Letter to Foxy the Dog

           dog’s head in my lap

           she knows only this moment

             – i am still learning

Dear Foxy:

You illustrate why I usually prefer animals to people.

Before you came to us, you experienced more bad things than I know about.

Of the time before Maggie rescued you from the shelter we know only that you had a litter. I often wonder if they shot your pups. You so fear gunshots, even at a distance, that when you’re enjoying a walk by the river, it’s over if we hear them shooting to scare birds from the pecan orchards. Fireworks are torture. Thunder sends you scurrying under my desk, the most solid protection you can get under.

Maggie rescued you, and cared for you; but, decades before your birth she was gang-raped, and she suffered other hardships thereafter. She was a sweet, intelligent, pleasant old lady; but she was convinced that the boys who had played tricks on her in the town you lived in initially were now in Las Cruces, breaking in at night to frighten her, and would soon kill her.

To protect herself and you from her oppressors, she kept the doors barricaded and you in a cage. Letting you out involved ten minutes of moving chairs and boxes and what-not. As dogs often take on their human companions’ moods and fears. I wonder how Maggie’s fear and paranoia affected you.

(Digression: in our youth, a woman friend always picked exciting guys who had a nasty edge to them; nice guys were boring; she loathed milquetoasts. Once when she visited my parents’ house, an exceedingly nice guy (Tim) was also visiting. As she came in the front door, her dog took off for the back of the house, where Tim and my father were mixing drinks, and instantly bit Tim, whom neither girl nor dog had ever met.)

When, Maggie fell ill and you came here. You loved Dael, who had sometimes brightened your life when you were with Maggie; but you weren’t too sure about me, perhaps reflecting Maggie’s understandably suspicious view of men. New circumstances made you nervous.

Watching you flower here brought me joy. No more cage. Your own small door let you go out and come in at will. Your own garden. Dael taking you for long walks every day, without fail, and us both taking you to the river when weather and schedules permit. No fear.

You’ve been remarkably well-behaved! While clearly from no obedience school, you’ve quickly recognized our preferences and accommodated them. No mutilated cushions, excessive barking, or other modest sins.

We also learn from you. You live so much in the moment, your reddish tan body barely able to contain your excitement when a Saturday morning bone appears! No sulking over disappointments or visits to the vet. No looking very far into the future. Making the best of stuff. Loving, unconditionally.

But it’s heartbreaking to hear friends’ stories of the overcrowded shelter, and of the horribly stupid neglect some humans destroy animals with. A bicyclist friend, a retired law-enforcement officer, talked often with his neighbor’s dog, and sometimes supplied water or other missing necessities, was saddened one morning when, not unexpectedly, the neglected dog was no longer. People who abuse or abandon animals should be abused. (They probably were.) 

Humans are a sorry lot. Governments aren’t coping with the wild-dog problem we’ve created, or with the devastating canine attacks on human beings.

 

 
                                            – 30 --

 

 

Will the Disqualification Clause Disqualify Mr. Trump?

 

Donald Trump inspired, incited, and participated in an insurrection. That it was an insurrection was clear at the time, on live television.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bars people who have taken an oath to support the U.S. Constitution from holding office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution or have “given aid to the enemies” of the United States. A waiver by a supermajority of Congress can lift the ban.

Two conservative law professors spent a couple of years researching whether or not the Disqualification Clause bars Donald Trump from being President of the United States. They concluded that it did. While that would not suffice for a criminal conviction of Mr. Trump on insurrection charges, barring him from appearing on the ballot in New Mexico for the nation’s highest office appears legally and ethically appropriate.

They cited Trump’s efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election, including his efforts to intimidate state officials to alter vote counts and to persuade state legislatures and Vice-President Mike Pence to overturn the election, assemble false electors, as well as his instigation of January 6 to pressure Congress.

In what they call Trump’s “incendiary address,” he repeated lies about election fraud and told the crowd to “fight like hell.” As they fought like hell, Trump stayed silent, despite urging from staff and family to attempt to stop the violence. The two professors call that “deliberate indifference bordering on tacit encouragement.” It sure looked that way.

