ABQJOURNAL OPINION/LETTERS: Letters to the Editor

GOP Going Down as It Heads Far Right
THE NOMINATION of Steve Pearce, Darren White and Ed Tinsley and the election of Pat Rogers as GOP national committeeman indicates that the extreme right wing has taken control of the Republican Party.
    The Republican Party of Sen. Pete Domenici, Gov. David Cargo and Rep. Heather Wilson no longer exists. That party as we knew it is gone with the wind. The positions of these candidates as promoted in their advertising are as far right as any candidate has ever taken in New Mexico. The extreme right-wing views of Rogers are known to everybody who has followed politics in this state.
    This move to the far right will have dire consequences and may well cost the GOP a Senate and a House seat. Any chance of retaking the governor’s mansion will also be affected.
    For those who think that the election of John McCain will move the party to the center, forget about it. The senator, to placate the so-called base, has begun pandering to it with a flip flop on such issues as Roe vs. Wade, tax cuts — which he twice opposed — and immigration. So much for the “straight talk express.”
    I see nothing but disaster for the GOP so long as it insists on promoting extreme right-wing views and candidates.
BOB BACA Albuquerque

Ranchers Don’t Own Our Public Lands
LIKE THE majority of residents in New Mexico and Arizona, I am in favor of the wolf-reintroduction program. Wolves are a distinct, unique part of our natural heritage. They never should have been eliminated and should be reintroduced in a way that will allow them to successfully sustain a permanent population.
   The Endangered Species Act should not be sabotaged by a radical minority, which represents a special interest. Of course the interests of cattle ranchers must be taken into consideration, but they cannot be allowed to doom the program to failure. That is what is currently happening.
    Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just pick and choose the laws we personally want to follow? But that’s not the way America works. Most cattle ranching is done on public lands. Those are our public lands. I would like to see all cattle ranching done on private lands, but that is not the law. When people from areas where cattle ranching is a way of life come to the big city, they have the same right to use public facilities and infrastructures as everyone else. For them to claim that I should have no say on how my public lands are used, simply because I don’t live nearby, is very wrong. …
DANNY RUPPERT Albuquerque

ABQJOURNAL OPINION/LETTERS: Letters to the Editor

ABQJOURNAL OPINION/LETTERS: Letters to the Editor

Limit Voting to Vets, Property Owners
A RECENT front-page article reported on skyrocketing property taxes. Of course, the main reason for this is that fewer and fewer of us are supporting more and more of us. My contention is this. I believe that the only people who should be able to vote are active or retired military personnel and those who own property. That would encourage people, perhaps, to own real property, and it would put the exploding population of do nothings right where they should be, and that is OUT, with a capital “O.”
JT, Albuquerque

ABQJOURNAL OPINION/LETTERS: Letters to the Editor

I give JT the benefit of the doubt that he doesn’t realize he’s just endorsed a view long held by racists, slave-holders and fascists. I don’t assume – based on one letter – that he is any of those things. However, it is quite clear he is an idiot. peace, mjh

ABQJOURNAL OPINION/LETTERS: Letters to the Editor

A Can-Do (Everything Wrong) Party
CONSERVATIVE PUNDIT Cal Thomas is right — the Republicans and conservatives are certainly the “can-do” party of the United States. They can continue to ignore the millions of Americans who have no health coverage and bleat “socialized medicine” every time a remedy is suggested. They can trash and exploit the environment. They can turn a blind eye when the U.S. president ignores, undermines or circumvents international treaties and laws like the Geneva Convention. They can gleefully slash taxes for the wealthy and for corporate America. And they can turn a billion-dollar budget surplus into a trillion-dollar deficit in order to finance a war that was predicated on half-truths and fear mongering. If the Republican Party has not demonstrated their absolute unfitness to rule this country, what more will it take? Do we dare wait for the smoking gun to take the form of a mushroom cloud?
BRAD JAFFE
Albuquerque

