Articles By

V.B. Price

UNM’s Honors College: Bigger isn’t better

In a world of future shock, where nothing seems stable and change often happens for no rhyme or reason, institutions with continuity and humane values are worth preserving, even as they evolve.

The crucial thing to avoid is ruining a great and on-going achievement while trying to make it bigger and better.

The University of New Mexico’s new Honors College has morphed this year from the Honors Program, which is one of the gems of the American Honors movement. It’s regularly ranked as one of the top three programs in the nation…

Insight New Mexico – Yvette Tovar

V.B. Price speaks with Yvette Tovar, Executive Director of the New Mexico Water Collaborative, about the ins and outs of water conservation in an era of persistent drought.

Courage in Mora County

If you knew that fallible human beings were going to drill for oil or gas through your precious groundwater would you feel confident about drinking and washing with that water? Not if you valued your health.

Of course you can’t see what actually happens when corporate persons out for profit pollute your ground water.  But it doesn’t take much imagination to suppose pollution will occur many times, if not most times, when drilling rigs and all their gear and goop go at it…

What’s happened to Albuquerque? Part 4: A city of edges

Is it time for a complete revamping of the goals Albuquerque has set for itself as a city?  Are we ready for a genuine city-wide discussion of what the current economic and environmental conditions mean for our future?

The great goals setting exercises of the l970s and l980s took place in an atmosphere of intense public interest and involvement in city issues.  By comparison, 21st century Albuquerque seems asleep at the wheel…

What’s happened to Albuquerque? Part 3: Police trust

If there’s anything city residents need to hear about during this mayoral season it’s how the candidates plan to give Albuquerque a police force it can trust and admire, and is no longer afraid of?

How would a mayor accomplish that turnaround? I know many of us would like to learn in detail how that could be done.

Living in a city where one worries about the police going rogue, killing people, beating them up, drawing guns at routine traffic stops, and the like makes doing business and going about one’s daily life even harder than it already is…

Prejudice looks like this

Santa Fe has seen in the last month an act of unique and open-hearted political courage and an example of dumbfounding intolerance when it comes to same-sex marriage and the civil rights of all persons in our state.

Governor Martinez’s vetoing of a bill to help same-sex domestic partners of military personnel expedite acquiring professional licenses to carry on their careers when they return to the poorest state in the union is so blatantly bigoted it’s hard to fathom in the 21st century…

Insight New Mexico – Bennett Hammer

V.B. Price speaks with longtime civil rights activist, former National ACLU Board Director and founder of the Bennett A. Hammer LGBT Archives Project.

What’s happened to ABQ? Part 2: Think tank city

Albuquerque’s economy has fallen into a big hole.  It’s lost sight of itself. It’s floundering in the dark. The l950s don’t work anymore. The city needs new perspectives to help it find its way. Wouldn’t it be useful if this year’s mayoral race gave voters an arena in which to ponder and assess new economic models and plans, ones designed to rescue us from these doldrums?

What’s happened to Albuquerque? Part 1: Growth uninhibited by water supply

Should Albuquerque be allowed to grow in size and population without tying its growth directly to its projected water supply over the next 50 to 100 years?

Should any big city in New Mexico permit sprawl development on the basis of “dedications,” which means, in the world of water, mere promises to find water after the developments have been built and populated?

Housebreaking fossil fuels

While Heather Wilson was losing her Senate bid to Martin Heinrich last year, her campaign team must have been drunk on PR from the Fossil Fuel lobby. The rhetoric tipped them off the bar stool.

She accused then Rep. Heinrich of being supported by not only “radical environmental groups,” but also by “the radical environmental industry” with their “extremist agenda.”

I wonder what a “radical environmental industry” might be. Does it sell camping gear and sleeping bags or manufacture trail mix? Does it produce energy without polluting ground water and without using taxpayer dollars to clean up its excreta? Does it actually believe in free enterprise without a governmental crutch?