News New Mexico: 2016

Swickard: For 2017 let us wag more and bark less

© 2009 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. The year 2016 will go down as being extra contentious. Every presidential election brings out the barbs by partisans but this one was worse. I hope 2017 features the mantra: wag more and bark less. I saw that on a bumper sticker and liked it.

The problem is that many people continue spewing hate from the election which didn’t change things then nor now. There are many still trying to change the presidential election but that hay is in the barn. Others have gotten addicted to the ways of spewing poison and do so whenever possible.

This is very apparent on our roadways where nice driving is an exception rather than the rule. The other day I was behind a woman who was waiting for someone to finish their turn. Neither the woman nor I could proceed but the person behind me was losing his mind. Yes, it was a young man. He was honking and waving at me but I couldn’t move.

We were making this young man be several seconds late. Oh, my. He finally came by me waving and cursing and swerving at me and the lady in front. Oh, my. It appeared he intended to pull in front of me and come back and punch me which would not have ended well since I was armed.

Instead he screeched off and ran a red light. Oh, my. In a matter of seconds his road rage almost caused several accidents. Why did this person feel entitled to act like an idiot? Perhaps it is because he does so online continually and his troll behavior has gone to his driving.

There is an epidemic of rage driving and dare I say new rules might be needed. I’m not one to want more legislation since we have a million rules for every person. Still, this might need something like if you are caught driving aggressively the first time, you lose your driver’s license for five years. That will make you older and you will be so glad to get your license back.

* Note, I have been told that if you take the driver’s license away they will just drive and threaten people anyway. I believe we can incarcerate them until they are too old to drive if they want to be mule-headed.

Wait. I was wanting to talk about wagging more and barking less. Shuckins, it is so easy to bark. And there are things that should be barked at but I want this next year to be one of more wagging and less barking. So first, we must heal the partisan wounds and become one nation rather than two fighting camps.

Again, that won’t be easy since many of Americans have gotten such a thrill out of being a jackass to the other people in our country. Mostly, this is online and in the media. When I lived in a small New Mexico town for many years this was rarely done.

The reason was simple: if you said something rude about one of the people you would see that person at coffee break and at lunch and at the town meeting. That person would play pitty-pat with your head for being such a wise guy. So, we were a bit more genteel because any slight was dealt with right away.

To their credit there are some media editors that attempt to take the slights out of discussion but it is like trying to wipe the stripes off a tiger. We Americans are getting wrapped around the political axle about Russia or China or countries in the Middle East.

The truth is contained in a statement made in 1848 by Henry John Temple Palmerston, “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”

The same is true for both of our political parties where it doesn’t matter which party, it matters which interest. My interest is that Americans get along better and not be so belligerent to those around them. For the year 2017 and beyond let us Americans wag more and bark less. A very Happy New Year my friends.

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

Swickard: Christmas Holiday Constitutional Amendment needed

© 2009 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. In 1870 our country had thirty-seven states. By then thirty-three of these states already had done something that the United States Federal Government finally did that year. It was name Christmas an official holiday. Alabama was the first state to name Christmas as an official holiday, doing so in 1836.

On June 28, 1870 President Ulysses Grant signed the legislation to make the federal holiday of Christmas. There wasn’t opposition because most politicians didn’t want to be known as opposing Christmas.

I have written about this previously but it still seems we Americans are conflicted. People seem glad to have the day off but the core issue involves the question: is Christmas a religious holiday?

Of course, since it celebrates the birth of Jesus. Can this religious federal holiday be allowed by the United States Constitution? We have done it for a very long time and we are doing it this year for certain.

The Supreme Court did not stop Nativity Scenes in 1984 but the high court has not ruled directly on the constitutional issue of the Federal Holiday of Christmas. I do not want the Supreme Court deciding if Christmas should be a federal holiday. Rather, this should be decided in the legislative process.

The only way to insure Christmas remains a federal holiday is to pass a Constitutional Amendment naming December 25th as the Christmas Federal Holiday. When passed by Congress then the constitutional amendment must be passed by thirty-eight states to become a part of the United States Constitution.

To take the other side, if enough federal or state legislators vote against the constitutional amendment then that’s the answer as to if our nation should have a Federal Christmas Holiday. But an overwhelming group of federal and state legislators would rather set their hair on fire than be known to have voted against Christmas.

I am willing to see the federal holiday of Christmas be retired if enough members of Congress and members of state legislatures put their name on a vote against the Christmas amendment. This would settle the issue on constitutional grounds.

