A Historically Slimy and Cowardly Prez

Remember the 1940 meeting in which U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt publicly berated Belgian King Leopold III for resisting the Nazi invasion, and announced that the U.S. would now work to resolve matters with Nazi Germany?

Probably not. Mr. Trump’s recent conduct is unique among U.S. presidents. (Actually, in 1940, U.S. assistance to the Allies was highly controversial, although both FDR and Republican nominee Wendell Willkie favored it.)

We all saw Russia invade Ukraine in February 2022. Senator Marco Rubio explained in a moving video why this was important far beyond Europe: not only was it illegal aggression, but when the USSR’s disintegration had left Ukraine a nuclear power, Ukraine gave up its nukes when the U.S., Britain, and Russia guaranteed Ukrainian security. Now Russia has invaded twice. Rubio correctly argued that opposing Putin was essential because not doing so would tell all potential nuclear powers they couldn’t trust our promises.

No sensible U.S. citizen can feel great about Mr. Trump claiming Ukraine started the war, voting with North Korea, against U.S. allies, on a U.N. resolution condemning Russian aggression, having an obvious crush on Mr. Putin, and attacking Zelenskyy, publicly and unfairly.

Trump doesn’t care about peace or justice in Ukraine. If he did, he’d have enhanced U.S. and Allied efforts to discourage Russian aggression.

Mr. Trump only wants Mr. Trump to look good. He seems also a uniquely cowardly man who resents courage, whether shown by U.S. prisoners of war such as Sen. John McLain or Ukrainians resisting Putin’s war crimes. Thus, Mr. Trump seeks a “Great Powers” carving up of Ukraine. He believes he and Mr. Putin should discuss peace. Ukraine and our European allies, aware that Adolfs and Vlads don’t stop with Czechoslovakia or Ukraine, needn’t participate, but must take what Mr. Putin decides. Does Trump also figure that letting Putin grab eastern Europe and letting China absorb Taiwan will smooth the way to the U.S. grabbing Greenland and Panama?

For him, Ukraine doesn’t matter. Trump feels that he and Putin have “been through a lot together.” He means the uproar over Putin’s cyber-support for Trump in 2016 and the credible reports that Trump minions cooperated in that effort. Too, Zelenskyy declined Trump’s request to dig up or make up dirt on Joe Biden’s son.

It would be hard to find a bigger single undermining of world respect for the U.S., or one less necessary. Even Republicans are embarrassed.

Trump had already squandered U.S. power to push for a viable peace, by acceding in advance to Putin’s demands. Trump acting like a spoiled child and the Ukrainian President trying to handle the tantrum as best he could was the sort of scene the world has feared for years now.

My father fought in World War II. I came to manhood during the U.S. imperialistic destruction of Viet Nam, and opposed it. Rightly, I believe. I have since learned more about World War II, and the aggression of Nazi Germany and Japan, and why sometimes nations and individuals must unite to pay the necessary cost to oppose tyranny and uphold international law. Since then, starting wars has become even less acceptable – although Russia and the U.S. have both been guilty of it.

Trump argues that Ukraine resisting Putin heightens the risk of nuclear war; maybe so; but giving Putin everything he might want because he could trigger world destruction just doesn’t sit right. Appeasement doesn’t work.

                                                    – 30 --

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 9 March, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, and should be posted soon on the newspaper’s website, as well as on the KRWG website under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the coming week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). ]

[ I’ve not a lot to add to this one. There are many eloquent statements by people of all political complexions, pointing out additional ways Trump’s conduct was stupid, anti-freedom, anti-U.S., and subservient to Putin; but whoever hasn’t yet seen that likely won’t from whatever I add below.]

[But I will include comments by Republican David Brooks, who I think is a bit too kind to the U.S. but accurate regarding Trump:

“I was nauseated, just nauseated. All my life, I have had a certain idea of about America, that we're a flawed country, but we're fundamentally a force for good in the world, that we defeated Soviet Union, we defeated fascism, we did the Marshall Plan, we did PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) to help people live in Africa. And we make mistakes, Iraq, Vietnam, but they're usually mistakes out of stupidity, naivete and arrogance.

“They're not because we're ill-intentioned. What I have seen over the last six weeks is the United States behaving vilely, vilely to our friends in Canada and Mexico, vilely to our friends in Europe. And today was the bottom of the barrel, vilely to a man who is defending Western values, at great personal risk to him and his countrymen."

“Donald Trump believes in one thing. He believes that might makes right. And, in that, he agrees with Vladimir Putin that they are birds of a feather. And he and Vladimir Putin together are trying to create a world that's safe for gangsters, where ruthless people can thrive. And we saw the product of that effort today in the Oval Office."

“And I have — I first started thinking, is it — am I feeling grief? Am I feeling shock, like I'm in a hallucination? But I just think shame, moral shame. It's a moral injury to see the country you love behave in this way.” ]

[Others have quoted Churchill’s remark to then-Ptime-Minister Neville Chamberlain after Munich, in 1938: “You had the choice between war and dishnor. You chose dishonor, yet you will have war.” But Trump lacks even Chamberlain’s excuse. Britain did not feel ready to fight Germany; but no one is even asking the U.S. to fight Russia, but only to continue three years’ support of Ukraine and try to broker some reasonable peace agreement if that proves feasible.]

