Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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New Mexico’s 30-day session begins Jan. 18, and while its emphasis will be on the state budget, the governor can add to the legislative “call” and already has. On the first anniversary of last year’s attempted coup at the U.S. Capitol, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced that she and Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver will be pushing for voting rights legislation similar to what’s been languishing in Congress since last year. In the U.S. Capitol, Republicans are holding up the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advanceme...
Seems to me, 2021 began on Jan. 20. That’s when Joe Biden was sworn in as president. Because of Donald Trump’s refusal to accept the 2020 election results, opposition to Biden’s election turned into an attempted coup on Jan. 6, followed by the most hurried and justified presidential impeachment in U.S. history (that’s what should happen whenever a sitting president tries to remain in office by force). By the time Biden’s inauguration came around, Washington, D.C., was a fortress of security — the violence had been quelle...
Christmas is exhausting. These days, as a man teetering on old age and living alone most of the time, I’m just not motivated to get all dressed up for these holidays. My adult kids are having their own Christmases elsewhere this year, and I’m way too busy with work anyway; I don’t have time for a big holiday. I’ll be fine with a nice nap on Christmas Day this year. Not that Christmas is without depth for me, because it still means a lot to me — both as a religious and a secular holiday. When I was growing up, Christmas...
If you think New Mexico’s commitment to alternative energy sources is evident only by the wind turbines and solar farms going up, think again. Hydrogen gas is on the way. Earlier this month, officials with BayoTech Inc., alongside Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, unveiled the Albuquerque-based company’s first “hydrogen-generating hub” — the first of many the company plans to help build in the U.S. and Great Britain over the next three years. BayoTech’s CEO said the company’s goal is to be the largest hydrogen distribution...
Sound the alarm! Gas prices are going up! Throughout my life, I’ve noticed a certain obsession Americans have with gas prices. I used to tease my father for driving out of his way just to save a couple of cents on a gallon of gas. I told him that he probably spent more money (and time) driving across town to the cheaper gas station than he saved at the pump, but he was unwavering in his search for the cheapest gas possible. To this day, I know guys who can make an entire conversation out of the price of gasoline. The media d...
Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I grew up on them. They were the first thing I learned to make in the kitchen. That and a glass of milk. Microwaves hadn’t been invented yet. Playing basketball on a dirt patch in our back yard. That’s where I learned to dribble and shoot with one hand. And football in our front yard. When no one else was around, I’d take the hike from an imaginary center, drop back and throw to the trees, believing that I was the star quarterback for the Arkansas Razorbacks, the only college team that...
By now you have surely heard about the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that passed Congress and was signed into law by President Biden. Its trickle-down impact is going to be significant for New Mexico. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham flew to Washington, D.C., for the Nov. 15 signing ceremony, as did about 800 other salivating state and local officials from around the country. Biden is calling it a once-in-a-generation investment for America’s future, but New Mexico’s governor took it a step further. Right after the signin...
Every year I write about Thanksgiving with a hope that I can avoid, or at least minimize, my political commentary, opting instead to make an annual kumbaya column, writing about what’s close to my heart in advance of my favorite holiday. At least I try. This year, however, I freely admit I can’t do it. The things for which I’m grateful are just too politically tainted this time around. Maybe it’s a sign of the times that my worldview is undeniably political, because the fight for “truth, justice and the American way” (as the...
Forget what the polls say. President Biden is getting things done. Some on the left say his accomplishments are too little too late, while others on the right cry socialism and foul play. But let the record show that, so far, Biden’s been an effective leader. In less than a year, he has managed the pandemic and a massive vaccine rollout — not as well as some would have hoped but far more competently than his predecessor. If you ask someone like me — a card-carrying, fully vaccinated recipient of some impressive science — you...
The divisions in our nation mostly lie along urban and rural lines. Why is that? Recently I spent a week in Memphis. It’s famous for Beale Street and the Blues, Elvis’s Graceland and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, but as is the case with any famous city, it’s so much more than what it’s known for. The Greater Memphis area population is about 1.3 million, but the latest Census count puts it at 633,104 inside the city limits. It should be no surprise that, in 2020, Biden won big there, carrying all of Shelby County...
Since this pandemic has upset the economic applecart and challenged the actual value of work, maybe we should consider some radical new ideas about how to compensate people. So, after being influenced by a week of workaday pleasures with a granddaughter, whose eyes are just beginning to see the magnificence of life on earth — let’s make up a utopia, where everyone lives off the generosity of each other. Instead of stimulus checks, let’s give out gratuity checks, the catch being we can only spend them on tips and bonus...
In 2020, the frontline in “the battle for the soul of America” was the election between Joe Biden, who spoke of that battle many times, and Donald Trump, who spoke about how it was all rigged. Now, that battle seems best viewed through the prism of two big and powerful states: Texas and California. On the surface, it looks like Texas is winning. The 2020 Census shows its population grew enough for two additional congressional seats, while California lost a seat for the first time in, well, forever. But politically, Cal...
“Progress” is a word liberals grabbed to avoid the “liberal” label that those on the right have soiled so effectively. Feel free to call me either; better that than to embrace the stagnation of conservative thinking. The reality is, we all want progress. OK, there are exceptions - like the Proud Boys, who prefer supremacy to equality and anything over liberalism - but for the rest of us, we want our society moving forward. The divisions come when it’s time to talk about what that really means. By definition, “progress...
