Thoughts on Two City Council Races - Retain Councilor Becky Corran!

This morning [1October2025] I listened to radio discussions of two city-council candidate races.

District 5 incumbent Becky Corran spoke knowledgeably about many city issues. Her challenger, Ronnie Sisneros, didn't respond to an invitation and didn't fill out the Bulletin 's questionnaire that lets candidates express their views unedited.

Sisneros has said that he would represent the conservatives to whom, he says, the city government doesn't listen to. (Running in 2021, he said he'd recently become a Republican and, if elected, would “oppose all of the present city council and all of the decisions they've been making for as long as I've been here.”)

Corran spoke effectively about issues including law enforcement, housing, roads, secure voter-registration information, food for the poor, recent ordinances, and dealing with the federal budget cuts that not only hurt individuals but reduce municipalities' funding. Though she looks at police with an independent critical view, she spoke knowledgeably and favorably about LCPD's Chief Jeremy Story's leadership.

She had no answer to the increasing acrimony of public comment, which helped fellow Councilor Becky Graham's decide not to seek re-election. Citizens address councilors in an exceptionally angry manner. Councilors can only respond during councilor comments, hours later. Some conservatives share Mr. Sisneros's view.

I've had more opportunity to observe Ms. Corran than I have most councilors. She's a star. A thoughtful teacher who has no political ambitions, diligent, and independent.

In District 3, now represented by Graham, Michael Harris and Isaiah Tellez are the candidates. Harris graduated from Mayfield High then received two degrees from NMSU. He and a friend then founded a small technology company doing software development and other technology projects.

Tellez was also born and raised here, as were his parents. He's a realtor. Public safety and concerns about violence “pushed me to run for office,” and that he will prioritize public safety. He said he wanted to restore youth recreational problems he experienced as a kid here.

Both men were conversant with city problems and actions. Each mourned friends leaving town for better opportunities elsewhere. Asked their highest priority, Tellez cited public safety and Harris mentioned making sure the city's budget was sustainable.

Graham has endorsed Harris. So has Conservation Voters of New Mexico, citing “his deep commitment to climate action and voter protection.” I don't know either man personally, but appreciate Harris's involvement with Cruces Creatives. I like that both are lifelong residents who know the city and care about its people. I would vote for Harris, because he seems to have a wider range of knowledge of issues, has already served on the city's transportation board, is more deeply concerned about climate craziness, and seemed to have a more balanced perspective on law enforcement. Like Corran, I appreciate Chief Story. I support the police and appreciate their challenges. As Corran mentioned, they're now asked to do much that's beyond their training and expertise. That isn't their fault; but incidents of unjustified police violence must also be faced.

The Bulletin asked each to state “the biggest challenges facing Las Cruces.” Harris's answer started, “The biggest long-term challenges to Las Cruces are climate, water, and energy costs.” Tellez started, “One of the biggest challenges facing Las Cruces right now is public safety. particularly the rise in youth crime.”

This local election includes city council and school board races and bond issues. I'd urge folks to study up, or even meet the candidates, then decide.

                               – 30 – 

 

[The above column appeared Tuesday, 7 October 2025, in the Las Cruces Sun- News, and on the newspaper's website and on the KRWG website (under Local Viewpoints). A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). That website also contains station show archives.]

[ Apologies for this typo: In the version sent to the Sun-News I erroneously identified the district represented by Councilor Corran: it is in fact District 5. ]

 

"Don't Trust Anyone over 30!" makes sense -- even when you've long passed 60

“Don’t Trust Anyone over 30!” contained a little wisdom, because the passing years fatten each of us with a career, a self-image, a mission, a mortgage, family, dogs or cats, friends, jobs or political positions, and/or other entanglements with society that demand priority, so that the question of what the village or nation should do doesn’t get answered so purely.

But I saw 60 in my rear-view mirror long ago, and 90’s a dim vision near the horizon. So that retreat from telling pure truths to power seems “mature,” and I’ve been wrong and right enough to recognize that not much is how we see it, and that even the Richard Nixons loved their dogs.

