Love dem hogs

April 25, 2013

By James Burbank

Why do we always think someone from somewhere else, some magic someone with money and jobs has the solution for our economic problems?

Perhaps if we can just concoct the right inducements and incentives, even though we’re in a 50,000-year drought cycle, and even though we’re one of the poorest and least educated states in the union, if only we can throw the right tax incentives and benizens at such folk, they will just roll over and begin to smile on us, dispense their largesse, and New Mexico will be a blessed and golden land.

Witness the latest proposed and potentially extremely visionary state economic development effort. Conservatives and liberals alike love this new deal.

The wild pigs from Texas are now eating their way north through New Mexico. They have, through their spokeshog, offered our fair state Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!

In exchange, the wild pigs humbly ask to rip up every tree root in the state, destroy all crops and living green matter, enroil and besmirch all New Mexico waterways.

Both the legislature and the gov. are just about trembling over this latest initiative to offer GRT abatement for a thousand years to the wild hogs from Texas, monthly incentive pig payments to be assessed against each and every living state citizen at the rate of .0107563 multiplied by the base indicator preference to be determined quarterly by TRD. (Yearly assessments against the dead at the usual discount window rate.)

This piece was written by:

James Burbank

James Burbank has written and published over 200 articles for regional and national publications such as Reuters International News Service, The World & I Magazine, National Catholic Reporter, Farmer’s Almanac, Los Angeles Herald Examiner, La Opinion, New Mexico Magazine, Albuquerque Journal, Albuquerque Tribune. He is author of Retirement New Mexico, the best selling book published by New Mexico Magazine Press, now in its third edition. He is also author of Vanishing Lobo: the Mexican Wolf in the Southwest, published by Johnson Books.

As a professional writing consultant, he has written and edited publications, video and radio scripts, annual reports, and investment information for a wide variety of corporate clients. A Lecturer II for the Department of English, Burbank has specialized in teaching technical writing and professional writing. His interests extend from composition and writing theory to environmental and nature writing. He has played a leadership role in developing and implementing the English Department’s teaching mentorship program.