We must do so because the “Politically Correct” crowd has threatened lawsuits on many government entities including public education. In most public schools, Christmas became Winter Holiday without a vote in Congress.

This spilled over into the business community. Citizens quelled it when they announced no Christmas greetings, no shopping from us. The stores caught on. They can also say Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah or anything else but they cannot omit Christmas greetings and still get our business.

When some of our laws are in effect repealed by special interest groups without elected representatives voting, our representative form of government ends. The only way to proceed is a up or down vote on Christmas in our country. Our representatives must be put on the spot to vote up or down.

I do not blame public schools for casting off Christmas songs, plays and pageants when our Representatives and Senators do not stand up for Christmas. They have let unelected people force the issue.

Now I do not have any trouble with the separation of the biblical story of the Baby Jesus in the public schools. Leave that to the parents and Churches. However, in the effort to not say Christmas, traditional songs cannot be sung.

Also, Santa Claus is politically incorrect so students are not permitted a classroom “naughty or nice” song. Teachers are instructed in many schools to have nothing to do with Christmas.

For me it will always be the Christmas Holidays. Some of my most treasured memories are of Christmas with my family. Friends have come and gone, loved ones are around me while others have passed. They still figure brightly in my memory.

I agree with Erma Bombeck, “There is nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.” Or to be able to celebrate Christmas with a child.

There is a need for a Constitutional Amendment on Christmas so some Federal Judge does not take it away from our country or even the Supreme Court. Merry Christmas to you if you celebrate Christmas. Happy Holidays to you if you do not.

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

Trying to measure the immeasurable in education

Sorry Albert, the first death in a heavily administered public school education system is student curiosity. Most students initially come to school curious about everything but if their curiosity is not nurtured it dies as does their desire to learn.

To really learn using literacy and numeracy the student must perceive an internal need for those abilities. This is where higher order thinking skills develop. But these activities are on the decline because of testing-fixated administrators.

America has gone on a journey to measure education which is immeasurable for administrators fixated on accountability. The core of education: curiosity, is being ignored so that the administrative testing mission can be achieved.

Example: lately there is a push to constrain teacher absences even when teachers are sick. New Mexico reportedly saved three million dollars last year by strong-arming teachers to come to school even when sick and therefore not use substitute teachers. How does having a teacher with active pneumonia in school help anything?

An army of armchair accountants in the public schools are counting things to be able to say which schools are good or not. They count teacher absences and what parents answer on surveys and how the bulletin boards look and which bubbles children mark on tests.

It’s a scam and most people in education realize that public school education has been hijacked by administrators intent only upon gaining power and money. They are enabled by politicians only intent on gaining power and money. If America had enemies, what would they do different in our public schools? Nothing! They are being destroyed as if an enemy were intent on their destruction.

When I judge public schools, I look for active curiosity in that school’s students. If they sit in mind-numbing silence preparing for an endless supply of mind-numbing tests, they are intellectually dead. Mostly, the testing-fixated administrators cause the intellectual deaths of the school’s students.

Very active student led classrooms are run by teachers who give lots of items of curiosity to the class and direct gently the students to uses of literacy and numeracy. These isn’t one model of a curiosity based classroom, it depends on the students that year in that classroom not the curriculum directors.

Teachers must be agile to find what each year’s students find interesting and tie it back to the need for literacy and numeracy. It can be done but not in schools dominated by top-down testing fixated administrators.

Those administrators who live by the constant use of tests are trying to measure the immeasurable when it comes to education. They focus on tests to induce teachers to juke the system by having students study for the accountability tests rather than spending their time on learning activities.

One of the most stressful jobs is being a bus driver since there is a time schedule but the driver cannot control the traffic. Likewise, teachers are put in a system where curiosity, the core of learning is removed yet their job evaluation is put on testing to which the students have no interest. Very stressful.

I would like to see schools return to a curiosity based curriculum where there are many activities designed to stimulate student curiosity. Return Art and Music to prominence along with having an active garden in each school tended by students. They will plan and direct the growth then harvest and use the products.

Also, I think that elementary school in the fourth grade should start teaching students to fly using flight simulators. It stimulates geometry and percentages and the language of flight. I also think a virtual zoo should be at every school so that teachers can see which animals capture the attention of their students.

We must do away with the notion that if students are happy, they are somehow not getting a good education. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Walt Disney wrote, “We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” If this current generation of administrators kill the curiosity in our young people, what will be our nation’s future? Very bleak.

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

Swickard: Good presidents and bad

The first President in my memory was Dwight Eisenhower. I was born when Truman served but don’t remember him. My father was a career military man. He happily had a badge, “I like Ike.”

