Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
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Today’s topic is sin. I’ll try not to get preachy about it. There’s a long list of habit-forming vices that Americans have enjoyed, condemned, regulated and even outlawed over time, but today we’ll consider four in particular — tobacco, alcohol, marijuana and gambling. Our U.S. government has spent a lot of time and effort trying to control each of them, with some of the biggest changes having occurred over the last half-century. Used to be, a lot of communities relegated drinking, pot smoking and betting to the shadows, while cigarette...
Trump. Climate change. Liberals. Conservatives. Socialists. Capitalists. Bet you don’t think any of these charged-up words are funny, but maybe you should. Recently I heard a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition connecting anger and humor, part of a series called, “The Other Side of Anger.” I found it familiar to my upbringing and how I’ve been conditioned to cope with the stresses of life. “All comedy starts with anger,” the NPR piece quotes Jerry Seinfeld saying, before delving into how stand-up comedy turns anger into laughter. George Carlin...
News item: The United Methodist Church voted on Feb. 26 to reinforce its ban on openly gay clergy and same-sex marriages, leaving in place a longstanding policy that states, “The practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” The United Methodist Church is built on a connectional structure that ties all its leaders and congregations together. Local churches share their ministers and their money in such a way that ties people together in meaningful ways. I grew up living under that big tent, as a preacher’s son in Arkan...
Move over marijuana. Your straight cousin is about to become the latest cash cow for agriculture in America. In case you missed it, the biggest news to come out of the 2018 Farm Bill is the federal legalization of hemp, a cannabis species that doesn’t get you high. The legislation, signed into law in December, sets up a structure for regulating commercial or “industrial” hemp in a way that will encourage its growth nationwide. Before this latest farm bill’s passage, more than 20 states had already legalized the production of hemp. But now it...
Sound the alarm! We’ve got a national emergency on our hands! Well, it’s really more of a constitutional emergency, as President Trump has opened the door for all future emergency declarations to be defined by politics, not real threats to our health and safety. He has conjured up a national security crisis at our southern border and, in doing so, has opened a new world of absurd possibilities. Allow me to illustrate … Let’s start with hair. The way Americans have decided to comb, cut, style and color their hair these days is causing great conf...
Let’s start with this reality-based premise: The “national security crisis” we face is mostly internal. The violence and crime in our schools and on our streets doesn’t have anything to do with foreign-born “illegals” and terrorists. They’re almost entirely the result of angry and/or disturbed Americans. The real crisis in our country isn’t so much “us” verses “them” as it is us verses us. Black and white, rich and poor, city dweller and county folks, the mentally ill and the less mentally ill — as Americans, we’re all in this together and yet...
This will be the year in which New Mexico’s minimum wage will go up, probably dramatically. The Democrats will make sure of that. Moreover, this year’s legislative session is an opportunity to put this perennial issue to rest for good — by tying it to inflation. Politics, not smart regulations, have gotten us to where we are now. Because of political pendulum swings between Democratic and Republican control, when the minimum wage is raised, and by how much, depends on who’s in power; the Republicans typically oppose minimum wage increas...
I’m done with the NFL. At least for this season. If I were a man of higher principles, I’d be done with it for good. The New Orleans loss to the Rams was the straw that broke my back. To essentially end a great season with such a blatant penalty that wasn’t even called is tough to take. And what’s going to come of that? Further delays to the game, as officials will now be allowed to second-guess their calls (and non-calls) on the field. And now we’ve got to watch those cheatin’ Patriots, again, this year up against a franchise that’s move...
The last time New Mexico was in this situation, Bill Richardson had just been elected governor. It was 2003 and Richardson, a former congressman and high-ranking official in the Clinton administration, had just won election with about 56 percent of the statewide vote. He succeeded Gary Johnson, known as “Governor No” because of his propensity to veto just about anything and everything. So by the time Richardson came into office, with Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate, the circumstances were in place for a flood of new law...
I’m always hoping things will turn out better than they appear to be headed. Take our future as a species as an example. Climate change and the polluting of our air, soil and water suggests that catastrophe is bearing down on us, and it doesn’t look like we’re willing to do anything about it. But wait, there are still reasons to believe we can survive this mess. I’ve written about one of them already — a company called Carbon Engineering, which is developing a chemical process to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, thereby creating...
Suit up, New Mexicans. Big changes are about to take place. That’s what a commanding majority of New Mexicans voted for — but that doesn’t mean we’re all going to like it. Take gun control as an example. In a rural western state such as ours, there are plenty of people who don’t want additional gun controls, but you can bet there will be talk of doing exactly that. It’ll pit urban lawmakers along the Rio Grande Corridor against lawmakers from small towns and country settings around the state. Even some Democratic lawmakers will oppose the...
