Flood Tragedy -- and U.S. Government Tragedy

As Mr. Dylan pointed out, you don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Texas suffered a terrible tragedy: torrential rains, exacerbated by an exceptional conjunction of slow-moving storms, caused destructive flooding that killed 100 people, including kids at a Christian summer camp right where two rivers meet.

That’s heartbreaking. Everyone’s sympathies go out to folks there, particularly parents and siblings of dead children.

Sympathy doesn’t mean ignoring causes. Empathy should impel us all to contemplate why this happened, so violently, and how we might improve our future.

Many wondered how the National Weather Service performed, after slews of DOGE-inspired firings, particularly of experts. It seems to have done well, predicting heavy rain and floods. The viciousness of the storm, and exact rainfall, couldn’t have been predicted precisely, but NWS warned appropriately. But the Warning Coordination Meteorologist, responsible for making damned sure those messages were heard and heeded, then coordinate with local officials, had been “bought out” in the DOGE madness, leaving the position vacant. Yeah, maybe Texas officials should do their jobs and folks living by rivers should watch for warnings; but the hundred dead folks and their families might have favored paying a WCM to ensure warnings were heard and understood.

Of course, Trump plans to have wealthy private pals take over our weather predicting. Less “government.” Huge profits for his pals, whom we’ll pay to do what government did. If some summer camp wants the most accurate weather data, well, that might be too expensive.

The flood’s root cause? Most all reputable scientists agree that we’re experiencing what I’ll term “climate craziness,” because it’s more serious and dangerous than “climate change” suggests and its symptoms include more than greater global heat. Climate craziness is serious. We can no longer prevent it. Experts differ on how much we can mitigate the disaster. It threatens to make many places uninhabitably warm and kill vulnerable people. Our greed and carelessness have caused or greatly magnified it. More and higher floods, bigger wildfires, and and increasingly violent storms, are facts of life.

Mr. Trump claims it’s a Chinese or Democratic “hoax.”

Trump is demonstrably wrong. Many Texans voted to reinstall him in the Casa Blanca. He’s abusing their faith.

It should matter to them that he’s ignoring forces that are killing their children and will make lives miserable for their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Seas are rising, glaciers melting, temperatures consistently higher, and these forces compound to cause much of what we’re suffering. Mr. Trump is in denial. (Of course, for decades, denying climate change and minimizing its significance have kept many politicians of both parties in office.

Mr. Trump is cutting government efforts to prevent or predict disasters, thus hindering preparations for the extreme weather he refuses to cooperate with the rest of the world in trying to mitigate. He’s cutting FEMA, which passed out post-disaster bandaids. As Ruidoso folks can testify, those “bandaids” help tremendously when someone’s lost everything in a flood. Washington is also cutting off health benefits for millions of people whose health might get hammered by wildfire smoke, higher temperatures, and/or pollution. (We need to save money to cut rich folks’ taxes.) Our government is also easing regulations, so’s corporations can do what they do more freely and maximize both profit and poisons.

If my kid had died this month, in a flood, with that context, I think I’d notice the connection.

                                                        – 30 –

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 13 July, 2025, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, and on the newspaper’s website (sub nom "Trump's Cuts Hinder Extreme Weather Preparedness" ) 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.]

[Remarkably, one MAGA Congresswoman from Georgia tried to claim the tragic Guadalupe River flooding was “fake news,” eventually backing up to the weird statement that the damage was real but the weather fake, apparently under the impression that cloud-seeding (which is mostly ineffective) was the explanation, not the conditions the experts all spoke of. I wonder how that sat with the two Congressfolk (one from Texas, one from Georgia) whose daughters were at that Christian Camp, though fortunately they both survived. The anti-science theme of Trump’s COVID nonsense and Robert Kennedy’s anti-vax machinations continues.]

Feeling Compassion for a Beleaguered Child Who Got Older

Watering tomatoes this morning, I glanced up and watched Foxy watch me. We inherited Foxy, a red-heeler mix, from a woman my wife was helping through her last years of life. Foxy had had a hard life, but blossomed here. Although initially she distrusted male humans, and I worried she’d be a pain, we’ve come to love each other.

That’s a simple experience Donald Trump has never had. He seems never to have had a pet. Well, what could the pet do for him? (What he could do for a dog or cat is a question that wouldn’t occur to him.)

Later, during a break from writing, the internet played a bit of Jason Carter’s memorial speech about his grandfather, Jimmy. Loved the part about hanging zip-lock bags up to dry for re-use. My wife has us doing that, too. And the Carters being small-town folks who never forgot who they were. A cutaway showed Donald Trump, scowling, then the Bidens and others laughing at the laugh lines.

