Our readers know that, given our relative disinclination toward hyperbole, the word “sordid” is not one we make a habit of using.  In fact, until »»]]> by John Weckerle

Our readers know that, given our relative disinclination toward hyperbole, the word “sordid” is not one we make a habit of using.  In fact, until now, we have never used it – and as of now, we can say we have used it only twice, both in the same article, but never seriously.

In response to our first ALEC and Us article on New Mexico legislators involved with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and a follow-up inquiry, State Representative Jim Smith provided a prompt (last Monday) response disclosing his sinister past with ALEC – or, more accurately, the lack thereof.  Mr. Smith indicated that his involvement with the organization was limited attendance at an ALEC-sponsored dinner in Santa Fe, at which many lawmakers from both sides of the aisle were present. The dinner was interrupted by the Occupy movement, and Mr. Smith recalled that “a couple of members spoke briefly about being pro-business” but no legislative agenda was discussed.

Mr. Smith indicated: “Although I do attend a lot of meetings sponsored by various groups, I don’t actually join many, if any, of them.”  This sounds like good policy for a legislator, and we’re glad to see it operative in this situation.

State Senator Sue Wilson-Beffort, to whom we sent essentially the same e-mail message as Mr. Smith, has not yet replied.  If a response is not forthcoming soon, then perhaps research will substitute.  We’ll keep our readers posted.

by Vince Case

On Tuesday, May 22nd, from 4-6 pm, the Edgewood Soil, Water and Conservation District, in partnership »»]]> Editor’s note: For more information, see the event flyer.  

by Vince Case

On Tuesday, May 22nd, from 4-6 pm, the Edgewood Soil, Water and Conservation District, in partnership with the Sandia Mountain Natural History Center (SMNHC) and the Environmental Education Association of New Mexico (EEANM), is hosting an “Environmental Literacy Planning” meeting in Moriarty at the ESWCD office for teachers, community members, and anyone else interested in providing input for a state-wide environmental literacy plan (see attached flyer).

I am sharing this with you because it’s an interest of mine (and I know many of yours), I recommend your participation, and since I’ve attended two of the earlier planning meetings, I feel it’s essential that as many teachers from the East Mountains attend as possible. Many times these kinds of plans are put together by non-classroom/non-school based educators, but this plan is specific to K-12 education (in other words, teachers and schools would be implementing some if not most of the plan with their students in schools). In my mind, we can’t possibly put together a plan like this, without the specific guidance, ideas, and suggestions from those who will put it into practice – and that means you all!

Thankfully, EEANM recognizes the value and importance of your voices as professional classroom teachers and is interested in not only hearing from you, but in gathering your input so that the plan reflects your needs and is responsive to the needs of your students and communities. That is why the organization is hosting similar events all over the state in April and May.

Please consider attending this meeting, and also please pass along to any of your colleagues, parents, principals, and other community members who may be interested.

Vince Case
APS Environmental Education Resource Teacher
Sandia Mountain Natural History Center
Cedar Crest, NM
505.281.5259

https://sites.google.com/a/aps.edu/smnhc/

We recently published an article on the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case, in part a response to a Sandia Tea Party article on the subject.  We »»]]> by John Weckerle

We recently published an article on the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case, in part a response to a Sandia Tea Party article on the subject.  We urged our readers – and everybody else, although we’re not sure how they’d know we were urging without reading – to refrain from speculating on the degree to which race was a factor in the tragedy until the facts are in.  We repeat that request, and want our readers to understand that our interest in mentioning the case is associated with Florida’s now-infamous “Stand Your Ground” law. It is not the merits of this law, but its origins that interest us today. Multiple sources have linked the law to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a consortium of conservative state legislators and corporate interests.  Put simply, this “consortium” drafts legislation for enactment at the State level, and its members then bring that legislation forward in their individual State legislative bodies.  The range of legislative subjects is incredibly broad, and the legislation typically focuses on advancing conservative approaches but especially corporate interests.