As someone who studies Presidents, it seems that in a hundred years people may consider Eisenhower the best president of the Twentieth Century. What he did with power was good and he didn’t tell the press.

What makes me think of this is social media proclaiming the best and the worst Presidents without research. We must agree on how to judge a President. Many Presidents were very popular during their lives and subsequently dropped as details of their presidency came out. Warren G. Harding was one.

Here are my five worst presidents: absolute worst was Teddy Roosevelt. Next was James Polk. Then Andrew Johnson. Next was Lyndon Johnson and fifth worst was Herbert Hoover. I can write a thousand words about their actions that landed them on my bad list. Maybe later.

My pick for best presidents involves them doing things that others of their generation would not have done. Washington set the bar high. After him I admire Abraham Lincoln who no one expected to be nominated. He was awful his first year as he tried to grow into the job. Then providence smiled upon him for the ages.

Lincoln almost single-handedly ended slavery in our country. He didn’t run to do it but came to understand how he needed to use his presidential powers. Likewise, Thomas Jefferson was bright but there were a dozen bright politicians when he decided to run for President.

Once in office Jefferson allowed his curiosity of plants and animals to evolve into sending the Corps of Discovery under the command of Lewis and Clark across North America. In a three-year period, what was known about the North American West was increased way beyond anyone’s expectations.

Speaking of a good president: Calvin Coolidge agreed to be Vice-President but did not have greater expectations. He was a quiet effective person who when thrust into the presidency took us out of a bad economic time and give us the “Roaring Twenties.” He like Eisenhower did not toot his horn so many people do not realize how good both were at being president.

Ronald Reagan likewise took our nation out of a bad economic time and gave us nearly two decades of prosperity. He almost single-handedly took the Soviet Union down when no one thought it could be done. And he inspired many Americans with his presidency.

Which brings us to Donald Trump. No one can tell how he will be viewed in a hundred years and as the saying goes, “A hundred years from now it is all new people.” But there are things we can see both good and bad that give us a framework to watch him as he conducts his four years of being president.

Trump already is someone that does not do like the swarms of politicians do in our nation’s capital. That may be both good and bad. Not many thought he had a chance to win but he did. In that he is like Lincoln who ended up with the nomination while the political leaders scratched their heads and wondered how he did it.

Lincoln also was a polarizing figure where he was loved or hated. In fact, nine states seceded from the Union before he was inaugurated based on their hatred of him. Trump is also like Jefferson in that he is interested in lots of stuff, but not politics.

We can see that Donald Trump is his own man and no one waving money will get his attention. Like Lincoln newly elected Donald Trump is hated by the press.

He can grow into the job of the presidency or not. Only time will tell. He may join the others on my list as a great president but he must do things, not just talk. We have had enough talk, it is time for action to get our people back to work and the economy going. Let’s see how he uses his power.

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

Swickard: When budget cutting must be done

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. There is a huge push in our country to talk about the office of the United State President without any data. Example: there is a notion that the protests about the election of Donald Trump are unprecedented. When Lincoln was declared the winner in 1860, nine states seceded from the Union. Our nation fought the Civil War.

So far, our nation has not had any states quit but there is still time before Trump takes office. California is one state with citizens wanting to secede. They can’t because they have spent themselves into the poor house and only federal money can keep them going.

California has overspent its budget 127 billion dollars. In round numbers that’s $3,500 per every person, dog, cat and hamster in the state. So, California is not going anywhere other than the poor house.

New Mexico is over spending this year’s budget by about 500 million dollars. That’s about $250 for every person, dog, cat and coyote. Our representatives in Santa Fe need to stop spending everything in the coffers they can find and a little more each year. Restraint is needed.

There is good news (hooray) and bad news (shuckins) as to the New Mexico budget. First the good news. It isn’t hopeless like what is happening in California. It can be fixed and New Mexico can live within its means with effective management from the representatives in Santa Fe.

The bad news is that the solution will hurt. Some people will lose their jobs through no fault of their own. This cannot be helped. What has put New Mexico in dire straits (not the band) was the election of Bill Richardson in 2002. Previously Governor Gary Johnson had New Mexico as one of only five states with a rosy financial picture.

But Bill Richardson came to New Mexico and the governorship with only one goal: to become the President of the United States. Every moment, action and tax dollar available was used to get Bill Richardson on the world’s stage as a top-tier presidential contender. This push to get Richardson the presidential nomination didn’t come cheap.