The new year is a time for hope. We want to believe in a better year ahead, so we celebrate the possibilities. Here in New Mexico, there are a number of reasons to be optimistic about 2019, especially if you’re a Democrat, the party that now controls all three branches of state government. But politics won’t be the only big news in the year ahead; the economy will also make some headlines. In the upcoming legislative session, the last eight years of divided government will come to an end, which means a plethora of changes are about to occ...
SANTA ROSA — Could it be that Time magazine is abandoning the “great man” perspective on history, one in which larger-than-life individuals shape world events, for a “people’s history” narrative in which common people have the greater impact? That would explain why the magazine has chosen a group of people, rather than individuals, as its “Person of the Year” for three of the last five years. Or maybe it’s because the magazine is just catching up with the realization that people, collectively, have a bigger influence over world events than...
In terms of pure economics, our biggest national holiday is, of course, Christmas. I read somewhere that Halloween comes in as a strong second, but I’d be surprised if it’s anywhere close to the money we Americans spend for the yuletide. Perhaps that makes me a little out of the ordinary, because I don’t remember much about the Christmas presents I’ve acquired in years past. Instead, I recall the experiences, and I’ll bet that’s true for a lot of you, too. When I was growing up as a preacher’s kid, Christmas caroling was one of my favorite h...
“Now the captain, he said to John Henry, ‘I’m gonna bring that steam drill around. I’m gonna bring that steam drill out on these tracks, I’m gonna knock that steel on down, God, God. I’m gonna knock that steel on down.’ “John Henry told his captain, ‘Lord, a man ain’t nothin’ but a man, But before I let that steam drill beat me down, I’m gonna die with a hammer in my hand, Lord, Lord, I’ll die with a hammer in my hand.’” — Lyrics from the folk song “The Ballad of John Henry” as performed by Bruce Springsteen’s “We Shall Overcome: T...
SANTA ROSA — I’m an optimist by nature, but lately I’ve been having a hard time. Like most Americans, I’m none too pleased with our political leadership. We have an amoral and narcissistic president who says he doesn’t even believe in one of the most important issues of our time, climate change. For someone like me, a believer in real news and real science, these aren’t exactly uplifting times. I can’t even get excited about our growing economy, because I figure it’s all a house of cards. Short-term gains, I suspect, that’ll backfire on us so...
Picture this: An Arkansas preacher and teacher have six sons who grow up, get married and have children of their own. Then those children grow up and have their own kids. Even the cousins have cousins, and our extended families grow and grow … and so it goes. That’s my family. I’m one of those six sons. We’re scattered all over now, but every year this loud and large family finds its way back to our Ozark Mountain heritage for an epic Thanksgiving reunion. We take over a lodge on a secluded mountaintop, pack in plenty of food and games and fam...
SANTA ROSA — There may have been mixed results nationally, with the Democrats winning the House and the Republicans increasing their majority in the Senate, but here in New Mexico, an indisputably blue tidal wave overtook the midterm elections. I know it’s due at least in part to Susana Martinez’ unpopularity these days, but if I were a New Mexico Republican, I’d blame it on President Trump. He made this election all about him, and New Mexicans rejected both his agenda and his divisive tactics by taking it out on the Republicans who dared to ru...
SANTA ROSA — Getting old sucks. At least that’s what I’ve heard. OK, I’ll admit it. I’m getting there myself. I’m 62 years old — but I’ve always been about 10 years younger, in maturity, than my actual age. In my teens, I rebelled against my peers; in my 20s, against my parents. I didn’t even start getting serious about life until my 30s, when I finally got married and started a family of my own. And while I was being a daddy to two young girls in my 40s, I had peers becoming grandparents. … I guess the only thing that explains my buying a news...
Here we are, on the verge of one of the most important mid-term elections in American history, and Russian meddling is being charged. Guess it never really stopped. Last week, Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova was charged with trying to influence the 2018 mid-term elections with what Justice Department officials are calling an “information war” against the U.S. and its elections. According to Reuters and other news services, Khusyaynova was chief accountant for Project Lakhta, an operation started in 2014 and financed by a Putin-friendly oligarch Ev...
SANTA ROSA — The other day I overheard an argument between friends over two particular candidates for the same office. One is the incumbent, so the question was posed, “What’s he done for us?” I’ll leave out the particulars — which candidates and which race — because I don’t want to water down my larger point. I’ve heard that sort of question a hundred times through the years when talking politics, and I’ll bet you have too. It speaks to the self-interests that always swirl around elections. What can this particular candidate do for me...
There’s an issue rising to the surface in New Mexico over some boreholes the Department of Energy wants to drill. A lot of people in some very rural areas are saying no. It pertains to nuclear energy and the radioactive waste it creates. New Mexico is at the forefront of this waste-disposal issue with our very own Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP — the only underground repository for nuclear waste in the nation — located just southeast of Carlsbad. Of course, it was sold as perfectly safe, but in 2014, we found out that, where humans are i...