We old folks see the world around us less clearly than the young folks for whom it’s “The World,” the only one they’ve known since they reached consciousness, with all the details precious. To us, it’s a superfluous epilogue to the real world we discovered in our own youth.

During my youth, older folks misunderstood what was happening because they viewed it through the lens ground by their own time. We who questioned the Viet Nam War were traitors or cowards, because anyone who did that in 1941 was. My father, who’d left graduate school to fly bombers in the Pacific, saw it that way, initially. I also remember a German-born janitor at college, who viewed the sixties through the eyes of someone who’d fled Hitler’s Germany, and worried about repression. The Eisenhowers, Dulleses, McNamaras, and Kennedys who made that huge mistake called Viet Nam recalled from youth Chamberlain returning from Munich proclaiming “Peace for our Time,” as Hitler prepared to gobble up all Europe.

Even so, things are especially nutty.

Donald Trump Time is not entirely a spontaneous fire at the intersection of aggrieved population Street and a narcissistic con man Avenue, with the Leader proclaiming his anger every six seconds. We’d like to think so; but he is also the logical end of a road we’ve been traveling a very long time. Yeah, we started with love, of each other and of this wonderfully natural world, and of our freedom, from all the ills and repression and intolerance of where we’d come from. (Unforgivably, we didn’t notice original residents or the humanity of folks we enslaved.)

Along that road we dropped community, caring, and other excess baggage to seek more effectively wealth, position, security, and perhaps a flash of fame; we formed corporations that soon took us over; we created computers, which soon dominated our lives and kindly did our thinking for us, and even our socializing; we divided into political parties, thinking to govern ourselves better, and they grew into huge entities that hated each other, paralyzing government.

But this is extreme. Compare Tom Homan, caught dead-to-rights taking bribes, with the FBI prosecuting, ‘til Donald Trump nixed that and made him immigration czar, with Sherman Adams, a minor embarrassment to President Eisenhower. Back then, vaccines dramatically saved a lot of us. Now Trump’s health guy proclaims unscientific nonsense about vaccines or painkillers, and the rest of the world tells populations not to bother listening. (Ike had actually helped end a war, a pretty significant one, but he never bragged about it a fraction of what Mr. Trump has done.) The world confronts climate craziness – a mere “hoax.”

I think we’re reliving early 1930s Germany. Perhaps we’ll find a better solution.

                                           – 30 --

 

 [The above column appeared Sunday, 4 October, 2025, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, and on the newspaper's website and will presently also be on the KRWG website (under Local Viewpoints). A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). That website also contains station show archives.]

[Sorry that technical issues meant that I mostly haven’t gotten the radio versions done during the last couple of weeks. ]

[I think our country has done a lot wrong, as well as a lot right.  But leaders of any previous era would have been appalled by Mr. Trump.  Our founders understood that just such a thing could happen, warned against it, and erected a structure, now being destroyed by Mr. Trump and his enabler, to prevent it.  Can you imagine Lincoln, with his combination of strength, grace, and humor, conversing with the inane Mr. Trump, who so lacks strength that he has to lunge awkwardly for praise from anyone, and bothers to engage bitchily with anyone who criticizes him? TR or FDR would have laughed at him. Jack Kennedy, Nixon, or George Bush, having fought valiantly in World War II, might have given him funny looks over evading service based on a rich man's diagnosis, then mocking a valiant warrior like John McCain as "a loser" for being captured in action.  Eisenhower would have looked to court-martial him.]

