Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
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My introduction to “black humor” was a book called “Catch-22” by Joseph Heller. I fell in love with it and enjoy this guilt-inducing brand of humor even now, a half-century later. In “Catch-22,” set in World War II, the humor came from lines of reasoning like this: You could get out of combat if you were crazy, but you would be crazy not to want to avoid combat. So, if you tried to get out of combat by claiming you were crazy, you were sane, and back into battle you would go. Well, it was that and other dark, ironic wartime insanity that was fu...
The way has been paved for the Tucumcari Senior Citizens Center to receive long-awaited improvements to its kitchen, electrical system, service entrance and driveway. The Tucumcari City Commission on Thursday officially accepted a $207,800 grant from the New Mexico Aging and Long-Term Services Department in a unanimous vote. Those improvements include a new enclosure for the senior center’s walk-in freezer, a new waterproof floor for the kitchen, replacement of cabinets, adjustments to convert a back room into a pantry, electrical system i...
New York Times columnist David Brooks, a thinking conservative, wrote what I consider a brilliant piece that sympathetically explains the loyalty of President Donald Trump’s base. Brooks, who is as critical of Trump as any “never-Trump” conservative, explains Trump loyalty without condescension by imagining a debate between an anti-Trump “Urban Guy” and “Flyover Man” from the nation’s interior. (It could have been two women, and maybe someone should imagine that conversation, too.) As Urban Guy ticks off Trump’s outrages and outbursts, Flyover...
A $5.5 million plan to keep treated wastewater from Tucumcari’s wastewater treatment plan out of waterways came significantly closer to reality Thursday. The city commission approved publication of the ordinance that will make it official and authorized final payment for land that will host the project. Before it becomes official, the ordinance must be published and undergo a public hearing, then a final commission vote. Under the plan, financed by $770,000 in local funds and a $4.7 million loan through the New Mexico Environment Department’s C...
Whether to impeach President Donald Trump, which seemed clear cut to me only a week ago, has gotten muddier since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced last week that impeachment inquiries would begin. If the July conversation between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, the new president of the Ukraine, is the issue on which impeachment rests, however, it stands on wobbly legs. Anyone who has been pressured by a manipulative boss knows what was going on in that conversation. Amid the flattery each laid on the other as thick as the filling in a double...
Like the people in Alcoholics Anonymous, I sometimes feel like I should stand up and say, “My name is Steve, and I have an online addiction.” Making an income through journalism, which the internet has made much easier over the years by literally putting the world at my fingertips, is just the beginning. I find I spend hours and hours looking at headlines on newsfeeds, occasionally consulting my online subscription to the New York Times, and like our current president, making many visits to Twitter throughout the day. I occasionally con...
Tucumcari city commissioners on Sept. 9 seemed amenable to granting city land to Tucumcari Municipal Schools that includes the current diamond for high school baseball games. The school district would construct new baseball and softball fields, parking and a building that would host a kitchen and restrooms on the site. School district superintendent Aaron McKinney and school board members met briefly with Tucumcari city commissioners in a public work session before the commission met in a...
I have two brothers who think I’m crazy. I think they’re nuts, too. My other two brothers are smarter. They don’t talk about politics. The two who think I’m crazy are ardent supporters of President Donald Trump. I think he’s the worst president we’ve ever had. To my mind, the only way Trump is a stable genius is if he’s the only one there who’s not a horse. My combatant brothers and I are mystified about how we could grow up in the same household yet have such polar-opposite views, and we suspect mental illness as the cause. But I have to c...
While President Trump’s hold on reality seems to fade daily, his hold on party power seems to be growing. South Carolina, Nevada, Arizona and Kansas are apparently preparing to cancel Republican primaries to deflect any opposition to Trump’s re-nomination. In opposing this development, William Kristol, a notable anti-Trump conservative, last week said, “Trump is an authoritarian. Excusing and enabling authoritarianism corrupts.” Kristol, of all people, should know that authoritarianism has always been a hallmark of conservatism. Please hear me...
Former FBI Director James Comey was the subject last week of yet another Washington dust-devil involving what he might have said in some emails that he shouldn’t have said in emails. Once again, we’re talking about Hillary Clinton, who, of course, used her personal emails for state business, like a lot of high-ranking officials from both parties have done, and who may have also said some things in emails that shouldn’t have been mentioned in emails. These controversies are always raised by grandstanding senators and representatives who broad...
After a brief but intense debate Thursday, the Tucumcari City Commission gave final approval to a code of conduct for city elected officials and employees. The debate centered on District 5 Commissioner Todd Duplantis' proposal to add a clause under the code's enforcement division that would provide a public hearing in case a commissioner is accused of misconduct under the code. The code passed with Duplantis' suggested clause, but not after District 1 Commissioner Ralph Moya, as he has in previ...
Three years of failing to achieve a 98% occupancy rate in its rental units may result in the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, taking control of managing the Tucumcari Housing Authority. A letter signed by Floyd Duran, director of New Mexico HUD operations, noted Tucumcari Housing Authority (THA) had accumulated three years of "unacceptable" scores - 13, 9, and 13 each out of possible total of 25 - in the "Management" category of HUD evaluations, which are based...
The federal government sometimes giveth and sometimes taketh away. Like a prime Biblical figure, it can also work in mysterious ways. Witness the events in recent weeks that could essentially end local control of Tucumcari’s Housing Authority, which is a federal creature in the first place. For reasons unknown, officials of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have set standards for local housing agencies that housing authorities in small, rural communities find impossible to maintain. Because Tucumcari has not met t...