I felt sorry again for Mr. Trump. He was raised by a Father obsessed with making more money. Donald and his siblings learned to compete for money and status, not to love. Or give.

Next, the Internet showed me Robin Williams, in Good Will Hunting, released twenty-five years ago, making that great speech telling the young genius, Will, that although Will could write a book on Michelangelo, he can’t tell us how the Sistine Chapel smells, or how it feels to look up at that marvelous ceiling; and that while he’s memorized Shakespeare’s love sonnets, he has never loved enough to be vulnerable, never loved a woman “so much she can level you with a glance,” or sat in her hospital room during her last months.

Some people know those feelings. Others avoid them. I don’t envy you, Donald. I envy men who stayed married to and loving a single woman all their adult lives, raising children the best they could to be loving, caring, confident, honest folks. Men who showed a steadiness neither you nor I ever did. You touched women without permission – the sign of a man who needs to bully women, not one seeking love, or even sex. Seduction takes a gentler mode.

Sorry, Donald. We’re 79 this year. I’m sorry your life has been so limited by your fear of real feelings, real friendship, love, or the sensation of wandering alone into a new country, having no common language with the folks there, humble as a baby in their culture, but smiling while they laugh at you. You’ve never been writing and suddenly teared up because your fictional characters lost a child or learned some painful truth. Have you ever truly loved a woman, as more than a status symbol, sexual release, or appropriate decoration for a life designed to impress folks?

I’m nobody. But when I die, if I’m able to reflect, I won’t regret having so few worldly accomplishments. I’ll regret moments I chickened out, didn’t ask the hard question, didn’t provide a kindness, I could have, didn’t go deeper into the Peruvian jungle, the Tibetan mountains, or the mind of a character, or didn’t love enough.

I’m sorry your father and mother didn’t teach you love and integrity, and exemplify those. I took all that for granted, mostly rebelled, and only later appreciated – and had time to tell them I appreciated – what they gave me.

                                     – 30 –

 [This is an odd and personal column. It illustrates how, in so many quiet moments in our pleasant personal lives, Mr. Trump and the dangers he and his confederates pose to the republic can suddenly insert themselves. But it takes a more human look at him. By the way, this is a sensible discussion of Trump's psyche by a man who has written a book on the subject. See also his nice, Mary Trump’s book, Too Much and Never Enough. ]

[Posting a link on Facebook to this site, mentioning compassion for Donald Trump, and recognizing how odd that likely sounds, I felt I should add: 1 Nothing in this column excuses or justifies any of his personal or political bad conduct, though it may help explain something. 2. Compassion for Donald Trump will sound particularly weird to folks who hate him.  However, would you really like to be stuck inside his head -- to BE Donald Trump, with all his inner pain that he's trying to get back at the world for?  How would that FEEL?] 

[ A point that deserves elaboration: as a young lawyer, I had an experience that taught me a lot. When I summered at a huge San Francisco firm, and later accepted employment there, a young lawyer was particularly prominent. Despite his relative youth, he spoke with a certain authority. The partners thought highly of him. And after I was employed there, we were acquaintances, though not particularly close. Over the course of a year or two, I formed close relationships with various young women employed there; and three different women, a Mexican-American secretary, a receptionist who was also an artist; and a woman who worked in document-processing, each told me privately that Carter [no, not his real name] had hit on them sexually in rather appalling ways. The secretary [a tough young lady who, when I once carped about her wearing nail polish, looked me sternly in the eye and said, “When I picked fruit in the fields beside my parents, it made a mess of my hands and nails, and I swore I’d get out of there, and I’ll wear nail polish whether you like it or not.”] seemed sweet and deferential, and probably Catholic, and he called her into his office to see the sunset and asked, “Don’t I deserve a kiss for that?”; the receptionist, he commented on her mammaries; and I forget how he came on to the third lady; but in each case, he was talking to a woman of lower status at the law firm and who likely seemed to him likely to be intimidated, or; in each case, he insulted her or seemed almost threatening; but none of these “advances” were designed to lead to an affair. He was a very smart fellow; I’m sure that, had he wanted to talk someone into an affair, he knew how to do it; but he was simply being pointlessly cruel and domineering. (Eventually, complaints on the subject reached the firm’s leading partners, and led them to suggest he go practice law somewhere else.) In the same way, Mr. Trump’s conduct is designed to bully, not to generate love or even satisfy lust. It’s a need he has to reassure us (and himself) that he matters.]

