an extremely eventful year

From Dave Barry's Year in Review:

"...In other political news, Joe Biden launches his estimated 17th presidential campaign, with the slogan: “Let Uncle Joe Give You A Great Big Hug.” Biden immediately becomes the leader of the crowded Democratic field based on the fact that his name sounds vaguely familiar..."

The Other Side of the Coin

Immigration to the U.S. is a topic that fills the news every day and it may be the most potent source of division in the country's political landscape.  On the other hand, emigration and expatriation from the U.S. get very little attention.

While most U.S. expats appear to be motivated primarily by economics, I would guess that quite a lot of people in the Trump era have given at least a passing thought to looking for residence in a place that seems to more highly value rationality, equality and stability.  Canada, Costa Rica and New Zealand come to mind.

It doesn't take a lot more imagination to realize that moving to another country brings with it a heavy load of complications.  To cite just one, the U.S. taxes according to citizenship rather than residence, so moving abroad can result in some real tax nightmares involving the bureaucracies of two nations.

Of course, there is another moving option available in the form of internal migration.  For instance, a lot of African Americans moved from the rural south to northern or western urban areas.  The reasons in that case were based on economic and political issues.  The logic behind such a move is irrefutable, but the consequences were seldom so clearly positive as might be hoped.

Despite some obvious drawbacks to picking up and moving to a new place for anyone, the idea still retains a lot of appeal, in most cases for possible economic improvements.  In some instances it also seems likely some people may feel surrounded by a community which they feel is unsafe or hostile to their beliefs, and be looking for that reason to change their residence.

I'm staying put.  Twelve years ago, I chose to move from rural southern New Mexico to Albuquerque, New Mexico's biggest city.  While I have lived in quite a few places inside and outside the country, moving at this late stage of my life no longer seems like a useful or even viable option.  Not that there are not local conditions which create serious concerns.  Albuquerque has some of the highest crime and murder rates in the country.  New Mexico is among the poorest of states and it is not likely that will change significantly in my lifetime.

Meanwhile, however, I live in a pretty quiet middle-class neighborhood.  And, while I am appalled by the state of politics at the national level, the city, state and federal representatives which are responsible for my part of town are bright, energetic progressives who are working hard to make things better for their fellow New Mexicans.

I have been particularly impressed by our U.S. Congressional Representative, Deb Haaland, who is one of the first Native American women to reach that position.  She has gone to great lengths to stay in close touch with her constituents through emails and town halls, and she has sponsored many progressive initiatives in her first year in Congress.

Even with some good local allies, of course, there is no guarantee that progress will continue on an unbroken course.  Politics doesn't work that way.  Still, I welcome the encouragement from activists who are younger and smarter than me.  Also, I do think that lasting significant change has got to come from the bottom up.

What got me thinking along these lines were a couple of articles in today's Guardian:

Lauren Gambino's article on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez explains very clearly how the youngest woman ever elected to Congress got to where she is.

Joseph Stiglitz's article about Martín Guzmán, Argentina's new minister of economy appointed by President Alberto Fernández, is encouraging because it gives a ray of hope to a country that for decades has experienced a rollercoaster ride of boom and bust.  I had a first-hand view of the country sliding into one of the worst busts which led to a nightmarish dictatorship, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Fernández and Guzmán will at least prevent a repeat of that.

Obama's Mistake

It is not unusual for politicians to talk about healing divisiveness and working across the aisle during their campaigns.  The difference in Obama's case was that he actually tried to make that work after he took office.  It was a great waste of time and effort.  When he reached out, the Republicans were right there ready to chop off his hand and shut the door on his candidate for the Supreme Court.

I was reminded of Obama's unfortunate strategic error yesterday when I went to a Democratic ward meeting in Albuquerque.  The up side of the get-together was the presence of some bright, engaged young people.  One of the brightest and most articulate spent his allotted time talking about the negative consequences of confronting aggressive rants by Trump supporters, pointing out that their attitudes were likely due to some personal misfortune.  For all I know that could be true, but is it relevant to effectively changing the way the country is governed?

I think it indisputable that people stressed by economic, social and emotional conditions will often turn for reassurance to authoritarian leaders.  We are certainly seeing that now with the rise of Trump and other right-wing leaders world-wide.  It is also important, however, to not lose sight of that fact that people over-all are becoming more liberal generally across the ideological divides.

