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. ]

Walking a Few Inches in a Cop's Shoes

How can I be writing this, given that when I tried to talk sense into someone yesterday, he shot me dead? I hadn’t even drawn my gun.

Fortunately both our guns lacked bullets, and just made a big noise. We (“media” folks, city councilors, city employees, and a few state legislators), and we were in the Las Cruces Public Safety Building,, attempting police training scenarios, wearing protective equipment and under close supervision.

Police must know dozens of specific legal cases and state or federal laws. They must know ‘em better than prosecutors or defense attorneys. Lawyers can research a law’s details before citing it in a brief or going to court. Police officers must decide on the spot, sometimes in nanoseconds, under pressure, whether or not to put a foot in the door to prevent a man who may or may not be abusing his spouse from closing that door, or how to handle a shirtless trespasser who is acting in bizarre and threatening ways outside Costco.

Our state courts have (mostly correctly, I think, but challengingly for law enforcement) interpreted our search and seizure and other constitutional provisions and laws as more protective of individual rights than analogous federal provisions.

The landmark 1989 U.S. Supreme Court case of Graham v. Connor (as interpreted by later cases) governs police use-of-force cases. The Court unanimously held that all excessive-force claims should be analyzed under the Fourth Amendment’s “objective reasonableness” standard, not a generalized “substantive due process” standard. Were the officer’s actions objectively reasonable in light of the facts and circumstances confronting them? Courts judge reasonableness from the viewpoint of a reasonable officer in the moment, not using hindsight. Relevant factors include the severity of the suspected crime, the immediacy of any threat to anyone’s safety, and whether the suspect is actively resisting (or trying to evade) arrest. (More specifics in today’s blog post.)

One could note that we didn’t see the other side of the coin, when police officers step over lines and harm people unnecessarily. While officers spoke of the basic rules, I thought about situations from just a few years ago in which failure to follow those rules led to deaths.

I also saw again the chest video Officer Jonah Hernandez was wearing when a man to whom he’d spoken politely just rushed him, without warning or provocation, and knifed him to death. It’s hard to watch. It’s hard not to reflect on, afterward. It must have been incredibly painful for Chief Story and others who knew him well.

For me, the proper response to the session (which wasn’t my first) is NOT to express unqualified support for whatever police officers do in whatever circumstances; but I do view their actions with greatly enhanced sympathy and understanding. We owe them optimum training, equipment, support, and oversight.

We should recognize that we make them deal with all the hardest problems we are too weak, lazy, or blasé to fix: that modern society seems to drive more people mad, that a capitalist society involves a lot of poverty for those the system can’t use; and that most people are wonderful, by nature, others are somewhat vicious. Whether that’s caused by God or the devil or getting beaten too badly by Papa, trying to talk such a person into acting benignly, without violating his or her rights, or seeing anyone injured, is a tough problem you and I rarely have to face.

                                             – 30 –

[The above column appeared Sunday, 17 August, 2025, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, and on the newspaper’s website (sub nom, "Understanding the Tough Choices Law Enforcement Officers Have to Make" ) 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.]

[I mention Graham v. Connor (1989), the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that set the constitutional standard for evaluating claims of excessive force by law enforcement during arrests, investigatory stops, or other seizures. The Court ruled that 4^th Amendment “reasonable search and seizures” standard applied, not the 8^th Amendment, which would have turned on whether the officers had malicious intent or acted with excessive cruelty. (Initially, the Charlotte trial court had tossed the case at the pleading stage, based on the 8^th Amendment standard, and the U.S. Court of Appeal had affirmed.

The facts perfectly illustrate the two worlds different people can inhabit in the same parking lot.

Outside a crowded 7-11 gas station / convenience store, a cop noticed a car pull up, and the passenger jump out, acting a little oddly, and tell the driver he’d be out in a moment. He ran back out soon afterward and jumped in the car, which took off rapidly. The officer followed them, stopped them, and ordered them to wait while he investigated, then released them after a while, once he found out that there had been no crime.

