New Mexico Mercury

Insight New Mexico - David Correia

V.B. Price talks with scholar and author David Correia about his new book "Properties of Violence: Law and Land Grant Struggle in Northern New Mexico."

What’s in a picture

The photo that appears at the beginning of this piece was taken in the rubble left after the April 24th 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza, an eight-story building in Savar, Bangladesh where a number of sweatshops housed clothing workers in abysmally unsafe working conditions. The day before that tragedy, the building had briefly been evacuated when cracks were noticed in its walls. But people were forced back to work; the unceasing fever of profit had to be maintained.

Industrial disasters are all too common in a world greedy for profit...

Heather Wilson: Caught in the revolving door

It’s been about a month since the news broke that federal inspectors had sanctioned Sandia and Los Alamos National Labs for their no-bid, no-deliverables contracts with former Congresswoman Heather Wilson. The Santa Fe Reporter has done an admirable job reporting on the story even providing a link to the Department of Energy’s Inspector General’s Report.  USA Today, the Washington Post and the independent watchdog group, POGO (Project on Government Oversight) have run national stories. But aside from one front page Albuquerque Journal story on June 12, we have not seen much from the local media here in her former congressional district. There’s been no follow up, no commentary or investigation of a scandal that raises questions about the ethics of former representatives (yes, even those considered saints)  profiting from their prior public service...

Border surge misses real security threat in Transborder West

New U.S. initiatives associated with immigration reform proposals aim to seal the U.S.-Mexico border with more hulking fences, high-tech surveillance, sensors, and drones -- all to “secure the border” against a dramatically diminishing flow (lowest in four decades) of south-north immigrants, and costing at least $30 billion in additional border security funding.

Generally unnoticed in this border security buildup is the rapid onset of a new transborder security threat. Not immigrants, not terrorists, not drugs, not spillover violence. Rather frightening changes in the deserts, in the mountain flora, in the surface water flows, in the falling levels of reservoirs, and in the disappearing aquifers and underground water basins...

What’s Happened To Albuquerque?  Part 6: Selling ourselves short

Honestly rebranding an intellectual and artistic hub with a chip on its shoulder 300 years in the making.

Mexico’s rich flourish

A Great Recession? Not for Mexico’s rich. In fact, the number of people in the Mexican Republic defined as wealthy by the corporate research outfit WealthInsight grew by almost a third between  late 2007 and late 2012, a time when high unemployment and hard times had most people scrambling to make ends meet.

According to WealthInsight, the total number of Mexican residents who held wealth valued at than one million dollars (minus their principal home) reached 145,000 at the end of last year. Of this group, 2,450 people were classified as multi-millionaires...

Steve Pearce tells us what to do!

Pilgrim, if you want to contact New Mexico Rep. Steve Pearce from a zip code in northern New Mexico, forget it. Steve does not want to hear from you and he will block your e-mail from ever getting through on his pristine web site. You probably voted for someone else anyway. Steve does, however, have some brilliant fatherly, patronish-type advice for you, especially if you work for the federal government.

“Get yourselves efficient,” the coherent and persuasive Pearce intones. Steve is encouraging people here in good old drypocket NM to “lead by example"...

Gila Plans Still Open to Debate

Water transfer "message bill" highlights rising tensions over water in the southern part of the state.

Background Checks

Humphrey's World

The path to economic salvation

Remember about three weeks ago when the Tea Party and other conservative groupies started screaming about how the IRS was picking on Sasquatch and his friends who were trying to educate the public about Ayn Rand’s secret recipe for fruitcake salad?

They were being singled out, they screamed, picked on and persecuted by Big Brother, who was actually off at a million dollar motivational conference in Hilo.

Well, hold onto your hats, the IRS, it turns out, when it was not partying, was also picking on progressive and liberal groups too...