Just look at attitude shifts in recent decades toward inter-racial relationships, gay marriage and marijuana usage.  Some concrete statistical support for those trends was offered recently in an article at FiveThirtyEight.  The article was specifically addressing the liberalization over the past thirty years of the Democratic Party, but the statistics also support the idea that liberalization has not been confined to the left side of the political spectrum.  While the populace as a whole has moved leftward, governance has moved in the opposite direction.

So, the problem is not the natural age-old human tendency to look to support from right-wing authoritarians.  Rather it is that the machinery of governance has been captured by corporate dark money which supports the politicians willing to sell out the real interests of their constituents -- and not all are Republicans.  An obvious response is to just not support any candidate -- regardless of party or ideological pretense -- who accepts corporate campaign funding.

Greta

Climate activist Greta Thunberg
photographed on the shore in Lisbon, Portugal December 4, 201Photograph by Evgenia Arbugaeva for TIME

Looking at recent polling I'm thinking I may write in Greta on my 2020 ballot.

Ignore Trump

He craves attention.  The best way to deal with him is to just look away.  He is, after all, just a symptom of what is wrong with the country -- the domination of government at all levels by the Republican agenda.

There is some satisfaction to be derived from exposing Trump's thuggish behavior in the impeachment inquiries.  There is certainly also some value to exposing the hipocracy of Trump's congressional supporters.  In the end, though, none of that matters if Democrats don't have  an effective strategy for winning.

There is a good overview available at The New York Review of Books of how Democrats can regain momentum toward achieving control of the nation through a bottom up strategy.  Joseph O'Neill reviews of couple of books which examine Democratic Party successes and failures, and he extrapolates their evidence to some hard-hitting recommendations for the long haul.  Worth a read.

Take Aways

Impeachment:

The Dems have done a pretty good job of staging the public hearings.  I would imagine that a fairly small percentage of the public tuned into all the hours of testimony and questions.  Still, there was plenty of red meat for the media and a coherent story of Trump's attempt at bribery is out there.  The last two people called to testify have done a thorough job of poking holes in the falsehoods and conspiracy theories propagated by the Republicans.

The Debate To Date:

I'm hoping ever more fervently that I will not have to vote for Joe Biden.  I'm also not much happier with the idea of supporting Pete Buttigieg, and for much of the same reasons, though he does not carry the burden of being over the hill like Joe.  Bernie still has the clearest voice of the bunch.  Warren seemed a bit lost in the weeds at this last debate. (Others rated her performance to be superior -- see, for instance, the 538 report on the debate.)  The rest are also-rans, but I would be happy to see nearly all of them in high government positions after a Dem victory in the 2020 elections.

2020

New Mexico has been treated to a preview of the Republican strategy for the upcoming elections.  Trump's Attorney General/Personal Lawyer put on a big show in the State implying that State and local governments are not doing anything to effectively combat crime.  This is now being followed up by an on line media barrage disparaging the governor, the mayor of Albuquerque and Representative Xochitl Torres Small of Las Cruces.  TV PAC ads about Torres Small are running nightly.

A sample of the Republican talking points can be found on Joe Monahan's New Mexico Politics blog.   The Nov. 20 blog post carried a law and order screed by retired APD Sergeant Dan Klein suggesting that Federal oversight of the Albuquerque Police Department was hampering law enforcement.  Overlooked was the fact that the current city administration has put a good effort into hiring more officers.  Additionally, the governor recently detailed a large number of State Police to help out with combatting crime in central New Mexico.  In the post for the following day, Monahan published my brief reply to Klein:

Klein, with his opportunistic law and order pitch, would have us conveniently forget that we just recently got rid of a "law and order" governor who did nothing to effectively combat crime in New Mexico. In fact Martinez starved and disrupted the public services institutions which are crucial to real progress. Lessening police oversight now is one sure way to undermine social justice while doing nothing to affect the root causes of crime in our State.

 So, expect LAW AND ORDER every day from now to the election.  What you won't hear from the Republicans, of course, is any kind of support for educational reform, jobs, health care, mental health or drug abuse treatment for rural and small town New Mexico.  Also, don't hold your breath while waiting for them to tackle methane pollution, degradation of the State's water supply through fracking and any number of other environmental threats faced by New Mexicans.