A diabetic patient beginning to experience an insulin reaction asked a friend to drive him to a convenience store to buy orange juice. The store was so crowded that he concluded he wouldn’t be able to buy the juice quickly enough, and asked his friend to drive him to another friend’s house. An officer stopped them almost immediately, and other officers soon arrived and handcuffed the patient, who was injured in the process.

One interesting fact is that I haven’t been able to discover how the case ultimately came out between the diabetic and the city police. The Supreme Court reversed and remanded. That’s a common move when the Court determines that lower courts applied the wrong legal standard, or misunderstood the law. You clarify the rules and play the game over. Lower courts take more evidence and ultimately decide. However, records from lower courts are sometimes spotty. It appears that the parties settled the case out of court after the Court clarified the governing law.

Therefore it seems that the diabetic got compensated. That sounds fair. Even if the first police officer’s stop was reasonable – hold these guys a moment while we have another officer ask the store if it had just been robbed – the cop who handcuffed Graham and rolled him over on the sidewalk, so rudely that a foot got broken and a shoulder injured, ignoring the man’s explanation about the insulin (while another officer said, “I’ve seen insulin shock. There’s nothing wrong with this motherfucker except he’s drunk.”) may not have been so reasonable. (If the plaintiff was physically resisting the stop, such that subduing and handcuffing him was necessary, maybe it’s a different story.)

I also understand that the diabetic was Black. In Charlotte in 1989. I’m pretty sure a couple of middle-class white businessmen in the same situation would have been heard a little better by the officers, or at least treated more respectfully.

At any rate, as I say, last week’s event was a good session. Well-run, and pretty fair. Certainly something more civilians should see or experience. ]

Bad News? Shoot the Messenger!

Economic chickens do come home to roost. August 1’s disappointing July job statistics and downward correction of the two previous months were serious bad news. They fit with the uncertainty Donald J Trump’s tariff madness and dithering has caused everyone. If you’re importing cars or making widgets that use foreign-made components you’d be wise to wait to see what costs and possible prices might be.

Dozens of presidents have seen good and bad numbers and tried to explain them, probably not always honestly.

They haven’t shot the messenger. DJT’s response is to fire the Bureau of Labor Statistics head. Joseph Stalin also punished statisticians when data didn’t match his hopes. Salting economic data sank Argentina and Greece. Given the years of trust that led many folks around the world to rely on the apolitical and objective standard Trump just tossed in the fire, we may never know the full depth of the harm.

Is this the start of the slowdown, or ”stagflation,” (weakening economy yet also inflation) economists have predicted? How much worse will it get? Will Trump respond with more reasonable tariffs? Will the Fed now have to lower interest rates to help repair the damage? As voters have trouble paying higher prices with unraised salaries or lost jobs blame Mr. Trump, or the hated Democrats? Accurate information would help folks answer fair questions.

But DJT is carefully killing all the messengers.

He dislikes the science on climate craziness, and therefore fires scientists, asks the Supreme Court to forget its decision on the subject, and removes solid information from the EPA’s website.

He resents that he was impeached (though not quite convicted). Therefore the Smithsonian’s exhibit on presidential impeachments removes reference to Trump’s two, which are that historical fact.

He started by firing seventeen inspectors-general Congress carefully legislated into existence to keep presidents and departments from breaking laws. Previously strong Republican Senate supporters of the inspectors-general, like Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, wimped out.

He dislikes the independent Federal Reserve Bank’s sensible reluctance to lower interest rates in the present financial context, and so he wants to fire the Fed chief.

His Department of Justice lawyers lie so frequently and baldly that judges, grand juries, and defense lawyers no longer trust the DOJ. All lawyers try to present the best case for their clients; but most competent lawyers try to make their exaggerations reasonable. Our court system depends on some minimum ethical standards, which these folks refuse to meet.

