Today's Opinions

The Sheriff’s Posse would like to thank everyone who attended Sunday’s Cowboy Pancake Breakfast with a special thank you to Richard Hannemann who donated his musical talent and time towards our cause. Between a record breaking number of breakfast sales and your additional donations we made excellent headway towards our New Mexico state mandated capital improvements.
Without your support we would not be able to continue. As you may know, if we do not upgrade our septic system and kitchen equipment we may be permanently shut down and the historic Posse Lodge would no longer be available as a community resource.
Anyone wishing to make donations may do so by making a deposit to the “Sheriff’s Posse of Los Alamos Capital Improvements Account” at Los Alamos National Bank in person, or over the phone or by mailing a check to the Lodge at 650 North Mesa Road, or by visiting our table at a community event. All donations will be used exclusively for capital improvements.
And by all means, keep coming to our Cowboy Pancake Breakfast on the first Sunday of every month!
The Sheriff’s Posse of LA 

Economic development is one thing. Developing the economy is another. Conflating the two runs rampant, to the detriment of everyone involved, especially those paying the bill, taxpayers and that small subset of taxpayers, businesses, drawn into supporting economic development.
Economic development in concept is straightforward. It is a sales task. Developing the economy is social engineering, a far more complex matter.
At the state level, the sales task goes to the New Mexico Partnership, a small (five-person, two-consultant) private organization.
The partnership, based in Albuquerque, spun out of the Economic Development Department about 10 years ago. The rationale was that state employees, restricted by necessary government procedures, were unable to “sell” competitively. They couldn’t even buy dinner for a prospect.
A prospect is a company that might expand its existing facility or move an operation or start something new. Such things do happen. The developer sells geography.
Conventional elected official-chamber of commerce thinking lays a totally unfair burden on economic developers, that a company will come to town — or to the state and through its presence, solve all problems.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which entered into force in 1970, is the backbone of the world’s nuclear non-proliferation regime — and the only multilateral, legally-binding treaty requiring nuclear disarmament.
The NPT divides states into “nuclear weapon states” — Russia, the United States, France, China and the United Kingdom — which commit themselves to complete nuclear disarmament and “non-nuclear weapon states,” which commit themselves not to acquire nuclear weapons, but are allowed to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
But the permanent division of the world into nuclear “haves” and “have-nots” has never been accepted by most countries nor thought to be practical. Over the years, the NPT has reached near-universality, with only India, Israel and Pakistan remaining outside its regime. North Korea left the treaty in 2003.