I came across this video of Arundhati Roy and Naomi Klein on The Nation yesterday.  I'm not usually pleased when lecturers deliver their presentations by reading from a prepared script.  However, Roy is such a marvelous writer that having her read her own written words produces a great experience for the listener.

Americans don't pay a lot of attention to what is going on in India,  but we make that choice at our own peril.  It is a country of over a billion people ruled by an authoritarian regime which operates comfortably in the neo-liberal global economy.  One result of that is that India is far along the path to the environmental disaster brought to us by a combination of global warming and continuing bad economic and political choices.  It is a scenario that is very likely a preview of what is coming to the U.S. and the other most prosperous nations which tend to think of themselves as much more advanced than those of the sub-continent.

Roy does a marvelous job of explaining all that in this video as well as in her recent books including The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, a novel which focuses on the plight of Kashmir whose people are living through a nightmare of military control over of every aspect of their lives.

The written version of Roy's story about India is available in an article at The Nation.

You saw it here first.

I see Thomas Geoghegan at Bloomberg has picked up on my idea to offer Trump immunity in exchange for immediate resignation from the office of the President.  I would like at least a citation.

To be fair, Geoghegan does thoroughly lay out the details of how Congress might craft the process of forced resignation by passing a law which would only require the votes of a few Republicans as opposed to a two-thirds majority in the Senate.

Realistically, there is close to a zero probability of success for either a conviction in the Senate or passage of a law forcing resignation.  Given the available time before the 2020 election the best that can be hoped is that either process would sufficiently damage Trump to prevent reelection.  The Democrats' strategy for the impeachment route is based primarily on two charges -- extortion of the President of Ukraine and obstruction of justice in regard to cover-up attempts by Trump and his lackeys. The process of crafting a law forcing resignation could be more wide ranging, including all of Trump's sordid past.

Well, it is probably too late now for the Democrats to change horses, and I expect they will stick to the impeachment process.  Too bad they apparently didn't see my suggestion in July.

Found Art

I found this nice mosaic lying in the dirt beside a street.

One wonders how something like this gets lost or discarded.  I probably should have photographed in place to document the circumstances of its discovery.  Instead I took it home thinking I might frame it and hang it on the wall.

I tried scanning the piece, but result was very dull; it needed to be lighted obliquely in order to properly illuminate the polished surfaces.  I then photographed it with my digital camera against a white background in subdued window light.

A shot of the back of the mosaic reveals something of its origin.

Dutch Salmon

Xenophon and Gemma on San Bruno Mountain

I read an article in the New Mexico Political Report this morning about the long struggle to protect the Gila, the state's last free-flowing river.  As has been the case for as long as I can recall the article started off with a reference to the involvement in the fight by Dutch Salmon.  It came as a shock to see that Salmon had died in March.  I found it hard to believe that his passing had not been sufficiently noted in the press for me to have seen it when it happened.

I read Dutch Salmon's first book, Gazehounds & Coursing, when we were living in San Francisco's Outer Mission District in the mid-70s.  His tales of chasing jackrabbits in the deserts of the Southwest inspired me to acquire a pair of salukis.  My dogs and I spent many hours together on San Bruno Mountain south of the city, and we also chased a lot of jacks in the fill land near Brisbane.  My decisions to move to Idaho and later to New Mexico were certainly influenced by Salmon's stories as well.

I put coursing and falconry aside for quite a while after we left Idaho, but I got back to the dogs when we moved back out to country living on five acres in the Chihuahuan Desert south of Hatch, New Mexico.  I got two greyhounds which were fine companions for walks in the foothills of the Sierra de Las Uvas.  Jet was a small black greyhound that came from a pack of coyote hunters belonging to some Basque sheepmen in central New Mexico.  Sky was an elegant brindle from a line of racers from the same area.  I miss those many fine days with my dogs in the high desert, and I will certainly miss Dutch Salmon's fine writing and his advocacy for the preservation of Wilderness.

Momentum

"For the first time since the beginning of the Democratic presidential primary, Elizabeth Warren took the lead in PredictIt’s online betting markets over the weekend. Shares of the Massachusetts senator were going for as high 29 cents on Sunday, one cent more than Joe Biden’s. Senators Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders were a fairly distant third and fourth..."