While the Coronado Partners group is far from giving up on obtaining a license to build a racetrack-casino in Tucumcari, the state's recent decision not to grant a sixth "racino" license leaves Tucumcari and Quay County again facing hard uncertainties about their economic future. In the wake of lingering regrets over the New Mexico Gaming Commission's decision not to grant a sixth license, for which the Tucumcari site was one of five competitors, local economic leaders remain optimistic about...
President Donald Trump announced out of the blue last week that he wants to buy Greenland, which has the whole world going, “What the rhymes-with-small-waterfowl?” Well, there are some unsettling parallels. Erik the Red, one of the most famous of Vikings, gave Greenland its name through a piece of Trump-like hucksterism. The story goes that Erik was exiled there and didn’t want to go alone. He called this huge island that consists mostly of ice-covered ice “Greenland,” hoping he could persuade a few Vikings to come on down, thinking they’d find...
As Quay County reels from the state’s decision not to grant a sixth racetrack-casino license, my inner wonk is motivated to see where the county stands as we figure out where we can go from here. As a first step, I collected U.S. Census numbers updated to 2018. I learned that Quay County still fares poorly in too many areas related to economics, but some neighbors fare worse in these areas. It also seems that surrounding Texas counties do better overall. Only two of the counties surrounding Quay actually gained population from 2010 to 2018, C...
After a public hearing on the proposed code of conduct ordinance to guide decisions and actions of city officials and employees, the Tucumcari City Commission voted Thursday to table the ordinance. The issue of enforcement in the code brought some debate. District 4 Commissioner Chris Arias and Mayor Ruth Ann Litchfield argued in favor of empowering commissioners to take strong actions against colleagues to enforce the code. On the other side, District 1's Ralph Moya and District 5's Todd Duplantis argued stronger enforcement would give...
OK, the Republicans are excusing the most excessive acts of Donald Trump, our most excessive president, and the Democrats might come up with such a toxic stew of unpopular policies that even Trump’s excesses might seem preferable. It’s time to write a column about something else, now that summer is drawing to a close. School starts within a week of this column’s publication. School starting to me still means summer is over, even if outside temperatures still exceed 100 by day until September, when school used to start. Summer is called a time...
The city of Tucumcari can reap $76,869 in advertising and promotion benefits for the current fiscal year while paying $29,836, according to Joanie Griffin, a principal in Sunny 505, the marketing firm the city has hired to help promote tourism in city. Electronic media advertising and promotion through Facebook and other social media, internet radio, websites and email are expected to dominate the spending, Griffin said in a public work session for the Tucumcari City Commission on July 25, but the plan includes advertisements in the New Mexico...
The GOP narrative that came out of the Mueller hearings on July 23 could have been written by Clive Cussler, John Le Carre or Ian Fleming. It was compelling fiction and, like much good fiction, it was inspired by true events. But the story Republicans laid out in the hearings and the truth are two different narratives. Against their better judgment, even knowledgeable Republicans rush to defend President Donald Trump, supporting even his attraction to conspiracy theories and the con artists who concoct them. Spy novelists at least admit their...
The state’s official review of the city of Tucumcari’s fiscal year 2018 financial records resulted in a rating of “unmodified,” the best rating the New Mexico Office of the State Auditor can give, the city commission learned at Thursday’s regular meeting. Fiscal 2018 ended June 30, 2018. City Manager Britt Lusk said the city can now breathe “a sigh of relief” after the state auditor gave the city a very low rating of “disclaimer” for its reported 2017 records. “It’s like having a teacher tell you your homework was so messy you got a zero...
While the city of Tucumcari’s general fund ended the year with a deficit of about $575,000, the city as a whole managed, with revenues of nearly $12.7 million, to finish the fiscal year that ended June 30 with a positive balance of $1,236,331, the Tucumcari City Commission learned Thursday during a special meeting. The good news about the general fund’s budget deficit is it is more than $200,000 less than the $775,519 deficit with which the city started fiscal year 2019, which began July 1, 2018, and ended June 30, the commission learned. Cit...
A July 16 column by the New York Times’ Thomas L. Friedman favors some moderate ideas he thinks the Democratic party should adopt even as it lists leftward. I agree. Friedman and I share a belief that Americans tend to settle toward the center even as the Republican and Democratic parties gravitate toward extremes. Friedman and I also concur that people mostly miss good jobs. Yes unemployment is down, but, as Friedman points out, “the wealth of the top 1 percent equals that of the bottom 90 percent.” At the same time, the type of job that...
A proposed code of conduct for Tucumcari city government elected officials and employees Thursday received a nod from the city commission to be published, but with some enforcement provisions removed. The commission gave the amended code of conduct ordinance a “first reading” approval Thursday, which means the proposed ordinance will be published and a public hearing held on it before it receives final commission action. The code as drafted includes requirements that employees and public officials treat their positions as public trust and to...
There were two sides to a confrontation that nearly got physical in the White House Rose Garden on Thursday. Big media almost ignored one side. The reporting of this incident, to me, is more evidence that mainstream media should do more to curb their self-righteousness, even if press freedom is under a historic level of threat under President Donald Trump. The mainstream media reported that on Thursday in the Rose Garden a right-wing radio personality named Sebastian Gorka strode over to Playboy reporter Brian Karem and, with video cameras humm...