This was an insurrection. Courts have convicted and sentenced participants on that basis. A NM judge disqualified a county commissioner on that basis. So the question is whether or not Trump participated. A Georgia grand jury and a federal special prosecutor say Trump participated.

The two professors think he did, as does Professor Steven Calabresi. All three are active members of the Federalist Society, the source of all Donald Trump’s judicial nominations, and Calabrese co-founded it, while a law student at Yale. In examining Section 3, they used “originalism,” the favored method of the Court’s most conservative members.

Further, Section 3 is self-executing. It does not require a court decision, but should be carried out by state election officials. (Had General Robert E Lee run for Senator in 1868, would you require a criminal conviction to determine that he was barred?) Nor does the First Amendment protect Mr. Trump. For one thing, he took action, which the public has witnessed or heard.

Federal courts should determine these matters. The professors suggested that former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie file suit. If he doesn’t, or a court says he lacks legal standing, others should stand ready.

I hope NM Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver read the paper. The moment Trump signs up for the June 4New Mexico Republican Primary, she should announce that he doesn’t qualify, and/or file a legal action for declaratory relief.

Why so quickly? Because the nation would be served by an authoritative decision, one way or the other, prior to the national Republican Convention. Disqualification after a Republican nomination would be unfair to the Party and voters.

Any disqualification would be challenged in court. Facts and arguments should be fully aired in this context. Then the case would, and should, be appealed to the Supreme Court. All this takes time. The nation deserves to have both sides present their best cases in court, facilitating a speedy and just determination.

                                              – 30 –

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 20 August, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website, as well as on the KRWG website. A related radio commentary has aired during the week on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/) and will air on KRWG Radio this week. Apologies to folks who read these columns on this site! Getting this and the next one up belatedly, and will try to get back on the beam this coming Sunday, 27 January – but that’ll be a challenge. The bridge folks have a Sunday unit game, then KTAL – Las Cruces Community Radio – will have an open house 6-9 pm Sunday, at the studios, 121 Wyatt Drive, Space #9. Should be food and live music and plenty of fun, so if you have an interest in the station, join us!]

[Lot more to say about all this, and more will be said. If Chris Christie doesn’t file suit, an election official, here or in another state, likely will make the obvious statement, that Mr. Trump isn’t qualified under the Disqualification Clause, and the issue should be litigated appropriately. It’ll be interesting to see how this Supreme Court, 1/3 of its members appointed by Mr. Trump, will handle the matter. However the litigation gets started, and by whomever, I hope it’s early enough so that the process and the possible result will be fair to all concerned.]

 

Can Israel and the U.S. Preserve Democracies -- and Strengthen Them?

Can the news from Israel teach us about our country?

You could say Israel and the U.S. were each was admirable in concept, yet deeply flawed. You could attack each for violently stealing land and decimating other peoples. Each sometimes lets religion control its government, as Hindus and Moslems do in India and Iran.

The U.S. was founded by adventurers, passionate Protestants, and criminals, who built a civilization from nothing, in a land so far from home that the first settlers’ great-grandparents hadn’t even known existed.

Our revolution and our democracy were a shining light to thoughtful citizens throughout Europe, and eventually throughout the wider world. And if, like a poor person who grows rich and is corrupted by power, we grew from nothing to the most powerful nation in the world, economically, culturally, and militarily. Although we have repeatedly abused our power, inexcusably, we have also retained a reasonable semblance of our democratic values and done some good around the world.

Israel was also a moving story, particularly if you read Exodus as a kid: a people who wandered the world, rootless and often abused, even persecuted, suffered an unthinkable loss of six million human lives. Other genocides have occurred (e.g., Rwanda) but hardly on such a scale and as irrationally. They find a land where they can be. The founders’ concept was more socialistic and tolerant than Israel actually is, a place where Jews could live in peace, together and with other folks in the area, free from persecution.

