Stuff you need to know, 4.14.23
Today's intelligence: how last year's wildfires have imperiled many of New Mexico's acequias, including 30 identified as harmed in the southwest region of the state
Category Analyses
Stuff you need to know, 3.29.23
In a country that prides itself on scientific excellence and innovation, and spends an incredible amount of money on health care, why does the American populace on average keep dying at younger and younger ages?
T or C $20-million request for emergency water-system repairs goes nowhere
The city asked the legislature and governor for a bail out without acknowledging how its water system got in such bad shape. The dire state of the water system was not reason enough to fund the request.
Stuff you need to know, 3.23.23
Today's intelligence: an airing of all sides of the Forest Road 40E closure controversy; and a CNN video report on "drought profiteers"
Stuff you need to know, 3.19.23
Today's intelligence: overviews from both sides of the aisle of the New Mexico legislative session that wrapped yesterday
Anti-gay, anti-abortion movement hits Sierra County
The Republican Party of Sierra County is hoping that you will believe that protecting LGBTQ persons' rights and women's and girl's rights to seek or not to seek an abortion are somehow an impingement of parents' and conscientious-objectors' rights. It's confusing, which is the point.
If you don’t believe me, believe John Arthur Smith and audit figures—tax revenue is the real point of a hospital district
I've been accused of lying by a hospital governing board member--that the point of forming a hospital district is not to bring in more tax revenue for Sierra Vista Hospital. Then Sen. John Arthur Smith and Hospital Association advisors to the two hospital boards lied too.
Hospital petition is latest example of authoritarianism growing in Sierra County
Do not be duped by local government officials into signing the hospital-district petition. It will form a new taxing authority that can levy up to 4.25 mills and issue general obligation bonds that would also increase property taxes--taxes in addition to the taxes already being collected.
Truth or Consequences’ water rates going up even more?
Utility fees hit the poorest hardest and T or C residents are among the poorest in the nation and the state. For generations the city has wrongly used utility fees to make up for budget shortfalls, and its only getting worse as neglected utilities fall apart.
Stuff you need to know, 2.13.23
Today's intelligence: why New Mexicans typically wait months to see a doctor, travel out of state to find one or use hospital emergency rooms for non-urgent medical needs
Assaying Entropy XIII: Inconclusion
I return to the idea of entropy, this time as a measure of the increasing randomness in the universe, and I relate this increase to our gradual loss of social cohesion under the influence of individualism, to the breakdown of language in our culture, and to our carelessness about Covid.
Assaying Entropy XII: Individualism, choice, and hierarchy
I continue my look at the sources of our present cultural impasse by examining in detail the incompatibility between an egalitarian democracy and individualism by examining the notions of rights and choice and how non-democratic hierarchies promote individualism.