freely to where it is cheapest to produce while securing access to where it is most profitable to sell.

10. Obama's next immigration scam - Guest workers get free pass in so-called free-trade TPP agreement, World Net Daily, March 14, 2015

11. Democrats Blast Obama’s Secret Trade Negotiations, Limits To Growth, March 18, 2015

12. Trans-Pacific Partnership Seen as Door for Foreign Suits Against U.S., New York Times, March 25, 2015

13. Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) - Investment Chapter, Wikileaks, March 25, 2015

Read the full Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) - Investment Chapter, Wikileaks, March 25, 2015

The TPP Investment Chapter is dated 20 January 2015. The document is classified and supposed to be kept secret for four years after the entry into force of the TPP agreement or, if no agreement is reached, for four years from the close of the negotiations.

Julian Assange, WikiLeaks editor said: "The TPP has developed in secret an unaccountable supranational court for multinationals to sue states. This system is a challenge to parliamentary and judicial sovereignty. Similar tribunals have already been shown to chill the adoption of sane environmental protection, public health and public transport policies."

Current TPP negotiation member states are the United States, Japan, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, Chile, Singapore, Peru, Vietnam, New Zealand and Brunei. The TPP is the largest economic treaty in history, including countries that represent more than 40 per cent of the world´s GDP.

14. Trans-Pacific Partnership Seen as Door for Foreign Suits Against U.S,, The Guardian, March 25, 2015

15. Corporate Sovereignty Provisions Of TPP Agreement Would Massively Undermine Government Sovereignty, TechDirt, March 26, 2015

16. Now We Know Why Huge TPP Trade Deal Is Kept Secret From the Public, Huffington Post, March 27, 2015

17. We join unions, environmentalists and more in broad coalition against threat of anti-worker trade bill, NumbersUSA, April 14, 2015

18. Obama's Pacific Trade Deal Is No Deal At All - These trade negotiations are about corporations seeking to prevent competition, U.S. News and World Report, April 19, 2015

19. Analysis of Leaked Trans-Pacific Partnership Investment Text, Public Citizen, March 25, 2015

20. Stop TPP – The Facts

10 Ways The TPP Would Hurt U.S. Working Families

21 Stop The TPP, Communications Workers of America Read more about The Subversive Trans-Pacific Partnership

There Is No Executive Order for Amnesty! - It Is Far Worse

NOTE: DHS issued ten memorandums to implement Obama's executive amnesty.

As we enter the last two years of the Obama Administration, the outlook on immigration issues is as bleak as it is complex and potentially overwhelming.

No, there is no Executive Order for amnesty for illegal aliens. The media coverage of President Obama’s “executive order on amnesty” has been loud, repetitious, and wrong. Many news organizations have used the terms “Executive Order” and “Executive Action” and “Executive Memorandum” interchangeably, and incorrectly.

As of January 23, the White House website for Executive Orders¹ shows no amnesty for illegal aliens.

What is being done is far worse for our country and our culture.

On the day of the President’s supposed Executive Order, November 20, 2014, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Jeh Johnson issued ten memorandums.²

The timeline of what happened: The news reported President Obama’s impending announcement on “executive order amnesty” for over a week.

At 8:00pm ET on November 20, 2014, President Obama did give a speech³ that was filled with lies and misinformation. He lied about border security and the number of illegal aliens entering our country. He repeated the idiocy about how our immigration system is “broken.” He made the same claim in his January 20 State of the Union address to Congress. (Just how the system is broken, nobody has ever honestly or accurately described.)

Obama surrendered on enforcement:

…tracking down, rounding up, and deporting millions of people isn’t realistic.

He also called it, “impossible.” But, nobody could know what is possible or “impossible” because real enforcement hasn’t been tried in decades.

No “Executive Order Amnesty” was announced on November 20, only the usual shibboleths about immigration.