[Certainly our nation is profoundly schizophrenic. Hardly an hour passes without a new announcement by the White House, or discovery about the administration, that’s not only wrong, in the sense of vicious or stupid (or both) but barely sane! Numerous lawsuits have persuaded judges, some of them appointed by Republican presidents, not only holding that Trump’s actions were illegal but doing so in some pretty scathing written opinions. ]

[Consider the scope of Trumpian stupidity: a mortifying, rambling speech at the U.N. where he lectured allies and complained about the failure of a teleprompter his own people were operating; while prior presidents either ignored television stars who mocked them, or engaged with those stars with humor and tolerance, Trump ham-handedly bullied a network into suspending Jimmy Kimmel, then watched the reaction force Kimmel back into his slot, while folks like me who never particularly listened to Kimmel paid a a little attention. And his childish secretary of defense (or war) called all major military officials together in one place (rarely done for security reasons, but the idiot who’d screwed up previous ZOOM efforts was probably scared to try that again) for what could have been said in an email, costing us zillions in travel expenses and lost useful time.]

[Meanwhile, a key Trumpist “spiritual advisor” and cog in the MAGA evangelical works, Robert Morris, who used his megachurch, Gateway to help Trump in 2020, has been convicted of sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl.]

A Major Environmental Scew-Up

I’m writing this Thursday. You’re reading it Sunday.

Friday the Dona Ana County Commission, five basically good people, will have screwed up.

We're in trouble. Scientists agree that we’ve passed the point when we could have spared our grandchildren catastrophic consequences from climate craziness. We are already seeing some consequences.

Forests and even cities are burning. Rising seas endanger Miami’s drinking water supply and priciest properties. Rivers are flooding. People are being killed. It’s the start of bigger fires and floods, more powerful and frequent storms, and other disasters. (The politicians who denied the problem’s significance are cutting our ability to help people suffering victimized by the emergencies these forces create.)

We’re all too selfish. Our immediate goal – bigger profits, research, driving faster, writing a better column, winning at cards – justifies contributing a little to the continued emission of greenhouse gases. Having known the danger for decades, the world last year burned more coal and more wood than ever before.

The folks with big money (and expensive mouthpieces and politicians) said, “Don’t worry, let’s drill and sell more oil,” and either hid evidence, denied facts, or promised we could figure it out later. We couldn’t.

The big-money folks offered some to the County, in the form of a few more jobs and significant help in cleaning up the drinking water and infrastructure situation in the south county.

However, those folks’ data center would have water needs. Their planned gas-fired electricity plant would not only use water but need as much electricity as the entire El Paso Electric system does. Double this area’s energy use and emissions. That’s so extreme I can’t write it without doubting it. But it’s apparently true.

That’s huge. (One specious argument defending it is, “We’ll comply with the Energy Transition Act” by phasing our non-renewable energy by 2045. That is, we’re doubling an important negative impact on the environment, but it’s okay because we’ll stop. No. Tapering off in 20 years doesn’t justify starting now. Two commissioners laughed when I used an extreme analogy: “If we were trying to phase out a legal activity that helped the county, but caused ten percent of newborn infants to die until we stopped, you wouldn’t say, ‘Okay, double what we’re doing, ‘cause we’ll stop in 20 years.’” Poisoning our atmosphere harms us. The ETA illustrates our state’s determination to cease doing that. Adding this new project’s extremely high energy use sure contradicts the ETA’s purpose. And damages us all.

Our commissioners could have said, “No, thank you!” They could have said, “This looks great for our county economically, but such energy usage is disastrous. If you commit to using 60% renewable energy from the start, I’ll consider voting for it. Otherwise, try for 3 of the other 4 of us.” Our commissioners could have had experts study some of this, and not take the big money folks’ words for everything. They could have hired topnotch, experienced lawyers to help cut the best deal for us and our environment.

Our commissioners said, “Where do we sign?” Staff favored it, and gave commissioners little time – and citizens less.

We may need these AI campuses to keep up with China; but let’s compromise with the climate realities! If you had to see your doctor, you wouldn’t rush into a burning building to do so.

Our county government should have done better on this one.

                                          – 30 --

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 21 September, 2025, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, and on the newspaper's website and the KRWG website (under Local Viewpoints). Sorry I was too lazy to post it until now; but the meeting on Friday the 19^th did go as expected, after hours and hours of public comment (a majority, but not an extreme majority, against the action the county commissioners were about to take.]

