Veronica and Nguyen’s children and their children

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.  Veronica and Nguyen were two high school students I taught years ago at Albuquerque High School. As a young teacher in my first teaching situation my opinion was teachers are the most important component to students learning, but this was before Veronica and Nguyen.

            It was the first day of classes. Veronica walked in, looked around and said plaintively, “God, is it boring in here.” Every ten minutes for a whole year Veronica announced that class was boring. Nguyen, another student in that same class never seemed to be bored.

            Every time Veronica said, “God, is it boring in here,” I flinched and kept thinking that if I tried a little harder she would come around. She never did. She graduated and I never saw her again nor do I know what happened to Nguyen. I lost track of both after they graduated.

            Still, I remember his ready smile as he absorbed lessons. Nguyen was one of the Vietnam Boat People who left ahead of the Communists. Over the semester I got to know him better. His parents were farmers in Vietnam. Neither could read or write but were related to a politician in Saigon so they had to flee.

            Until five years earlier Nguyen could not read since he had never attended school. When he arrived in America, he was put in an inner-city school in Los Angeles and then moved to Albuquerque the year before I had him in class. He quickly learned to where he was an on-track junior.

            Veronica was born in Albuquerque. Both parents worked and were high school graduates.

            Nguyen played on my after-school table tennis team so I saw more of him than just in class. One day I gave Nguyen a ride home after table tennis practice and met his parents. They spoke little English but wanted to talk to me. Nguyen translated, which centered on Nguyen’s school work. I said, “He’s one of the best students in my class.” They beamed.

            Later I asked Nguyen what would happen if he got a bad grade. His reply surprised me. “Dad would beat me until his arms gave out. Then Mom would take over until he could continue.”

            I immediately asked, “Do they beat you often?”

            “No,” he said, “They don’t have to beat me, I work hard to make them proud of me. They don’t understand math and English, but know if I’ve been working. They know I should get an A in each class.”

            A few days later I scheduled parent-teacher conferences. Over two weeks I called Veronica’s parents five times. Each time I got the brush off. Her mother said, “You’re the teacher, teach Veronica and leave us alone.”

            I never met Veronica’s parents. I asked Veronica, “What would your parents do if you got a bad grade?” She smiled slightly, “They don’t even look at my grades.” Veronica got a C and graduated. I asked her if she was going to college. “No, college is boring.”

            Nguyen, on the other hand, got a college scholarship. The last I heard he was in the field of biology.

            Now I did my very best for both students and never quit. In both cases it didn’t matter. Nguyen was going to be excellent regardless and Veronica was going to be bored.

            I learned that the most important component to student learning is not the teacher, it is the family. Having a good teacher helps, but having parents who care and demand effort is far more important.

            It would make a nice ending to this story to say that Veronica is a cashier in a store making minimum wage and Nguyen is a Ph.D. Researcher making big bucks. But as I have said, I lost track of them many years ago. Still, that is the way I would bet - Nguyen has prospered and Veronica is now paying her dues for not working hard in school.

            But what of their children? Assuming both got married and have children, I suspect Nguyen will take an active role in the education of his children and Veronica will not. Nguyen’s children will do well in school while Veronica’s do not. And what about their children’s children?

 Email: drswickard@comcast.net - Swickard’s new novel, Hideaway Hills, is availableat Amazon.com

Veronica and Nguyen’s children and their children

Swickard: New Mexico’s Oops moment with water

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.   Sam Houston was president of Texas when it was founded. At a dinner he ate a big spoonful of very hot mashed potatoes. He realized they were hot and spit them out on the table while observing, “A dern fool would have kept that in his mouth.” Someone probably said, “Oops.”

            Race car driver A. J. Foyt was leading a race as the laps wound down before electronic communications. A board was held up showing the laps remaining.

            Foyt misinterpreted the board and thought he had won when in fact there was one lap to go. He slowed down and four drivers passed him. At the press conference, “Sometimes you blow a tire or an engine, I blew a brain.”