[ Finally, here are excerpts from a highly accurate and moving speech by a French Senator to the French Senate just days ago:

“My dear colleagues,

Europe is at a critical turning point in its history. The American shield is crumbling, Ukraine risks being abandoned, Russia strengthened.

This is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. . . .

“Never in history has a President of the United States capitulated to the enemy. Never has anyone supported an aggressor against an ally. Never has anyone trampled on the American Constitution, issued so many illegal decrees, dismissed judges who could have prevented him from doing so, dismissed the military general staff in one fell swoop, weakened all checks and balances, and taken control of social media. . . .

“This is the beginning of the confiscation of democracy. Let us remember that it took only one month, three weeks and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its Constitution. . .

“We were at war with a dictator, now we are fighting a dictator backed by a traitor.

Eight days ago, at the very moment that Trump was rubbing Macron’s back in the White House, the United States voted at the UN with Russia and North Korea against the Europeans demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops.

“Two days later, in the Oval Office, the military service shirker was giving war hero Zelensky lessons in morality and strategy before dismissing him like a groom, ordering him to submit or resign. . . .

“What to do in the face of this betrayal? The answer is simple: face it.

And first of all, let’s not be mistaken. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. . . .

“What Putin wants is the end of the order put in place by the United States and its allies 80 years ago, with its first principle being the prohibition of acquiring territory by force.

This idea is at the very source of the UN, where today Americans vote in favor of the aggressor and against the attacked, because the Trumpian vision coincides with that of Putin: a return to spheres of influence, the great powers dictating the fate of small countries. . . . Mine is Greenland, Panama and Canada, yours are Ukraine, the Baltics and Eastern Europe, [Xi’s] is Taiwan and the China Sea.

“So we are alone. But the talk that Putin cannot be resisted is false. Contrary to the Kremlin’s propaganda, Russia is in bad shape. In three years, the so-called second largest army in the world has managed to grab only crumbs from a country three times less populated. . . .

“The American helping hand to Putin is the biggest strategic mistake ever made in a war.

“The shock is violent, but it has a virtue. Europeans are coming out of denial. . . . [T]he survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands and that they have three imperatives.

“We must convince public opinion in the face of war weariness and fear, and especially in the face of Putin’s cronies, the extreme right and the extreme left.

“They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump say is that their peace is capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of de Gaulle Zelensky by a Ukrainian Pétain at the beck and call of Putin.

“Is this the end of the Atlantic Alliance? The risk is great. But in the last few days, the public humiliation of Zelensky and all the crazy decisions taken in the last month have finally made the Americans react.

“Polls are falling. Republican lawmakers are being greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News is becoming critical.

“The Trumpists are no longer in their majesty. They control the executive, the Parliament, the Supreme Court and social networks.

“But in American history, the freedom fighters have always prevailed. They are beginning to raise their heads.

“Our parents defeated fascism and communism at great cost.

The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century.

Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.”

                                           -Claude Malhuret speaking to the French Senate March 4, 2025 ]

 

A Long and Well-Lived Life -- Enrique Simon Miranda Lucero

Saturday [22Feb2025], they buried Enrique Simon Miranda Lucero across the street from where he was born in 1925.

Into his 90s, Enrique was still working the farm his father had won in a raffle after returning from World War I. Enrique graduated from Hill Public School, then from Las Cruces Union High. At 16, following Pearl Harbor, he tried to join the Navy. He obeyed his first order: to graduate from high school, then sign up. In 1942, he became a medical corpsman in the Pacific Theater.

He stayed in the Navy 20 years. He took his growing family wherever he could. They camped all across Europe, while he was stationed there.

He even signed two up for guitar lessons in Italy. Saturday, celebrating Enrique’s life, one son played the guitar and sang, a couple of Mexican songs Enrique had loved, and then Willie Nelson’s On the Road Again. The family had been on the road a lot. He and another son visited the Ryman Auditorium (original site of the Grand Ole Opry), from whence emanated the first radio broadcast, also 100 years ago), as they bonded over love of country and western music.

After his Navy service, he used his medical skills working with the local hospital, then took a medical job at La Tuna Federal Penitentiary in Anthony. Being Enrique, he worked hard and well. Years later, he was the first Hispanic warden in the U.S. Bureau of Prisons system. It was a high-rise prison in San Diego, with a big office. “You look important,” one granddaughter told him.

He was important, there and on the farm near Radium Springs, and in the northern part of our county for decades after he retired. He and his wife of 73 years, Enedina, were actively involved in making things happen, such as the Radium Springs Community Center and Radium Springs Volunteer Fire Department.

Meanwhile he improved the farm. He worked on it physically well into his 90s. Six years ago, Enedina passed away suddenly in the kitchen. He missed her tremendously, but persevered.

In his 90s, he was a strong man. He’d show grandchildren his biceps, still “hard as a baseball,” we’re told – but “It’ll cost you!” he’d proclaim, then collect five bucks – which, he secretly returned later on.