 

County's Handling of Jupiter Project Tests State Transparency Laws

Government secrecy is unethical and sometimes illegal.

New Mexico’s Open Meetings Act and Inspection of Public Records Act are strong transparency laws. They require governments to disclose material information to the public. That facilitates informed public comment and scrutiny.

The City cut OMA corners in appointing City Manager Ikani Taumoepeau. The Attorney-General investigated, nullified their action, and they had to redo.

The OMA forbids “rolling quorums.” A majority of commissioners, who couldn’t legally discuss county business privately, can’t do so sequentially: A with B and then B with C, or each of them privately with D, who wants them to take a certain action.

Are some County Commissioners violating the law?

The County is violating the IPRA. [Fair Disclosure: as a lawyer I won IPRA cases against both City and County.] Heath Haussamen (and probably others) has requested documents. I asked for just one, but was told more time was needed. IPRA requires the County to give me the document as soon as reasonably possible. The 15-day extension the County asserted is not automatic. I questioned that. No one even deigned to respond. Reminds me of Hays v City of Las Cruces: the then city attorney told us to go pound sand, when we sought to talk with her and sent her a copy of the statute under which the City ended up paying out $94,000. That’s bad lawyering. (I haven’t met the new County Attorney, but doubt that she has extensively advised public bodies on their OMA and IPRA responsibilities – or negotiated many NDAs – or other contracts -- with huge companies and their teams of high-priced lawyers.)

Heath reports that the County signed a non-disclosure agreement. So far, he can’t get a copy. (Trust me: there’s no legal justification for withholding the entire NDA.) At the meeting where the County voted to go forward with this, Commissioner Susana Chaparro hadn’t seen it and alleged that she hadn’t received full information given to other commissioners. She hadn’t known the County had signed the NDA, so who decided that how? It appeared likely that three or four commissioners – most of whom I know, like, and respect – may have violated OMA, probably unintentionally. Certainly we aren’t seeing the kind of transparency that OMA and IPRA mean to guarantee. The Foundation for Open Government has expressed concern.

I get the need to protect trade secrets. I litigated that professionally for decades. Companies routinely define trade secrets way more broadly than the courts do. Sometimes there’s confusion when private need for secrecy meets government’s legal obligation to act transparently. State law defines trade secrets, so Heath reasonably asks why an NDA was needed. Certainly, under New Mexico cases, we’re entitled to see it.

Numerous citizens and the nonpartisan League of Women Voters have urged the County Commission to delay a vote on this controversial proposal. That might be good advice. Delay might even benefit the developer.

The AG may be investigating this. A requirement for selling bonds is a bond attorney’s unqualified opinion that the bonds were properly issued. Were they? A lawsuit or AG investigation on just that point would be problematic.

If I were an active lawyer, just reading Heath’s article would motivate me to take a long, hard look at the commissioners’ and developer’s conduct here, before I considered okaying the bonds. And if I okayed them, I’d notify my malpractice insurance carrier. But I’m no bond lawyer.

                                              – 30 --

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 14 September, 2025, and will presently be on the Sun-News website and on the KRWG website (under Local Viewpoints). A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). That website also contains station show archives.]

[Unless the County heeds suggestions by the League of Women Voters and other organizations and individuals, Friday, September 19, will be a significant day. A special meeting is scheduled to consider issuance of industrial development bonds to help the proponents push toward actualizing their proposed Jupiter Project. Wednesday, during th 8:30 – 9:30 portion of the weekly “Speak Up, Las Cruces!” radio show, we will discuss the project with county commissioners, representatives from the proponents, and a variety of folks who oppose the proposal or have significant questions about it – on 101.5 FM or the Las Cruces Community Radio website listed above.]

                                 

Open Letter to Lanham Napier

[Lanham Napier chairs Borderplex Digital Assets, which proposes to build a huge data

 center campus in Santa Teresa.]

Dear Lanham:

I am glad you favor “putting communities first,” that the Jupiter Project is “deeply personal to me. … I’ve dreamed of improving lives,” and that you say you aspire to doing this “the right way.”