Bernie has a good excuse for a sudden relative drop in popularity.  Biden does not; he is just coming up against raw reality.

The idea that the former Vice-Pres was the one most likely to beat Trump was based on equal parts of his association with Obama and a dose of nostalgia for largely imagined better times.  Now, it is becoming increasingly clear that Joe is short on genuinely original ideas and he has demonstrated little skill in articulating the ideas he does have.  It seems unlikely that Biden would hold up well in a debate with an unscrupulous performer like Trump.

Warren has thought deeply about the major issues and developed thorough policy positions on all of them.  Equally important, she has shown that she knows how to deal with Trump-style trolling.
--------------------------------
Related:
How to get rid of that skunk smell?
(help from Science)

The Trump Spiral

It seems there is no way to know at this moment what is going to happen about impeachment or the 2020 election.  What is obvious, however, is that Trump is spiraling out of control in his responses to the daily challenges he confronts.  He spouts a poisonous torrent of daily Twitter posts interspersed with confrontations with the Press full of truculence and name calling.  His demeanor is that of a frustrated, inarticulate child.

Some commentators have speculated that Trump is losing his mind.  While that cannot be ruled out, it seems more likely that he has just panicked due to  losing control of the narrative, even within Foxworld.

Consider the contrast in Trump's behavior when he is in a campaign appearance with his loyal supporters.  In those venues he looks confident.  He is able there to stick to a very limited set of issues designed to appeal to the fears, frustrations and prejudices of his base.  He is able to present an image of being in charge of the nation's course.

Outside of those carefully staged appearances, however, Trump seems unable to sustain any coherent line of thought in response to daily challenges from Congress and the Press.  He lies compulsively and often contradicts himself in adjacent sentences.  He just cannot seem to shut up when that would clearly be in his own best interest.

Trump's behavior under pressure is in sharp contrast to his Republican predecessors in the Presidency.  Think for a moment about how they handled revelations about their lies and illegal behavior.  Ike lied about the U2 overflights of the Soviet Union. Reagan lied about arms sales to finance the Contras.  Bush fabricated the weapons of mass destruction myth to take us to war with Iraq.

In each of those cases, however, the perpetrator-in-chief knew to keep his mouth closed.  They let their Congressional allies carry the defense, and they let the agents of their plots take the rap and go to jail when necessary, knowing that a pardon was always available at term's end.

Nixon, of course, did talk himself out of office, but that was only because the Supreme Court forced the contents of the secret tapes into the open.  Trump, in contrast to his predecessors, also seems uniquely incapable of holding onto key advisors and of keeping his Cabinet supporters from being fatally tainted by his misbehavior.

It is interesting to speculate about the calculations that are being made now by Republicans in the House and in the Senate in response to Trump's daily melt-down.  As long as Trump could stay in campaign mode, they could fall back on the idea that Trump-will-be-Trump and then forge ahead with their standard operating procedures of cutting taxes for the ultra-rich and slashing benefits for the rest of us.

The Republican leadership is still holding the line against impeachment with the usual techniques of deflection and obfuscation.  However, there have been a few tepid criticisms coming out of the red ranks, and there appear to be around thirty Republican Senators who would be very happy to see Trump be brought down if that could be accomplished without their own political demise.

Quite a few Republican congressmen have elected to forego an attempt to hold onto their seats due in large part to the Trump trajectory.  It seems very likely that those who plan on remaining in office, in the face of Trump's volatile behavior will focus increasingly on the idea that if Trump were forced out now before the election, they would still have Pence to carry their flag.
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ps:  I see now at 10:40 PM that Colbert is covering much of the same territory in his opening monologue.  He's funnier.  Maybe I should just post links to his show on a daily basis.

Ukraine

The whistleblower report is public and the congressional hearings are under way.  The whistleblower clearly has high level access to White House activities and has conducted a thorough initial investigation, interviewing many individuals with direct knowledge of events around interactions of the President and his administration with Ukrainian officials.

The hearings will bring out many additional details as the people indicated in the report are identified and brought in to testify.  However, the concise report really lays out the major accusations quite well.  The real battles will now be to control the media narrative while also pressuring members of congress to support or oppose impeachment.

