A New Blog for You Politicos

All of us who are interested in politics have a favorite story about a politician or an event.  It could be historical or recent.  It might be humorous or very traumatic.  But most of these things are very entertaining and educational.

I propose in a new blog to publish from you, the reader, some of  your favorite political stories.  I only ask that you mail them to me at NMPoliticalLore@gmail.com.  I will not edit them nor change them, but this process will allow for some discretion in keeping away some crazy stuff.  You may have a byline or not but the comments page will be open for other views.

This could be fun.  To see the new blog just go to http://newmexicopoliticallore.blogspot.com

We are open for business.

Misc.

I just finished reading Daniel Suarez's new novel "Kill Decision".  It is about the future of autonomous weapon drones.  It is a timely read right now as the morality of  using drone attacks against enemies is being debated.  The writer is an expert in IT and former contractor for the intelligence infrastructure of the U.S. Government.  His knowledge of the technology and the direction it is headed paints a very frightening future.  I suggest  you pick it up to see what a game changer this new technology will be.  The problem is that anyone can build one with off the shelf technology and they can blow you up.  This is not just going to be a U.S. weapon.

I ranted yesterday about the efforts of the extractive industries to use P.R. and lobbyists to get New Mexicans to believe it is possible to take over federal public lands.  Think of the oil companies taking over Chaco Canyon.

At times like these it's worth remembering a few key things:

* Article IV, Section 3 of our Constitution gives Congress the exclusive, "Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States;..."

* Exercising its prerogative under this provision of the Constitution, Congress admitted all of the western states to the Union on condition that they disclaim "... all right and title to the unappropriated public lands lying within the boundaries" of each state.  In other words, the western states are creatures of Congress, which under our Constitution and the enabling acts of each state is responsible for the administration of the federal public lands therein.

* In further exercise of its responsibilities under Article IV, Section III of the Constitution, Congress in 1976 passed the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which among (many) other things states that, "... it is the policy of the United States that the public lands be retained in federal ownership,..." (43 U.S.C. 1701(a)((1))

In other words, theories propounded by various "states' rights" proponents that somehow the federal lands within the various western state boundaries by right belong to the states are completely contrary to our Constitution, the state enabling acts (and often state constitutions) themselves, and the most recent iteration of general Congressional policy with respect to the federal public lands codified in FLPMA. 

Eastbound

This is a view at dawn on I-10 East of Benson, AZ.  It was a pretty morning.  And then I had a call that lobbyist Dan Weaks in Santa Fe has been pushing a bill that would have the state take over ownership of federal public lands.  Of course this is unconstitutional, but that doesn't bother the right wing oil boys and greedy lobbyists.  However the gun enthusiasts who partner with the right wing use the constitution to argue for their rights to carry assault rifles.  They do this because they are paranoid the government will attack them.  Also because they thinks it prove they have big uhhhh, you know.

Tucson

I'm in Tucson playing golf. Last night the city Council in Tucson voted to require registration and background checks of people buying guns at private Gun shows. And then I looked in the Albuquerque Journal website today and find out the gun nuts are carrying assault rifles into the state legislature. I wonder if New Mexico's becoming crazier than Arizona.

Sent from my iPhone

I-10

This is a roadside stop between Deming and Lordsburg. There is no wind and the skies are blue with some clouds. A very pretty scene.

Warned

There are warning signs everywhere. I wonder what kind of accident you could can have in a small restaurant in Hatch New Mexico. Lawyers are with us everywhere.

Sun Shine

I will be gone for a few days to play golf with friends near Tucson, Az.  It is supposed to be in the mid 70's.  Woo Hoo!  

Earth to Cowboys

This is earth calling cowboys.  Your state of New Mexico is in a record drought.  You should not be suing the Forest Service for cutting back your grazing allotments if you want the landscape to survive.  You sound like a bunch of mewling kittens when you complain the Forest Service Ranger in your district doesn't like you because you don't respect her.  And don't forget, the state's water supplies come from these forest watersheds and they are not yours to devastate.  Grow up and be responsible.

Earth to oil and Gas industry.  Why would anyone in their right minds object to revealing what potentially dangerous chemicals are being injected into the ground during fracking?  Yet you are trying to kill Brian Egolf's bill in Santa Fe to require you to fess up!  Here is a compromise.  Any oil man who supports killing this bill should allow the Sierra Club to inject the same chemicals under said oil man's home.  If it is good for everyone else then it is good for you!

3%

C'mon Albuquerque!  We can do it.  Let's show our kids we really do believe in democracy and endeavor to beat the 3% turnout for the last School Board and Bond election.  That will take place on Tuesday and there is early voting available.  I will vote today since I will be off to Amado, Arizona for a few days of golf on Monday.