But you are an intelligent, thoughtful fellow. You know that climate craziness threatens a draconian future for our children and is already wreaking havoc. You know that our county is within one of the four areas on Earth now suffering from a “Mega-drought.” You know that such a data center not only can threaten water supplies, but demands huge amounts of power comparable to a modest city.

Particularly here, it should be a rebuttable presumption that any big new installation be as largely renewable-powered as feasible. You likely also know that this community has stood for sustainability and that we have abundant sunlight here.

Therefore I urge you to improve your plan by using primarily renewable energy and by agreeing to very strong requirements on water use.

The Board of County Commissioners should require such a commitment from you. As a decent human being, aware of our plight, you should not require a requirement.

The Commission should have county residents’ welfare as their top priority. While the niceties of cooling technologies and corporate maneuvering can be complicated, this part is not: we are threatened by a climate catastrophe largely fueled by our own greed; mitigating damages and minimizing our carbon footprint is as clear a duty for each of us as honoring our parents, treating the downtrodden as we might treat our savior, or not raping our neighbor’s wife (or anyone else). Unnecessarily adding to the problem, in 2025, is just plain wrong.

You know this as well as I. Can you summon the self-discipline to let that knowledge influence your business conduct a bit? Can you modify your plan, even if that’s inconvenient or might cut into the huge profits you say this campus will produce?

As a practical matter, building a renewable power source might be cheaper than building a gas plant, and would avoid exposure to high and volatile fuel costs; extra cost for firming might change that initial cost equation, but renewables would still save you from exposure to fuel-cost volatility and from the eventual cost of adjusting, as the world moves more definitively toward renewables. Thus it is hard to see how at least a hybrid, involving large investment in renewables and battery storage, but with some firming, would not be a very reasonable solution, minimizing emissions and remaining cost-competitive.

County Commissioners: Please keep in mind the difference between your mission and Mr. Napier’s. His is to make profits, hopefully within the law. Yours is to balance what’s best for us, including our health and well-being as well as the relative affluence of our communities. If you see some benefit to the county in this proposal, your job is to negotiate, at arm’s length, to gain the safest and best possible agreement for us – not to roll over like five obedient dogs.

Urging or demanding that these business entities compromise their profits to improve our environment, isn’t some impermissible discourtesy. It’s your duty.

Most similar projects have provided fewer jobs and used more water than promised, and fought transparency like the plague. Why not turn some promises into contractual requirements?

                                              – 30 –

  

[The above column appeared Sunday, 7 September, 2025, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, and on the newspaper's website (sub nom "Mr. Napier, Let's Talk about your Project") and will presently be on the KRWG website (under Local Viewpoints). A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). That website also contains station show archives.]

[If you’re interestested, there are several sources of information, including the county leaders’ comments on the county website, a series of community meetings, and Heath Haussamen's piece on the project. Rep. Angelica Rubio and the Albuquerque Journal havev also written on it, as have both the Sun-News and the Bulletin.]

Upcoming Community Meeting Schedule:

• District 1: 5:30 p.m., Friday, Sept. 5, at the La Mesa Community Center, 744 San Jose Road in La Mesa

• District 2: 5:30 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 9, in the auditorium at DACC’s Sunland Park Campus, 3365 McNutt Road in Sunland Park

• District 3: 5 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 10, at the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum, 4100 Dripping Springs Road in Las Cruces

• District 4: 5:30 p.m., Monday, Sept. 8, in the auditorium at DACC's East Mesa Campus, 2800 Sonoma Ranch Blvd. in Las Cruces

• District 5: 5:30 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 11, at Placitas Community Center, 241 Monticello Drive in the Village of Hatch

Full details are also available on the County website at www.donaana.gov.

idiotic Leadership Endangers Health

Sadly, last week’s column on Robert Kennedy’s insane “leadership” of Health and Human Services got illustrated vividly by Kennedy’s misconduct in the few days since.