A Unique Investment Opportunity

A guy brought a prospectus the other day. The administration is going public. If we invest now, we get a share in the profits.

“I didn’t know there were profits,” I said. “The U.S. government is in hock already, with Congressfolk screaming about the debt.

“Yeah, but only suckers pay taxes. We find ways to help rich folks and oil companies avoid taxes and regulations, and they pay well. Remember Trump’s campaign meeting with the oil companies, explaining all the ways he could help them and saying they should contribute billions to his campaign?”

“Yeah, but look how incompetent all his appointees are! Pete Hegseth?

“The beauty is, incompetence is irrelevant. The people paying us the money tell us what they need. His two biggest inauguration contributors were JBS, the Brazilian company that owns Pilgrim’s Pride chicken processor and Ripple, those cryptocurrency guys, $5 million each. JBS, a Brazilian company, had been trying for years to procure governmental approval for a U.S. stock listing. A few months in, JBS finally gets government approval for its stock listing, and the SEC settles its long-running lawsuit against Ripple, which included personal liability for its top managers, and their coins soar.”

“I’d heard that the inaugural fundraising game brought in a quarter of a billion dollars – about equal to the sum of the last four inaugurations.”

“Pardons are great, too.”

“Yeah, Mr. Trump must be really merciful and caring. He’s issued an incredible number of pardons.”

“Not just the patriots he conned into invading the Capitol four years ago, beating up Capitol police and scaring Congress and Pence half to death. It’s real people with real bank accounts. He released that nursing home big shot who stole more than $10 million, including $7 million in withheld payroll taxes, as a “million dollar favor” to the prisoner’s mother after she attended a $1 million-a-plate Trump fundraiser and raised other money. Or the reality TV couple convicted on $36 million in bank fraud and tax evasion, but their daughter spoke at the Convention.

“Aren’t people supposed to show some remorse?”

“Dumb-ass! That’s for parole hearings. Pardon means you’re good to go. There’s no law requiring a reason.”

“What if Trump supporters ask questions?”

“They don’t. First of all, they’re so excited that he doesn’t take a salary?”

“What is the salary?”

“$400K.”

“Chump change!” I agreed.

“There are so many ways to monetize the presidency! Not just Bibles, commemorative coins and medals, and such, but foreign entities dropped $750,000 a his hotels last term, and political groups and government agencies spent $160 million at his businesses. He’s made billions of dollars from Trump Truth Social. Smith Social would have gone bankrupt. And the United Arab Emirates invested $2 billion into the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company just before Trump sent the UAE a huge shipment of AI Chips.”

“Wow!”

“Hell, we’ve got folks paying $5 million for a few minutes alone with him. Or $2mill for a seat at a candlelight dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Find a few more of those folks, you could pick up a commission, not just your shareholder profit! Or a few more rich folks who need someone out of jail.”

“It sounds great! But one last question. So many Trump schemes went bankrupt. Should that worry me?”

“Hell, no! He was younger then – and casinos are a gamble, but this Presidency deal is solid!”

                                                          – 30 --

 [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 archives.]

 

Faint Hopes for the Supreme Court?

Is Amy Coney Barrett reminding us that, with Supreme Court justices, what you see is not always what you get, because some appointees are more than they seem, or grow in the job?

We progressives dismissed Barrett as a rabid anti-abortion advocate. At least she had adopted children, two from Haiti. She is definitely conservative, but her “conservative” votes have decreased from near 80% of cases to below 60%. Trump’s attacks on the courts and constitution push her away. She and Chief Justice Roberts seem the slim hopes that the Court might check Trump’s dictatorial behavior.

Critics called California Governor Earl Warren “a politician, not a jurist.” He’d been a judge for a year at some point. But he became one of the most effective and impactful chief justices in history, perhaps ranking behind only John Marshall. The Warren Court issued Brown v. Board of Education, (integrating schools), Reynolds v. Sims (one person, one vote), and criminal procedure classics such as Miranda and Gideon.

Hugo Black transcended his youth, which included Ku Klux Klan membership (de riguer for a young Alabama lawyer, he claimed) and zero judicial experience to become a steadfast guardian of civil liberties for decades. Folks belittled New Hampshire’s David Souter as “the stealth judge,” guessing he was a nobody who would at least prove reliably conservative; but his commitment to precedent and careful jurisprudence eventually made him a centrist to liberal justice, respected for his integrity and clear thinking.

