The Movement of People
Hundreds of refugees from Africa dying as they attempt to cross into Italy, Spain and other parts of southern Europe. Tens of thousands of displaced Syrians searching for safety. Kids fleeing the violence in Central America and ending up in detention centers in places like Dilley, Texas.
The dominant issue of our times will be the movement of people. Not voluntary movement as we know it but movement that is forced, desperate and dangerous. No country knows how to deal with it...
Ridiculous Flix
Adam Sandler, the famous comedian, is making a movie called Ridiculous Six, but Native American actors got all upset because Native American women characters in the movie were given names like "Beaver Breath" and "Wears No Bra." I couldn’t stop laughing at these very clever, very funny names that most certainly would have maximum impact after six or so Buds.
Very famous, very funny person Adam Sandler, I hear, actually plays an “Indian” in the movie. Here’s an uproarious thing the very funny man said when people started to confront him about disrespecting Native American ways. Basically Adam Sandler said the movie was a satire, so get over it already...
The One Book: Naomi Klein’s “This Changes Everything”
If you are planning to read a book this year I strongly suggest Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything. Climate change and global warming are real, tangible, and undeniable, the evidence is concrete, and it is planet-wide. The only serious question remaining is whether or not something can be done to slow or otherwise mitigate it in the face of powerful political opposition. This book reminds me of Ralph Nader’s Unsafe At Any Speed. The sounding of an alarm reflexively resisted by vested interests but of vital interest and value to everyone else...
Semolina
Semolina is a nearly 14,000 acre new proposed community in Southwest Bernco named for coarse, purified wheat middlings, a very romantic association, if I do say so.
If approved by the Bernco Commission, Semolina could maybe possibly potentially bring in 38,000 imaginary residents for 75,000 existentially deficient invisible jobs. Good deal and just in time. These ghosts will bring their own water from wherever, so not to worry. The water thing is just a Trojan horse anyway, or a horse of another color, so back up your hard drive and get over it...
Children and Society as Fair Game
What is with the anti-children political agenda going on across the country? What do Republicans have against children? Why do they push laws to force women to have children then pass laws to harm those children—not just at the state level but at the national level as well by cutting funds for education, food stamps, health care, and anything else of social value?
To have witnessed a revolting fist-pumping celebration by a New Mexican Republican legislator for his victory over third-graders who aren’t ready to learn to read by third grade was an eye-opener. If someone had told me adults would celebrate such a victory I wouldn’t have believed it—but I saw it with my own eyes! At the moment, 3rd grade retention is an iconic right-wing red-meat political issue, part of a larger strategy to privatize public education nationally...
Thank You, Eduardo Galeano
Brilliant thinker and writer Eduardo Galeano died of lung cancer yesterday (Monday, April 13, 2015) in his native Uruguay. He was 74. Throughout Latin America his books defined generations. Here he may best be remembered for having written The Open Veins of Latin America, the book that Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez stepped forward and placed in Barack Obama’s hands during the latter’s first meeting with the continent’s presidents in 2009...
Tax cuts, a special session, and the budgetary storm that’s brewing
Since the legislative session concluded without the passage of a capital outlay bill—money for public works projects like building community centers—there have been rumblings about the need for a special session. Amid this din, the Executive Office has indicated that it would also want tax cuts to be considered. A special session should be called, but the Legislature should limit their agenda to passing the public works projects and not even consider handing out more tax breaks...
A Ship of Fools
A ship of fools is adrift. The crew is filling the sails with lies, ignorance and innuendo – fueled by religiosity, ignorance, racism, resentment, misogyny, homophobia, hate speech, class discrimination, ethnicity, fear, distrust of government, disparagement of anyone and everyone not like them and, not the least, unbridled political ambition funded by billionaires. No person, no institution is safe from their depredations, not even the sitting president. Fear of truth also fuels this taxonomy of dysfunction, deception and destruction...
Oil and gas industry ‘run amok’ on New Mexico’s highways
Route 285, which runs near our home south of Eldorado near Santa Fe, is a big part of my life. Last week, my wife and I looked forward to traveling home on it from its southernmost point, a small Texas town called Sanderson, 20 miles from the Mexican border. We expected a beautiful drive through sparse cattle country. Instead, we found ourselves in a Western version of Mad Max meets Dante’s Inferno meets L.A. freeway at rush hour. The culprit: our oil and gas industry run amok...
The Politics of Insanity
In the Politics Aristotle says, “ The mere establishment of a democracy is not the only or principle business of the legislator, or of those who wish to create such a state, for any state, however badly constituted, may last one, two, or three days; a far greater difficulty is the preservation of it.” Today we are confronted with the preservation of American democracy in the face of an ongoing political assault on behalf of oligarchs and assorted religious zealots. Something has gone terribly wrong in a society when elected representatives of the polity are hell-bent on destroying that polity’s social contract on behalf of sociopathic billionaires...