In his 90s, he was a thoughtful man, constantly reading, mostly history and geography, or writing about his life or how the day had gone, or organizing the marvelous family videos, papers, and other artifacts that evidenced a life well-lived.

In his 90s, he was always “fine,” if asked; always, “just sitting here waiting for your call,” if you phoned. All his life he’d made family and friends laugh with his unique one-liners. Several were retold Saturday – but, in case anyone forgot, he also left a two-page typed list of them.

Hill is as gone as a tumbleweed in the spring winds. Most Las Crucens have never heard of it. Nor of Enrique.

They buried Enedina outside a farmhouse window, so’s he could look out at where she was. Now they’re together again, under a tree. A while back, he showed a granddaughter a map of the spot, saying he’d be so close to his great-grandfather, who’d rolled his own cigarettes, that he’d smell the smoke as they laughed over old times, and not far from Pat Garrett, with whose kids Enrique’s father, Simon, played.

They buried a hell of a man!

                                 – 30 –

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 2 March, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, and should be posted soon on the newspaper’s website, as well as on the KRWG website under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the coming week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). ]

[ I’ve not a lot to add to this one. I liked Enrique, and respected him. I thought a column particularly appropriate because here was a boy from Hill – which, as noted, no longer exists, and barely did when I arrived here in 1969 – who died here 100 years later, but lived a very full, successful, and loving life in between. A life well lived, whether measured by worldly success [reaching a high position in his field] or loving family, or by taking full advantage of what life offers you, such as taking your kids camping all over Europe on a modest budget – or still laughing, loving, reading, and running your tractor at advanced ages not all of us reach, and by which most folks are living far more limited lives.]

 

A Local Controversy

Except maybe some in the county administration, we all want local law-enforcement slots to be filled – and filled with officers with sufficient character, skills, patience, and judgment.

Our sheriff’s department spends maybe $5,000 on checking background and character, including having applicants take a multi-phase Pre-Employment Test that’s then evaluated by a certified expert. Dr. Susan Cave. Dr. Cave also interviews each applicant before recommending acceptance or refusal of a candidate. She does this for numerous counties and pueblos. Her report includes all the relevant facts she has on applicants, good or bad. This is standard practice.

Months ago, DASO had 19 recruits who’d gone through the process. HR jumped in and terminated five,. Sheriff Kim Stewart disagreed with this unprecedented action, but there was no appeal process! By January, the remaining fourteen cadets were close to graduation. Suddenly, pencil-pushers at County HR demanded that half be fired.

Cave and several law-enforcement authorities call this “unprecedented” and “senseless.” (It’d also give seven cadets a great lawsuit.) Sonya Chavez, Director of the New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy, which has oversight responsibilities toward the county academy, says, “We have no official comment, but if they are at the County Academy they have been through a pretty exhaustive process and they meet the basic state requirements.” City sources say HR makes sure basic rules are followed, then doesn’t interfere.

Why did HR non-experts suddenly pick out some minor score on a small piece of the test, or some point in a recruit’s background, and direct Stewart to fire people?

Why wait so long, letting us pay these folks for months? Why arrogantly assume you know better than the expert? If Dr. Cave mentions a recruit’s bitterness toward an ex-spouse, but sees no huge red flag, why assume you can make a better judgment than she – without her education, her experience, or the personal interview? If a recruit stole beers ten years ago when working as a bartender, is some clerk best positioned to decide how important that is? And why not raise your belated concerns more collegially, by Dr. Cave or Sheriff Stewart a question?

The sheriff appealed and HR recently cut the “Fire these seven!” order to “Fire two!” Stewart said, “You fire ‘em!” (HR reportedly fired one by breaching chain-of-command and ordering Stewart’s Major to do it.)

I wondered why. HR and county management have mostly not returned my phone calls seeking some explanation.

One very knowledgeable county source, not associated either with DASO or with HR, said HR has long been a problem.

Wednesday afternoon, County Commission Chair Chris Schialjo-Hernandez told me that the County is following all applicable state laws, that he couldn’t comment because of pending litigation, and that there’ll be a public explanation at the regular County Commission meeting at 9 a.m. Tuesday. Meanwhile, the County has filed a legal action to mandate that Stewart certify the graduating class, which she has done.

I hope Tuesday management will at least try to explain why this unprecedented interference with law enforcement was necessary to our safety. (We can’t see people’s personnel files; and if we were arguing about one guy HR thought was crazy and Stewart didn’t, I’d not have written a column. But 7 of 14 – actually, 12 of 19?)

That sounds more like sabotage than care. More like settling old scores than like trying to run a county properly. But maybe we’ll learn different on Tuesday.

                                  – 30 --

The above column appeared Sunday, 23 February, in the Las Cruces Sun-News , sub nom “Filling Empty DASO Jobs Now a Power Struggle,” and should be posted soon on the newspaper’s website, as well as on 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/). ]

[I’ll be interested to see whether the county even tries to explain HR’s conduct at Tuesday’s meeting, set for 9 a.m. ]

[This week, I left messages for County Manager Scott Andrews, Assistant County Manager Deb Weir, Human Resources Director Meg Haines, Human Resources Administrator Brandon Masters, and others. No one cared to explain or defend HR’s conduct. No one deigned to tell me to go to hell, either. I did get a strange call from a nice young lady named Amanda Parra, who said she handled “public safety” for the County, but I couldn’t figure out why she was calling for me. I was going to give up. Finally when I recited some facts and said that from what I’d heard so far, the County was acting stupidly, but that I’d love to hear someone from the County explain or defend the conduct, or tell me why it wasn’t stupid, she said that she was authorized to read or send me a statement which, when she started reading it, was obviously non-responsive. I reiterated that I start columns and things often look one way, then, after further discussion, look another, and that I’d love to have someone from the county call me to discuss this, she undertook to pass on that message.

