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Today's Opinions

  • Honoring the Rio Grande del Norte

    On Tuesday evening, more than 10,000 New Mexicans joined a telephone town hall meeting with Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), local community leaders, and the Sierra Club to celebrate President Barack Obama’s recent decision to permanently protect the state’s Rio Grande del Norte region as a new national monument.
    During the hour-long event, Senator Heinrich and Congressman Luján were joined by Questa Mayor Esther Garcia, Mora County Commissioner John Olivas, and Rivers & Birds Executive Director Roberta Salazar for a discussion of what the new Rio Grande del Norte National Monument means to New Mexico. New Mexicans participating in the call also had the opportunity to ask questions and get more information about the designation.
    “I would like to thank the New Mexico Sierra Club for hosting a virtual town hall meeting to connect with thousands of constituents across the state to celebrate the designation of our new national monument,” Heinrich said. “The Rio Grande del Norte National Monument is a prime example of what can happen when local communities, businesses, sportsmen, tribes, elected officials, land grant heirs and others come together to build a brighter future for all New Mexicans.”

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  • The wonder of Rio Grande del Norte

    Almost 30 million years ago, in what is now Northern New Mexico, two of our planet’s ever-shifting plates, the North American and the Pacific, crunched up against one another, causing a dramatic separation in the earth’s crust through which in time a great river would flow.
    Today that separation in the earth’s crust remains spectacular, and we know it as the Rio Grande Gorge, named for the river that runs through it, sometimes ferociously, sometimes serenely.
    To drive through that canyon is to drive through one of this continent’s beautiful and breathtaking wonders.
    Last week President Barack Obama used the powers vested in him by the Antiquities Act of 1906 to make it the “Rio Grande del Norte National Monument.”
    Corks were popping and hands were clapping from Taos to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., as the President signed a proclamation adding some 240,000 acres of Northern New Mexico, all the way up to Ute Mountain near the Colorado border, to the roster of national monuments.
    It was an especially poignant moment for New Mexico’s recently retired U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, who was present for the White House signing ceremony.
    Bingaman has long championed national park or monument status for the area. “This is a great day for New Mexico,” the former senator said.

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  • Dawn nears for smart regulation

    Regulation, government-style, begs for modern methods of limiting bad side effects.
    Yet a new concept cannot spread far unless it has a name. To urge change, this column introduces the new terms “integral regulation,” “built-in inspection” and “smart regulation.”
    Of necessity, regulation and civilization grew up together. Early societies expanded slowly, from isolated bands to tribes to city-states. Methods of regulating evolved as slowly as civilization.
    Regulation began with simple peer pressure, which evolved to tribal traditions and later into early religious themes.
    As time crept on, the need for regulation led to governments and politically-set rules.
    Technology enters the story. Technologies first were used as they came. The unwanted side effects is that a technology can have become more evident to more people as the technology gains more usage in more places.
    In our time, the side effects have come to be examined and judged in a set forum, such as an agency hearing with lawyers, technologists, interested spokesmen of all kinds and the government that is in office.
    By such means, a regulation is shaped to limit the harmful side effects. Meanwhile, the pace of technical innovation quickens. Quicker tools emerge quicker.

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  • Where is your inheritance?

    Most people who grew up during the Great Depression and World War II learned to scrimp and save as a matter of necessity.
    Many also gained financial security during subsequent decades when pension plans were more common, homeownership became the norm and government programs like Social Security and Medicare expanded.
    For a time, it seemed their Baby Boomer children stood to inherit amounts unheard of for previous generations.
    However, many economic factors have taken their toll on seniors’ nest eggs in recent years.
    Thus, if you were counting on a sizeable inheritance to help finance your own retirement, you may want to rethink that strategy.
    Here are several reasons why many seniors are revising their estate distribution plans:
    Most people who invested heavily in the stock market during the Great Recession watched helplessly as their accounts lost significant value. Although the market has mostly recovered, many people — especially those in or approaching retirement — stashed their remaining balances in safer investments earning very low interest, worried the market might plunge further.
    Many likely will have to draw on their account principal to make ends meet, thereby depleting their savings (and estates) much more rapidly than planned.

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  • Governor still riding high

    Susana Martinez appears to have gotten just about everything she wanted for her finance program from the 2013 Legislature.
    An economic development proposal for corporate tax cuts and tax breaks was in trouble in both houses until she threatened to veto the Legislature’s appropriation bill.
    Suddenly the previously uncompromising governor became a tough compromising former district attorney.
    She tossed lawmakers the “Breaking Bad” tax break for the filming of television series plus an agreement to sign the appropriation bill.
    What happened in that negotiating session? We don’t know, but in the waning moments of the legislative session, the governor’s 35-page tax cut bill was trotted out on the floor of each house with little debate and no time to read the proposal.
    Democratic leaders House Speaker Kenny Martinez and Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez were roundly criticized by many Democratic legislators for caving in to the governor.
    It is hard to figure. Did they not want a special session? Were there personal reasons? Did they not want the governor and her PAC going after them in their next election?
    One thing seems certain. Unless there are some real surprises in her bill, Gov. Martinez and her 60 percent approval ratings seem headed toward very likely reelection in 2014.

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  • Tax deal can lead to compromise

    Bloggers and editorial writers have examined the Legislature’s love child — the surprise, last-second, tax package that looked like both parents — and hooted about transparency and back-room deals. 

    But the tax deal was a compromise, fair and square, and it was refreshing to see legislators stop jawboning and hustle to get it done. 

    It’s now being touted as “tax reform.” It’s not, and to be clear, it doesn’t raise all boats.

    From the beginning of the session, lawmakers focused on the economy. 

    The most serious proposals boiled down to a handful. Democrats wanted a minimum wage raise, a tax incentive for TV productions (the “Breaking Bad” bill) and capital outlay. 

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  • Change plagues borderplex

    El Paso, Ciudad Juárez and Las Cruces are a region, one entity. The assertion grasps the remarkably obvious. Businesses in southern Doña Ana County and Juárez back up to one another. The Rio Grande, the nominal border between El Paso and Juárez, is often dry, posing little real barrier. Otero County and Alamogordo might be added with El Paso being the closest thing of size.

    The region is complicated. Northern New Mexico, commonly clueless about the south, might not understand this. To say the region consists of three states (Chihuahua, Texas and New Mexico) and two countries (Mexico and the United States) oversimplifies. There are counties and municipalities, water districts and basins and who knows what else.

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  • Some pugilistic poetry

    Art often imitates life, and sometimes life imitates art. But when the artist is a poet, life is most often ridiculed than mimicked.
     When I was young, it seemed that the lure of poetry was limited to the “classics” — Frost, Blake, Dickinson, Thomas, Sandburg, Tennyson, Poe.
     Ah yes. The masters.
     One cannot deny the art of poetry when yelling not-so-gently to that good night, riding along with the six hundred of that light brigade into the valley of death, or considering whether or not to take that road less traveled.
     I remember thinking that someone should put Whitman’s “I hear America singing” to music, perhaps something with a nice patriotic chant. Or Lawson’s “Grey Wolves Grey” set to a spirited marching tune. Either that, or a nice jazz beat.
     And I still don’t understand why my English teacher marked me off for errors in punctuation and grammar. E.E. Cummings butchered the language and he was called a genius.
     But even with my usual disregard for anything that wasn’t math, I found myself admiring the sheer beauty of some poems. A poem of joy is indeed a thing of beauty.

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