However, earlier in the day Secretary of DHS Jeh Johnson issued ten memorandums dealing with legal and illegal immigration, immigration enforcement, prosecutorial discretion, DACA, etc.⁴

On Friday, November 21, President Obama traveled to Las Vegas, gave a speech, and signed two Presidential Memorandums, not Executive Orders as the media, once again, erroneously reported.⁵

In the first memorandum, “Modernizing and Streamlining the U.S. Immigrant Visa System for the twenty-first century,”⁶ Obama twice invokes the “broken” lie and says;

We have worked to simplify an overly complex visa system, one that is confusing to travelers and immigrants, burdensome to businesses, and results in long wait times that negatively impact millions of families and workers. But we can and must do more to improve this system.

Translation: “Even though the United States lets in more legal immigrants per year than almost all the rest of the countries in the world added up…we are going to accelerate the process.” In the second memorandum, “Creating Welcoming Communities and Fully Integrating Immigrants and Refugees,”⁷ Obama provides an overview of the plan to accelerate legal immigration and to naturalize over 13 million Legal Permanent Residents before the 2016 Presidential election....

[Read the original article for an explanation of each of the ten DHS memorandums] Read more about There Is No Executive Order for Amnesty! - It Is Far Worse

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Poke the Bear

Posted by Cynthia Kendoll on Fri, 08/01/2014

Americans are the most generous, compassionate and welcoming people on earth. Yet, with the recent surge on the border and the President's unwillingness to even address the issue in any meaningful way, citizens are beginning to look up from their busy lives and realize we have a really serious problem on our hands.

Citizen's patience with the President and Congress and the lack of enforcement of our existing immigration laws has worn thin and immigration has now moved to the top of the list of issues that concern voters - finally! There is nothing more powerful or more effective in correcting the course of our nation than citizen activism and involvement.

Letters to the editor (LTE) are an effective way to reach folks in your community and to educate them about the devastating, tax funded, job stealing, health risking, environment destroying, culture altering situations we will all be facing in the very near future if the situation, not only on the border, but, all across the country is not resolved soon.

Be certain to be factually accurate and to the point when you write a LTE.

Please read the excellent letters submitted from citizens all over the state and then write one of your own. Consider submitting your letter not only to the larger newspapers, but to your local community paper, as well. It's time to speak up!

Read more about Poke the Bear

Massive marijuana grow in eastern Oregon forest nets guilty verdicts for defendant

A 34-year-old man was found guilty by a federal jury in Portland on Monday in connection with a massive marijuana growing operation that covered a mile-and-a-half stretch in eastern Oregon's Wallowa Whitman National Forest.

Fredy Figueroa-Montes was the only one of six defendants to choose to go to trial for what is believed to be the largest marijuana grow ever found in Oregon, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office....

....Authorities discovered more than 91,000 plants in the marijuana grow. The defendants had torn out trees and underbrush to develop several pods of plants.....and used more than 500 pounds of illegal pesticides, herbicides, fertilizer and rodent-killing chemicals for the operation. Damage to the area along the Wildcat Creek was estimated at $97,000....

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House Republican Circulating Petition to Push Immigration Reform

The third House Republican to support the comprehensive immigration bill introduced by House Democrats is circulating a petition to House Republicans to pressure House Republican leaders to bring up comprehensive immigration reform legislation this year.

On Friday, Rep. David Valadao (R-CA) said he was "hoping to get a decent number" of signatures, according to the Washington Post.

Reps. Jeff Denham (R-CA) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) are the other two Republicans who have come out in support of the Senate's immigration bill that provides a pathway to citizenship for the country's illegal immigrants with less stringent border security provisions.

Valadao said he is not calling on House Republican leadership to hold a vote on the Democrat bill but on immigration reform in general before the end of the year.

House Republicans are reportedly working on various piecemeal bills in order to go conference with the Senate, where a pathway to citizenship provision will most likely prevail. The Congressional Budget Office determined that the Senate bill would lower the wages of working class Americans.

