Self-Serving Payday Loan Industry Proposals No Surprise
Two weeks ago, the New Mexico House Regulation and Public Affairs Committee tabled popular 36% interest cap bills designed to protect borrowers from triple digit interest loans that lock them in poverty.
The committee dismissed testimony in favor of 36% caps from a broad range of financial counseling, social service, tribal, religious, senior citizen and other groups. It preferred to consider an industry proposal for consumer protections that lenders promised was forthcoming. Once the loan sharks were handed the keys to the bait tank, advocates of loan reform were skeptical that meaningful proposals were in the offing...
Home, Part One: Ties that bind
Later this month, I will be traveling far from home. My wife and I will be exploring Nicaragua, a country we have been trying to visit for 25 years but year after year kept putting it on the deferred list. Now, however, we are pulled by opportunity and pushed by two realizations: now in our 60s and 70s, we are unlikely to get any younger; and Nicaragua itself is moving toward a point of crisis with totally unpredictable results.
But while I am preparing to be far from home, I find myself thinking almost obsessively of home—what it means to have and not have it, to find and lose it, to leave and return, or not...
Ripples Into Riptides
John Adams once wrote, “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes and murders itself. There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide.” The unrelenting war on all forms and manifestations of a democratic social contract has led to bloody revolutions in every era, on every continent, and in virtually every culture. They all begin as slight disturbances, ripples on the surface of daily events, minor perturbations in the status quo that eventually take on a destructive life of their own, not unlike the early gentle rumblings of an earthquake...
Five Questions for New Mexico Authors—Lois Palken Rudnick
This week we ask editor, scholar, teacher, and writer Lois Palken Rudnick about the reissue of her condensation of the four books of memoirs of Mabel Dodge Luhan, titled Intimate Memories, which make up Luhan’s autobiography. Rudnick’s work as an editor and as a writer of the book’s wisely insightful introduction and afterword gives readers an entry into Luhan’s life and contribution to American culture that has not been possible before. Intimate Memories is published by the University of New Mexico Press...
Fool’s Gold: Aftermath
Not to toot my own horn, but I’m pretty much a math genius. Like, I scored more points on the SAT than the Seahawks and Patriots scored in the Super Bowl COMBINED, which means I’m worthy of a halftime show with performers way more famous than Katy Perry, whoever he is.
Other greats, like Stephen Hawking and Benjamin Franklin, must prove themselves. But I never needed to publish a groundbreaking book or invent kites, let alone take a college math class. My intellect was free to study the humanities, which is where all the chicks are, anyway...
Making Chorizo
Geez it’s depressing watching the legislature. It’s never pretty. Bismarck supposedly said those who like sausages and laws shouldn’t watch either being made. And Dios sabe we’re all used to how ugly DC looks. But somehow, in New Mexico, you expect more humanity, more empathy, when the human issue is laid on the table. Sure, there will be different ideas of how to solve problems, but people will be more likely to understand them in terms of what it means to be a human trying to make it through the day.
But this pack of Republicans, I dunno...
Bulldozing Public Trust in the Bosque
In an extraordinary display of disdain for the wishes of the public he nominally represents, Mayor Richard Berry ordered a trail to be plowed through the Bosque on Tuesday. Although not literally done in the dead of night, the Mayor could not have been more secretive. The Mayor's intentions for the design of the trail were never disclosed, and the plans to begin construction on Tuesday were never divulged, but were only discovered by accident after construction had already begun. The Mayor reneged on the City's promise to allow the public to review and comment on specific design options before a final plan was selected...
Publicity from Hell
This year the state Department of Tourism is spending $8.6 million on ads, but some publicity is so valuable it can’t be bought at any price. Such is the case with the New Yorker’s just over 1 million subscribers and Rolling Stone’s nearly 1.5 million. However, without the Martinez administration spending a single cent, New Mexico just scored major feature articles (totaling some 15,000 words) in both magazines in the same week...
Only More is More
When immigrants and refugees from Eastern and Southern Europe immigrated to the US in the late 1800s and early 1930s found work and could provide for a family the education of their children became the first priority. These people knew the value of education from experience and provided it sometimes at great sacrifice. In fact, they demanded it and insured that their children understood its importance...
Vacancies in Our Morality
On Monday, the city issued three-day eviction notices to the people living in tents along First Street. The notices are based on nuisance abatement laws, statues allowing the removal of something or someone deemed to cause an inconvenience or annoyance. The posted notices state that the city will file a complaint in Metropolitan Court “to eject you” from the city’s property or right of way. As we know, the strategy of the city’s leaders to eject the nuisances near the Rail Yards will only shuffle Albuquerque’s most-needy population to other locations where these individuals will be less concentrated and less visible...