News New Mexico

This Week's Scheduled Guests

The guest list for next week's News New Mexico shows is complete (team photo left).
News New Mexico education editor Del Hanson is scheduled for Monday morning at 8:30am. On Tuesday morning at 7:30am Las Cruces City Councilor Dolores Connor will join us and make her views known on the controversy surrounding the extension of North Sonoma Ranch Boulevard. Mayor Ken Miyagishima will follow on Wednesday morning. NMSU Head Football Coach DeWayne Walker will be our guest on Thursday.

BP Hopeful That Damaged Well Can Stay Closed

After three days of encouraging test results, BP said Sunday that it planned to leave its well in the Gulf of Mexico closed until it could be permanently plugged, perhaps in several weeks. Read more here:

Educational Inertia and the Impending Train Wreck

The public schools are like a train barreling down a dead-end track, and there seems to be no way to even slow it down, let alone turn it around. You would have to be blind to not see the problem. Yet, as a society, we choose not to see it.

I was a physics major in college. Want a conversation-stopper at a party? Just mention that you majored in physics. First, they get a look of disbelief like a lab turning its head a quarter turn when you ask it what a quark is, followed by a blank expression of consternation, and finally they hold their head in abject horror like the figure in Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”, before quietly slinking away to “freshen their drink”. Or, try this for a suicidal move at a rockin’ get-together: mention that you were a physics major AND suggest that the discussion topic be about institutional inertia in education. Might as well as have someone yell “he’s got the plague” on the streets of London in 1348. They scatter like rats.

What we are doing in public education isn’t working. Oh, there are pockets of excellence and many hard-working, dedicated teachers still toil under difficult, if not nearly impossible, circumstances. However, if public education were an automaker, it would be belly-up and closing its doors, or at least re-structuring under bankrupcy laws. If ever a giant corporation needed to re-tool and re-organize, public education should. But, is it too big to die? It may not be too large to die, but it is definately too large to reform itself.

To use a physics term and apply it to education, it can be said that “there is too much institutional inertia to even slow the train down, let alone stop it and turn it around.” A quantum leap change must occur for public education to improve and reform. Sadly, it won’t happen in a system that now exists chiefly to perpetuate itself.

The most positive step forward in recent years was the creation of a mechanism that generated charter schools. The report is mixed on the success of charter schools, with pockets of excellence mixed with cesspools of scandal and closure. However, the charter movement seeks to move outside the carefully fortified boundaries of institutional structure that has become public education, a fortress made impregnable not by results, but by the sheer power of funding

Lest one rise to his or her feet and accuse this writer of being another negative Nellie bashing education, I might add that I have worked hard in public education for over three decades, always supporting and often defending it. However, even I can sense and see that what we are doing isn’t working. It benefits few, especially the children we purport to serve, to pretend that things are good and getting better. Eight years of Draconian measures spurred by No Child Left Behind haven’t made even a big dent in the overall success of our schools, except to provide a massive jobs program for test manufacturers. School children, their parents, the teachers, and the nation deserve better.

Will This Create a Consensus on Border Security?

So far over 1300 murders in Juarez in 2010, stray bullets from Juarez rattling off of the El Paso City Hall building, a Middle East style bombing resulting in three deaths, and the shooting of a rancher and law enforcement officers in Arizona has not prompted elected officials in the U.S. to reach a consensus and implement a major initiative for air tight border security. Perhaps this story (below) will really stir the emotions of those who remain unconvinced of the need.
ALBUQUERQUE - Federal authorities confirmed Friday they are investigating the death of another endangered Mexican gray wolf that was found shot along the New Mexico-Arizona border. The male wolf is the third to be found dead within the past month. It was a member of the Hawks Nest Pack. Read more here:

Where Are They Now?

Columnist Ken Blackwell recalls the process that secured one of the "swing" votes that enabled a federal government takeover of healthcare. Here is his "Where are the now? Update.".........Last spring, President Obama managed to corral the votes of a half dozen formerly pro-life Democrats in the House of Representatives for his takeover of health care. Congressman Bart Stupak (photo right - D-Mich.) had been a staunch supporter of pro-life initiatives for nearly twenty years in Congress. Tragically for him, and even more tragically for the country, Stupak fell in line behind the White House. For months he had held out, bravely. Then, at the eleventh hour, he caved in. He and his cohorts switched from being pro-lifers to being “faux lifers.” Read more here:

Larry Elder has Jesse Jackson's Number

Is NBA star LeBron James a victim of racism? The Rev. Jesse Jackson thinks so. When James decided to leave his hometown team to play elsewhere, the owner of his former team accused James, among other things, of "cowardly betrayal." He felt jilted, and his team suddenly lost perhaps half its market value. Maybe before commenting the owner should have taken a cold shower. Read more here:

Fenton Rexford Makes the ANWR Case

Inupiat Eskimo Fenton Rexford, a native American who lives in the area know as the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) speaks for eight of every nine Inupiats in the area. In a video on the subject of recovering the energy reserves there his common sense resonates. Congress should be heeding his advice in the wake of the Gulf Oil Spill. Watch the video here:

Jon Barela Raised $244,000 in Q-2

According to the New Mexico Independent, NM Congressional candidate...........Jon Barela raised $244,000 in the second quarter, his best fundraising quarter so far. However, Barela’s opponent Martin Heinrich earlier announced that he had raised $375,000. Barela also trails in cash on hand through June 30. Barela had $536,000 cash on hand as of the end of June, while Heinrich had more than twice that; Heinrich has $1.3 million cash on hand. Read more here:

Chamber - Our Free Enterprise System at Risk

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce held a summit Wednesday to highlight its views on creating jobs and challenge Obama administration policies it believes have allowed the country's employment rate to stagnate.

"For the first time in my 40 years of observation, I truly think our free enterprise system is at risk," said Tom Bell, chairman of the Chamber's board of directors, opening the summit. "If you hear the conversations in Washington and read the popular press, everyone seems to see earning profit and creating wealth not as the heart and soul of our economy, but as a nefarious activity that works to the detriment of our society." Read more here:

Residents Still Support Oil Drilling Despite Spill

Despite the significant economic, environmental and emotional toll of the BP oil spill, residents of the Gulf Coast still overwhelmingly support off-shore drilling, according to a new poll. Perhaps it is because they drive cars, want to stay warm at night, and have food on their tables. Read more here:

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