ABQJOURNAL OPINION/LETTERS: Letters to the Editor

Amen, Brad. peace, mjh

ABQJOURNAL OPINION/LETTERS: Letters to the Editor

Drill the Leases You Have, Not Our Last Wilderness
THE DEBATE over America’s energy needs is often riddled with misinformation and fear mongering. The level of propaganda by the pro-drilling forces has reached a pinnacle of disgust. As Sergeant Friday once said, “Just the facts, ma’am.” Between 1999 and 2007, the number of drilling permits issued for public lands, both onshore and offshore in the United States, increased 361 percent. This is a staggering statistic that should not be overlooked when debating energy needs in this country. The Bureau of Land Management has issued over 28,776 permits to drill on public land. Yet today, only 18,954 wells have been actually drilled. In other words, 10,000 well permits have been stockpiled by the already cash-bloated oil and gas industry. In addition, 47.5 million acres of onshore public lands are leased by oil and gas companies. Only 13 million of those acres are actually in production. America cannot afford to stoop so low as to allow the oil and gas industry to drill the last, best, wild places left in the country like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or Otero Mesa. … Conservation, fuel efficiency, renewable energy, tax incentives for businesses and strong-willed leadership by our elected officials in Congress is the right answer. Misleading propaganda by an industry and its allies in Congress will only take us further down the path of high energy prices and destruction of our last wild places.
NATHAN NEWCOMER
New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, Albuquerque

ABQJOURNAL OPINION/LETTERS: Letters to the Editor

Well said, Nathan.

This weekend, I heard a pundit say, “We will not conserve our way out of this problem. We will not ‘green’ our way out of this problem.” (Clever dick.) News flash: We will not *solve* this problem if the solution involves oil, a finite resource which we are going to run out of some day, whether tomorrow or in a hundred years (in your dreams). When you are rushing towards a cliff, don’t mock people who suggest slowing down. When you call yourself a conservative, try conserving something. Oil in the ground is money in the bank.

peace, mjh

ABQJOURNAL OPINION/LETTERS: Letters To the Editor

Thank Environmental Wackos for $5 Gas
CONGRATULATIONS to the politicians in Santa Fe on their recent decision to haul waste products from drilling locations from sites in New Mexico.
This is just another sample of the irrational thinking that has brought us to seeing $4 per gallon gas when we fill up our cars with this product. This started when Bill Clinton vetoed drilling in that beautiful ANWR that a lot of folks will visit.
We also have coming down the tracks the Lieberman/Warner Climate Security Act that has just come out of Barbara Boxer’s Environmental and Public Works Committee. This will add an estimated $1.50 to $5 per gallon of gas to the current price, according to industry experts. The energy industry is not faultless with their record-setting profits.
Let us send Santa Fe some $5 per gallon gasoline from the San Juan Basin and perhaps the legislators can jump on King Bill’s train and go up to the Galisteo Basin and enjoy the beautiful environment. They might also stop and buy some corn on the cob at $5 per ear — thanks to ethanol — and have a snack.
Everyone else can have a nice day pedaling their bikes around town and take time to thank the idiotic environmental whackos!
ROGER BILLINGS
Farmington

Change Could Usher in Extinction
    CHANGE IS in the air— or so we hear. That is the mantra. All our presidential candidates, to some extent or another, are promising change. But change to what, and for whom?
    Plans for additional governmental control over human activity seems to be the theme. Education and health care are major topics. Yet increasing bureaucratic involvement in these areas has resulted in poor performance, fraud and a waste of taxpayers’ dollars.
    Producers of current energy supplies will be hampered by more regulations and taxed to near extinction in favor of subsidized “designer” alternative fuel companies. Damn the market, the politicians and environmentalists know what is best.
    Do not question them, they are inspired and determined and not deterred by facts. Producers of goods and services will face energy shortages, government manipulation of the money supply and blatant political favoritism.
    Businesses asking for handouts will be the norm. Integrity will become an antiquated notion. Stores filled with food, clothing and consumer goods will be a thing of the past. Shortages will abound, lines will form and primitive man will emerge. We may be the most prosperous nation in history to self-destruct and the last generation to enjoy what we have today.
    What we eat, drink, drive and do will be controlled by our saviors. Crises will be constant and control absolute. What is left of property rights and individual liberties will finally be laid to rest. We will live in fear, unable to think beyond our own survival. As in most of the world, and throughout the history of man, life will be brutal and brief.
    AB