I got an email from a democratic precinct chair warning me that the Tea party is trying to take over the school board.  Sure enough the Journal endorsed one of them this morning.  I for one do not want any of those folks in charge of curriculums for the school districts kids.  Creationism, gun mania, and right wing lunacy should not be pounded into our kids.  Although it would be hard to imagine most of the teachers allowing that to happen.

My Uncle Jaime

It was my uncle Jaime Baca's 90th birthday today.  Many of  his friends and colleagues from St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Rio Rancho gathered for a luncheon for him at the Chamisa Hills Country Club.  My brother Tom and I posed with him before the event.

Jaime has been a Deacon at the Church for many years and is greatly respected.  You can see it in this birthday cake produced by one of the parishioners.  It was a thing of beauty.

Jaime is a retired Bernalillo Public Schools teacher.  He had many harrowing experiences as a gunner in a B-24 Liberator Bomber in the  5th Air Force in the Pacific during WWII.  He escaped many brushes with death.  He is one of the finest men I have ever known.

It was a bright, sunny and breezy day in Rio Rancho.  A bit to cool for a round of golf but the beautiful Sandias made up for that!

Economy

New Mexico, more than most, will feel the effect of less defense spending.  But that doesn't mean those jobs have to disappear.  They just need to turn into something else.

Maybe the Governor and Mayors should get to work on this.

The U.S. economy has contracted in the last quarter.  One of the reasons given is that the defense budget is shrinking.  Hooray.  Up to a point.  I think it is great we are spending less money on our warrior ways.  Those dollars in the end don't really produce anything.  The weapons systems are designed to destroy assets.  Not build them.

But, that money we have been spending should mostly be redirected into research and development of renewable energy.  We know right now that putting up solar panels on every roof top is a winner, so lets redirect some of that money into such a coal killing project.  It is a twofer.....it helps with climate change issues and it builds infrastructure.

The rest of those defense dollars that we will be saving ought to be jammed into the nation's efforts at improving our roads, highways, bridges, rail and other transportation systems.  This would create lots of jobs while improving our chances of staying off of collapsing bridges.

Remember

I watched a phenomenal story on CBS news this evening about a young soldier who lost both arms and both legs to an IED in Iraq.  Surgeons transplanted a human arm onto him and it works.  His courage and outlook was good.

What isn't good and upsets me most is that young man will never be normal.  The men who put him on his road of suffering have all but escaped any recrimination or responsibility for putting him in harms way after lying about the need for war.  Those guys are george bush, dick cheney, and donald rumsfeld.  They should go down in history with the worst of war criminals.  There should never be any suggestion that these men can be historically rehabilitated.  

Misc.

The issue of the year is sane gun control.  So of course the New Mexico Legislature's first committee to look at closing loopholes in private gun sale background checks has tabled the motion.  Will it see the light of day?

The big Pharma groups in Washington are trying to limit the sale of generic drugs.  This would cost the taxpayer dearly under our new national healthcare.  I assume all of these CEO and Boards are republicans soaked in greed.  They might be a real death panel.

The New York Times Science page today has interesting piece on all the little things that can kill you.  Like falling in the shower.  It says to pay attention to these little things. I guess not passing gun control legislation is one of the big things that can kill you.

The Republicans and the President and Dems are in a race to reform our immigration laws after the GOP realized that Latino voters count.  This is a good thing.  Now if we could just get our nation's environmental movement to recognize this fact too.  I challenge anyone to look at the boards and staff of national, regional and local environmental nonprofits and see  if there are any Latinos there.  I can tell you they are few and far between.

Bosque VS. Walmart

I snapped this picture of the Bosque early this morning as the sun was peaking over the Sandias.  It was a beautiful scene.  I am glad I can go out and take walks again on my new knee.

The Bosque is a very special place for many of us in the Valley.  Whether you live on the east or west side of the Rio Grande it is a place of quiet nature.  Well, kind of quiet.

The Albuquerque City Council will soon have to decide whether a big box Walmart will settle itself into the scene near the Bosque School on Coors road.  This controversial siting decision by Walmart and its minions has been denied by the Environmental Planning Commission and the City Hearing Officer who upheld that decision.  There are over 7000 pages of written record and thirty hours of recorded testimony for the Council to peruse.  Nobody will ever convince me they will read those 7000 pages or listen to that testimony.  They will just sit and listen for a couple of hours and then make a political decision.  The question is will the five republican councillors and Mayor Berry just bend over for Walmart and enable them to build in this inappropriate place.  Or will one or two brave GOP councillors break ranks and do the right thing.  Let us hope so or the city will most likely be in for litigation that will cost us taxpayers deeply.

There are many places for Walmart to build their stores.  This site is not even close to being appropriate.

Outrageous

 One of the front page headlines in the New York Times is about the crush of lawsuits against the new healthcare law that requires contraception be made available by the policies.  The religious nuts and far right wing says it violates their beliefs.  So, if you work for a church or a business owned by a fundamentalist you might be shoved aside.