We are supposedly a democratic republic. A democratic republic requires informed voters. I think 90% of our population would agree: let’s look honestly at the facts, then make decisions, on which, of course, we might disagree; but let’s be in the same zip code as the facts.

Mr. Trump is systematically removing all independent sources of those facts.

That’s a quantum leap from just explaining stuff in a way that makes you not look so bad. Like the difference between claiming the wind and a photographer and bad luck caused you to shoot a 12-over-par 84 – versus crossing out scores and saying you shot 70. The difference between making excuses for a senseless war in Viet Nam that killed 58,000 U.S. soldiers – and erasing the casualty figures to claim that only a couple of dozen died. Or, better, getting so tired of making excuses for losing to the Yankees that you hire new umpires paid by your team, not the American League.

                            – 30 – 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 10 August, 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 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.]

[Trump added another level of idiocy – or dementia – by criticizing Joe Biden for appointing the Federal Reserve Bank’s President, whom Trump appointed.]

[Inspired by our president, I knew just what to do when I received an exorbitant electric bill this week. I shot the postman, though we liked him. Then I blew up that damned Smart Meter. We couldn’t have used THAT MUCH juice last month!]

You bring me a bill that high again, you're toast!

The West Bank, Gaza, the G-word, and Us

Months ago, we saw the film No Other Land at the Fountain Theater. Last Monday an English teacher who’d shot some of its footage was shot to death.

We liked the unique story of the film’s making, by two Palestinian and two Jewish directors, about the forced displacement of Palestinians from Masafer Yatta, a cluster of villages in southwest occupied West Bank. The Israelis declared that a huge swath of Palestinian farms and village was part of an Israeli military base, so that the residents were trespassers. Yeah, it reminded me of the U.S. South decades ago. The authorities weren’t marching Negroes to concentration camps, but stood by while white citizens did as they liked.

The film is deeply personal, especially in scenes where the two key directors talk about their situations. The Palestinian was born in Masafer Yatta.

It moved us. It helped humanize what’s going on there.

A similar cooperative spirit ran through our recent radio visit with Amalia Zeitlin, Las Cruces resident and symphony violinist, discussing her efforts to bring Jewish and Palestinian youth together through music in Jerusalem.

Dead is Awdaw Hataleen, father of three. The settler who shot him had been under U.S. sanction for violence against Palestinians – until Mr. Trump took office.

If I focus here on the West Bank, it’s because the slow, inexorable, illegal eviction of Palestinians from their farms and villages there has angered me longer, since well before October 7, and has been so clearly wrong. Nothing could justify the October 7 massacre and kidnappings; but earlier events can help explain.

The film won the 2025 Oscar for best documentary feature, yet couldn’t find distribution because of prejudice among the powerful.

I have Israeli friends whom I love. I do not judge them for their country’s misdeeds, as I was grateful that folks from other countries never judged me for my country’s terrible crimes. Fellow budget travelers who liked someone from the U.S. would say, “Oh, you must be Canadian.”

In December I wrote that Israel’s leading genocide scholar classed Israel’s treatment of Gazans as genocide. That bus is filling up. Just this week two Israeli human rights organizations and Marjorie Taylor Greene jumped on. Include prominent Holocaust historian Omer Bartov, who initially called Israeli actions “just war crimes.”

No one wants to say a country founded partly in response to the Holocaust is committing genocide But there are 60,000 dead, 90% of the population displaced, and 80% of medical facilities destroyed or only partially functional. Amputations have replaced limb-saving surgery. Sixty per cent of housing units are gone. Huge numbers are starving, with innumerable kids suffering malnutrition in what the U.N. calls a “worst-case famine scenario.” More than half of aid shipments have been denied, delayed, or impeded.

West Bank facts help establish motive or intent. They show on a smaller scale, over time, that Israel does not regard Palestinians and their human rights, or lives, even outside Israel proper, as worth protecting. And they predated October 7. Netanyahu has more understandable motives than Hitler did; but he’s doing the crime. So did Hutu. Reasons, but not justification. As an Israeli human rights group points out, all instances of genocide have had justifications, at least in the minds of those who committed them.