Both stories were flawed. “Columbus discovered America!” Comedian Dick Gregory did a great routine: “How would you feel if you’re sitting in your car, I’m walking down the street and like the car, ‘Hey, I just discovered this car!’” There were people here. We destroyed their world. Arguably, we committed genocide. Certainly we killed many. We destroyed their culture, freedom, and homes. Our beautifully success story rested partly on that crime and partly on kidnapping and enslaving another set of people. Obviously there were also people living in the land the Jews found, and whatever the founders’ hopes might have been, those people have not been well treated – and the mistreatment seems to be increasing. Israel’s shiny democracy, originally meant to include others who lived there, has never been fully democratic.

Now Israel is run by a right wing and allegedly corrupt man whose power depends on pandering to the greediest, most prejudiced, and most religion-crazed of citizens. Having been in and out of power, he now clings to office partly to evade criminal charges, and perhaps imprisonment. While most Israelis are modern, moderate folks, who practice a liberalized form of their religion or are mostly secular, the government, partly to maintain its leader’s freedom, is attacking democracy, destroying the supreme court, regularizing violence against Palestinians, and plotting to spare the most zealous orthodox Jews from military service. Courageous Israeli citizens have responded with weeks of passionate, courageous, unprecedented protests.

Here, a rightwing and apparently corrupt figure gained (and abused) the Presidency, by pandering to greed and prejudice, and seeks it again partly to avoid criminal prosecution, including for attacking our democratic process. While most of us are modern and tolerant, he panders to the chauvinists, racists, and haters among us, has helped destroy our Supreme Court, and incites his supporters to violence, while elevating Fundamentalists.

Sad. Tragic. Inspiring a new passion for threatened democracy, in Israel and here.

                                                               – 30 --

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 13 August, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website, as well as on the KRWG website. A related radio commentary aired during the week both on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/) and on KRWG Radio. Apologies to folks who read these columns on this site! Getting this and the next one up belatedly, and will try to get back on the beam this coming Sunday – but that’ll be a challenge. The bridge folks have a Sunday unit game, then KTAL – Las Cruces Community Radio – will have an open house 6-9 pm Sunday, at the studios, 121 Wyatt Drive, Space #9. Should be food and live music and plenty of fun, so if you have an interest in the station, join us!]

[This column grew out of a radio discussion regarding Iran and Israel. They’re enemies, but have some similarities. For one thing, in common with much of the world, while majorities of individuals seem to be growing more tolerant, secular, and modern, governments (in parts of Europe, Burma, Iran and Israel, and the U.S.), or at least significant population segments, seem to be retreating into more conservative and intolerant religious passions, for various reasons. The word-limit for a Sunday column led me to omit discussion of Iran above.]

 

                  

 

Heat and Homelessness Could Lead to a Wider Conversation

As we suffer this crazy weather that we are making normal, two top conversational topics are: it’s too hot, and more people are homeless.

Recently after Shell promised to help transition to renewable fuels, its CEO recanted, saying Shell would go all out to maximize oil and gas profits for the next decade.

That’s appalling. But why? Legally, a corporation exists solely to maximize shareholder profits. Unless it commits crimes (with serious penalties) or so disgusts enough people that profits suffer, the corporation’s duty is to ignore that stuff. It exists to maximize profit and insulate its owners from liability.

That’s our law. We take it for granted. But might there be something wrong with a system in which humans can organize an entity designed to run roughshod over everyone, give it immense power, and even call it human for the purpose of influencing our elected officials?

Homelessness is epidemic, nationally. Contributing causes include mental health, medical costs, drugs, war-sparked inflation, and insufficient low-income housing, because we haven’t built enough recently.

In a capitalist system, folks the system doesn’t currently need are refuse. We’ve modified our system to take some care of those folks, which a purely capitalist system wouldn’t; but right now there are just too many such people for our present systems to help. (Drug sales exacerbate the situation.)

Meanwhile, people eat highly-processed foods full of junk that harms us. Obesity and diabetes are epidemic. Industry has poisoned some of our air and water. It even turns out that fashion fabrics, either because of added substances, is extremely irritating to women’s skin, when cotton or wool mostly wouldn’t be. But profits trump health.

Yet voters harmed by these corporations fight regulations that would improve their health, believing that “big government” is the enemy.

