Politics / Current Events

New Mexico First was created in 1986 by Jeff Bingaman and Pete Domenici to provide New Mexicans with a public forum in which to discuss issues important to New Mexico.  This year the organization decided to honor the contributions of Jeff Bingaman at a First Forum lecture.  Fortunately Pete Domenici was available to attend and participate in the policy tribute held last Friday evening at the National Hispanic Cultural Center.

The agenda placed the two former New Mexico senior senators on the stage together across from one another.  They sat at a small table with ABC reporter Sam Donaldson moderating and posing questions to them which were selected by the NM First board of directors.  The topic areas chosen were education, the economy, energy and Congressional gridlock...

The United State has fallen into a pit of political absurdities so chaotic, so brutal, and so cruel that many of us have become desensitized to the torturous, slow ruining of lives that poverty in our country causes every minute of every day.

We’re so mesmerized by the viciousness of our politics that rich lawmakers have no qualms about taking food out of poor people’s mouths, passing laws that diminish their only hope to get an adequate share of life’s basic substance through food stamps...

I was absolutely taken aback when one of my many detractors told me in a recent e-mail “NOBODY CARES” that our distinguished gov. paid no Gross Receipts Tax on her on-line purchases.  This individual, who shall forever remain nameless and faceless, advised me to in his words, “Get a life.” I refer, of course, to one of my previous pieces in which I tsk, tsked the illustrious governor of our state for not paying Gross Receipts Tax on her on-line underwear purchases...

I have always known that there is one unshakeable truth given to us by God: thin people damn well deserve to get ahead because the almighty has made skinny folks supremely more qualified, more talented, more perceptive, more articulate and more blessed than fat people who are ill-suited for the rigors of a life in which we all have to scurry about as quickly as possible.

Now I have living confirmation of the living truth of my insightful prejudgment thanks to self-styled “idiotic” and impulsive” UNM Psych. Professor, Dr. Geoffrey Miller, who so wrongly beats himself up over a little on-line kerfuffalo he made...

Inform yourself. The responsibility of every good citizen.

But how?

Way back in a time before the Rabbit Hole opened up and we all passed into that other world where up is down and in is out, it seemed simple. You bought a morning newspaper or listened to the evening news. You thought you were getting the information you needed because you believed your government, church, even the corporations urging you to buy, wanted you to be informed.

It’s been a complex and highly sophisticated road from there to here...

Whatever else happens in this degrading age of universal surveillance, let us as New Mexicans make sure that if we’re stopped in a speed trap for going ten miles an hour too fast that our entire genetic identity isn’t taken from us by some guy with a swab, blue gloves, and a gun.

It’s bad enough that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in his majority opinion last week declared that seizure of DNA is a “reasonable search that can be considered part of a routine booking procedure” in serious crime arrests. But then the AP reported that New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez was considering proposing to the Legislature next year a bill to make DNA a reasonable search in misdemeanors as well as felonies...