The column stressed that makes decisions based on his ideology or interests, not on science. The main example was his sudden and tragic withdrawal of funding for life-saving m RNA vaccines. Instead of scientists reaching a conclusion based on evidence and the agency approving and announcing it, the agency announced its conclusion – which was a total surprise to staff and lacked any kind of rationale.

This week? He followed that up by limiting who can get COVID-19 vaccines. I can, because I’m old, but my wife can’t. Because Kennedy doesn’t like those vaccines. In March this year, Kennedy promised, “Anybody who wants a vaccine can get one, and we will make sure of that, and they can get it for free,” adding, “I’m a freedom-of-choice person.” Well, not most folks reading this.

He also announced a full-court-press on establishing the cause of autism – when he’d laid off a scientist making progress in studying just that issue. Hers was an open scientific study of environmental factors. He needs the study to conclude that vaccines cause autism. Maybe next he’ll fire scientists and hire Kyrie Irving to determine once and for all whether the Earth is flat.

Meanwhile, the CDC has a unit (Laboratory Leadership Service) on strengthening lab readiness to help people recover quickly from infectious disease outbreaks; but the CDC has laid off two-thirds of LLS staff.

But the big news was protest by high-level scientists over Kennedy’s “weaponization” of the CDC.

Dr. Susan Monarez is the CDC director, confirmed by the Senate just a month earlier. Basic qualifications included serving as principal deputy director then acting director this year. She had a strong scientific and public health policy background, including PhDs in Microbiology and Immunology and in veterinary science. The party-line vote was 51-47 to confirm her, over Democrats’ objections, so the Trump folks apparently found her unobjectionable.

But now Kennedy has told her to resign or be fired. She declined to resign, although his office announced that she was no longer in her job. Maybe he’ll fire her tomorrow.

Meanwhile the four other top leaders at CDC all resigned the same day, to protest Kennedy’s continual subordination of science [and our health] to his interests and prejudices. Monarez’s lawyers called his directives “reckless” and “unscientific.” Even Kennedy couldn’t provide scientific backup.

The other four senior officials cited increasing misinformation, political interference, harmful budget cuts, and censorship of scientific communication.

This is NOT liberal/conservative political stuff. These are NOT politicians, but scientists. They are not “the deep state” or do-nothing bureaucrats, but actual working scientists. These four were not fired, or laid off, but quit jobs they loved because they can’t bear seeing the CDC perverted and hunan lives endarngered.

Nor is this some Chinese or Democratic “hoax.” Monarez was a Republican nominee. Republican senators alone voted to confirm her.

Nor is this an isolated incident within the Trump Administration. Kennedy may bring especially bizarre views and conduct to the battle, but the pattern is clear: if science, law, or sound policy stands in the way of total and immediate acquiescence to the Leader’s latest idea, then law, science, logic and human decency must be banished.

This is plain, old-fashioned bad government: illogical, ineffective, and dishonest. Not regarding foreigners. This is about your children.

                                                – 30 – 

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 31 August, 2025, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, and presently on the newspaper’s website and the KRWG website (under Local Viewpoints). A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). That website also contains station show archives.]

Draining U.S. Greatness at Warp Speed

We’re watching government accentuate the decline of a once pretty great country.

Take health, for example.

Measles and polio were problems in my childhood. Vaccines allowed us to eliminate measles by 2000.

After months of Robert F Kennedy heading Health and Human Services, amplifying his voice fostering doubt about vaccines, we have more measles cases than we’ve seen since the early 1990s. Misinformation fosters vaccine hesitancy and decreases coverage, facilitating the spread.

When the COVID-19 pandemic came out of nowhere and changed all our lives, initial response was hampered by the first Trump Administration having jettisoned the little department that used to look for such things. Trump denied the seriousness, blamed China, and recommended absurd or dangerous remedies.

