Misc.

You could almost hear all of the sphincters tightening out in the western United States last night.  After the President said he would unilaterally protect public lands, without even mentioning the underlying Antiquities Act, a lot of the 'lords of yesterday' in the fossil fuel, mining and livestock industry must have felt some puckering.  One of those areas will hopefully be the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks proposed National Monument.  Get those cards and letters in to the White House.

The City of Albuquerque will send off another $8 million from the city's internally financed risk fund to deal with another cop shooting settlement.  It might have been a good settlement given what a jury might have awarded.  But, of course, that money comes from taxpayers and they should be pounding down the doors wanting reform at APD.  Now what happens is that all city departments will be assessed more funds to be paid into the risk fund over the next few years which ultimately cuts into their programs.  If the largely invisible on this issue Mayor holds regular weekly department head meetings like I used to do, then he will probably see some real animosity aimed at the APD Chief.  Some enterprising reporter should look into how this risk fund will be replenished.