For the record, the County’s statement was,

Per our phone call, the following statement can be attributed to Doña Ana County. 

"Following Sheriff Kim Stewart's written notice that she would not commission recent graduates of the law enforcement academy, Doña Ana County filed a Writ of Mandamus in the 3rd Judicial District Court to ensure that the recent graduates are able to begin serving as deputies.  We are aware of the statement published online by Sheriff Stewart, via her personal social media account, where she states she has commissioned seven of the graduates. Sheriff Stewart has yet to confirm this to the Court or the County administration, and has not issued any other statement regarding the remaining cadets and whether she will commission them by the deadline set by the judge.  We continue to seek positive resolution with Sheriff Stewart that prioritizes the safety of our residents and the well-being of our deputies."

That doesn’t answer the question. Rather, it covers the low-hanging fruit. At some point during the back and forth, which involved other examples of what Stewart felt was HR overreaching, Stewart said some version of, “Well, then, I won’t commission anyone.” The County jumped into court to order her to do that, which in fact she did within days. There’s a hearing set for March. Sounds like someone wanted to sue – and with Stewart not having a lawyer, since the county attorney represents the County, why not?

But that doesn’t tell us much.  Interestingly, Weir and Stewart go back a long ways: https://soledadcanyon.blogspot.com/2015/07/jury-orders-dona-ana-county-to-pay-135.html. ]

 

 

Protecting All of Us as Best We Can

This week’s news events include the one-year anniversary of a crazy guy’s tragic, senseless killing of Las Cruces Police Officer Jonah Hernandez and the trial of Officer Brad Lunsford for the tragic (and perhaps unnecessary) death of Presley Eze, who was passing through town. Let me quickly add that I do not pre-judgee Officer Lunsford,. I damned sure pre-judge Hernandez’s killer, because the video leaves no room for reasonable doubt that his action was unjustifiable.

These are evidence that we need better criminal competency laws – and a citizen’s police oversight board. The Hernandez killing occurred in the context of a public demand for a better balance between defendants’ rights and the rights of citizens not to be victimized repeatedly by offenders who can’t be tried, because of their mental incompetency, but aren’t “dangerous” enough to commit, pending trial, to protect the public. The Eze killing occurred in the context of a disproportionate number of “questionable” officer killings of civilians, for which we have recently paid out tens of millions of dollars. (Wednesday, a jury found Lunsford guilty of voluntary manslaughter, a verdict sure to be appealed.)

There’s real progress toward a legislative reform of the competency issue. Since lawyer Joe Cervantes, a powerful state senator who strongly opposed the less thought-out bills that Governor Lujan-Grisham urged a 2024 special session to consider, is a sponsor of this legislation, I like its chances.

H.B. 4 would provide for “community-based competency restoration” for non-dangerous defendants, while expanding the list of crimes that could spark involuntary commitment. It would smooth out the legal process to treat rather than punish non-dangerous defendants whose mental limitations mean they can’t legally be tried, but also that jailing them may not help. This follows pilot-program experience, including here, with improving how we bring people needing treatment together with people providing treatment. That’s gotta help.

It’ll help more if we also pass three bills intended to rebuild New Mexico’s behavioral health system, savaged by then-Governor Susana Martinez ten years ago. Legislative leaders have noted that better laws regarding therapy for defendants can’t do much if therapy isn’t readily available.

We should deep-six a stupid bill that’d increase fentanyl-trafficking sentences. Jailing people often makes things worse, and the feds tried something similar that didn’t work. Too, I suspect some people selling small amounts do so to feed their own habit – and don’t deserve a huge sentence. With marijuana isn’t, I remember college friends saying “If you find some weed, buy a lid for me too.” That’d make someone a “trafficker.”

Meanwhile, we must take such sensible actions as we can to minimize chances of deaths like Eze’s, Amelia Baca’s, Antonio Valenzuela’s, and Teresa ($20 million) Gomez’s. One important step is an oversight commission. In ___, the City Council directed that proponents and city staff, including law enforcement, discuss and refine a citizens’ proposal and bring it back on the agenda. Mayor Ken Miyagashima, who’d opposed the commission’s action, slyly sabotaged the project by assigning discussions to a semi-secret committee he and fellow opponent Tessa Abeyta controlled, and permitting no discussion. The council should insist that staff follow the council’s command by having the City Attorney, Police Chief Jeremy Story, and others meet with citizens to refine the proposal for a yea-or-nay vote. Lives matter – and so do millions of public bucks.

We should all mourn Jonah Hernandez, a good guy who did NOTHING to deserve getting slaughtered.

