Monthly Archives: March 2005

Letters-to-the-Editor

Don’t wait for permission

Column: Not right time for gay rights
by Dane Roberts
Daily Lobo columnist

I wish the debate on gay marriage could be put on hold. … [P]ushing for legalized gay marriage might do more damage than it’s worth to progressive causes.

I disagree with Dane Roberts about waiting for change.

Thirty years ago, some said, ‘just wait until we have power — then marijuana will be legal and taxed!’ Hasn’t happened — even though so many people in power have direct experience with grass.

We need to realize the Radical Right doesn’t care one iota what we think about them, their agenda, or their tactics. They are righteous; they are certain; they are resolute. Liberals worry about timing and others’ views.

I agree with Roberts that the pendulum will swing. But our belief in equality, justice and freedom cannot wait. “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi. Don’t wait for permission. mjh

[printed 3/23/05 in the Daily Lobo]

loco

Bingaman and Udall on Social Security

SENATOR JEFF BINGAMAN
SPEAKING ON SOCIAL SECURITY: A CRISIS?

Wednesday, March 23, 7:00 PM
UNM Law School, Room 2401

Stanford Drive, north of Lomas, south end of golf course
All are welcome ? bring your friends

The Albuquerque Tribune: Local

U.S. Rep. Tom Udall, a Santa Fe Democrat who opposes the idea of private accounts, on Monday announced he will have four town hall meetings across the state next week specifically aimed at discussing Social Security.

Udall will hit Rio Rancho’s Meadowlark Senior Center at 10:30 a.m. Monday and TVI’s Montoya campus auditorium at 7 that night. That will be followed with a trip to Española on March 29 and Taos the next day.

“We need to improve the long-term outlook of the Social Security program,” Udall said in a news release. “My concern is that if we divert payroll taxes to private accounts, we do nothing to improve solvency.”

Theirs

the two Americas

Daily Howler: In Scarborough Country, viewers got worked by a brilliant ”Nobel nominee”

What are the two Americas? If you read the Washington Post, you read about a woman who had a heart attack and suffered brain damage in the process. In Scarborough Country, you hear something else. You meet an impressive Nobel nominee — and he makes “explosive allegations.” He tells you she had no such heart attack. Instead, he suggests she was strangled by her husband.

These two Americas have existed for years. If you live in cable America, you routinely hear whole sets of things that never appear in the Washington Post, things that the Washington Post rarely attempts to discuss, describe or debate. Cable viewers live in one world; newspaper readers exist in another. Newspaper readers rarely hear what’s being said in the other America. And for that reason, people who live in the cable America sometimes get played for plain fools. …

Does Terri Schiavo respond to commands, as cable America heard last night? …

Judge Greer counted.

“By the court’s count, (Hammesfahr) gave 105 commands to Terri Schiavo and, at his direction, Mrs. Schindler gave an additional six commands,” Greer wrote. “He asked her 61 questions and Mrs. Schindler asked her an additional 11 questions. The court saw few actions that could be considered responsive to either those commands or those questions.”

In cable America, viewers weren?t asked to hear about that. Hustlers like Scarborough know a good story. And they know facts can mess such tales up.
—–
News Hounds: We watch FOX so you don’t have to.
In Case You Haven’t Had Enough of Terri Schiavo…

Theirs

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

ABQjournal: Letters to the Editor

A Modest Proposal

RATHER THAN DRILL the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and Otero Mesa and the Valle Vidal for gas, why not strip mine the campus of the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs for coal?

The academy was built over the largest remaining deposit of strip minable coal in the state of Colorado. Building the academy over the coal deposit was justified on the grounds that the United States would never need the energy that would be realized by mining the coal.

Now we are told we are at war and need to make sacrifices to defeat terrorism. Drilling ANWR, Otero and the Valle Vidal, we are told, are small sacrifices in that war. Considering all the positive aspects of strip mining … mining the coal under the campus would be a very small sacrifice. …

RONALD GRENKO
Albuquerque

Oil’s Effects Devastating

THE OIL INDUSTRY claims that full-scale oil and gas development would have little or no impact on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Look 60 miles west to Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, a gargantuan oil complex that has turned a thousand square miles of tundra into a sprawling industrial zone. The result: a landscape defaced by mountains of sewage sludge, scrap metal, garbage and more than 60 contaminated waste sites. …

MURIEL J. PETERSON
Albuquerque

Protect Land From Greed

IN THE SPRING of 2001, about 92,000 gallons of crude oil were spilled in the “newer and safer” oil fields at Kuparuk, Alaska. …

Polls by both Republican and Democrat organizations indicate Americans are opposed to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by a 2-to-1 margin. Oil companies are losing interest and are looking to more profitable areas. Still, Secretary of Interior Gale Norton and Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and other extremists are determined to destroy a pristine wild land for a minimal amount of oil.

