Some Thoughts on δημοκρατία☆
From the adoption of nascent democracy during Greece’s Golden Age, around 460 bce to this day, the system has been considerably altered.
In Athens, the center of trade and the arts, the citizens voted for their government officials. The Council and the Assembly ruled. The Council was made of 500 members who were drawn by lottery from the population. Stop for a second and visualize that today.
The two groups met every ten days and any citizen could speak and vote at the Assembly. However, they would only convene if there were at least 6,000 citizens present. Imagine that...
Parents Respond to For-Profit Education Reform Lapdogs
As mothers helping to lead the fight against harmful policies inflicted on our children in New Mexico and Tennessee, we felt compelled to respond to the July 24 opinion piece written by education leaders Hanna Skandera and Kevin Huffman that appeared in the Washington Post.
In classrooms across New Mexico and Tennessee, standardized tests are taking away valuable classroom learning. Of the 174 days our children attend school in New Mexico, 76 of those days are impacted by some standardized test or another. In Tennessee, teachers estimate that at least 1/3 of the year is devoted to testing or test preparation...
Does it matter how many students are raped?
A young woman, a student at the University of New Mexico, gets into a BMW with three men, including two UNM athletes.
Later she shows up at her dormitory in tears and reports that she has been raped. Her lawyer says she was drugged.
The men say she had sex voluntarily with them. She says she blanked out because she was drugged. The investigation has been dropped at least temporarily.
This incident, which transpired in April, and the questions it raises are typical of many of the sexual encounters on campuses around the country. Was it a sexual assault? Was it rape? What should the university, the police and the district attorney do about it?...
Oh what a tangled web panel we weave
The U.S. political polling universe shifted a bit this past week when CBS and The New York Times decided to radically depart from their reliance on traditional live-interview telephone polling. In collaboration with the British marketing survey firm YouGov, CBS and The New York Times switched from random-digit dialing to a much more difficult to understand methodology for their political polling...
Texans, New Mexicans Team Up for a Sustainable Economy
On a blazing July day, the temperature in El Paso’s Union Plaza District was almost as hot as the brassy sounds of the local musical group Riboflavin that entertained the crowd at the Downtown Art and Farmers Market (DAFM) with bursts of jazzy R&B.
A great portion of the fresh produce sold at the El Paso market is actually grown just across the state line in southern New Mexico’s Dona Ana County. While the legal battle between Texas and New Mexico over use of Rio Grande water has been in the news as of late, the DAFM is an instance of cooperation between Tejanos and Nuevomexicanos in harnessing land and water for mutual benefit...
The New Immigration Crisis
Governor Rick Perry orders 1,000 National Guard troops to the US-Mexico border. President Obama urges the Presidents of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to focus on their “shared responsibility” for the influx of migrant children from their countries. But where are Governor Perry’s troops going to go and what are they going to do? And what responsibility does President Obama think we have for this crisis?...
Parties and partisanship
We have elections that are mostly controlled by two major parties and the partisans of each who function to organize policy arguments in our representative democracy.
This process has its critics. Complaints surface here and there in the New Mexico commentariat. Ideas for improvement – suggestions like open primaries – are championed.
But some of the arguments around the issues of voting and parties and elections and partisanship need to be chopped down or trimmed back before we can get on with a more reasoned discussion of any changes...
Mayor Attends Mental Health Training
Burque Mayor Bichard Merry recently attended a mental health training here in town. Puffing up his chest in immense pride, Mayor Merry bragged that our city is on the national forefront in addressing the gap in urban mental health services by simply killing the mentally ill.
Saying that offing the mentally ill was both entertaining and a huge cost savings, Republican Mayor Merry urged other cities to take the same step Burqueville has taken to reduce the public health budget by having the police conduct target practice on our most unstable citizens, especially those with PTSD...
Fracking Fights Loom Large in Mexico
Mexico is emerging as the next big battleground in conflicts over hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, as the method of extracting natural gas is commonly known.
While Mexican lawmakers consider regulatory legislation to put into practice the 2013 energy reform that opened up their county’s oil and gas reserves to private investors, anti-fracking forces are mobilizing for a moratorium or an outright ban of the controversial practice from the Mexican Congress...
The Journal, Guatemalans and American Exceptionalism
Atop their dusty perch, the Albuquerque Journal’s editorial board adjusted their monocles last week, put on their flag attire, and took a stab at defining patriotism. The piece was entitled, “Why celebrate the Fourth? Try asking a Guatemalan.” While the piece neither quoted, referenced, or made any attempt to include the voice of an actual Guatemalan, it did spew forth a surreal, Bush-esque view of American Exceptionalism that equates to ‘Shut up and wave the flag'...