As Edmund Burke and Albert Einstein said, the world will not be destroyed by evil-doers but by regular folks standing by silently.

Ain’t that us?

                                        – 30 --

[The above column appeared Sunday, 2 August, 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 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.]

[By using the G-word, I do not mean to equate Israel’s destruction of Gazans with the Nazi obliteration of Jews. Hitler, unlike Netanyahu, had not killed in battle, and had not had family killed by, the people he tried to destroy. Further, while I cannot agree with Netanhayu’s final solution, and believe his conduct influenced also by his desire to avoid legal consequences for his own alleged bad conduct, any reasonable person would have to agree that “How can we end the violence between Jews and Muslims and live in peace?” is an incredibly difficult question I can’t answer. No such question made sense as to the German non-Jewish people and German Jews. Without regard to apportioning blame, everyone in the nation has lost someone to hostile violence, and/or been injured, and/or killed, and many on all sides have been displaced, or lived longing for the home from which they or parents or grandparents were rudely evicted. If one said, “I want all of us to make a fresh start,” it’s not clear what that would look like or how it would be maintained as some few on each side bore grudges too deep to transcend. The Germans had no such problems with the Jews. But the effect on me is the same if I’m a starving orphan in or Jabalia or Khan Younis: I’m in shock, fear, and pain – and grieving, though I’ve harmed no one. Whether it’s because Hitler insanely blames the Jews for Germany’s defeat and depression, or Tutsis horribly took out their anger and resentment against Hutus based on years of discrimination, if you’re a suffering kid you’re a suffering kid. And it doesn’t help to know that the Belgians should or could bear some ultimate responsibility, or the British, or the allied negotiators at Versailles.

Before We Debate Mr. Trump, Let's Contemplate the Context

When someone suggested we debate Donald Trump’s impact, I contemplated the context for that discussion.

The context includes truths we duck. That, to much of nature, humanity is the scourge of the earth, having killed off numerous species. Euro-Christian humans are the worst. Their Torah-Bible-Koran, as generally translated, tells ‘em the earth and animals are theirs to use and abuse – and they do. Everywhere, they’ve decimated indigenous peoples who generally believed more in living in harmony with nature, not trampling it. Our greed and carelessness now guarantee our grandchildren and their descendants a very inferior life.

A second context: the wealthiest of us have long controlled and abused the poorest. (Lighter-skinned folks have abused darker-skinned folks, too.) By any measure, wealth was very concentrated in a few hands in the late 19^th Century. Early 20^th Century progressives, the 1930s Depression, and the 1960s brought that obscene inequality down a little by the 1970s. Then, a reaction set in, bringing even worse inequality. The highest marginal income tax rates declined from 91% (1950) to 37%. The U.S. middle and lower classes got squeezed. And told it was the fault of welfare cheats.

A third point: charging “that sounds Communist!” meant little even when the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China were our sworn enemies. Pure socialism probably hasn’t been tried, except in Kerala; and pure capitalism demonstrably fails. Major efforts at communism have ended in dictatorships. The Chinese periodically had to add in more personal and economic freedoms – “Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom!” but curtailed those when freedom annoyed the rulers. The U.S. has had to soften capitalism with pensions, fairer laws, worker’s comp, and even welfare – and regulations that protect workers’ health and even the environment we all share. Even so, we’re extreme: every other advanced nation has public health care, but we retain a dysfunctional private system. Our CEOs make 300 times a worker’s annual salary, not the 40-50x common in several of our allies. There’s lots of room between 300x and socialism.

We’ve also developed a dominant two-party electoral system that ultimately doesn’t serve us too well.

In that context, none of it Donald Trump’s fault, let’s consider his impact.

Claiming scientific facts are “a hoax” and joining Yemen and Libya as the only countries rejecting Paris Agreement on mitigating climate craziness, Mr. Trump is not going to help improve our descendants’ air, water, or temperatures. Denying the need to shift to electric cars lets China get way ahead of us in development we’ll gave to ape.