The other day I attended a special meeting on crime. I came away thinking that we’re actually making progress. I say that despite reports that show a sharp increase in violent crime these days. FBI data show a 25% increase in homicides nationwide in 2020, and this year is looking about as bad. The reasons are debatable. Some blame the pandemic and its economic and social disruptions; others, the continuing proliferation of guns; and still others say it’s because law enforcement agencies have been on the defensive ever since G...
The Wall Street Journal should be lauded for putting Facebook on trial in the court of public opinion. The newspaper is exposing one of the biggest issues facing America today — our ability to discern hard truths from the destructive nature of misinformation. In a series of recent articles, the Journal is using internal Facebook documents to expose how the social media platform is hurting its consumers. It’s even drawing comparisons between Big Tech and Big Tobacco, it’s that harsh. Or so I read from other sources. I could...
Perhaps you’ve noticed that old people like to remember the “good old days” even when they weren’t so good. It’s a nostalgic tendency to think that, as tough as things were, we got through them so it must have been good for us. You might remember the old Saturday Night Live skit of the old man exaggerating his old-days experiences with the conclusion, “That’s the way it was, and we liked it,” when, it reality, that’s not the way it was, and often we didn’t like it. History, on the other hand, shouldn’t be written that way. It...
It’s been 20 years since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and what have we learned? We learned that then-President George W. Bush was right when he told us it would be a long war against the terrorists who attacked us. We’ve just now concluded our “longest war,” in Afghanistan, and we’d still be there if we were determined to “win” whatever that war became after Osama bin Laden was killed one country over, in Pakistan. We also learned how easy it is to lose sight of our objective, to root out and destro...
If you’re an American worker, there’s cause for a real celebration this Labor Day. The economy is flush with jobs, wages are going up and employers are so desperate to find workers they’re offering benefits for what used to be starter jobs for teenagers. If you’re looking for work, you’ve got plenty to pick from, unless your skill sets are stuck in the old economy. Technology has or is changing just about every job out there, so workers must adapt. That’s easier for the younger generations who have grown up with their eyes...
The Afghanistan pullout may be the most nonpartisan issue in years. Not that it’s without its partisan pundits and politicians. When it comes to America’s failure to win this war, it seems that Trump is blaming Biden, Biden blames Trump, and the talking heads are blaming whoever is in their crosshairs already. Such is the circus of our body politick. But for two-thirds of Americans, according to at least one poll, it’s no longer a war worth fighting. Every president since we entered Afghanistan deserves at least a piece...
Last week I wrote fondly about one of my favorite infrastructures, Interstate 40, reflecting on my life and travels back and forth across this long-running superhighway. It’s proof that I’m part of the problem. I have burned a lot of carbon in all my years of South-to-Southwest driving. It’s just one of many ways in which I’ve contributed to Mother Nature’s current condition. But at least I’m not in denial, which is a whole other sin. Conservatives have used denial effectively through the years, and some still do, to avoi...
All this talk about infrastructure has me thinking about one of my favorites: Interstate 40. Sure, it’s not as nostalgic as old Route 66, which it mostly follows out West, or as homespun as highways 64 and 70 as they cross the South. But as a baby boomer born in the 1950s, I sort of grew up with I-40. For better and worse, it was built in the ‘60s and ‘70s to become a 2,559-mile “superhighway” spanning the continent and running through much of my life and times. I was born in Ozark, Ark., a small mountain town alongside...
We’re now entering crisis territory with the Delta variant, and collectively, it’s our own damn fault. Maybe we should call this latest variant “COVID-21” because it’s more contagious, and therefore more dangerous, than the 2019 version. Thankfully, the vaccines are proving themselves effective against it, and despite some “breakthrough cases” — vaccinated people who get the virus but with milder symptoms — this latest outbreak is mostly “a pandemic of the unvaccinated” that makes the vaccinated majority less caring...
The torch has been lit, albeit for an empty stadium, and the Olympics are underway anyway. History is being made in so many ways. If you’ve been keeping up, you know it’s the 2020 Summer Olympics taking place in the summer of 2021. Tokyo has a brand new 68,000-seat stadium, but only a thousand or so at a time are being allowed in to watch the action live. This year’s lack of spectators is part of a wide range of COVID precautions being imposed on these Games, but that isn’t good enough for most Japanese citizens, who wanted...
Richard Branson’s “live-streamed” coverage of his voyage to the edge of space was, well, little more than an infomercial — in partnership, of course, with New Mexico True. Guess I should have expected it to be what it was: A larger-than-life promotion of Branson’s burgeoning space tourism business. That’s what his ambitious undertaking at Spaceport America in southern New Mexico has been all about from the beginning. And, at $200,000 a ticket, it’s exclusively a ride for the rich. This is a billionaires’ space race for...
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Graceland is an amazing place, or so I hear. As the former home of legendary entertainer Elvis Presley, it’s a must-see destination for his millions of fans. Located on the outskirts of this amazing Southern city — where many of my relatives, including my brand new granddaughter, reside — some 650,000 people a year visit The King’s mansion. But I’ve never actually been there. I’ve been visiting family in Memphis for most of my life and yet I’ve never been to Graceland. Isn’t that the way “locals” are everywhe...