ABQjournal Opinion: Letters to the Editor

Nuclear bombs are of practically no use in the so-called war on terror. Although this is the war that we have, this is not the war that pits can be used for. Nuclear bombs cannot be used in Islamabad, or in Mosul, or to protect nightclubs in London or Bali. They can’t be used in Al Anbar province and they can’t be used—except to level the mountains—in Waziristan; they can’t be used to uncover subversive cells in the United States and they can’t be used against the Chinese or the Russians without starting a final holocaust. They aren’t practical for anything at all except as a jobs program for the defense oligarchy. …

Building bombs creates the impression of great danger. Assuming great danger gives excuse for assuming absolute authority. Assuming absolute authority, Mr. Bush regularly says that he will suspend all, or parts, of laws with which he disagrees. It does not matter that a statute has been enacted exactly as the Constitution requires; if Mr. Bush does not—or thinks he may not some time in the future—agree, he issues a signing statement saying that he will not enforce that law. In so doing he attempts to suspend, not only the law, but also Articles I and III of the Constitution which were intended to give legislative and interpretive authority to the congress and courts. He just plain, flat out, restructures government. The Boston Globe reports that he has declared his intention to suspend legislation over 1,000 times.

When the constitution of the republic is willingly overridden, when the priorities are to build bombs rather than find the water, or fund the trains, or maintain the forests, when a ruling oligarchy of defense contractors is funded while at the same time ignoring all those who actually educate, carry the rifles for, and feed our nation, ignoring all those who wrap up our wounds and inspire us with poetry and song, the time has come to find someone else to draw up the budget.

Craig S. Barnes - Commentary

I am an atheist. As you could imagine that it is hard for one of my persuasion to want to give thanks to anybody for any reason. About a year ago I was diagnosed with CLL, one of the forms of leukemia. …

All of the above and many many more deserve my best wishes. I wish there was a Santa Claus so I could send a letter to him in your behalf.

BOB DYE
Albuquerque

I am always interested in public declarations of atheism. While there is no need to convert people to atheism, other atheists need to know it’s safe to come out and speak up. So bravo to Bob Dye for opening with that. Further, I’m very glad he has survived his cancer. (And, I add ruefully, without some sickbed conversion.)

My only quibble is as “one of (his) persuasion,” a fellow atheist: I am grateful every day. I see no reason that atheism should play any role in reticence to give thanks, to love one’s neighbors or strive to live by the Golden Rule. These are humanity’s best qualities, not god’s or religion’s. mjh

I’VE HAD IT! If you think humans are directly responsible for global warming— which we aren’t— I have a great solution: Sell your car and ride a pony to work and sell your house and live in a tent.

That way you will be doing your part while those of us who don’t believe we are responsible for global warming can keep driving our SUVs and live in warm houses. This way, global emissions will be cut and we’ll all be happy!

Come on “activists,” really do your part and sell those polluting Subarus and live in a tent. Let’s do it for the children.

CHARLES PAEZ
Albuquerque”

For the past eight years, AmeriCo has been ruled by a coalition of self-serving biznizmen and gaggle of idiots. I’m not sure which Mr. Paez is. mjh

Look Back to 2002 For Vile Advertising

    EXCUSE ME all you politicians objecting to the Gen. David Petraeus ad. Did any of you object to one of the most vile ads of all time— Georgia Sen. Max Cleland, a triple amputee Vietnam veteran, whose opponent in a 2002 campaign ad placed his photo between images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein?

    PEG BRINEY
    Roswell
   
It’s Not Unpatriotic To Oppose the War

    WHILE I personally don’t agree with the “betray us” ad, I find it laughable that the Republicans are so outraged and injured by it. This is the exact same tactic that was used to smear one of their own in 2000, Sen. John McCain— a Vietnam POW— and also Sen. John Kerry in 2004— both decorated veterans!

    Calling into question the patriotism of good, decent, patriotic Americans simply because they want to end the slaughter of our young men and women is reprehensible. Yet the Republicans continue to self-righteously accuse anyone who does not blindly and mindlessly agree with this president’s hysteria of being unpatriotic. I think their outrage comes more from the fact that this extreme left organization has taken a page straight from the Republican National Committee’s play book of dirty politics and used it brilliantly. Getting a taste of their own bitter medicine has left Republicans reeling. They don’t like it, but since they perfected the art, perhaps they should get used to it. …

    But with organizations like MoveOn.org now willing to mix-it-up with them, this election cycle promises to leave no mud pie left unthrown.

    YVONNE HAWPE
    Albuquerque