We learned last week that a major player in the now infamous proposed Santolina development on the southwest mesa put up scads of bucks to defame Albuquerque mayoral candidate and State Auditor Tim Keller with a disgusting and utterly bogus TV attack ad accusing him of supporting sex offenders over children. As was noted last […]
Columns
So Much Mean and Nasty Talk, and One Bright Light That Can’t Be Dimmed No Matter What Anyone Says
This can be an awful dirty little world. But sometimes what I call the Trump Impulse – to smatter everything with caca – doesn’t have its desired effect. It can even backfire on the smatterers. We’ve had some pretty brutal caca moments in New Mexico recently. While the southeast Atlantic Coast and the Caribbean have […]
Who’s Tackling the Hard Questions on Water for the Future?
You probably saw that the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority (ABCWUA) released its new 100-year plan called WATER 2120: Securing Our Water Future. It came to most of us in the form of a four-page flier full of amorphous high hopes and a few generically good ideas. The flier’s headline reads “Water for the […]
Can Crime Ever Really Be Brought Under Control?
Getting tough on crime. It’s an election promise not unlike a city councilor running on a platform of whipping inflation. Both promises are hollow. One promises to do something that no one person can do. The other implies results that most likely will never materialize. In the 1940s and early 1950s inflation in the United […]
After Harvey and Trump, Will the Federal Government Ever Have Our Backs Again?
In the hot, chaotic world of global climate change would Mexico and the Mexican Red Cross be the hope-of-last-resort for New Mexicans caught in a thousand-year drought or a Harvey-like episode of monstrous monsoonal flooding when the Republican Congress and the White House would not? That’s not a joke question. While the White House praised […]
Can a Chaotic, Frothing Mess of a Culture Like Ours Morph Into a Tyranny?
What do you do with a tangled, embroiling week like this? Endless war in Afghanistan announced with platitudes, fanfare and no information; an assault on National Monuments and National Parks; in Phoenix a double down double talk by the President on white supremacy, “dishonest media,” “the wall” and shutting down the government if it isn’t […]
The Trump White House, That’s Mighty White of Ya
In the Jim Crow South of the ’50s and ’60s, one of the traditional compliments of the white upper class, I’ve been told, was to say with nodding approval “that’s mighty white of ya.” That phrase has become a sort of sick joke for those who have fled the haunted culture of segregation that still […]