                            – 30 --

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 16 February, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and should be posted soon on the newspaper’s website, as well as on 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/). ]

[One stray thought: reading about Lunsford’s possible sentence, it startled me to find mention of a possible firearm enhancement. Maybe the law touches on this, but my first thought was that Lunsford should NOT be subject to that. Firearm enhancement exists because firearms are especially dangerous and most of us aren’t carrrying one during most of our interactions with others. Often, we would need to bring one specially. It ain’t so, for a cop. He’s carrying the damned thing almost always, certainly when in uniform. Therefore it’s always within reach, if there’s a dispute or he’s in danger, or thinks he is. So, I don’t think he should suffer extra punishment. It ain’t like he carried a gun specially into a discussion with an ex-girlfriend, or whatever. (This isn’t anything I’ve thought-out or researched, but a first impression.) ]

Evading Wildfires

    I’d planned to write very few columns on the national scene this year, but it’s hard to take our eyes off the political wildfire destroy familiar landmarks of democracy, even to catch up with the fates of health, public safety, and other bills I wanted to back during our state legislature.
    What, I wondered, did progressive provincial legislatures accomplish in 1932-33, while Hitler gained power?
    Turns out that Prussia’s progressive parliament expanded workers’ rights and social welfare programs, and improved public education and police professionalism.   However, in right-winger Franz von Papen took over, appointing himself Reich Commissioner.  That probably wasn’t legal; but German courts, like the U.S. Supreme Court that recently declared our President could not be criminally liable for crimes carried out while in office, let it slide.  This greatly helped Hitler consolidate power when he became Chancellor in 1933.
    Fortunately, a right-wing coup in New Mexico seems unlikely. But it’s not impossible.
    I’ve wondered, too, whether state legislators are having as hard a time as I am controlling their eyes.  I hope and trust they’re finding ways.  Because what they’re doing will matter a great deal to us, particularly the most vulnerable among us, assuming the blaze doesn’t destroy us.
    We absolutely should let all New Mexicans vote on whether or not to pay our legislators, as every other state does.  That means poor and middle-class folks can run, and maybe stay somewhat honest, while now you have to be rich or retired, or a trial lawyer.  Glad that passed a committee.
    We absolutely should provide oversight of acquisitions, mergers, and other transactions involving changes of control or assets of hospitals and other health care entities.  It’s too common now for private-equity to buy a hospital and bleed serious healthcare out of existence – or bankrupt the place by dealing at odd rates with entities indirectly owned by the hospital’s indirect owners.  We also need to protect whistle blowers - the employees so appalled by bad conduct that they’ll speak truths to government agencies or elderly column-writers.   We should bolster recruitment initiatives to stem the shortage of health-care workers here.  (We must better balance the interests of doctors and patients who’ve suffered malpractice – or between greedy hospitals and greedy malpractice lawyers.  “Tort reform” shouldn’t mean save hospital profits and screw poor folks; but I’ve seen disgusting abuse of the law by plaintiffs’ malpractice lawyers.  
    Also more delicate than most citizens would acknowledge are some of the public safety initiatives.  Some candidates always shout “Crime!” to justify jailing everyone and trampling Constitutional rights, but crime right now is a far more serious problem than many of us progressives care to admit.  But solutions must balance a host of interests and considerations more delicately than we usually manage.
    We must pay and protect our peace officers better – and also set up mechanisms to make them more professional – and safeguard citizens from some police officers.
    We need universal child care funding and early childhood development.  Historically, the chance to learn the skills and language success required  was primarily a privilege of the rich.  Universal public education has made great strides.  We’re incredibly literate.  But the kind of emotional/psychological well-being head start some of us got from loving, literate, thoughtful parents who were not hampered by poverty, should be there for all the kids we can create it for.
    Kudos to all the folks working on this stuff sincerely in the public interest.
                – 30 – 

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 9 February, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and should be posted soon on the newspaper’s website, as well as on 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/). ]

[Particularly fascinating to me right now is that so many folks who voted to elect Mr. Trump and whose interests will not be served by the Trump-Musk effort to shape our government into one that does less for regular folks and better serves corporations, do not yet see the danger in abandoning democratic safeguards to let Musk run free. That’s scary. I think a critical mass of such folks won’t see what they’re losing until far too late, when it bites them personally but most of their potential allies for change are jailed, dead, or fled. Or merely intimidated. As Musk uses unusual financial knowledge to interfere with folks lives, Patel uses an FBI stripped of apolitical investigators to start nuisance investigations of enemies, and folks who committed violent felonies for Trump and were pardoned by Trump commit new violent felonies for Trump, many will indeed fall silent.]

[For now, we U.S. citizens are living in two very different realities.]

A True Danger!

The 47th President’s Administration is starting about as foreseen, but with some differences.

We knew that in 2016 he was an inexperienced narcissist who figured everything would change when he bellowed at it. It didn’t. Shockingly, the rightwing sycophants he’d installed in important cabinet positions (AG, Defense Secretary, even his military chiefs of staff) found that vestiges of ethics, patriotism, or good sense, meant there was some dung they just couldn’t eat.

