New Mexico Mercury

A Fresh Face: District Two Update

Guess who’s been rubbing elbows with David Koch at the lil ‘ol Country Club? And guess who got the royal nod from the National Association of Industrial and Office Parks (NAIOP): the Commerical Real Estate Development Association? The lengthy name alone shows just how important these folks really are! For instance, the New Mexico branch is currently headed up by Bruce Beebe, Wells Fargo VP for regional business banking.
Mercury readers, on Nov. 29 last year then pres. of the New Mexico NAIOP, Dale Dekker, wrote a letter endorsing this mystery person to run for city council in District 2 as a pro-business candidate.  If you guessed this mystery person is good ol’ Uberprogressive, District 2 candidate Rox Meyers, you were right! ...

Montagues and Capulets

As our country goes into its second day of partial government shutdown, many foreigners ready to spend their money at our national parks and other points of interest are being told their destination is closed. They don’t understand how a standoff between two modern political parties in a democracy constantly advertised as worthy of emulation can paralyze a nation, furlough federal workers, and stop important services. This couldn’t happen at home, they say...

Pachyderm Pout

El Machete

The New Deal Revisited in Symposium and Exhibit (This Saturday)

The New Deal lasted only a decade.  But in that decade thousands of bridges in the country were refurbished or built new; thousands of miles of roads were built, hundreds of post offices, schools and community centers were built or festooned with New Deal art provided by unemployed artists, many products of the nation’s best art institutions.

Some of our national icons were completed during the period like the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam. Three million young men worked in Civilian Conservation Camps, many living outside their communities for the first time...

Countdown to Health Reform III

The New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange opened October 1, and it is clear there are some hiccups as an enterprise as massive as this one moves into action.  But they will get over these growing pains and will get it together. Individuals without coverage or those wanting to change their coverage will have six months (October 1, 2013 – March 31, 2014) to enroll through the Exchange.  Anyone can enroll now, but the policies will not be effective until January 1, 2014. So you have time to learn about using the Exchange.

Below are a few suggestions for those who want to purchase coverage...

The Magic of Your Dreams

It’s one of the most important days in the life of Yeira Rubi Beltrán. Her quinceañera. She lives on the west side of Juárez with her brother, Hector and her grandmother, Elvira Romero in a shack with little protection against the rain and wind. To survive, they’ve often had to find scrap metal to sell along the highway. “They’ve suffered a great deal,” Elvira says.

I first met Yeira and Hector in March, 2011. Their grandmother, Elvira was the cook at the nearby mental asylum, Vision in Action that I visit every month...

The New Normal

Because of our elected officials’ extreme polarization, important sectors of our nation closed down this morning. Government services not deemed to be essential have been forced to shut their doors. National parks and monuments have lines of cars stopped at their gates (many carrying visitors coming from halfway around the globe). Even some workers whose expertise guards our safety, such as a percentage of air traffic controllers, are off the job. More than 800,000 government workers have been furloughed without pay, with thousands more required to continue laboring, also without pay...

Counter-Ad to Diesel’s Affront to Muslim Women

Media Literacy Project was disturbed by Diesel’s ad featuring a white woman in a niqab with much of her body exposed and tattooed, reading, “I am not what I appear to be.” Yes, the ad affirmed that women in niqabs are diverse and interesting, but it also was an affront to Muslim women’s modesty and cast their bodies as exotic. It enticed people to look at Muslim women and wonder what’s beneath the clothes, which is the antithesis of what this everyday piece of clothing is intended to do. It took the power away from Muslim women and put the emphasis on their appearance...

Climate Whacks Mexico’s Economy

The twin blows of Hurricane Ingrid and Tropical Storm Manuel are jolting the Mexican economy. According to the federal Budget and Taxation Secretariat (SHCP), the storms will shave Mexico’s estimated 2013 growth rate from 1.8 percent to 1.7 percent. Federal officials expect growth to pick up pace during the fourth quarter of the year, but the latest downward indicators followed a series of previously announced reductions in the year’s projected economic growth rate, which plunged from 3.5 percent to 3.1 percent even before reaching a new low in the aftermath of September’s storms...

My Own California

Long before the Mamas and the Papas recorded their famous song 48 years ago, “California dreaming” was a national preoccupation, and it still is: the land of eternal spring, endless beaches, waving palms, bare sensuality, and men and women—in the title of another famous song by Bob Dylan—“Forever Young.”

These days I am spending a long bit of time in another California, where the mornings are foggy, the ocean is bitterly cold, and many of my neighbors are elderly and not at all rich. The roads are narrow and hilly, and most people, while polite, prefer to ignore their neighbors rather than socialize with them in suburban style. In such respects it is not much different from the East Mountains in New Mexico...