Richardson worked to be declared the “Education Governor” of the United States. He won that moniker which came with a propensity to hire lots of people into the Public Schools. This was supposed to make New Mexico number one in education nationally. Sadly, spending lots of New Mexico tax dollars didn’t make Richardson president nor did it lift New Mexico education.

Worse, once people are hired they expect to keep their jobs. With the downturn of oil and gas revenue the state of New Mexico has less money available and must do something. Most of the quick cures have already been done so this time it must be drastic. There are only two places to get this money.

The first is to raise the gross receipts taxes substantially. In many places the gross receipts tax is above seven percent. Taking it to ten percent or more would cripple the economy. Don’t look to Corporate Taxes since they are only about ninety million dollars a year.

The only place left to really make a cut is education. To balance the budget New Mexico needs to cut about ten percent from education. This is despite the education mantra that it doesn’t have enough money even now and need lots and lots more money.

Most of the education budget is spent on people. That is why what must be cut are some of those people who were hired during the Richardson orgy of spending. There is one rule. NEVER fire or change the pay for teachers. The cuts must be with administration and everything else such as the legions of consultants in schools.

Shrink the administrative overhead to balance the budget. It can be done without harm to the students. The representatives will need to cut other things but the main thing is to cut education. Politically that is almost impossible but the next election is as far away as possible so maybe it can be done.

Finally, quit spending everything the state has and a little more than the state has each year. Don’t turn our state into a California.

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

Swickard Column: Thankful for Thanksgiving

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. A caller to my radio talk show a few years ago said, “If you had not come to North America, the Native Americans would still be living free in a glorious land all by themselves. Shame on you for ruining it for them.”

My first thought was: I’m old, but I am not that old. I replied, “If Europeans had not come, Russia or another organized culture would have conquered these tribes.”

Those North America populations lacked a cohesive organization. Any time within a couple decades of Europeans landing the native populations could have suddenly and thoroughly wiped out all Europeans if they coordinated their efforts.

That way of life was doomed by the tribes not being organized. But what was done is done. All we today can do four hundred years later is treat those indigenous descendants fairly and with cultural sensitivity.

Our country has been uniformly unreliable in dealing with the indigenous populations. Most 19th Century agreements were broken. Americans did not care. However, many of us do care now but it is impossible to right those wrongs. I think of this each year especially on Thanksgiving.

One thing totally American is the Thanksgiving holiday which developed long after the Pilgrims. Most of the heavy lifting to make this the holiday that it is goes to Abraham Lincoln. The final placement was tied to Franklin Roosevelt in World War Two.

It’s a holiday I’ve celebrated all my life. I am thankful that my ancestors did come to these lands. Two branches of my family came about the same time and were in the Revolutionary War. They were on opposite sides. But during my lifetime the two branches enjoyed Thanksgiving… my mother and father.

Our simplistic discussion of the “First Thanksgiving” has some aspects of truth but not a general truth. Regardless, that was then and this is now. Many of us, myself especially, have so much to be thankful for that a holiday focused on being thankful is perfect.

We in the 21st Century are not the people of the past. In the last two hundred years, this nation has dealt with most of the human rights issues that were a blight upon our nation. As such we have a president with an African heritage and we almost elected a woman president. We are a nation trying to be a better people.

We have stumbled a bit with the election since it seems to have brought out the worst in some people on both sides. I for one am very happy that it is over. Hopefully we can do some work before we must stop and have another election.

This is the American way. In my life thankfulness is a way of life. Much of what we have with prosperity and freedom was paid for by other Americans. Often we never know their names but we see the effect of them in our better lives.

One major task remains. In the coming years, we must heal the final American wound, that of the indigenous people. While none of those people treated so badly are still alive, the Native Americans, as a whole, continue to not enjoy a prosperity equal to other minorities in our nation.

How to do so is something that I do not know. There is a need to have justice with the Native Americans in our country. We are troubled by the word sovereignty. Are they or not? I don’t know. We are wrong to think they should be thankful that our ancestors came and conquered their ancestors.

But should Native Americans celebrate thankfulness at this holiday named Thanksgiving. Absolutely, if they so desire to focus on the individual act of thankfulness. They can ignore the “First Thanksgiving” that is mostly made up. And those moments that destroyed their ancestor’s world. But we are alive now.

We all should celebrate thankfulness, not for history or politics but for the human emotion of hope and individual thankfulness.

I’m personally thankful for my loving family and friends. Also for the many years I have been allowed to write a weekly newspaper column. To all of you reading this I am grateful and wish you peace and happiness.