The Democrats still need a few more votes to move forward to impeachment.  There are a number of Dem members of congress who have voiced opposition to impeachment, most of whom are in districts with a large contingent of Trump supporters.  A good example is Xochitl Torres Small who narrowly took a seat in southern New Mexico that has long been held by Republicans.  Another notable holdout on impeachment is Tulsi Gabbard* of Hawaii who recently qualified for the third debate.

Helpful commentary on the unfolding Ukraine story is in progress at fivethirtyeight.com.

* "Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii endorsed the impeachment inquiry against President Trump on Friday..." (nytimes)

Nobel candidate?

wikipedia

She has already received many honors for her environmental leadership, and it would be hard to dispute the impact on world opinion of Greta Thunberg.  That this young woman can consistently demonstrate such an astounding ability to articulate her advocacy for action on climate change along with great courage seems to make the choice for the Nobel obvious.
 
    I'll freely admit some bias in favor of Thunberg due in part to memories of my own cluelessness at her present age.  Of course I was not alone in that affliction.  I don't recall any of my teenage 1950s peers having any concerns beyond that generated by exaggerated self-absorbtion. The Vietnam war woke me up, but it was still a long struggle that extended well past the 1960s before my consciousness of social and political issues took on any coherent form.

Trump's Strategy

Trump's recent visits to Democratic majority states raise some interesting questions about his support for his 2020 run and his opposition.  His stated reasons focus on the possibility of flipping those states to the red column.  That seems like a pretty unlikely scenario and it is hard to believe Trump - and even more so his advisers - really consider such a development at all likely.

There is also the fact that Trump's rhetoric at his campaign events in those blue states really is not effectively aimed at broadening his base.  Trump continues to harp on imaginary economic gains associated with his policies and he continues to rant about immigrants and non-white groups - all the themes that are red meat for his base.  In the case of California Trump has also prefaced his visit with attacks on the state's emission standards and on San Francisco's homeless policies.

What we have not seen in recent political commentary is any assessment of what Trump's visits to the ultra-blue states have had on the opposition.  While Trump's words and actions seemed mostly designed to push the Dem's noses into the dirt, it seems possible that he could easily be hardening the opposition's determination to make Trump a one-termer.  It would be interesting to see the results of polling immediately before and after Trump's visits to New Mexico and California.  I could not find any such fine-grained analysis in progress right now, but maybe the pollsters will decide to play catch-up.

Lessons

Matthew Reichbach - NM Political Report

While Trump harangued his crowd on Albuquerque's west side we sat on the grass at Tiguex Park and listened to our local Dem politicos voice their opinions about Trumpworld.  It was a pleasant way to spend the late afternoon.

Andy Lyman - NM Politial Report

Nothing much new from either side of the long distance debate.  The main thing I took away from the day was that it is a lot easier task to tear things down by appealing to the country's base tendencies than it is to fix and build a better society.

If We Must Die

Smithsonian

There is a fine remembrance today in the Dailykos by Denise Oliver Velez about the bombing on Sept. 15, 1963 of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.  The article includes a marvelous poem by Claude McKay.

With Trump about to descend on Albuquerque on Monday, reading the article would be a useful preparation for New Mexicans to reflect on the history and origins of much of Trump's support as well as the trajectory of his administration.

Overrated Electability

I haven't yet seen the charts about the audience for the third debate, but I'll guess that the numbers tuned in after the first hour plummeted.  Three hours of sound bites is just way too much.  Still, there were some revealing moments and all the candidates managed to make some substantive contributions.

Biden was feisty and loquacious, topping the list for most words spoken.  It seems likely, however, that the only real advantage from that approach was to deny a bit of time to his opponents.  Biden's plans for moving the country forward are unconvincing -- lacking the depth, detail and conviction of most of the other candidates.  He keeps hammering on his connection to the Obama administration while ignoring the fact that Obama chose him as VP because he was unlike Obama -- chosen for his appeal to those Democrat leaners who were vaguely uncomfortable with Obama's race and mildly progressive agenda.

Biden looks physically in good shape standing next to Bernie.  However, Bernie never misses a beat in his delivery, while Biden is constantly struggling to hold on to the thread of his thoughts.  He gropes for words and compensates with inappropriate fill-in terms such as the howler about advising parents to have their children listen to record players.  The reference to curing cancer is a trope going back to the politics of the 1950s; I recall it being common in many campaigns of that era including Nixon's.