A remarkably good headline story in the Albuquerque Journal today is how 70% of child births in New Mexico are paid for by medicaid.  Just listen to what anti tax right wingers say about this.  If you know any of them ask them to read the New York Times story.  I wonder if they might see any connection.  Strangely, the Journal didn't even mention contraception in its story.  No comments from family planners.  Just from the head of the chamber of commerce.  Weird.

My wife Bobbi says if contraception isn't allowed as coverage for women then no public monies should be allowed for erectile dysfunction drugs.  It too is a pill having to do with fertility and it is covered under the health care law.

And then on the other end of the equation we find that 24% of medicaid expenditures are spent on just 8% of medicaid recipients who are in nursing home care.  A whole industry has grown up around keeping people alive that have zero quality of life.  These companies exist on tax dollars earned by keeping folks alive no matter how much they suffer.

Internet Gone Wild

Yesterday I got several emails from folks saying the Land of Enchantment had a bad day after the introduction of a bill by Representative Cathryn Brown that seemed to say a woman could not have an abortion after rape or incest because it would destroy the fetus, which was evidence.  This went viral on the internet and will be there forever it seems.  One friend called from Tucson this morning saying Arizonans are pointing to NM as being crazier than they are.


After watching Rep. Brown explain that she did a bad job of reading the poorly drafted bill and that it was not what she intended at all, I think I do believe her.  She said the bill was meant to make it a crime for the perpetrator to coerce a woman to have an abortion to get rid of evidence.  But, it is probably too late for that apology and contrition.  It will be interesting to see if everyone from Huff Post on down will run this followup.

And here for the laugh of the week is something sent to me by my friend Ned.

Hoisted

The University of New Mexico has lost out big time because of the greed of the Board of Regents and administration back in 1985.  It has now been announced by Forest City, the developers of Mesa Del Sol south of the Albuquerque International Airport, that they are pulling out.  This development should be a prospering community by now but the conflicted Board of Regents back in 1985 killed the development of the planned community because they wanted to figure out a way of taking the land held in trust for them by the State Land Commissioner and getting it into their own hands, thus depriving the permanent fund of the money.  I was Commissioner at the time and had worked closely with UNM to make sure the planned community would work.  I even parceled out a 480 acre section for them to  use as they needed.  They agreed to the process but when bids were opened on the first 2700 acre allotment the Board of Regents, heavily salted with conflicts of interest from westside developers, stopped the process and the winning bidder walked away.

Nothing was done with the project for years and the west side took all of the development.  Mesa del Sol withered and missed the boom.  The permanent fund lost big time and now that money is gone forever.  And UNM's current administration gets screwed for it.  

Progress

Remember the Age of Aquarius?  Could it be returning?  Democrats and Republicans talking to each other in Santa Fe.  The Governor willing to compromise away her pogrom on immigrant drivers licenses.  Gay marriage legislation being introduced in the Round House.

Well, it is all a start.  And it is strangely driven by politicos looking at the shifting opinions of the people.  Many more are deciding that continuing the culture wars just aren't worth destroying the country.  One big shrug and many move on.  This is good and we need to ride this pendulum swing as long as possible.

I am making progress too.  Twelve weeks after surgery and I returned to the Golf course yesterday for 18 holes.  The sunshine and decent weather were a great tonic.  Yeah, I am a little wrecked today, but not as bad as I thought it would be.  My new knee is not painful at all.  My other one however is starting to scream again.  I will get that one replaced in a year or so.  

Lunacy

Sometimes timing is everything.  Look at some of the republicans in our New Mexico State Legislature.  Rep. Nora Espinosa introduces a bill that would require New Mexico to ignore federal gun laws.  Another republican from Ruidoso wants to make it legal to carry concealed weapons into bars.

One really wonders how on earth such stupid people can be elected.  But is is really something we deal with in reality.  Kind of like poor timing.  The massacre of family members in the south valley of Albuquerque will certainly rain on this lunatic parade.

Did these bills ever have a chance of passing?  Probably not.  But the introduction of such legislation really shows off the pandering to lunatics that legislators are willing to undertake in order to hang on to their feeble political offices.

One last comment, if the father of the massacred family did have a felony in his past, why did he have firearms in his house?  There is something very strange with this tragedy.

A Point

One of my blog readers made a good point yesterday.  He was lamenting the fact that Senator Tom Udall was worried that his emails were running 10 to 1 against any gun control legislation.  Bubba Munster, a.k.a. Frank Conway, wonders why that has anything to do with good government.  So do I.

But if the email volumes are deciding what policy in the U.S. Senate should be then everyone of us needs to send an email to our delegation.  I guess emails equate to common sense now so we need to play the game with some of our more timid Senators and Congressmen.  Yes, all of them.

In the meantime, I am happy to see that Udall's quest to reform the filibuster in the Senate is actually getting traction.  If he can pull that off then there is one less thing to make the DC scene dysfunctional.  We should know if he is successful in a few days.