We knew that this time he was resolved to appoint people no hint of backbone. He has. I thought he’d appoint some experienced but bombastic defense secretary. He appointed a joke, except that it’s mostly Putin, Xi, and the mullahs in Iran who are laughing at it. Behind their sleeves.

The speed and comprehensiveness of the viciousness are surprising. Mr. Trump, having thought he could command this vast beast, the civil service or “Deep State,” now knew (or had minions who knew) that they needed someone loyal to him in every cell of the beast. He also has a cadre of folks, including the creators of the 2025 blueprint, who understood this and were prepared to kiss his posterior hard enough and often enough to gain his trust to do as they liked. He himself cares little for policy, except that he hates anyone who’s opposed or belittled him, and any favoring of women, folks of color, poor folks, or queer folks at the expense of Anglo frat boys and billionaires’ profits – or bore the scent of Mr. Biden of Mr. Obama.

They’ve rapidly released felons who violently attacked Capitol cops, canceled security details, excised Tuskegee Airmen from Air Force training syllabi, illegally fired all inspectors-general, encouraged [intimidated?} civil servants to take buyouts (to limit the government’s ability to tax or regulate corporations) but imposing the abortive” pause in paying moneys already committed.

It seems that the reaction of even Republican officeholders in states and cities caused that U-Turn, which so embarrassed the Trumpies that they denied it was a retreat at all. But don’t celebrate. The game plan is to distract with unconventional formations and pre-snap motion so’s defenders can’t cover everyone. Throw out so many appalling absurdities that more thoughtful and patriotic forces can’t fight em all.

Everyone wonders how and when many Trump voters will realize that he’s working against their interests? He represents the well-heeled corporations that are gouging and poisoning people. Government officials trying to protect us from them is somewhat inconvenient to their profit maximization. He promises lower grocery prices; but neither depriving farms of their largely immigrant work-forces nor imposing tariffs will reduce the price of eggs, nor will ignoring bird flu. He is their champion, but his various actions to weaken their access to medical care won’t make ‘em feel a whole lot better, nor will the polio Mr. Kennedy might subject their kids to. Trump yammers about job creation, but he’s trying to undo the jobs Biden and Congress quietly created through the Inflation Reduction Act. (He needs to cover the Biden smell.)

Will they see the connection? Or will he convince them that Joe Biden’s ghost is tinkering with the machinery, or Kamala has a sly finger on the scale? Will Musk’s Twitter continue bombarding them with enough pro-Trump propaganda to keep them quiet? Will eliminating all the watchdogs suggest he has plans to break laws – or just that he’s pruning the Deep State?

Beats me!

                                                      – 30 --

 

[The above column appeared today, Sunday, 2 February, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on its website, as well as on 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/). ]

[ What’t going on is dangerous in an unprecedented way. And part of the plan is what my column points out, the great variety of the bad acts – as predicted by Steve Bannon years ago, when he spoke of flooding the zone.

The moment I sent in the column, Trumpian absurdities flooded in. Krish Patel, the proposed FBI head, scrambled to explain why saying he’d destroy the FBIwas not a problem; and our proposed new Fauci, Mr. Kennedy danced such weird gyrations around his dangerously goofy vax ideology that even the Louisiana Republican U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, a physician himself, confessed he was “struggling with your nomination.”

Since, top FBI officials are gone, and Musk operatives have full access to the federal system of payments, which was normally well-guarded information even within the government. They could cut off funding to a social program they disliked – or stop sending Fauci’s pension checks.

Meanwhile a tragic crash between a small airplane and a military helicopter killed scores of people near D.C. That’s a tragedy. Mr. Trump immediately insulted women and ethnic minortiies by blaming DEI! Under reporters’ questioning, he said sometimes brains could be a factor in air controllers’ work, implying disadvantaged folks’ brains were inferior, and complained about a slogan he said Biden had put up at the FAA, until another reporter said the slogan had been there all through Trump’s first Presidency.

Trump’s absolute lack of grace in trying to make a political point even before the bodies were recovered was no surprise. Nor was his lurching into a random lie, then trying to support it with remarks that were as stupid as they were racist.

Meanwhile, facts emerged that I suspect were irrelevant but had a lot fatter chance of being relevant than Mr. Trump’s babbling. Trump’s pal Elon Musk had essentially fired the head of the FAA; Trump had then dissolved the Airline Safety Council; and the combination of Trump’s “pause” in payments and “Fork in the Road” letter inviting federal employees to resign rattled folks, causing great chaos.

Here’s a possibly relevant fact that those facts probably didn’t cause: on the night of the crash, a staffing shortage had the air traffic controller doing the job of two controllers. I’m not blaming Trump for the crash. But I promise that if it had happened a week or two into Biden’s Presidency, Trump would have blamed Biden. And creating chaos and fear among federal employees, as Trump is doing, can’t be helpful.

Mr. Trump’s Presidency is something few of us deserve for our sins.

As Republican (or former Republican?) David Brooks wrote, “This was the week in which the Chinese made incredible gains in artificial intelligence and the Americans made incredible gains in human stupidity. I’m sorry, but I look at the Trump administration’s behavior over the last week and the only word that accurately describes it is: stupid.”

