Countdown to Health Reform II
With less than two weeks to go, a critical component of the ACA, the New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange, unveiled its new look and commitment to becoming part of the landscape of New Mexico starting October 1, 2013. The new website was unveiled Tuesday morning and you can check it out at: BeWellNM.com. In addition, the Exchange is getting ready to initiate a campaign of radio and television advertisements touting its services shortly...
A Sordid Tail of Campaign Abuse
Anyone who wants to witness the wonderful result of the Citizen’s United decision can just take a gander at what is going on in the District 2 City Council race where Isaac Benton faces Roxanna Meyers.
The city has never witnessed such a downright dirty, nasty attack campaign in a little old local race that usually features the kind of bland optimistic campaign statements about some general ways to promote the city and keep constituents happy...
What some see as border security, others see as border hysteria in Mexico
As Congress gets back in session the question of immigration reform will be front and center. The danger is that fanatics will dominate the debate and that the key question once again will be border security and an excessive hysteria about Mexico.
About every three weeks I cross the border into Mexico at Juárez, Santa Teresa just to the west, Palomas south of Columbus, N.M., or on foot at Nogales and Tijuana. What actually happens just across the border? Here are the kinds of people you would actually meet...
The benefits of owning a polling company (updated)
Last week, the Albuquerque Journal ran a story that stated "Most Albuquerque voters favor a city proposal to build more trails and other recreational access through the city's riverside bosque….The support is widespread across political and demographic groups, the survey found."
Apparently the hundreds of naysayers that showed up in vehement opposition to the mayor's Rio Grande Vision on September 4th were just the vocal riffraff who only represent a small minority of people who "oppose the city's proposal to increase access to the Rio Grande and the Bosque."
Or so the Journal would have you believe...
Weekly Poem: I think I understand fishing
when lakes glisten with shallow ripples
and crows cry from distant pines,
echoing late summer
when the cicadas' clamor breaks afternoon calm
as autumn approaches
the fisherman stands along the shoreline waiting
sentinel-like, dressed in khaki pants and shirt
sunglasses and broad-rimmed brown hat
he contemplates the moment, then another in simple succession...
The Corporatization of Street Dealing South of the Border
A persistent narrative of narco issues south of the border maintains that violence is largely over the struggle to control drug routes leading into the dope-ridden United States, the world’s largest consumer of illegal drugs. Yet, an increasing share of Mexican narco-violence can be attributed to conflicts over domination of the country’s own expanding domestic market. From Tijuana to Tapachula and from Monterrey to Mexico City, the internal market is thriving as sales of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, and methamphetamine all meet a demand that’s soared since the early 1990s...
The Gardener and the Woodsman
A story by Wally Gordon
Jackson and Enid moved to the mountains when he was 49 and she was 39. They bought a big house on 20 acres of dense forest an hour from the city, where they both taught at the community college. They could afford the house on teachers’ salaries only because it was rundown, the land overgrown, the property uninhabited since a bank foreclosed on it four years earlier. Jackson wasn’t sure, but Enid was, and that was that.
Five days a week Jackson and Enid drove together to work. He taught welding, spending his day with fire and fumes, on his feet all the time, sore at day’s end. She taught art and comparative religion, and talked about the gods of Hinduism and the ethics of the Tao...
Raytheon and certain members of Congress want our lunch money
Bless your heart if you believe our current Syria docudrama is about Team America’s moral outrage. If so, you might also believe that Goldman Sach’s $1 million political contribution to Obama had no influence on his treasury appointments and the eventual multi-billion public dollar give-away to the orchestrators of the largest financial crisis the world has ever seen. Unfortunately, in this modern iteration of our “democracy,” our government’s moral outrage is often dictated by those greasing the gears. In this case, the $65 million put out by the war industry lobby is doing the greasing. And they don’t fork out that kind of cheese for diplomacy and peace treaties...
September 11th and Syria
Each September 11th since 2001, as another anniversary of a tragic assault upon this country’s life and treasure is observed, we relive those horrendous images and think in powerful unison about the almost three thousand lives lost that bright fall day. Some of us mourn loved ones. Some feel collective grief. The hearts of some still pound with a desire for revenge. Some wish the tragedy had provoked a deeper, more profound and useful national conversation about the roots of anti-American hatred and what it means to live in a multicultural world—where one country cannot forever play the bully role and still expect to be loved and respected...
Mexico’s Teacher Uprising
Conflict and struggle are key words at the beginning of the 2013-2014 school year in Mexico. After a summer break, the controversy over education reform laws promoted by the Pena Nieto administration and backed by the country’s major political parties is back at center stage.
In recent days, tens of thousands of teachers and their allies have taken to the nation’s streets, plazas and highways to register their firm opposition to the education reform package, including the professional service law approved last week by the Mexican Congress that establishes a new educator evaluation system requiring teachers to pass No Child Left Behind-like standardized tests...