Ninety-five percent of Alaska’s North Slope is open for drilling. Prudhoe Bay has been destroyed. …

CHARLES B. HOUSTON
Albuquerque

Extremists Sieze Issue

RE: “OTERO MESA Drilling Gets Green Light” article

The only green light the Otero Mesa is showing is a “go” signal for the environmental extremism that contributes mightily to the poverty of New Mexico.

As usual, our environmental doomsayers grossly misrepresent the impact of the highly limited oil and gas development proposed? so limited it may not even happen. Not satisfied with 99.9 percent of the area being left alone, they have to have it all regardless of cost or lost economic benefit to the larger community.

The enviro-exaggerators….

DANIEL H. HOUCK
Albuquerque

Yes, folks, New Mexico is poor because of the enviro-exaggerators. mjh

Dump Duhbya

Tom DeLay’s conduct is odious.

Columns: Power abused, democracy corrupted

By HOWARD TROXLER, Times Columnist

The end justifies the means.

When you have enough power, you can tell the courts to get lost, you can overrule the self-government of an entire state, you can obliterate the rule of law.

It does not matter that Florida’s courts ruled that Terri Schiavo expressed the wish not to kept alive artificially. We are entitled to ignore court rulings.

Neither does it matter that the doctors say that her brain has largely turned to fluid. We may dismiss these facts with a wave of the hand, or a sound bite on CNN.

Congress knows all. The federal government knows all. The strutting Tom DeLay and the unctuous Bill Frist know more than all the judges and doctors combined.

They are cynically armed with their internal memo about how many votes they are going to get out of the Christians. Some members of Congress speechified without knowing how to pronounce Terri Schiavo’s name, or the most basic facts.

Tom DeLay’s conduct is odious. He represents everything bad about Congress. His principal pastime is raising large amounts of money from wicked people in return for hurting the public good. …

If you are cheering because Congress acted in the midnight hour to “save” Terri, be sure of what you are cheering for.

You are applauding a Congress for throwing out the rulings of the courts, throwing out the due process of the states, and substituting its own will. …

For the sake of headlines and self-righteousness, the U.S. Congress waited until the final seconds of a years-long, agonizing legal process to say that our law does not count. Many well-meaning people are cheering. And so one more tree falls.

Dump Duhbya

the Republican Party had almost no following in the South …

… until Democrats endorsed Civil Rights.

The Writer’s Almanac – MARCH 20, 2005

It was on this day in 1854 that the Republican Party was founded. The name “Republican” was first used many years before, by Thomas Jefferson’s political party, the Democratic Republican Party. That name was shortened to the Democratic Party, which is what we call it today. The present-day Republican Party was formed by opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, and by members of other parties, like the Democratic and Whig parties, who disagreed with their parties’ positions on slavery. By 1855, the Republican Party was thriving in the North, while it had almost no following in the South. The Republican Party’s second candidate for President of the United States was Abraham Lincoln, who was elected in 1860.

Theirs

Right to Die for New Mexicans

Life Planning in New Mexico, by Merri Rudd – Abogada Press
includes:
Health Care Decisions in New Mexico: Uniform Health-Care Decisions Act; Right to Die and End-of-Life Decisions; EMS-DNR Orders; Assisted Suicide Prohibited

Legal Forms – Abogada Press
Values History Form and Health Care Directive Form

Ask the Probate Judge

Q: You discussed financial powers of attorney in a recent column. Can’t someone also use a power of attorney for health care decisions?

Yes, more people are recognizing the importance of planning ahead for health care decisions. [read more]

[disclosure: the book is by my wife, Judge Merri Rudd]

Update 3/22/05

From a national perspective: WSJ.com
Learning about living wills and advance health-care directives.