Opinion

Sad to say, Russia has it right when it comes to outlining the failed security at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The President of the United States has been adequately warned — as have all of Congress ­— about this serious threat against America, yet they remain mute and do nothing.

And that is Republican, Democrat and Independents.

This issue is not about politics.

It is the protection of these United States of America that we love.

SANTA FE — Are New Mexicans getting their money’s worth out of our 112 state legislators? A recent report indicates we may be getting a very good deal indeed.

The Illinois Policy Institute looked into the range of salaries paid to state legislators across the country and found that the states that pay their lawmakers the most also have the highest budget shortfalls.

The average budget shortfall for the states with the top 10 salaries is over 30 percent. The average for the bottom 10 states is under 19 percent.

The nation’s outsized deficit is high on the list of domestic problems most in need of a solution.

From the president’s deficit commission, meeting throughout the year to figure out what to do, to the America Speaks group holding multiple town hall meetings, experts are zeroing in on the skyrocketing deficit number.

And we keep hearing that cutting Social Security benefits needs to be part of the solution.

Hold on a second. The budget deficit needs to be tackled, and Social Security needs to be strengthened for the long run.

My recent experience with the Department of Motor Vehicles makes me wonder if they even begin to understand service.

On July 28 I went in the afternoon to renew a car registration. A sign was posted that stated “system down no registration possible.”

I returned July 29 in both the morning and the afternoon and the sign was still posted.

Then July 29 I tried to do an online registration and after 15 minutes and answering several recorded questions I again was told by a recorded voice the system was down.

Lt. Gov. Diane Denish is getting tied so closely to Gov. Bill Richardson that one might think Denish is Richardson’s last name.

The Richardson-Denish or Richardson/Denish administration is being blamed for the ills of the past seven and a half years, thereby making the lieutenant governor equally responsible or at least a knowing accomplice in all the governor’s actions.

A recent Business on the Border luncheon in Las Cruces illustrated that the Mesilla Valley has fared better with job generation than both the national average and New Mexico as a whole — though it’s still behind the peak employment growth numbers of the mid-2000s.

At that luncheon, Christopher Erickson, Ph.D., from New Mexico State University’s College of Business, said that even though the country seems to be emerging from a staggering 20 months of recession, it will probably take about three years to catch up to pre-recession employment levels.

 Is demography destiny?

 If so, say some experts, states with growing Hispanic populations seem doomed to fail, weighed down with ineffective school systems and abysmal test scores.

One academic recently predicted that states like New Mexico will become the “Appalachia of the 21st Century.”

He based his prediction on well-known statistics concerning the dropout and low achievement scores of Hispanic students.  

Job creation has been the Holy Grail for as long as I’ve been writing in New Mexico – 35 years, and one byproduct of our long struggle to spin straw into gold is the economic development incentive.

We have dozens of tax breaks and gimmees to lure companies. Even in good times they’ve drawn criticism, but now, as the state attempts to balance the books, and candidates cast about for campaign fodder, there are new calls to examine their use and the public’s return on investment.

It’s a dandy idea, but we’ve heard it before.

It’s difficult to know how to compare enormous disasters with one another.

What has been unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico is often called the “greatest environmental disaster” we’ve faced as a nation.  

My mind turned to an earlier environmental disaster we endured for years in the 1930s. That was the Dust Bowl when a combination of drought and our farming practices in the Great Plains launched the top-most layer of the Earth into the sky again and again.