Meanwhile, top FBI personnel were reportedly told to resign or get fired. They left. Now Mr. Trump can ensure there’s no top expertise, independence or conscience to protect us from whatever January 6 sympathizer Kash Patel wants to do. Musk and friends also demanded sensitive information about methods of payment to retirees getting social security. No legitimate reason fot them to get that, and those officials resigned, too. What that says to folks who might want to speak up, is, realize that we can make up any kind of case we want and put you through legal hell and, if you depend on social security, you might need a lawyer to get the government to keep paying you. None of that sounds real subtle.]

A public school is an a public accommodation which must treat us all equally.

Likely you’d have figured that that that statement was so obviously true that I’m an idiot for writing it.

But, in a sense, it only became true in New Mexico today (January 23), when the New Mexico Supreme Court unanimously decided the point, tossing out an erroneous 1981 decision that UNM was not a “public accommodation,” as that term is used in the New Mexico Human Rights Act.

The new case arose from a Halloween event in which their Advanced Placement English teacher allegedly cut three inches off one Native American girl’s braid and called another “a bloody Indian.” Albuquerque Public Schools argued, as lawyers will, that APS was not a public accommodation. The trial court bought that, and dismissed the case; but the Court of Appeal overruled that, and the Supreme Court agrees. (Lawyers will note that the Court of Appeals “distinguished” the 1981 UNM case, but the Supreme Court explicitly overruled it.)

I note the decision not merely for its irony, but for the distinction between our courts’,, and our state government’s, willingness to consider candidly our sorry history in such matters; and to be glad we do not live in Florida or Texas, and have some protection against the possible abuses at the hands of our federal government.

Said the court, “ The NMHRA’s protections against numerous forms of discrimination must be read against the backdrop of this state’s unfortunate history of race-based discrimination, including that history transpiring within our public schools.” Noting that our New Mexico Constitution provides for education for all children, and that, “Children of Spanish descent in the state of New Mexico shall never be denied the right and privilege of admission and attendance in the public schools . . . but shall forever enjoy perfect equality with other children in all public schools and educational institutions of the state.” For a lot of the 20^th Century, that simply was not true for Native American kids.

In judicial language, despite such constitutional protections, “New Mexico schools have been used to further efforts of assimilation and cultural erasure among Native American and Hispanic children” and that historians have written that our schools sought to force “assimilation through education ‘that intentionally sought to destroy their cultural ways of life.’”

Political point: can you imagine the governor or attorney-general of Florida or Texas writing that? Rather, we’re seeing directives that such things not even be spoken of in those states’ public schools.

Personal point: I’ve talked with a Navajo long-distance runner whose father taught himself long-distance running as a kid, racing home after escaping from the schools to which our state sent him to learn not to be Navajo any more. I also recall my friend Fred Johnson, a Dineh student here in 1970, whose required ten-minute film to pass Buddy Wanzer's filmmaking course was a very moving study of his daughter, juxtaposing the loud chaos of a morning here, and on a local schoolbus, with the quieter strains of a morning at home.

Justice Briana Zamora’s concurrence correctly notes that while Brown v Board of Education held in 1954 that the segregation of public schools based on race was unconstitutional, it was 41 years later, in 1995, that a federal court explicitly held that that applied to children on the Navajo Nation.

Another reason I’m glad I’m in New Mexico.

                                – 30 --

[ oops - thought i'd published this y/d, sunday, but apparently i didn't quite do that.]

[The above column appeared Sunday, 26 January, on the Las Cruces Sun-News website, as well as on 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/). ]

No News Is Good News If the Alternative Is Armed Insurrection

This week’s news included our first human bird-flu death and no violent effort to overthrow the government.

Outgoing VP Kamala Harris quietly presided over certification of Donald Trump’s election to the U.S. Presidency. That’s always a yawner. But, four years ago, a losing Presidential candidate orchestrated a plot to stay in office through fraud and chicanery, aided by a violent protest that killed five police officers and threatened the lives of congessfolk trying to do their constitutional job, including that losing candidate’s vice-president. Imagine trying to explain that to Dwight David Eisenhower! Then explaining that the guy was elected again.

He’ll reportedly pardon folks convicted of crimes in the failed coup effort. You elect a somewhat demented narcissist, then even violence against our country is acceptable if committed with admiration for the narcissist. An event almost unimaginable in U.S. history occurred, on national TV. The shifting sands of memory have already covered it.

This year, no violence. No threat of violence.

I can’t tell if the first human death from bird flu will someday loom large in memory, or be a trivia answer. (I’d bet on the latter, but for months I’ve washed my hands after filling bird-feeders.)

In 2016, the new president economized by abandoning the small office in charge of monitoring the world for possible pandemics, such as ebola and swine flu, and responding quickly. In 2019-20, that president denied that COVID-19 was any big deal. Perhaps coincidentally, the U.S., 4.24% of the world’s population, suffered by May 2020 28.6% of the global deaths from the pandemic, 103,700 out of 362,705. Maybe reporting anomalies contributed; and maybe some of the initial sanitizing recommendations proved excessive. But Mr. Trump was pooh-poohing masks, and advising folks to try weird remedies, and now wants to appoint an anti-vax nutcase to oversee such matters. Trump’s term ended in January, 2021. By April 2024, the death figures were just over seven million worldwide and 1,219,487 [a reasonable 5.7%] here.