Many disrespected Sandra Day O’Connor, the first female justice, for being a woman and a westerner, with just state court judicial experience. (O’Connor grew up on a ranch just across the Arizona line, and her mentor was lively young lawyer E. Forrest Sanders, later a crusty old district judge here and a great friend of mine.) She became a fine justice.

Even the great Chief Justice John Marshall (1801-1835), could qualify. He’s revered, partly for establishing more clearly federal supremacy and the Court’s power to invalidate Presidential or Congressional actions that violate the Constitution. But Marshall, when appointed, was a political operative and mostly self-taught lawyer. (Few realize that the Court was initially viewed as so trivial that justices often took months getting to New York to serve. The first chief justice, John Jay, cared more about diplomatic work and governing New York than about his judicial sideline.

I’m not nominating Barrett for some judicial hall of fame. She was complicit in such embarrassments as the Trump “presidential immunity” idiocy. (Her self-proclaimed “originalism” - the backward view that the Constitution is less a living document than a historical one to be interpreted as its authors would have – must have been in Tahiti, because the writers of the Constitution feared above all any king, and rejected any idea of such immunity.) Trump appointed her to overturn Roe v Wade. Although she voted to axe Roe, in the initial secret vote on whether or not to hear the case, she voted no.

She has shown some judicial independence, as well as the kind of diligence and careful legal thinking to write concurrences. Concurrences say, “I agree with this result, but for these different reasons.” Concurrences matter, when lawyers and lower-court judges try to discern how a 5-4 Supreme Court precedent applies to the somewhat different facts of other cases. They also express enhanced respect for law.

Too, beggars can’t be choosers – and we civil libertarians are beggars just now.

                                                    – 30 –

   

[The above column appeared Sunday, 22 June, 2025, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, and on the newspaper's website on the newspaper’s website and the KRWG website (under Local Viewpoints). A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version 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 archives.]

         

Understanding Why Folks Kill Each Other

 I’ve long believed that increasing the sentence for homicide can’t cut the murder rate because 90% of people who kill do so when they’re too damned angry, jealous, scared, drunk, or high to think straight. Acting under irresistible impulse, they ain’t stopping to think. Or can’t.

The book, Unforgiving Places, by Jens Ludwig, makes this point vividly. Our legislators and those who yammer at them about crime should read it, or at least Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker piece on it, as should law enforcement officials.

The book recounts as an example a 2023 murder. A woman, leaving her teen aged son in the car, goes into a cheap fast-food place and places her order. This big guy behinds her keeps telling her to hurry up. He warns that if she says another word he’ll punch her. She says something to her son, who’s now in the doorway behind the guy. The guy slugs her. Twice. Her shocked 14-year-old son shoots the man, then chases him outside and kills him.

The big guy knew (and assumed she knew) that, in order to move fast, that place didn’t take special orders. Hers was one. So he thought she was selfishly holding everyone up, and then disrespecting him for calling her on it. She thought he was just a jerk. Her son, seeing Mom get punched, wasn’t calculating the penalty for murder.

We each have two ways of thinking.

Criminologists distinguish between instrumental violence (shooting a bank guard to facilitate a robbery) and expressive violence (expressing my rage or jealousy with fists or pistol). Almost all murders are expressive, so laws designed to minimize instrumental murders won’t much change the overall murder rate.

Cops must know this; but criminal laws are written as if that guy in the fast-food joint is as rational as Warren Buffett analyzing all the facts and deciding rationally whether or not to buy a failing business. No. Mostly, people do things on impulses, out of anger or jealousy or because a sudden unexpected opportunity arises to steal some stuff or break things. Consider the recent fatal shootings in Young Park. No one was laying for anyone. No one gained anything. Just happened.

A Chicago program called Becoming a Man teaches teenagers how to handle potentially volatile encounters. In a large randomized trial, Ludwig found that at-risk students who had participated in BAM got arrested for violent crimes 50% less than their peers who hadn’t taken the course. San Francisco’s RSVP program similarly reduced recidivism in violence-prone prisoners, and Boston’s “Operation Ceasefire” (aka the Boston Miracle) achieved a 63% reduction in youth homicides within two years.

Our governor and legislators should contemplate that. It makes perfect sense, too. Sudden moments of anger or fear are tough. Some folks’ lives make those way tougher. If you can get their ears, and enhance both their ability and their motivation to forego violence, some of them will succeed in that when pushed.

