New Mexico Mercury

A Sordid Tail of Campaign Abuse

Anyone who wants to witness the wonderful result of the Citizen’s United decision can just take a gander at what is going on in the District 2 City Council race where Isaac Benton faces Roxanna Meyers.

The city has never witnessed such a downright dirty, nasty attack campaign in a little old local race that usually features the kind of bland optimistic campaign statements about some general ways to promote the city and keep constituents happy...

Here’s An Idea For Managing Growth

Innovative community/private collaboration may be the key to initiating responsible strategies of redevelopment and infill in Albuquerque.

What some see as border security, others see as border hysteria in Mexico

As Congress gets back in session the question of immigration reform will be front and center. The danger is that fanatics will dominate the debate and that the key question once again will be border security and an excessive hysteria about Mexico.

About every three weeks I cross the border into Mexico at Juárez, Santa Teresa just to the west, Palomas south of Columbus, N.M., or on foot at Nogales and Tijuana. What actually happens just across the border? Here are the kinds of people you would actually meet...

The benefits of owning a polling company (updated)

Last week, the Albuquerque Journal ran a story that stated "Most Albuquerque voters favor a city proposal to build more trails and other recreational access through the city's riverside bosque….The support is widespread across political and demographic groups, the survey found."

Apparently the hundreds of naysayers that showed up in vehement opposition to the mayor's Rio Grande Vision on September 4th were just the vocal riffraff who only represent a small minority of people who "oppose the city's proposal to increase access to the Rio Grande and the Bosque."

Or so the Journal would have you believe...

What The Thunder Won’t Say

Stormy monsoons won’t save N.M. from its growing water crisis.

Provincial Matters, 9-16-2013

V.B. Price's weekly collection of appreciations and observations.

Humphrey’s World

Ol' Rich Berry

The Corporatization of Street Dealing South of the Border

A persistent narrative of narco issues south of the border maintains that violence is largely over the struggle to control drug routes leading into the dope-ridden United States, the world’s largest consumer of illegal drugs.  Yet, an increasing share of Mexican narco-violence can be attributed to conflicts over domination of the country’s own expanding domestic market. From Tijuana to Tapachula and from Monterrey to Mexico City, the internal market is thriving as sales of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, and methamphetamine all meet a demand that’s soared since the early 1990s...

Raytheon and certain members of Congress want our lunch money

Bless your heart if you believe our current Syria docudrama is about Team America’s moral outrage.  If so, you might also believe that Goldman Sach’s $1 million political contribution to Obama had no influence on his treasury appointments and the eventual multi-billion public dollar give-away to the orchestrators of the largest financial crisis the world has ever seen. Unfortunately, in this modern iteration of our “democracy,” our government’s moral outrage is often dictated by those greasing the gears. In this case, the $65 million put out by the war industry lobby is doing the greasing.  And they don’t fork out that kind of cheese for diplomacy and peace treaties...

Chemical Weapons

El Machete