            Then there are times in New Mexico like the controlled burn in 2000 at Cerro Grande done in high winds. That wildfire burned for a month, destroying almost 50,000 acres and torching 400 homes. Oops. A few years later two fires were allowed to burn that burned out of control and scorched lots of the Gila and the Ruidoso areas.

            In 1999 a Mars obiter was constructed with one team of engineers using the English system of measurement while other teams used the metric system. It cost NASA $100 million and a lot of ridicule.

            Captain Joe Hazelwood put an underling in charge of piloting the Exxon Valdez as it left Alaska March 24, 1989. He was drinking and therefore wasn’t available to keep the ship off a reef where it poured 11 million gallons of oil. It cost about $8 Billion and ruined Exxon’s reputation.

            Or the makers of booster seals on the Space Shuttle Challenger who said don’t take off when it is below a certain temperature. But didn’t speak up forcefully when NASA got “Launch fever” while the temperature was too low and the Challenger blew up killing seven crew and costing $11 Billion. Oops.

            Look at the Fukushima nuclear plant that built the emergency pumps on the ocean side of the building so they were swamped when the tsunami hit and didn’t work. Oops. But that is small potatoes to the Soviet party official who overruled the engineers and wanted to do a very unsafe test at Chernobyl.

            That cost him his life and many others along with more than $400 Billion in damages. Double Oops.

            We have oops like the twelve publishing houses that rejected J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter book. They lost a billion dollars. In 1999 Google founders were trying to sell their search engine for one million dollars and even lowered the price to $750,000 but no one bought. It is worth about $350 Billion today.

            Record label Decca holds a special place in the hearts of record label EMI. Decca signed Brian Poole and the Tremeloes and passed on the Beatles. Oops. That is almost as bad as Russia in 1867 selling Alaska to the United States for a couple cents an acre because it was not valuable.

            One of the biggest oops over the years is the way New Mexico thinks it can conserve its way to plenty of water. That is not possible. The state of New Mexico either has to pipe water into the state or it has to make unusable water into water that can be used for people and agriculture.

            But there is no movement by the state officials to do something useful. Instead they stand mute and dumb on the crisis of New Mexico not having enough water. New Mexico has never had enough water and it gets worse with the needs of more people and agriculture.

            The best they can do is hope that it will rain. Or those who think the answer is to quit having agriculture. That works as soon as we all stop eating. Idiots.

            The best time to plant a shade tree was twenty years ago. Next best time was ten years ago. But you will never get shade if you do not plant a shade tree. Likewise, real action needs to be taken on securing a supply of water for the coming generations. Or I guess years from now as it gets worse and worse we can say, Oops.

 Email: drswickard@comcast.net - Swickard’s new novel, Hideaway Hills, is availableat Amazon.com

Swickard: New Mexico’s Oops moment with water

Swickard: Promise to spend wisely next time

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.  There is currently deep despair in New Mexico because budget cuts cannot be avoided and the political football can’t be punted to next year. Things have to change now. Example: New Mexico State University has to cut twelve million dollars from their budget.

            The total budget for NMSU is around $620 million so $12 million is 1.9 percent. In an institution as large as NMSU, with all of their fund-raising programs and hold-back funds, it is a small sum. But it’s a cut and that’s the problem.

            In our current political climate many people think that every government program must be continued or something is seriously wrong. It is inconceivable in the media that budgets can be chopped, in fact, programs can be eliminated in hard times.

            Over the last two decades the state of New Mexico has gone from a very rosy financial status to the budget crisis of today. Who knew the oil and gas business was going to tank?

            The issue is: in the recent years when times were good, what did the people who guide our state do? They spent everything they could. Did they save anything for hard times? Not recent leaders.

            Former Governor Gary Johnson was a fiscal conservative. He constantly vetoed spending bills when he thought they were not wise. It was seven hundred times in eight years ending in 2002. Not all of his vetoes were spending, but many were and the money piled up.

            In January 2003 Bill Richardson took office. There were hundreds of millions of dollars in rainy day funds that he spent immediately on political issues. The eight years of savings were gone in days. Bill Richardson was running for President of the United States. So he spent and spent and spent.