Here’s another fact: in dangerous Philadelphia neighborhoods, a group beautifies vacant lots, clearing weeds, planting a lawn, removing trash. Where nothing else has changed, gun violence crime is down 29%.

Our city is actually doing some good things; but there likely are more good ideas in play out there. It’d help for lawmakers to recognize that most of the “criminals” aren’t our “enemies.” They’re us: fellow humans whose road to a calm adulthood was blocked or twisted more than ours was.

                                           – 30 –

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 8 June, 2025, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, and on the newspaper’s webiste and the KRWG website (under Local Viewpoints). A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version 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 archives.]

[ The most-recent New Yorker issue has Malcolm Gladwell’s discussion of these matters and Ludwig’s book. I’m a long-time admirer of Gladwell, since reading the New Yorker piece he later expanded to the really interesting book, Blink. I still recommend it. ]

[ One BAM exercise divides young men into pairs. In each, one holds a big ball. The other is told he has 30 seconds to get the ball from the other. Each man struggles to hit the ball or pry the other man’s fingers loose. Afterward, the host asks why no one tried just asking if he could have the ball. The general answer was, “well, he’d think I was a [wimp].” The guy holding the ball, asked what he’d do if asked for the ball, said, “I’d give it to him. It’s just a stupid ball.” ]

This Big, Ugly Bill Has Both Obvious and Hidden Dangers for the U.S.

I’m no financial guy.

But isn’t this insane?

Mr. Trump and his cult are determined to pass a bill that will cost us $3.8 trillion plus interest over the next decade, per the Joint Committee on Taxation.) Moody’s Ratings just downgraded our credit. That’ll likely increase the interest rates we pay. We already pay $1.13 trillion per year interest on that national debt – compared with $997 billion on military (plus $304 billion for veterans), $70 billion on highways, and $ 1.72 trillion on people’s health.

The bill will also cut into most every non-military thing our government does: imprison criminals; help folks get necessary medical treatments; help improve the quality of education; foster scientific research that could help treat cancer, improve our air and water, develop innovations that will help us financially in the foreseeable future, help local governments with disaster relief and law enforcement; inspect food and drugs for purity and safety; and enforce antitrust, consumer fairness, white-collar crime, and other laws.

You’d figure that weakening an already pathetic national financial condition AND endangering people’s health at the same time would be done for some high priority, such as responding to Pearl Harbor, fighting the Climate Crisis, or containining a pandemic. Nope.

We must do it to decrease taxes for our richest people – who, by the way, got incredibly richer during the past year. The biggest owners of the large companies that keep poisoning us and our air, causing a lot of those health problems. (The big, ugly bill will also cut our income from oil leases.)

I’d oppose that budget. Ten million U.S. humans will lose medical coverage.

I was a kid during some of our best financial times, the 1950s. Our tax structure was different, more like other nations have: the top brackets had tax rates of 91% and 88%. Not the 37.5% to which Trump lowered it from 39% in 2017. And we were thriving!

That earlier time reflected some different views. It reflected the fact that folks making exorbitant amounts of money do so using infrastructure we all pay for; and the quaint idea that we were all, including the very rich, part of a common nation.

The Bill is huge. Hidden in it, garnering no headlines as they rush it through, the bill also forbids courts from charging government officials with contempt of court for disobeying court orders. Along with the Supreme Court’s gift to Trump of a presidential immunity our founders would have fought duels to prevent, this paves the way for Mr. Trump to become our first dictator. Our first emperor, if he likes.

Of course, the “patriots” who support this don’t realize it would give equal power to B Sanders or A Occasion-Cortez, if one got elected. Or they are pretty confident that we’ll never again have an election real enough to put in a non-Republican?

Fortunately, the courts will likely point out that our Constitution forbids such chicanery. The Constitution’s words, court precedents, and logic say so. Has Jon Roberts figured out what we should do when Trump and cult say, “Sorry, but we’ll do as we please?”

We will keep having hard times to avoid inconveniencing the billionaires. What’s a few extra dead folks and a few extra hours for each worker, when those folks need better Bentleys and have islands to buy.

Still, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley swears he’ll block folks losing healthcare. I hope so.

                                                                    – 30 --

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 1 June, 2025, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, and on the newspaper's website and the KRWG website (under Local Viewpoints). A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version 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 archives.]

A Contentious City Council Meeting on "Realize Las Cruces!"

I watched the City Council discuss Realize Las Cruces and the conservative campaign to undo it.