No nation practices pure communism or pure capitalism. While most most capitalist nations are more humane to citizens than we, we have social security, equal rights acts, pensions, and the like. Meanwhile, major communist countries have found personal incentive a practical way to boost production and increase loyalty.

I haven’t seen socialism working anywhere, except maybe Kerala. But unchecked capitalism is worse. It uses workers and customers, rejecting those who can no longer work effectively or can’t afford products. They’re on the slag heap. That’s not ideological rhetoric. It’s what has happened, all through history. The system is built on human greed, and resists any steps to mute that greed.

At city council, folks complain about some homeless folks anger. Drugs are a vicious factor, but capitalism contributes. Developed nations with the biggest gaps between rich and poor experience just the sort of nasty resentment small business folk here complain of experiencing. By the way extensive studies have also shown that on days the temperature exceeds 85 degrees Fahrenheit, overall crime increases by 2.2% and violent crime by 5.7%. (None of this excuses bad conduct – by criminals, homeless folks, or city officials.)

In basically a long-term con job, corporations convinced people that capitalism was somehow essential to our democracy. I’d guess there is some relationship between fostering creativity in political ideas and doing so in economic ideas. But the catechism we’ve mostly bought into is: 1. Democracy is wonderful. 2. Capitalism and free enterprise are essential to meaningful democracy. 3. Therefore, any efforts to bridle free enterprise would, if adopted, destroy democracy.

That’s nonsense. But it’s why efforts at improvements earn angry shouts of “Communist!”

                                                         – 30 – 

 

 [The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 6 August, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website, as well as on the KRWG website. A related radio commentary will air during the week both on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/) and on KRWG Radio.  6 August, Hiroshima. ]

[Thanks for reading! I hope this column wasn’t too disjointed. I really started two or three (one on the homelessness problem as discussed at city council, another on the heat and some folks’ persistent denial of climate change /global warming / global weirdness) and each kept leading straight to Rome (capitalism’s role in each of the problems, and others). The weather slowed me down so much that it felt too complicated to merge them, but I eventually took a shot at it. Unfortunately some specifics on each different issue got lost, to fit the available space for my Sunday column. So did a couple of paragraphs on what a wonderful innovation our democracy was in the late 18^th Century, the roles played in creating our feelings of specialness by infinite resources, a huge salty moat protecting us from serious invasion by anyone in Europe, and the frontier as both a real and a psychological pressure release, allowing innovative or mischievous or restless youth go be in their own new place and figure things out. We felt special, but we also were special because of the relative freshness and roughness of our surroundings and for just the reason that’s begun to scare faux patriots, that we were a nation of quite varied immigrants discovering how to get along together. ]

[Of course, our accomplishments as a young nation were sullied by, and perhaps required, our terrible treatment of the folks who lived here when we arrived, the tribes.]

[Further to two recent columns:

This week MMC finally announced that it’s reopening its mental ward, contracting with Peak to provide services MMC is contractually obligated to provide us.

Fortunately, “very soon” turned out to be true this time, even though actually MMC didn’t bother to call me back and repeat that when I was writing the column. Howevber, this could have and should have happened sooner; and I believe stronger and public pressure from the landlords, Las Cruces and Doña Ana County, would have helped with that. Further, it’s another example of the problem with corporations: it’s natural for the national corporation, Lifepoint, that owns MMC to maximize profits from it, and take such shortcuts as law, liability, and its patient landlords may allow.

Another column explored the effort by Gadsden Independent School District Supervisor Travis Dempsey (for obvious reasons) and County Manger Fernando Macias (for reasons as yet unascertained, at least by me – though I expect to get to ask him this coming week) to pressure Sheriff Kim Stewart into buying into a program requiring her to hire, have trained, and manage a set of school resource officers (not deputies, but with different duties and training) rather than meeting her objections. Dempsey and Commissioner Manny Sanchez each even gave out Stewart’s official contact info, inviting or u rging people to reach out to add to the pressure. (Few did, I understand.) I’d expected GISD to recognize how things have turned out and start exploring an alternative; but I’m told they’re still waiting for Stewart to join the party. I suspect it’ll be a long wait, as the county has no viable way to force her to take on this extra operation.