            The last budget of Gary Johnson in 2002 was $3.9 Billion. That number went all the way to $6.8 Billion in Bill Richardson’s quest for the presidency. He was named the nation’s Education Governor for his spending on education, which had no effect on the outcomes for New Mexico students but looked good in the headlines.

            Fast forward to today since there are serious budget problems at $6.2 Billion. The problem is that there has been a large downturn in the oil and gas revenues. The budget is no longer viable and must be amended.

            When talking about reducing spending some people act like there has always been over six billion dollars in the budget. But New Mexico’s budget was under $4 Billion just a few years ago.

            The last time there was an oil and gas bust was 1981. At that time, I remember seeing bumper stickers that proclaimed, “Please God, give me one more oil boom… this time I promise not to piss it away.” Do we have anyone saying that prayer today?

            New Mexico was one of only five states who were not having budget problems in the late 1990s. Then in 2003 the spenders got their hands on our state. Some politicians want taxes to now rise as compensation for falling oil and gas revenues.

            That would be wrong because it gives the impression that government budgets cannot be seriously cut. Not one percent or two percent. Rather, ten percent. New Mexicans will be fine.

            The media will find those people who lose out. But for the two million citizens in New Mexico being fiscally responsible is essential for our future and the future of our children. NMSU is gravely wringing their hands over less than two percent. Seriously.

            Here’s a solution: NMSU and the University of New Mexico have many similar programs. Retrench to one or the other a couple of the programs currently at both universities. Know this: you should not touch the core of NMSU’s Land-Grant mission or the core of the University of New Mexico’s metropolitan university.

            It is time to bring sense back into the spending of the people’s money by government entities. No more spending so that people can be elected with promises. The oil and gas will come back; will we be careful with the money next time?

            Only if the voters elect those who are responsible and prepare for the next coming hard times.

 Email: drswickard@comcast.net - Swickard’s new novel, Hideaway Hills, is availableat Amazon.com

Swickard: Promise to spend wisely next time

Swickard: Never ending elections for personal gain of the elected

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.  New Mexico and America’s elections have become never-ending. Every minute of every day for decades has been focused on coming elections. There has never been even one moment when the elected stop campaigning and start representing the people.

            Worse, our society has descended into a “Thumb in the eye” society so that every action in politics is meant to divide the people, not bring anyone together. Every issue is calculated by both parties as to how much money the political operatives can raise because people are upset.

            For many years I took care of an uncle who was a staunch Republican. One day while doing talk radio I was talking to a staunch Democrat about the mailers coming to my uncle. He said that he gets the same volume of mailers and their message is similar: to stop the other side just send lots of money.

            Perhaps what bothers me the most is that we have professional legislators who will stay in office until they are recalled by their maker. In some offices there are term limits but the professional office-holders just move to another elected position and continue feeding on the carcass of New Mexico and America.

            Even worse are those professional office holders who work for professional entities that are effected by the legislature. These elected ones turn into a lobbying representative for the people who write their paychecks instead of representing the voters.

            Be it public education, environmental organizations or those attorneys who gain immense wealth once elected to an office that pays no money, they represent their own interests rather than the voters. It is why some people think New Mexico is the capital of crony corruption in our country.

            Corruption is intertwined with all of this political activity since it rewards those who will break the rules and laws. Even more stupid are those who think that the crony corruptors will self-report their transgressions. If someone with a bribe gives it to someone who wants to trade influence for that bribe, neither will report this fact.

            The only way to see even the shadow requires noting the rise in wealth of these people when the reason for the rise is not apparent. Mexico’s President, Enrique Peña Nieto observed, “Whenever there are some who have more opportunities than others, this feed corruption.”

            It goes on all of the time. The person elected stands at the buffet of corruption and no one reports on their meteoritic rise in wealth. The media gives them a pass.

            Bess Myerson wrote, “The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference.” We are partially responsible because year after year the crony corruption continues and more often than not the crony corrupt legislators are returned to office because the citizens do not care or often even vote.

            At the coffee shop the other day someone said that they could not wait for the November election to be over. Me too, but I understand that there will be no pause. The 2018 election is upon us as is 2020. We cannot think about governing because we are in the never ending election cycle.