We developed effective vaccines that used messenger RNA technology, telling one’s system to create a “spike” cell that’s harmless but triggers the immune system to fight COVID-19. This sped development and facilitate alterations to fight virus adaptations. Vaccines minimized urgent care visits and hospitalizations, reduced transmission, saved lives, and were generally quite safe. Trump called this “one of the greatest scientific accomplishments in history.”

It worked.

Recently the Government ceased funding further research projects and announced that those vaccines just didn’t work.

Usually such an announcement would follow expert staff reaching the conclusion based on facts, evidence, and science.

This announcement surprised everyone. It appeared absurd. It contradicted experience. But it was announced. Pathetic efforts to explain it followed.

That’s how upside-down this administration is. We are all Alices in Wonderland. But it’s not wonderful, in its impact on human health.

It’s also disastrous for our country’s future.

Climate craziness, which the rest of the world has united to mitigate, “is a hoax.” So we won’t deal with it, or develop viable alternative energy sources and products that are green. That means that when we eventually have to buy those, we’ll buy from China, or Norway.

The mRNA vaccines, the incredible drug innovations that muted the pandemic and were hailed by Donald Trump as “a medical miracle,” “don’t work. So we’ll stop work on those. That means that whatever the next pandemic arrives, or some enemy attacks using biological warfare, we’ll be buying vaccines from someone else – if possible.

Our Education Department kind of tried to stick to historical facts and scientific conclusions, which is inconvenient when you want to say slavery wasn’t so bad, there’s not much pollution and the universe started when the bible says it did, so we’ll abolish that department, and let folks teach whatever feels good to them, or whatever their god, mullah or preacher wants ‘em to teach.

That’ll hasten our already serious decline in science skills and learning.

What’s been helping us survive that decline is lots of foreigners, some not entirely white, want to study and live here. So we’ll scare the [excrement] out of folks seeking to visit this country, particularly if they talk funny or don’t kneel to Our Leader’s image.

That’ll help.

A country can be great lots of ways: culturally, as high-quality education, an uncensored Kennedy Center, an uncensored Smithsonian, and thriving public broadcasting helped us toward; scientifically, if you believe in science; economically – though we’re rapidly falling behind other nations; or militarily, having replaced experienced experts with a clownish defense secretary who is using insecure on-line rooms for classified conferences and bankrupting the department with unprecedented numbers of friends and family needing federal security.

               – 30 – 

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 24 August, 2025, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, and on the newspaper’s website ("From a Great Nation to a Great Scare" ) and the KRWG website (under Local Viewpoints). A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). That website also contains station show archives.]

[ Space didn’t permit further details. Kennedy canceled $500 million in 22 mRNA vaccine research contracts. Although his social media announcement claimed vaccine ineffectiveness, he provided no support (and there has been none) for his view. Further, HHS staff got no advance notice, no explanation, no communication plan, nor even a simple fact sheet to prepare staffmembers to respond to questions. Even if the decision were arguably correct, that’s extremely poor management.

Meanwhile, the moment I sent in the column to the newspaper, there was breaking news about further Kennedy idiocy. Kennedy has long held, without support, that the vaccines cause autism. He wants it that way. Recently he announced a huge project to identify the causes of autism. In particular, HHS would check with numerous available sources. That shocked the federal scientist who had been doing exactly that for years. She’s been tracking whether or not, and to what extent, workers’ exposure to chemicals can cause autism in the workers’ children. Kennedy canceled that and laid off the scientist. That interrupts a valid, ongoing scientific study to determine what he says he wants to determine. Either that’s idiotic, and a terrible waste, or it’s worse than idiotic, and was done to whitewash companies from any kind of responsibilities. At best, it says, “We’ll spend a lot of money to study causes of autism – if we can get the study to implicate vaccines.”

Like your doctor saying, I’ll do a test and proved that your condition is what I think it should be. Not, “this test will determine the facts, whatever they are.” But Kennedy is not your doctor. He’s everyone’s doctor. Or would be, if he were any kind of doctor, rather than a somewhat addled lawyer. At least then he’d have taken the Hippocratic Oath, and sworn to do no harm. ]