In spite of all of the above, Biden could hold on to his lead.  He might even achieve the presidency.  The result of that would be an administration that would be little more than a placeholder for the next demagogue.

The Day After

There has been a lot of discussion in the media over the past week about 9/11, and what happened and how people reacted to the event.  I was thinking today about the day after 9/11.  What changed for me on that next day was the beginning of an obsession about watching the news of the day to get some idea of what was coming next.  Eighteen years later I find myself still in the grip of that hypervigilant awareness.  I check the news many times a day to find out what kind of threat is imminent or in progress.  All too often I find something concerning, sometimes something horrendous like the murder of school children.  In most cases, however, the perpetrators are not some foreign enemy, but American citizens.

The Dem Debate

I'm looking forward to Thursday's debate by the ten Democratic candidates.  Could be a game changer as everyone will be looking to peel off some of Biden's support.  But, three hours?  That is going to take a real marathon effort.  I usually get some help from the team at fivethirtyeight.com with their running commentary on the debaters' performances.  I wish I had that kind of mental agility.  I'm wondering what other strategies people have for sticking it out to the end?

6:00 PM Mountain Time!

Can Trump Ever Do Anything Right?

It seems like the odds are against it.

A lot of people will be pleased by the firing of John Bolton, who as a national security adviser clearly posed a danger to humanity.  It seems that the best thing Trump can be credited with, however, is correcting the mistake of hiring a right wing ideologue to occupy a position that demands unclouded objectivity.  The conclusion is also inescapable that both the hiring and firing had nothing at all to do with Bolton's capabilities and judgment and everything to do with Trump's need to be at the center of uncritical attention.

In regard to the circumstances surrounding Bolton's dismissal it is also clear that Trump bungled what he saw as a great opportunity to be at the center of an historic deal in the ending of the eighteen year conflict in Afghanistan.  It appears that an agreement had been largely hammered out by the diplomats and all that was really needed to complete the deal was an announcement that would sit comfortably with all parties including the Afghan government.  Instead, Trump went for grandstanding at Camp David, which wasted the opportunity as well as losing support even in his own party.

So, while there may be an outside chance that Trump could stumble into doing something to benefit the country and the world, the likelihood of his turning any scenario into a disaster through his narcissism and unpredictability is just too great to tolerate.

Smithsonian Mag

"A Well Regulated Militia"

The NRA version:

Let him play

I see some criticism in the media about Trump playing golf while the country faces multiple emergencies including mass shootings and hurricanes.  That seems short sighted to me.  I say keeping him out on the greens and away from the White House as much as possible is much to be desired.  Whacking around a little ball will help him release some frustration and lessen opportunities to meddle in things he clearly doesn't understand.  Now if we can just figure out a way to take away his cell phone...

guns and politics

I got to the Albuquerque City Council chambers a half hour before the sign-up would start for comments on the proposal to urge a state law establishing the Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) Act.  There were already about twenty people ahead of me in the line, but I was still within the thirty commenter limit.  I didn't keep a tally of the speakers.  I think about two-thirds were NRA supporters, though I don't recall any stating that affiliation.

The first commenter was a heavily tattooed drama queen who held up a pocket copy of the Constitution and loudly demanded to know if any of the councilors had read it.  She slammed the booklet on the podium and made a series of derogatory statements about politicians.  That set the tone for many of the subsequent commenters, though none of the others delivered their message with such verve.

There were a lot of shade tree lawyers, along with a couple who professed expertise in police work and terrorism monitoring.  The common threads were claims about Red Flag laws violating various parts of the Bill of Rights and judgments that the proposed legislation would not obtain the desired results -- all the usual NRA talking points with no supporting evidence.

I decided to use my 1.5 minutes to highlight a couple well-established facts; that a substantial majority of Americans support Red Flag laws, and included in that group is a majority of gun owners who also support other common sense gun regulation.  I said I thought the ERPO Act resolution was a small step, but one in the right direction, and I urged the councilors to keep on with their initiative.

The proposal that the city urge passage of a state Red Flag law passed four to two.  One of the two against supporting the recommendation said about six times that she was for "reform", but then said she would not support the recommendation to the State legislature because there was no way to know exactly what the State law would say.  That same pathetic evasion was also cited by the other "no" voting councilor.  Three other councilors did not show their faces at the meeting.