In response to the Martin/Zimmerman tragedy, a number of corporate/nonprofit entities – Kraft, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and Intuit, and the Gates Foundation – were reported to have pulled out of the organization.  You might, and should, question why they were there in the first place.  We question whether some of them left at all:  as of 7:30 MDT today, the organization’s web site continues to list Derek Crawford of Kraft Foods as one of its Private Enterprise Board members. With the recent announcement that ALEC is discontinuing its efforts associated with gun laws and other “non economic” causes came a few articles (a random one here) reporting that ALEC will no longer promote “social policy,”  we saw a few articles suggesting that ALEC was doing the National Rifle Association’s bidding.  On the other hand, a few news outlets did some reporting casting some doubt with respect to the question as to who was errand boy to whom (one here).  Leaving aside that question, we’ll simply note that ALEC, an organization of which we’ve been aware for years, found itself back in the slightly dim area next to the spotlight.  The entire ALEC issue had received less attention than one might have expected – but then again, those corporate sponsors do buy television, radio, and TV time.

As a result of the attention, ALEC issued a statement that they were discontinuing their “non-economic” efforts.  We move on to another subject associated with ALEC, albeit one that has received even less attention in the popular press, that is certainly economic in nature: the recent and relatively quiet repeal of a law in Wisconsin requiring equal pay for women.  As our readers know, we do tend to want to go for “mainstream” news sources where we can, but these seem so far down on the search indices on this subject that we have our choice of linking to a Huffington Post article or Monday’s Daily Show coverage – and while we are providing a link to the latter, and we think it’s worth watching, we’d like some of our more family-oriented readers to know that there’s a bit of raunch toward the end of the latter story.  Of these two sources, only the Daily Show short brings forward the role of Wisconsin legislator ALEC member Glenn Grothman – and again, since some of our readers are perhaps not interested in some of the imagery that might be found in that video, we’ll summarize to the extent that Mr. Grothman is on record as saying that making money is perhaps more important to men than women because young men may want to be breadwinners some day (New York Daily News article here). We invite our readers to weigh in on that position… According to the Daily News article, other pieces of legislation of interest to women included one “barring abortion coverage through health insurance exchanges” and another “mandating doctors to consult privately with women seeking abortions.”

With all the renewed attention on ALEC, we started wondering just who in the New Mexico legislature might be involved – because, quite frankly, having New Mexico laws written by a consortium of business interests and predominantly out-of-state legislators does not sit any better with us than it probably does with most New Mexicans.  The ALEC site doesn’t list all the members, but we found the following list in a Sourcewatch article:

House of Representatives

• Rep. Paul Bandy (R-3), ALEC State Chairman^[20] and Guest at the December 2010 International Relations Task Force meeting^[27]
• Rep. Jimmie Hall (R-28)^[21][109] and Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force Alternate
• Rep. William Gray (R-54), ALEC Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force Alternate
• Rep. Nathaniel Quentin Gentry (R-30), ALEC Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force Alternate
• Rep. Rick L. Little (R-53), ALEC Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force Member
• Rep. Alonzo Baldonado (R-8), ALEC Education Task Force Member
• Rep. Dennis Roch (R-67), ALEC Education Task Force Member
• Rep. Paul Bandy (R-3), ALEC Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force Member
• Rep. Nora Espinoza (R-59), ALEC Health and Human Services Task Force Member
• Rep. Larry A. Larranaga (R-27), ALEC International Relations Task Force Member
• Rep. William R. Rehm (R-31), ALEC Public Safety and Elections Task Force Member
• Rep. Anna M. Crook (R-64)^[18], ALEC Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force Member
• Rep. James R.J. Strickler (R-2), ALEC Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force Member
• Rep. Thomas A. Anderson (R-29), ALEC Telecommunications and Information Technology Task Force Member
• Rep. Dennis J. Kintigh (R-57), ALEC Civil Justice Task Force Member

Senate

• Sen. Sander Rue (R-23),^[110]Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force Member
• Sen. George K. Munoz (D-4), ALEC Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force Member
• Sen. William E. Sharer (R-1)^[18], ALEC Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force Member
• Sen. Mark L. Boitano (R-18), ALEC Education Task Force Member
• Sen. Vernon Asbill (R-34), ALEC Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force Member
• Sen. Sue Beffort (R-19), ALEC Health and Human Services Task Force Member
• Sen. William H. Payne (R-20), ALEC State Chairman^[20] and International Relations Task Force and Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force Member
• Sen. Rod Adair (R-33), ALEC Civil Justice Task Force Member
• Former Sen. Kent L. Cravens (R-21) (resigned September 2011 to become lobbyist for [[New Mexico Oil and Gas Association^[111]), former ALEC State Chairman,^[112] and Public Safety and Elections Task Force member