Lowering taxes for the wealthiest while cutting SNAP, scholarships, and health assistance, and destroying the Education Department probably won’t help diminish our obscene inequality.

Finally, gutting our professional and apolitical civil service system, our inspectors-general, and semi-independent Department of Justice, and mistreating legal immigrants who have anti-Trump materials on their computers, won’t enhance our efforts at democracy or true prosperity. Decisions made to protect the ruler’s ego don’t gain us the world’s cooperation, inspire our troops, or help us be the innovators who create the Next Big Thing.

He may get the Washington footballers to be “the Redskins” again, and bully the news media into submission, and maybe even stymie a welfare cheat; but your great-grandkids, sweltering and struggling to breathe, or sneaking across our northern border, won’t honor you for failing to shout “No!” Neither will veterans and folks with limited incomes and less than perfect health.

                                      – 30 – 

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 27 July, 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 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.]

[ The point I probably don’t make in there is that the U.S. despite all we learned in civics classes, did a lot of harm to a lot of the world, and to a lot of nature, before Donald Trump took things to their logical conclusion. He’s a con man; but just as the con man turns people’s own greed against them, or sometimes their charity, Trump has material to work with. People are angry. Our rulers are adept at masking the reasons for the conditions that cause that anger. In our south or 1930s Germany, it’s the N’s or the Jews; later it’s the welfare cheats, not the reduction of rich folks’ and corporate taxes to less than half the rates we had in the prosperous 1950s. And it’s those immigrants! And folks with unconventional genders.

The principle of Trump’s success hasn’t changed: people are angry; Trump is angry; he bellows and people think he’s angry about the same things that bother them; but, in fact, he’s profiting from those. But he didn’t create the conditions that are troubling people.]

[Bottom line: if you’re Putin or the People’s Republic of China, Trump is probably pretty convenient for you. If you’re someone hoping the U.S. will deteriorate, and/or NATO blow up, he’s pretty helpful. If you like the paralytic partisanship we and our Congress our suffering, he didn’t create that but sure keeps it going. Perhaps if you’re Nature, and want the destructive human race curbed, maybe decimated, maybe he’s a funny kind of help for you, by refusing to focus on cooperation or our long-term survival needs, because, like a baby, he’s mesmerized by the glittering baubles life is waving in front of his crib.]

The Dalai Lama Turns 90

Forty years ago, I stood in the Dalai Lama’s bedroom contemplating a cup with a skull carved above it, which he drank from as a child, so that he would be always aware of death’s imminence.

He had left that bedroom in 1959, aged 14, to avoid having the Chinese capture him and make him sing the government’s praises, abusing Tibetans’ passionate Buddhist faith to weaken Tibetan resentment over the Chinese invasion in 1959. He escaped to Dharamshala, India. One moving morning, after witnessing a sky burial, I climbed to the top of a hill behind Serra Monastery, one of the three most important monasteries around Lhasa, where a man who lived up there showed me religious items that the Chinese had destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. He unrolled them from a dusty bag as if they were treasures.

Tibetans revered the Dalai Lama. In Lhasa, giving someone a picture of the Dalai Lama was one of the biggest kindnesses a visitor could do.

He, and other tulkus, are believed to be reincarnations of important Buddhist lamas. After a death, signs lead religious leaders to a home, and a child who might be such a reincarnation. They observe the child. Sometimes he seems to recognize someone who was close to the dead lama. Often they’ll spread on the floor before him several things, some shiny and appealing, and when he selects a less appealing article that belonged to the dead lama, as if it were familiar, that is also a sign.

We feared then that when he died the Chinese would appoint his “successor,” from some family they controlled. Tibetan Buddhist leaders would search as usual for his tulku, necessarily among Tibetans in India, but the Chinese would beat them to the punch.