The Salk vaccine stemmed the polio epidemic of seventy years ago. Polio has vanished. Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s lawyer has brought lawsuits seeking to undo approval, and even do a new placebo test – not vaccinating some kids, to see what happens. Sorry, but given 70 years’ scientific history, that just sounds dangerously goofy. Kennedy also helped undermine Samoan confidence in the measles vaccine, helping Samoa suffer a deadly measles outbreak.

In 2020, Kennedy said that much of the pandemic “feels very planned to me,” adding that “if you create these mechanisms for control, they become weapons of obedience for authoritarian regimes.” Jay Bhattacharya, Trump’s choice to heat the National Institute of Health, said in April 2020 that the pandemic would be less deadly than flu. FDA appointee Marty Makary said in February 2021 that COVID would be “mostly gone by April.” Their ideologies dominated their “scientific” pronouncements. Not ideal behavior by the folks who’ll decide how we handle the next big health problem. Or biological warfare against us.

Meanwhile Mr. Trump, like an Alzheimer's patient, grabs at everything he sees. His threat to snatch the Panama Canal and Greenland, for our security, undermines alliances. Refusing to rule out violence tells Xi and Putin that if they feel they need Taiwan or Ukraine, that’s cool. Even Trump’s own former National Security Advisor says that’s dumber than a fencepost.

Very few of my future Sunday columns will mention the White House. It’s too easy a target.

                                         – 30 –

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 12 January, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website, as well as on 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/). ]

[In 2025, very few of my Sunday columns will discuss Mr. Trump. We have plenty of urgent issues locally worth discussing; and Washington is both too easy a target to be much fun [see above column] and a little fruitless, because folks mostly believe what they believe and ain’t listening.

However, a Facebook exchange today set me thinking on what’s maybe an odd course: Along with keeping an eye on Mr. Trump, and resisting excesses if and as we can, we should be grateful we are not him. Most of us, clearly including Joe Biden, grew up in families that taught us some basic stuff about loving and being loved, living our lives but considering others’ needs too, and basic decency. Mr. Trump was taught that it was a dog-eat-dog world, and one’s task was to make as much money as you could off anyone else you met, and you got laughed at if you didn’t. All his annoying traits, some trivial, such as cheating at golf and comically exaggerating crowd sizes, and humiliating anyone who disagrees with him, are indeed annoying; but each speaks eloquently of his need to do that sort of shit, and I can think of few people I know who would choose to be in Donald’s wounded mind if they could avoid it. It must be hell!

So, while maintaining compassion for all those he hurts and insults, save some for him. ]

New Mexico Supreme Court Confirms Localities Can't Outlaw Abortions

No big surprise here, but on 9January, as I watched all that wonderful snow float earthward, the New Mexico Supreme Court unanimously rendered a decision that’s important but also as obvious as the snow falling in the direction Newton would anticipate: that the vicious efforts by Hobbs, Clovis, Lea County, and Roosevelt County to outlaw abortions was illegal and ineffective. Despite a laundry list of goofy sounding rightwing “friends of the court,” the justices said that the ordinance, as it was intended to, conflicts with state law, and that the state statute controls. The court did not consider or decide the deeper question of the ordinance’s constitutionality, because there’s a basic procedure rule that if you don’t have to decide a constitutional question, because some other issue is sufficient to decide the case, you don’t look at or opine on the constitutional question.

The case was formally known as State ex rel. Torrez v Board of County Commissioners for Lea County, et al., Docket # S-1-SC-39742 (1/9/2025)

The ordinances, in the court’s words, “create blanket prohibitions on the mailing or receipt of any abortion-related instrumentality.” Those prohibitions, the court concluded, “plainly conflict with provisions of the Reproductive and Gender-Affirming Health Care Freedom Act (the Health Care Freedom Act or the Act), NMSA 1978, §§ 24-34-1 to -5 (2023)” and several other statutes.

Therefore the effort failed.

The court reviewed the history, starting with the 2022 US. Supreme Court decision in Hobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215, 360-61 (2022), overturning Roe v. Wade, 410 US. 113 (1973), and declaring the authority to regulate abortions a state issue. Today’s opinion noted the accuracy of the Hobbs dissenting justices’ prediction that Hobbs would encourage just such in-state battles as this one.

In response to Hobbs, New Mexico’s Legislature revisited the decades-old state criminal statute banning abortions unless deemed necessary to protect a woman from death or “serious and permanent bodily injury. In 2021 the Legislature repealed the old ban and its criminal penalties, removing legal bars to abortion in New Mexico. Further legislative and executive actions broadened access. Most notably, the the Health Care Freedom Act, stating New Mexico’s modern desire to protect women's’ rights to access reproductive health care in New Mexico, went into effect in June 2023.  It prohibits any public body, entity, or individual from interfering with access to reproductive or gender-affirming health care and imposes penalties for violations of the Act’s provisions. The two county commissions and the two city councils had willfully violated that law.

Thus, today's decision should come as no surprise.

However, it confirms the importance (disputed at the time) of formally rescinding the old law and enacting a fresh one, bringing a more modern and compassionate approach to the issue. 

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