Now, that’s 21 legislators, not counting former Senator Kent Cravens, who apparently experienced the ALEC version of the Rapture – all but one of them Republicans.  What we found most interesting was that our locality is quite well represented among the ALEC ranks.  Senator Sue Wilson-Beffort, of Senate District 19 is prominently listed, as are ALEC State Chairman Senator William Payne of District 20, Senator Mark Boitano of Albuquerque’s District 18, Senator Sander Rue of “just across the river” District 23, and Senator Rod Adair of District 33, just to our south.  On the House side we have Jimmie Hall, Nathaniel Quentin, Larry Larranaga,  and Bill Rehm of Albuquerque; Thomas Anderson of western Bernalillo County;  District 8′s Alonzo Baldonado; and another neighbor to the south, Dennis Kintigh.

We are asking our readers to alert these people to the existence of this article, and we are inviting them to provide us with a disclosure of their involvement with ALEC and a list of bills that they have introduced or supported that are or were supported by ALEC or based on its model bills.  We are also, quite bluntly, asking that every New Mexico legislator with any ties to ALEC sever them immediately and henceforth serve their State’s interests and not those of other entities.  We especially direct this request to our own Senator, Sue Wilson-Beffort -and to be fair, to our Representative Jim Smith, whose name we are very glad not to see on the list.  We suggest that all our readers contact their Senators and Representatives, and demand to know whether they are a part of the ALEC network or supporting its initiatives.  Let’s keep the running of New Mexico to those who live here.

A few related links:

• Source Watch – American Legislative Exchange Council
• NPR – Who Writes Our Laws?
• WCVB TV Boston - NRA, ALEC Team Up For Causes Beyond Gun Laws
• WFIE TV – ALEC Stops Pushing “Stand Your Ground” Laws
• Crooks and Liars: Gates Foundation Announces It Will Withdraw Funding From ALEC
• Sarah Kennedy: Our Resident Smart Aleck Talks About ALEC

]]> http://nm-central.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=2583 0 http://nm-central.com/blog/?p=2576 http://nm-central.com/blog/?p=2576#comments Sun, 15 Apr 2012 14:34:19 +0000 John Weckerle http://nm-central.com/blog/?p=2576 Update: Upon further examination, we find there are a few small green beans on the bush bean plants.

by John Weckerle

With the hoop house repair nearly complete (all »»]]> Update: Upon further examination, we find there are a few small green beans on the bush bean plants.

by John Weckerle

With the hoop house repair nearly complete (all that remains is to reattach the door and the bird netting), we find ourselves eagerly awaiting some warmer weather for planting, even if it’s just cool weather crops.  To get a head start on the growing season, we bought a couple of inexpensive shop lights for starting plants.  Shown here are several varieties of bush beans (Maxibel, Contender, and Blue Lake), mustard and collard greens, broccoli, and oregano.  The white window box in the back contains basil, dill, and cilantro.  Not yet under the lights because they haven’t sprouted yet are this year’s tomatoes.  As we mentioned previously, we’re going with Romas plus four heirloom varieties. A total of 18 starter pots have been primed with three seeds each, and we hope to see sprouting within a week or two.

Our early seed starting efforts are yielding results.

The beans have done very well – they’re already beginning to flower – but the greens are having a tough time.  For some reason, they have been repeatedly attacked by aphids.  We’ve knocked these back a couple of times, but they showed up again recently.  We’ll keep fighting them but we’re looking forward to hardening the plants off and getting them in the ground.

Last year’s kale has already started putting out leaves (one plant actually stayed active all winter, and we’re nearly ready for kale and white bean stew).  The carrots we didn’t harvest in the fall have also started sending up greens, and early taste tests have been positive.  On the herb front, the tarragon and parsley have begun leafing out, and the sage stayed awake through the winter.  Additions to the herb bed this year will include basil, dill, cilantro, chives, and maybe a few others.  We’ll take another run at rosemary, although we don’t think we’ll put it in the herb bed given that it does tend to get pretty big and makes a nice stand-alone shrub.