Four decades have passed. Wandering around China, I was moved by Hong Kong folks’ justified fears that when the PRC recovered Hong Kong from the British, in 1997, the Chinese promises of semi-autonomy would be like dust on the wind. Tibetans mostly resented Chinese rule. At the time, I studied carefully what I could see on the ground, but also befriended China’s leading English-language apologist for its invasion. Mao, having liberated much of China from bondage, sought to do the same for Tibetans, and considered religion, as Marx had said, the opiate of the people, a mechanism by which aristocrats kept the ordinary people under control. That’s often true, but the Tibetans loved their religion with a humility and passion of which I was always in awe. Imagine folks making pilgrimages to Lhasa from their rural homes, across land not unlike New Mexico’s, and pausing, every three steps, to prostrate themselves flat on their bellies, as they did when circumamulatingg the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa. And the Chinese, as the U.S. did with surviving members of indigenous tribes, wanted also to turn the Tibetans into imitation Han-Chinese. It’s called “progress.”

The Dalai Lama lives the “loving kindness” he advocates. He knows all religions, but remains quirky, funny, and warmly informal with everyone. As he says, "A tree can make ten thousand matches, but a single match can burn ten thousand trees.”

Recently he turned 90. His longevity has frustrated Chinese plans. The Chinese are rubbing their hands in anticipation now. In July, he confirmed his plan to be reincarnated, with his non-profit trust locating his successor. Sadly, we will see dual – and dueling – Dalai Lamas.

                                                         -- 30 –

 [The above column appeared Sunday, 20 July, 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 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.]

For me, traveling in Tibet was a marvel. Nearly died of illness at one point, but learned a lot.

For you, probably the best book introducing you to the 14^th Dalai Lama is Pico Iyer’s The Open Road: the Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. Iyer is both a noted travel writer and a longtime friend of the Dalai Lama.

Bakground Tibet stuff, or Tibetan Buddhist stuff? I loved The Way of the White Clouds, which I read while traveling there. The writer was a German, a Buddhist but initially a bit of a skeptic about Tibetan Buddism – until he met the tulku of a lama he’d known personally, and the kid recognized him. Anyway, I recall enjoying that and also Alexandra David-Neel’s My Journey to Lhasa. I also recently read a biography of Patrul Rinpoche that I really liked, that really gave one the flavor of the faith.  And humility!  Typical of him, walking the countryside to a town where he was to speak, he fell in with a poor old woman, and traveled with her, and she treated him like a beggar-servant.  He said nothing of who he was, and made no complaint.  She, on her way to hear him in that town, was rather startled when she arrived.   

For any person who is grieving, I would recommend The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. When my mother died I gave a copy to my father, a militant atheist, and he ended up greatly appreciating it. For someone seeking a fine introduction to Buddhism and the Buddha’s life, you might try _______’s . I read it decades ago and again within the last few years. Thich Nhat Hanh’s Old Path White Clouds: Walking in the Footsteps of the Buddha. I think of it more as a novel based on the Buddha’s life than as a historical biography, because it mixes historical accuracy with good storytelling.

A favorite shot of the Potala -- from the Banak Shol

 

Tibetan at Norbu Linka w DL pic

Doubt the DL would approve flag or soldier at Potala

The Potala -- Note name of bar in foreground

This last image is incredibly moving for me.  The photo backdrop of the home with a TV near Guilin or Yang Shuo was Chinese vision of perfection, favorite Chinese scenery and a nice place with a TV.  It was among five or six photo-backdrops at which Chinese tourists could have their pictures taken -- and, to me, rather unpleasant, as a sign of the Chinese transforming the Potala, which was both the DL's home and the seat of the Tibetan government before the Chinese came, into a tawdry tourist attraction.  The Tibetan passing on the bicycle, pausing to regard this, was irresistible as an image -- but what he was thinking I can't know.

All these photos were shot in 1985 or 1987, and are copyright Peter Goodman

Our [illegal] road to Lhasa included a stop at this nomad camp