New Mexico Legislature 2019

Ok, here we go again. I always meet this day with both hope and fear. Hope that good bills will be passed that help the voting public of this state and fear that educational administration and their high paid lobbyists will find a way to screw the people who work with students. 

Most years both happen. Early childhood education will get much needed funding. New plans will be put into place to build back the cuts that have occurred to education over the past eight years. If the Legislature authorizes a lump sum for pay increases that will go to education you know already that most of that money will end up in the pay checks of educational administration. The college I work for has already lowered the minimum wage for starting employees, hired student employees to replace part-time employees and capped the pay of long time employees. All this just so they can ask for an across the board salary increase. I would hope that the legislature would install a claw back provision with the pay raise. Each employee working in education gets the percentage raise as a reoccurring raise. Any money not award for each individual either now or in the future would go back to the state. No one employee can receive a higher percentage raise using state money.  

We now have the ability to start funding green energy growth in this state that can earn revenues for the state and protect our environment. I don’t expect the minimum wage to increase over twelve dollars an hour for starting pay but I hope with training that the voting public will have the opportunity to enter new fields in the green energy industry that will offer higher wages over time. 

 We should find a way to put some of those profits from the green energy industry into the permanent fund.  

Let’s look at building new technology in the communication field as well. This state needs to be connected to the internet so that businesses all over the state can sell goods without moving to a large city. Reliable internet would help in educating students across the state both at the K-12 level and the higher education level. Giving students access to the right tools will help them to find the jobs of the future.

Once we have increased the educational level of our citizens then we can look at requiring that people who work with taxpayer’s dollars be trained so as to prevent the misuse of taxpayers’ dollars.

As far as crime is concerned we need to fund treatment and housing. I don’t mean booth camp for criminals either. For profit prisons are not the answer to rehab. Mental health treatment and substance abuse treatment will go a long way in reducing crime in this state. This also includes the legalization of marijuana. Hemp has already been taken off the federal list of schedule one drugs. It is now being sold in local malls. This product has many benefits for people that will reduce the abuse of level one drugs. It will also help people suffering from ongoing pain.

So with a mixture of hope and fear the legislature will open today at noon.    

The Tragic Truth About Immigration in the USA

Let’s start with the fact that unless you are from South America or are Native American your family at some point in history immigrated to the United States of America or was brought here by force. Many people came over in ships from Europe before it was even a country. At which point there was no legal work to come to this continent. Millions of Native Americans were killed by these first immigrants. 

One of the first horrors was the killing of Native American to make way for the new immigrants. The children of Native Americans were taken away and placed in boarding schools. Their entire identity was destroyed. Everything was taken from those children. Their parents, their culture, their language, and their place on this continent. Still we cannot begin to understand why their descendant are so dysfunctional in modern European based society. 

Next came the African slaves. Again the European culture ripped children from the arms of mothers to sell them off like livestock. Again their language, culture, and sense of place was destroyed by the European culture. And yet again we wonder why the descendant of these people are so dysfunctional in modern European based society. And yes we still put their descendant in cages and create laws to make it legal. 

Next came the Japanese. Once again these individuals were treated as slaves. They were worked hard to build the rail system that would connect our country. They were mistreated just like all the others before them. They were put in camps during World War II out of fear that they might turn on the dominant European culture. Again we wonder why the descendant choose to stay in areas where they do not interact with the modern dominant European based society. 

Lastly came the Spanish from South America. We destroyed their government to make sure that our idea of the correct form of government controlled it. We forced their countries into chaos. We developed a need for drugs and bought those from the South American countries encouraging the growth of gangs that murder, rape, and enslave the local population. When they flee to our borders we put them in cages and take away their children. Promising them they will never see them again as we did many of the other cultures. 

We have built this country on the backs of many different cultures. With each generation we have abused those individual for our own benefit. Some of them like many of my ancestors have learned that the only way to survive is to integrate and hide their children within the modern dominant European based society. Often teaching those very same children to hate anyone that does not look European. Others hate and despise that dominant culture and develop small areas that recreate the culture their ancestors came from in the first place.

This is the "Great America" that everyone in the white dominant European based society so desperately wants to defend and continue. They don’t want to know that their DNA often carries the blood of the people this country has stepped on to build the greatest nation in the world. None of us from this country have any moral high ground to stand on.  The best we can do is resolve that this type of treatment will never happen again. Never again means more than just not building camps to put a disadvantages culture in to keep them under the control of the dominant European based society. It means welcoming immigrants and helping them to build a better life for them and their families. Fear of other immigrants cannot rule our country. We are all at least part immigrant in our DNA.