So now New Mexicans will have to wait for 2020 to see what happens with the Red Flag law and other gun control measures.  As is always the case, a lot of momentum toward gun regulation has built up following the latest horrific massacres.  It remains to be seen how much of that momentum can be sustained long enough to force the law makers to take action.

Meanwhile, there are a lot of excellent articles appearing every day on the subject of gun violence and how it might be reduced:

A chill in the air: The problem of teen suicide (Searchlight New Mexico)

Can We Prevent Mass Shootings By Preventing Suicide? (FiveThirtyEight)

Why extreme risk protection orders can make a difference (The NM Political Report)

guns and bombs

There were a couple gun violence prevention events in Albuquerque last Saturday.  One was sponsored by congresswoman Deb Haaland.  The other was a town hall at the downtown Methodist Church under the direction of three city councilors who were encouraging the State to pass a Red Flag law.  We opted to go to the church event to hear what our rep, Ike Benton, had to say about the Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) Act which he hoped the State legislature could be persuaded to adopt.  The panel of speakers included three city councilors, six state legislators and an Albuquerque Public Schools board member.

After the panel presentations, the group of a hundred or so attendees broke out into three discussion groups.  At that point we were informed that a bomb threat had been received.  We were told to stay in place while a police team swept the area.  No one gave much credence to the threat, but it was reassuring to see the quick law enforcement response.

Our discussion group included activists from several local groups and a lot of good ideas, mixed in with a large dose of frustration over the halting pace of reform efforts.  I contributed the thought that the ban on CDC research into gun violence did not mean that such research and information dissemination could not be conducted by other local entities including UNM and city government.

A thorough sorting out of fundamentals is essential to ensure that proposed remedies are based on a solid understanding of underlying psychological and political realities.  I said it seemed important to me to recognize that gun possession is often folded into identity formation which helps to explain the often irrational response to common sense firearms regulation by gun owners.  There are a lot of gun owners who clearly are not a threat to themselves or others, but who at the same time present a challenge to sensible gun control measures because of paranoid fears stoked by National Rifle Association propaganda.

Councilor Benton said that the NRA was planning to send a contingent of supporters to dominate the public comments at the upcoming City Council meeting.  He expressed the hope that some of us would also show up to challenge the NRA effort to stop city endorsement of the ERPO Act.  I decided to take a shot at getting on the public comment list on Monday.

guns

I first met John when I visited his home in Hillsboro in the course of doing in-home computer trouble shooting for a southern New Mexico internet service provider. John was an accomplished photographer and I went out of my way to visit with him whenever I was in the vicinity. We spent some time outdoors together doing photography and we also did a little target shooting.

 One night, I don't recall if it was a problem with the electricity or the gas, John's old house burned to the ground. He lost a lifetime of photographic work and pretty much everything else, including guns and photo gear. He lived in an rv on the home site for a time after the fire, and finally moved down from mountainous Hillsboro to river-side Truth or Consequences.

 I saw less of John after the move because my service area did not extend that far from Las Cruces. Then, in 2008 we moved to Albuquerque even further away, but we still stopped in to see John on occasional trips between Albuquerque and Las Cruces. John cultivated a circle of artist friends in T or C, continued to do some photography and began seriously collecting antique guns.

* * *

On December 14, 2012 Adam Lanza killed twenty 6 and 7 year old children at Sandy Hook Elementary School with an assault rifle, along with six adults at the school. He had murdered his mother at home before going to the school, and he finally shot himself after the massacre.

wikipedia

The next morning, John got on his computer and emailed everyone he knew to express his alarm over  Sandy Hook.  He was worried that the public reaction to the mass shooting would result in efforts to curb gun ownership.

I was appalled by the fact that, in the face of the deaths of all those children and the bottomless grief of parents, John's first thoughts were directed toward his gun collection.  It seemed an utterly obscene reaction, and it put an end to our friendship.

Since then, Sandy Hook-type incidents have been replicated many times, as have the reactions of NRA supporters which have seemed equally obscene as what John expressed.

(... to be continued)

Let's Make A Deal!

In exchange for immediate resignation, offer him immunity from prosecution after he leaves office.