I felt for the folks pushing for a city-wide referendum. That has a certain appeal, but costs money and time. In a representative democracy: we elect representatives we’re politically comfortable with and trust to do their homework, use their judgment, and apply judgment and core values to hundreds of specific issues.

The referendum proponents’ objections seemed to be: that signatures were disqualified if names weren’t identical to the names as registered; and that the City withheld critical information.

The law provides that proponents have a set period for signature collection after the petitions are finalized. After the city clerk examines the submitted signatures, rules some out, and tells the petitioners where they stand, the petitioners can opt for a second period to try to collect enough valid signatures. The proponents say they asked when they could collect signatures, and got no answer. The City Attorney says an attorney answered that question and specifically advised proponents how to cure defects.

A couple of citizens voiced my reaction: whenever I’ve signed a nominating petition, collectors told me to sign the way my name appeared on my registration. Objecting to that requirement sounds specious.

Councilor Bill Mattiace voted for a referendum, saying that obviously more than 4,000 citizens were unhappy with the ordinance. But that’s not clear. Yes, 4671 signatures were submitted, but some were duplicates. Further, how many of those 4671 had been misled or flat-out lied to?

One Saturday at the Farmers’ Market I listened to a gentleman seeking signatures. He said the City was “springing it on people,” without getting voters’ views. Not true. I could testify that I was approached many, many times over a four-year period to attend meetings, answer e-mails, or otherwise learn more about this idea and comment. I’m told there were upwards of 30 public meetings about this. People weren’t interested. Zoning? Ugghhh! Petitioners now argue that a lot of the publicity was on-line, and not everyone is on-line; but a lot was by traditional means, meeting minutes were kept, reports made to the council, and I doubt the newspapers and KRWG were hibernating all those years. Should the City have spent our tax money going house to house?

Telling someone a McDonald’s is going in across the street is false fear-mongering. If you live on a quiet street in a quiet neighborhood, what sane entrepreneur would suddenly try to put in a truck stop or a McDonald's One puts those things where they’re very, very visible and very, very easy to enter and leave. City officials also claim that the new zoning wouldn't permit that. Further, basic parking, setback, and other regulations would likely make it impossible. I gather some of the “horribles” mentioned to citizens aren’t okay under the new code.

So in my one actual encounter, I heard untruths told, very passionately and persuasively. I can’t say they were intentional lies, the kind of whoppers paid canvassers used years ago in trying to recall three city councilors for approving minimum wage increases mandated by referendum.

“Realize Las Cruces!” should make developers more creative in building new neighborhoods and help some folks add a mother-in-law or art studio out back of their existing homes, but make no difference at all to 99.44% of us. Perhaps it’ll be delayed by a likely-to-fail lawsuit over the above claims.

                             – 30 –

 

 [The above column appeared Sunday, 25 May, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, and on on the newspaper's website and the KRWG website (under Local Viewpoints). A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version 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 archives.]

[ I’m no zoning expert. I never studied Realize Las Cruces! as deeply as I probably should have.

I do know that the last time someone successfully petitioned for a referendum here was ten years ago when citizens, led by CAFe, petitioned for an ordinance that would raise the local minimum wage gradually over several years. When that happens, the mayor and council are required legally to enact the proposed ordinance unchanged. To my chagrin, they violated law to slow down the process so that the increase was more gradual. Right or wrong in theory, that was illegal.

The minimum-wage proponents opted to just live with that. However, conservatives, funded partly from elsewhere, sought to recall councilors for enacting a minimum wage. They told citizens some real whoppers, such that many citizens asked that their votes be removed. Litigation ensued, and I represented three then-councilors, and we successfully got the recall effort thrown out. ]

[ I lack such detailed knowledge of the current situation, but do know that if the anti-Realize people sued, they’d have a tough row to hoe in court. First of all, courts tend to give a lot of weight to the conclusion of the relevant public official (here, City Clerk Christina Rivera ). Secondly, if my experience was not anomalous, there might be showing of misconduct and misrepresentation in the procuring of signatures.

Obviously some of the disagreements are factual ones that may not be resolved without a court hearing; and if City Attorney Brad Douglas has the evidence he says he has, the petitioners would be well-advised to avoid a lawsuit. ]

[ I do respectfully disagree with my councilor friends who complain that any opposition to Realize! Must be racist. I’ve fought for equality and against racism all my life. I like my quiet garden. If someone is playing music insanely loud, just beyond my back fence, I don’t much care what kind of music it is. I live in a non-single-family-only area; but when a construction crew was storing equipment across the street and making noise early in the morning that shook our house, I wasn’t real pleased. ]