I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
The furor surrounding President Obama’s effort to secure the 2016 Olympics for his adopted home town of Chicago took me by surprise; the outrage on the right was fierce and uncompromising. But we need to save our outrage for the issues that really matter.
In his commentary here at NMI the other day, Bill Jordan wrote: ”Education—which represents the largest single expenditure for the state—saw some of that increased spending. And not a moment too soon. At the end of the Johnson administration, New…
“You’re all racists!” That’s the meme sweeping the mainstream media and left-leaning Web sites these days. Conservative opposition to the Democratic policies championed by President Obama. Everybody is saying it. Former President Jimmy Carter is saying it.
There is in our country a deep divide between those who see an activist government as the best solution to most of society’s problems, and those who believe that believe it is not the role of government to engineer a utopian society. The majority of Santa Fesinos fall into the former category, but those of us in the latter comprise a significant and politically active minority. Our daily paper attempts to marginalize us at its own peril.
This morning, President Obama addresses the next generation of American citizens in a speech that will be shown in classrooms all across the United States. Since it was announced, that speech has ignited yet another ideological flame war between supporters and critics of the President, but this speech transcends both party and ideology.
When the news came that Santa Fe’s public schools would get some of the federal stimulus bounty being handed out by a benevolent Democratic Congress and president, few suspected that some of that federal pork would turn rancid.
I hope that the sort of NIMBYism that foils so many public works projects doesn’t rear its ugly, selfish head this time, because a new I-25 exit at Richards Avenue is really a necessity.
Nobody — not even Republicans — wants poor people dropping dead in the streets because they can’t pay a doctor. Okay, maybe some libertarians do. But I’m not a libertarian. I’m not opposed to all taxatation and all government. But I am opposed to the disastrously misguided attempt by Congress to “reform” our system of paying for health care.
Back in the bad old Bush-Cheney days, Code Pink activists were considered heroines for their disruptive protests against the war. Now, in the more enlightened Age of Obama, conservatives are protesting the attempt to ram a 1,018-page bill through Congress before all of its potential ramifications and unintended consequences can be considered.
If the online newspaper eventually does replace the printed page — and I cannot help but believe that it eventually will — there will still be investigative journalists because there will still be readers who want to know the facts.
Let’s be honest: Poor people know that green chile cheeseburgers will make them fatter than steamed salmon will, and they know that doing an hour of exercise will make them fitter than watching an hour of television.
The fact is, our government cannot go on spending money at the rate it has been. Politicians of both parties have in the past defended deficit spending because, “We can grow our way out of the deficit.” Oh, really? So what happens when the economy contracts — as it is doing now — instead of expands?
The fact that Judge Sonia Sotomayor believes that policy is made in the courts troubles strict constructionists. All too many on the left dismiss this legitimate concern as nothing more than thinly disguised racism. Any opposition to Sotomayor is racist by definition. Case closed.
New Mexico’s sentencing guidelines need to be revised, and revised immediately. Repeat drunk drivers, the kind who routinely drive with blood alcohol levels well above the legal limit, need to be taken off the streets, and kept off.
The other day, when it seemed like everyone else was getting dewey-eyed over the death of a pop star they’d spent the past decade or so mocking as a freak, I was, as usual, perusing the fine print in the “How They Voted” section of the Santa Fe New Mexican to see what our illustrious members of Congress had been up to.
There is no bottomless pit of wealth. In fact, lIberals’ socialist vision of America’s future is eroding the spirit of enterprise that is necessary to create wealth. They are gobbling up the last of the bread and the cake and there are not enough productive bakers to replenish the supply.
Somehow, people have gotten the idea that medical care ought to be free. Our employers ought to pay for our insurance, and that insurance ought to cover every red cent we spend keeping ourselves healthy. Better yet, the government ought to pay for it. Why not? If public education is a right, why not health care?
Whether Mariano Leyba Jr. is convicted of two murders or three might not affect his sentence, but the idea that a baby who is fully developed and clearly viable is, legally, a non-entity is disturbing.
Santa Fe’s Alvord Elementary affair illustrates, in microcosm, exactly what is wrong with contemporary American society. It is the triumph of feelings over facts and fiscal responsibility. It is a refusal to look at the big picture and see the greater good, and to make necessary sacrifices for that greater good. It is selfishness as social policy.
The penny-ante larceny of which Jerome Block, Jr., is accused is small potatoes when compared with the great, hulking pork roast that is the public financing of campaigns. New Mexico currently extracts millions of dollars — with perfect legality — from taxpayers to fund candidates like Block in elections all over the state. That is the theft we should be angry about.