            We are bombarded with Thumb in the eye political actions. The elected are not stupid, they do so intentionally to rally the base to give more money. Normal citizens are made nauseous by their actions and they do not care as long as they feast at the money buffet.

            The number one problem in our country is that the media has changed sides from protecting the citizens to protecting the crony corruption agents. Perhaps they are also on the take or they understand that if they do not take the side of the elected ones, they will be cut off from contact.

            The only time corruptors cannot avoid scrutiny is the Internet but canceling the First Amendment rights of citizens is very attractive to those dealing with corruption. When the First Amendment ends, which it will end, given the power of the corruptors, the nation goes over the cliff.

            At the very least let us stop allowing companies and organizations to have paid lobbyists in elected office. We have to start somewhere in cleaning up our government.

 Email: drswickard@comcast.net - Swickard’s new novel, Hideaway Hills, is availableat Amazon.com

Swickard: Never ending elections for personal gain of the elected

Swickard: Tough times ahead for New Mexico

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.   “Laws are like sausages; it is better not to see them being made.” Mark Twain

            Increasingly the political dialog is about complete and absolute transparency for those elected people making decisions. The notion is that the public should know everything about the legislative process including everything that happens during the deliberation phase.

            We are not talking about the outcomes, how people voted, rather, how they reached their decision to vote. Some people think the public should be eyewitness to the deliberations. This sounds good but will not work. H. L. Mencken wrote: For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

            Consider if jury deliberations were in public. Jurors would be watched as they deliberated the case. Everyone could see how they reasoned and voted. Would that scrutiny change their actions? You bet.

            An example is our Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia from May to September 1787. The delegates decided first that they could not revise adequately the Articles of Confederation which was their announced task so instead they negotiated a new form of government.

            They did so without any transparency as they worked. The doors to their hall were locked and members pledged to not talk to journalists. The newspapers of the time had no idea what was happening.

            Why did they take such an unusual action? Because the daily pressure as they debated issues would have ultimately killed the convention if the issues under debate were known. As they day by day debated these issues they would have had too much pressure to continue if what they were debating was known to the public.

            It looks like a special session of the New Mexico Legislature will be required. And the forces of transparency will want to watch everything from the first Frito-Pie made to the last coffee pot put away… along with everything said and done during the special session.

            Transparency of the final actions of our elected is essential but perhaps not the deliberations. As the politicians figure what they can and cannot support they must not have literally thousands of people bombarding them with instant reactions.

            Deals cannot be made in front of everyone. That is a truth transparency activists do not accept. Like with jury deliberations and the designing of our Constitution, deliberation scrutiny is detrimental to the outcome.

            New Mexico has vastly less money than budgeted. So New Mexico will have to do something about it but this is an election year. Politicians would rather not act but must since our Constitution requires New Mexico financially to be in the black. New Mexico cannot deficient spend, even in election years.

            U. S. Senator from Oregon Jeff Merkley wrote, “Budgets are nothing if not statements of priorities.” The priorities are going to be called into account shortly in New Mexico and the political leaders will not be able to punt the financial football to the next session.

            They will meet in special session and do things that will lose each of them votes. The New Mexico budget will be cut. There will be winners and losers. The only thing worse is to lose the representative form of government by allowing extreme daily intrusions to the point that the representatives can no longer function.

            Fixing this financial problem will be hard since the budget was already cut in many ways in the last session. Some things cannot be cut and so one answer is to raise taxes.

            With the increase of taxes being dynamic the raises may not bring in the needed revenue because businesses and people move out of state. The state may go into a financial death spiral of taxpayers leaving and the people needing services not being funded adequately.

            There are people who want complete transparency but it is the kiss of death to most complex negotiations. Careful what you wish for as it could make this problem much worse.

            Some tough decisions will have to be made. The lobbyists and activists will endeavor to protect their clients through information, advocacy and political threats. Give our elected a fair chance to fix the budget. It is important to watch how they vote for a solution, not their deliberations.

 Email: drswickard@comcast.net - Swickard’s new novel, Hideaway Hills, is availableat Amazon.com

Swickard: Tough times ahead for New Mexico