We find ourselves, as always, in bewildered awe at the jaw-dropping oddness we see out the in the flatter parts of the political bell curve. »»]]> by John Weckerle

We find ourselves, as always, in bewildered awe at the jaw-dropping oddness we see out the in the flatter parts of the political bell curve. We refer once again to a Sandia Tea Party article, this one titled “A Slap in The Face By FLOTUS” (this refers to the First Lady of the United States, currently Michelle Obama. We’re getting just a bit tired of the constant appending of “OTUS” onto just about everything; then again, we got sick of the “you-name-it-gate” thing a long time ago).  In this missive, the Sandia Tea Party leadership makes mention (of course, with no links) to an article which was first purported to have a photograph of Ms. Obama holding hands with Bernadine Dohrn, wife of Bill Ayers.  Readers may recall mention of Mr. Ayers – a leader (along with Ms. Dohrn) of the Weather Underground Organization, or Weathermen, an extreme radical left organization of the 1960s and 1970s – during the 2008 Presidential campaign.  Mr. Obama was, at that time purported to be “palling around with terrorists.” The photograph in question (but not provided) is supposedly evidence linking the Obamas to Ms. Dohrn and Mr. Ayers.

The Sandia Tea Party leadership corrects itself (after, apparently, having been corrected by somebody else), stating: “I have been corrected.  The hand clutch is with Terresa Heinz Kerry.”  Now, at that point, most people would have at least gotten suspicious and done a little research into what they were writing about – or at least changed the title, given that Ms. Obama had apparently not held hands with Ms. Dohrn.  Instead, the Sandia Tea Party provides a link to a Freedomworks article (surprised?) titled “Charles Manson and Three Degrees of Separation” by Jack Lloyd Rowlinson.  This is, according to the Sandia Tea Party, “an excellent account by Jack Lloyd Rowlinson, of politicians and their pussy-footing around with folks longing to overthrow our form of government using the most violent methods possible … warping our young people’s minds in progressive colleges and slaying our first level protectors at every opportunity.”  Leaving aside the rather hyperbolic/paranoid tone of this particular piece of prose, the Freedomworks article demonstrates nothing described in the Sandia Tea Party article.  It is a rather rambling discussion of Charles Manson’s purported pre-murder relationships and a short history of the Weather Underground’s activities, followed by an assertion that the Obamas maintain a relationship with Mr. Ayres and Ms. Dohrn “to this day.”

Now, we’re not going to waste a single word defending Mr. Ayers or Ms. Dohrn and their past activities.  Not one.  What are going to do is point out that the supposed relationship between Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers was subjected to rather intense scrutiny back in 2008, and the entire “controversy” was shown to be politically generated bunk.  We refer not to the partisan blogsphere of which the author of the Sandia Tea Party is so clearly fond, but to articles by the master debunkers at Snopes.com (here) and the renowned Factcheck.org (here).

Now, we know that the falsehood factories may have lost a little of their production capacity in recent months, but this particular product didn’t gain much all that much traction the first time around and recycling it seems a bit odd, especially given that the recycling’s being done by FreedomWorks.  We’re a little surprised to see FreedomWorks – with money from Koch Industries and other major corporate sponsors – wasting its resources on rehashing old and discredited attacks. With their resources, shouldn’t they be able to do better?

Unfortunately, we’re far less surprised to see the Sandia Tea Party picking this sort of thing up and passing it along.

Checking in on our friends at Mountainair Announcements, we find that the New Mexico Aging and Long-Term Services Department has vacancies for three positions: two »»]]> by John Weckerle

Checking in on our friends at Mountainair Announcements, we find that the New Mexico Aging and Long-Term Services Department has vacancies for three positions: two in Albuquerque and one in Santa Fe.  For more information, including position descriptions, instructions for applying, and contacts, see the Mountainair Announcements article.

The East Mountain Interagency Fire Protection Association has issued an advisory on how to assist fire protection agencies in preventing wildfire during red flag warnings.

How »»]]> by John Weckerle

The East Mountain Interagency Fire Protection Association has issued an advisory on how to assist fire protection agencies in preventing wildfire during red flag warnings.

How do we know when a red flag warning is in effect?  Well, there are a number of ways, but we’ve set up a customized weather page at www.weather.gov.  To get started, input your city and state in the “Local Forecast by City, State” box near the top left.  When the new page opens, you can use the map to zero in on your location.  We used the satellite view to pinpoint New Mexico Central headquarters.  Then just bookmark the page and you’re set.  You can access location-specific weather advisories, forecasts, hourly weather graphs, and much more.