Why Living in New Mexico Is Exciting, Reason #8206

You encounter headlines like this: "Bernalillo halts $9 million arsenic treatment project over 'public safety' concerns". And they don't even surprise you.

Yet Another Stupid Move from the New Mexico Legislature

Shorter New Mexico Politicians: "Between allowing concealed weapons in restaurants and refusing to take a strong stand against drunk driving, we'll lower our state's population yet!"

Seriously - I don't understand why any legislative body would find setting a minimum prison sentence for drunk driving and reducing from four to three the number of DWIs before it becomes a felony to be objectionable. I understand the legislature is worried about cost to the state, but you're the legislature - find ways to reduce spending. Might I suggest firing a few regents on the UNM Board of Regents and reducing payroll ? Seriously - yes, the state is in a deficit, but this is the kind of law that makes as much sense to pass as anything. But no - New Mexico's legislators are apparently determined to make a strong push as "worst state-legislative body in the country." The competition is stiff, but with decisions like these, don't count New Mexico out yet.

[UPDATE] Well, at least they're willing to crack down on texting-while-driving...

Shorter New Mexican Politicians: "We Need to Reduce Our Population through Violent Means"

This is obviously a terrible idea:

A bill that would allow concealed handguns in some restaurants that serve beer and wine has been pre-filed for the 2010 legislative session, which begins later this month. The bill, sponsored by state Sen. George Munoz, D-Gallup, would allow concealed handguns in “a restaurant licensed to sell only beer and wine that derives no less than 60 percent of its annual gross receipts from the sale of food for consumption on the premises.”

I just don't understand the purpose of this type of proposal. Why on earth would anybody need a concealed weapon in a beer/wine bar or restaurants (since 60% of the income apparently must come from food)? I don't buy the whole "self-defense" bit. You know what's good self defense? Not having to worry about some drunk shooting you unexpectedly. I suppose my favorite haunts are probably off limits on this, as they also serve hard liquor. Still, this just screams "stupid idea" all over, and the fact that a similar bill has already passed New Mexico's house just leaves me more depressed. Maybe I'll go have a drink...

Absolutely Unnecessary Things that Albuquerque Spends Money On: Hovercrafts

Talking with a friend in Albuquerque last night, I learned something that boggled my mind: the Albuquerque police department has a hovercraft.

Let me repeat that. Albuquerque has a hovercraft.

A city. In the desert. With a shrinking river. And they got.....a hovercraft.

There's so much one can say here: another of Marty Chavez's ridiculous and stupid self-promotion efforts? The worst waste of taxpayer dollars in Albuquerque? The complete futility of this hovercraft beyond the issue of river rescue on a body of water that's disappearing? The fact that a lifeboat, which would have been much cheaper, could have been used instead to the same effect? Does the hovercraft get used more in parades than in police work?

I think my favorite part of this is the hovercraft-manufacturer's website, which puts the "balloon fiesta water rescue" images up all over, as if to show the hovercraft's utility, yet in every picture, the hovercraft is either A) unoccupied, clearly to be photographed for publicity, or B) sitting there while there are no balloons in the water. The smile on the officer in the first picture says it all, just screaming, "I cannot believe we convinced them to buy this thing for us!"

To be clear, hovercrafts can have their uses, as the company's page shows. There are some much more compelling pictures of a "Mud/Ice/Water rescue" at Anchorage airport. That is a circumstance in which a hovercraft seems like a defensible purchase. But Albuquerque, with its one shrinking river?

And for those who still can't believe it, you just have to see the police report from June 30th of this year: "APD deployed the hovercraft and ATVs manned by Open Space personnel and APD divers" when a boy fell into the river. And in a sad turn, the boy was not recovered, and while his presumed death is indeed tragic, it prompts the question: if the hovercraft cannot do the one thing it was ostensibly purchased for, why get it?

Oh, right - so you can show it during parades and take pictures of it with balloons in the sky (not the water) behind you.

Viva Nuevo Mexico

Well, that's one way to get to Albuquerque...

University of New Mexico's Tangential Relation to Recent National News

Apparently, leaving UNM's presidency in heated context wasn't enough for Louis Caldera - he has now resigned over the flyover scandal in NYC that caused panic a few weeks ago.

Now, when I show my kids my Masters Degree one day, I'll be able to say to them, "and that signature there? That's the signature of a man who had to resign from Obama's White House after he made a bone-headed decision that struck fear into the hearts of people in Newark and the Financial District one day back in 2009...."

The 2008 Nobel Prize Winner

No big surprise here - a non-American (North or Latin!) winning the 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature. Still, it's pretty wild to me that Le Clezio apparently spends most of his year in Albuquerque. As has been the case in the past, I suspect this will lead to broader availability of his works in English. Nonetheless, I'm a little cautious of any literary work that "contrasts the ugliness and ignorance of Europe, as experienced by immigrants, with the simple nobility of a lost Tuareg civilisation in the Sahara, destroyed by French colonialism" - at least at the level of summary, it smacks of the kind of false idealism of the "noble savage" that has plagued "western" thinking for way too long. I hope Le Clezio's work is more complex than that, but if nothing else, at least now the English-speaking audience will get to find out for itself. And New Mexico can kind-of claim a Nobel Prize winner, too, which is, if nothing else, surreal.

The New Mexico Disaster

The most underreported story of Super Tuesday is the New Mexico disaster. Basically, the Democrats didn't print nearly enough ballots for their caucus that Bill Richardson created. One friend of mine in Albuquerque was given a photocopied ballot and was told that they had no idea if it would count. There were huge delays and people left the polls because the lines were so long Rio Rancho, the third largest city in the state, had one precinct open. Three boxes in Rio Arriba County were held overnight in people's homes. The party claims they had no idea so many people would turn out and vote. All they had to do is look around at turnout throughout the country to know that they would face the same thing. It's this laughable: they were expecting 40,000 voters. They got 131,573 voters. Whoops!

Bill Richardson is distancing himself from this, but that's not acceptable. First of all, moving the caucus up was his idea. The entire thing was his baby. But he didn't prepare the state for it at all and didn't fund the process. It's another example of Richardson's pretty poor governing style that makes me happy he did not win the nomination. Richardson is blaming Brian Colón, the new Democratic Party of New Mexico Chairman. I don't know much about Colón, but people I respect think highly of him. Within the nepotistic and corrupt politics of New Mexico, breaths of fresh air are not welcomed. This doesn't look good for him, but certainly Richardson and other leading Democrats deserve plenty of blame as well. It also seems that Richardson's presidential campaign took priority and the state party is suffering as a result, leading to the underfunding and understaffing of the caucus. This is the second big screw-up with national implications Richardson has had as governor. The first was his poor campaigning for John Kerry in 2004 which led to small turnouts in the Hispanic population in northern New Mexico and Bush winning the state.

The caucus is not the ultimate issue here. The problem is that this incompetency is going to carry over to the election this fall. I love New Mexico, but it's a disaster. If New Mexico is tight this fall, as it was in 2000 and 2004, very careful oversight is going to be needed. The Republicans stole the election in Florida. It is hardly inconceivable that the election could be stolen in New Mexico this time around.

Maggie has some great thoughts (here and here) about this disaster as well.