If House Republicans do not bring up immigration reform this year, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) recently said Republicans may try to pass comprehensive immigration reform next year--after the primaries--when Republicans do not have to fear challenges from the conservative wing of the party. Read more about House Republican Circulating Petition to Push Immigration Reform

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Just a smiley face painted on self-serving policy

Posted by Cynthia Kendoll on Mon, 09/16/2013

What will happen to us, to our country and to our grandchildren if this massive mess of an amnesty bill prevails?

In their self-serving, big money, wheeling and dealing shenanigans, many of our elected officials can't see (or more likely, don't care) what they are doing to our country and our future.

Read Max Powell's insightful article about the consequences of such short sighted thinking.
Read more about Just a smiley face painted on self-serving policy

Call now - as if the future of our country depends upon it

Alert date:

June 24, 2013

Alert body:

Please continue to call Congress and urge Senators to VOTE NO on S. 744, a monstrous disaster in the making.

The Senate just voted 67-27 to limit debate and amendments on the Corker-Hoeven amendment to the S. 744 amnesty bill.

That means the 1,100+ page bill as amended by 119 pages of amendments today can come to a vote as early as Wednesday morning. The final cloture vote (requiring 60 votes) on the whole bill could be as early as Thursday morning.

We recommend that you sign up with NumbersUSA for free faxing to Congress and to receive alerts on immigration bills before Congress. http://www.numbersusa.com.

NumbersUSA and FAIR are both doing great work in leading the opposition to bad immigration bills in Congress.

Congressional switch-board numbers: (202) 224-3132 or Toll free (866) 220-0044.

Call, call, call....as if the future of our country depends upon it...because it does!

Smoke jumpers plant landing in pot 'starter kits'

A team of smoke jumpers fighting fires in the Applegate unknowingly dropped into a 1,500-plant marijuana garden this week, sheriff's officials said.

The locally-based smoke jumpers parachuted into the garden as they were searching for lightning-sparked fires, Jackson County sheriff's spokeswoman Andrea Carlson said.

The firefighters contacted law enforcement, who pulled the plants from the site on Tuesday, Carlson said.

"They had no idea they were dropping into a marijuana garden," Carlson said.

The sheriff's department said it is unusual to find a large marijuana garden this early in the year.

People usually stumble into the gardens in the late summer or early fall.

Most of the plants were small and growing inside plastic pots.

"They were in starter kits, so to speak," Carlson said.

The grow site was littered with hills of garbage, much of it harmful chemicals that can pollute soil and streams in the area, officials said.

At least two people were believed to be camping at the garden, keeping armed watch over the plants as they grew over the summer, Carlson said.

"These plants were going to be harvested in late summer or early fall," Carlson said.

The amount of garbage was disturbing, though not surprising considering what deputies have seen piled up at previous gardens found in the forest, she said.

"If you consider at least two people were eating two meals a day and then throwing the food containers away, and that it takes a lot of chemicals and fertilizers to start these grows, that's a lot of trash," Carlson said. "It's very bad for the environment of our forests."

The sheriff's department is putting together a group of volunteers who will hike into the garden to haul out the trash in the coming weeks, Carlson said.

"We won't just let it sit out there," Carlson said.

There were 1,509 plants at the site, along with hundreds of additional holes dug for future planting. Authorities also found two long guns and other evidence that suggested the garden was part of a Mexican cartel operation, Carlson said. She declined to elaborate, citing the ongoing investigation.

Those recreating on federal lands should be aware of the dangers of coming across possible grow sites, officials say. Telltale signs are PVC piping or black poly-pipe, bags of fertilizer, large quantities of trash and camp sites. Those who come across such sites should leave immediately the way they came in, police say. If possible, take note of the location on a GPS and make a waypoint but do not linger or investigate further. Upon returning home, call the local sheriff's department and provide accurate road descriptions and drainage or creek names.

"Anything that doesn't add up to the way the woods should look should give you a clue that you're in a marijuana grow," Carlson said. "Just head back the way you came and immediately call law enforcement."

Most of the marijuana plants at the grow site were small and inside plastic pots, said sheriff’s officials. Read more about Smoke jumpers plant landing in pot 'starter kits'

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