New Mexico Alcatraz
In the fall of l979, a number of reporters, including myself, toured the New Mexico state prison, Old Main as it was called, a few miles southwest of Santa Fe. We were to meet a new warden and get something of an inside look at the grim surroundings, including an up close inspection of the gas chamber
This was something less than four months before the February riot at the penitentiary, considered by many as the most brutal and sadistic prison uprising in American history, worse even than Attica in l971...
Weekly Poem: Sing no hymns save frog-croaks
Frogs, a sort of mascot for my brother
whose friends called him Hoppy.
One of his tree ornaments,
a frog wearing a Santa hat,
hangs on our tree every Christmas,
near the back.
Flat fields of his youth provided
nowhere to hide, the sky was too close;
so he left muddy rivers, farm ponds
and sloughs to become a frog out of water,
exotic desert amphibian, trying to drown
Vietnam nightly
at the Green Onion Bar...
The Supermen Gather at Tamaya: Paul and Eric, Chuck and Dave
As anybody who is anybody will tell you, last week Davey and Chuckie Koch had a warm get together at the Tamaya Resort with, “some of America’s greatest philanthropists and most successful business leaders to discuss solutions to out most pressing issues…”
In fact, Dave and Chuck needed a bit of privacy, so they could think about their great ethics in peace. The bros just rented the whole damn place and surrounded the idylllic resort with armed guards and dogs on chains foaming at the mouth to keep you and me from sniffing around and sharing some of the same air as the very special people were breathing out there in the magic desert Tamayaland...
To repair or destroy
The Human Services Division (HSD) which funds Behavioral and Mental Health as well as Medicaid has concluded that 15 New Mexico Mental and Behavioral Health Services that have served their communities for decades have been so fraudulent on her watch that only the nuclear option was possible. She plans to shut them down and bring Arizona agencies to the rescue. HSD has no stomach apparently to fix our system if it’s broken, to build New Mexico capacity and grow New Mexico jobs. New Mexico tax revenues will ship off to Arizona. There should be no surprise that this is seen as part of a purely political agenda to privatize the not-for-profit mental health providers in the state...
The Inside Dope on Reinhold Reince Priebus and Hanna Scamdera
Reinhold Reince Priebus is really pissed off. The Grand Poobah of the Republican Party, Priebus doesn’t like it that CBS and CNN plan to air specials on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Reince is very angry because these shows are really advertising for Hillary’s presidential campaign that she hasn’t announced yet. Reince has decided to take his football and go home. He’s been blubbering that the Republicans should refuse to air their scintillating presidential campaign debates on either network unless the media giants drop their plans to fete Hillary...
Paranoia
I see a plot in the New Mexico Medical Board's rule to make medicinal marijuana prescriptions hard to write for patients. This is nothing but big pharma applying pressure to the Docs to make it hard to prescribe the low cost and effective herb to patients that qualify. I mean if a few brownies take the place of outrageously expensive drugs then corporate profits will slide. How much longer do we need to put up with this corporate manipulation of everything in our lives? Am I being paranoid? Or is having the munchies a threat to our way of life?...
Tom Udall’s Campaign Against Global Warming
When I saw videos of two feet of hail in the streets of Santa Rosa in early July, and felt the power 10 days ago of the most intense wind and rain storm Albuquerque has ever seen, I thought of Senator Tom Udall’s line, “If anyone still denies that climate change is real, I invite them to come to New Mexico.”
Having seen the predictions of climate change scientists come to life, it’s heartening to know that New Mexico’s senior senator is among the most outspoken politicians in the country when it comes to confronting the reality of our changing atmosphere...
Right To Lifers on UNM Campus Spark Counter-protest
During the noon hour on Monday right to lifers put up twenty by ten ft. color pictures of mutilated and aborted fetuses along Central to convince students and faculty on UNM’s main campus that abortion is wrong. The protestors, who were mostly teenage girls, got a surprise, however, when ten adamant fetuses bearing their own placards descended on them...
Sex and red herrings
The very discussion of the ability to obtain an abortion in American is a “red herring”. A topic put out to distract us from real issues. We are fighting about shutting down abortion clinics when we should be talking about why we need them.
Approximately 20,000 American girls, under the age of 15, become pregnant each year. Shouldn’t we be talking about who is having sexual intercourse with our 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 year old girls?...
Harry Truman and the decision to drop the bomb
On the eve of the 68th anniversary of the dropping of atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, historians are still unable to answer the most basic questions: Who decided to drop the bombs, why were they dropped, why were they even built?
On Aug. 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and three days later on Nagasaki. In the decades since, the mysteries about the decisions have only multiplied the more researchers have delved into documents and the memories of those involved...