New Mexico Mercury

Assimilation in Europe and the American Response

With the terrible killings in Paris, attention has finally turned to the thousands of North Africans who have not been assimilated into those societies, live separate lives, and do not feel that they are a part of the future of those countries. We saw it repeatedly in both Spain and France.

Europeans will talk about discrimination in the United States. This is understandable because our issues are open and public, always making the headlines. In France and Spain, however, the problem is much worse because it is hidden – or at least has been hidden until now.  Outsiders, whether they have come from Algeria or Morocco or are gypsies, are simply forgotten...

Who Controls ABQ’s Public Airwaves?

Eighty-one years ago Congress passed the Communications Act of 1934, which stated that, “the airwaves belong to the people,” a syllogism that does not stand the test of time. Corporate ownership of the airwaves is a labyrinth of holding companies and monopolies that control almost all aspects of electronic communications in this nation.

In Albuquerque, for instance, there are very few viewers who can tell you who owns the local commercial broadcast entities, like Hubbard Broadcasting, Hearst Television, or Lin Broadcasting. Who are these media conglomerates? And what do they offer in return for permission to exploit our airwaves?...

El Machete: King Tiger

King Tiger

Anniversary of Citizens United is No Cause for Celebration

In his heyday nearly a century ago, Will Rogers made Americans smile with an observation that our country “has the best politicians money can buy.”

This week, on the fifth anniversary of what might be characterized as the Supreme Court’s initiative to help us buy better ones, it’s fair to say the justices have increased the cost of our politicians without improving the quality.

Since January 2010, when the court ruled 5-4 in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that corporations, trade associations, labor unions, and other groups have a constitutional right to spend whatever they like to influence elections...

Water is for Talkin’ Over

A report back from the 21st annual statewide New Mexico Water Dialogue meeting and thoughts on an inclusive governance strategy for our water's future.

Provincial Matters, 1-19-2015

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

Play Illustrates Idealism vs Reality in American Corporatocracy

“What laws ever made men free?” Henry David Thoreau asks in The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, a thoughtful new production at the Adobe Theater in Albuquerque. If his question has more than a passing resemblance to the rhetoric of the Tea Party 170 years later, the parallels deserve close examination.

I have published a detailed review of this brilliantly acted and skillfully directed play on talkinbroadway.com and won’t repeat that here, but I do want to discuss further the idea of freedom that is the core of this play—and of much of the political debate in the U.S. today...

The Skandera Loop

In computer programming loops are repetitive iterations of the same operation used to carry out specific tasks. The computer having no brain and no sense of monotony simply repeats the script ad infinitum until a particular condition is satisfied. The New Mexico legislature seems to be in some kind of incarnation of the loop phenomenon. We have been running the Skandera loop for going on five years now, over and over again and with the same result...

Educators accuse state of backtracking on teacher evaluation policy

“...Like A War Zone”: Worries About Increased Oil Drilling