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

Swickard: New Mexico can’t afford politician promises

The election is over so we must stop talking election politics and have these who were elected start making the tough decisions. I don’t care who is running in 2018 or 2020, we must fix serious problems now.

Running for office has little to do with fixing New Mexico’s financial problems. In fact, it may make our problems worse since running for office often entails making elaborate promises to spend more money. We don’t have more money, we have less. The problem is two-fold.

First, in the last New Mexico Legislative session in January New Mexico legislators put in the budget a far rosier revenue projection than what has actually been collected this year. No amount of posturing by politicians can change this shortfall. Hard choices must be made since New Mexico is spending more money than available.

New Mexico’s budget is unlike the federal government since New Mexico cannot spend more money than it has. The New Mexico Constitution is clear that New Mexico cannot deficit spend.

The New Mexico 2016 budget is running in the red and it is likely the same problem will be for the 2017 budget when the Legislature meets next January. Some people running for office have not worried about this problem since they put their entire attention on winning their election. Now the price for victory will be paid.

One of two things must be done. New Mexico must spend less or collect more. Perhaps they could do both. Raising taxes is problematic since it is dynamic. The higher the tax rate goes up, more New Mexicans will take legal actions to avoid those taxes. I didn’t say evade which is illegal, rather, they will avoid them.

One dramatic way is to move to a state with no state income tax such as Texas. While a pain in the keister to move, it does happen and the New Mexico budget suffers. The legislators could retroactively tax which would make it hard to avoid paying the tax but that would also drive taxpayers out of the state.

New Mexico has a great climate and yummy green chile but there are states near that have good climates and no state income tax. Yes, you would have to change the spelling to chili which doesn’t impress me. The state could tax businesses more but again it causes some businesses to leave and therefore less rather than more money to be collected.

The sensible thing would be to cut the budget down significantly but the big spending party ran the political table in much of the recent election so I do not expect this to happen. Promises of more money for many things were made and were rewarded with election victories.

What I am hearing is that these are extraordinary times so extraordinary actions are needed. New Mexico has lots and lots of money in Permanent Funds which are not supposed to be touched. But this is extraordinary.

Some people wish to spend money from NM’s Permanent Funds. It won’t be easy but it can be done. Should it be done is a better question. In a word: no. Alaska is in a big political whirl because the residents are used to getting lots of money for being a resident and the decline of oil revenue is making this impossible.

New Mexico’s troubles likewise go to oil and gas revenue which is not providing as much support as the legislators want to spend. The budget over just a few years has gone up fifty percent but going down ten percent for some legislators is out of the question.

This January New Mexico has the best chance to solve their financial woes without an election immediately on the horizon. Regardless, some wish to confiscate NM’s Permeant Funds and go on a spree of spending the likes of which this state has never seen.

One day the Permanent Funds will be gone. These politicians will sneak out of public service with their retirement. It will be our children’s problem. I refuse to betray them this way. I hope you will refuse also.

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

Swickard column: The always watching society

Thomas Jefferson was more right today in his quote from two hundred years ago than when he was alive. Back then only if people were watching could they see what happened. Yes, someone could tell them what happened but to see it for themselves they had to be there when it happened.

With amazing changes in our technology, we are now a society that is always watching and recording whatever happens anywhere. When anything happens, out comes the cellphones and the product goes on the Internet almost instantly so that lots of people know within moments.

When I was younger and would come upon a traffic accident people would pile out of their cars to see if they could help those involved. Today people pile out of their cars and most jerk out their cellphones to record and instantly post what is happening rather than provide any help either for those injured or to direct traffic so no one else gets hurt. They just stand being of no use in a crisis.

This would predict a respectful and lawful society since whatever you do will probably be recorded in security tapes, personal cellphones or other recording devices. But it seems we have a society that knows it is being recorded and acts badly despite the fact there always is a record of their actions.

Often when confronted with the evidence they have done something wrong their response is: are you going to believe me or believe your own eyes? And we seem to believe the liars because we have a need for what they are lying about and so will be hopeful rather than truthful.

With an always watching and recording society it is prudent to assume anything you do outside of your own home is being recorded. Not necessarily watched every moment, there are not enough people on our planet to watch everything as it is being recorded. But anything you do can be seen if there is a reason to look.

I am so surprised when I see people doing things in stores which uniformly have security cameras. There is little chance that someone can do something without it being available for people to see and judge. This is especially so at athletic events, even local sports events.

Example: recently it appears to me that at a New Mexico high school football game the referees cheated one New Mexico high school out of a victory in the last minute of the game. Frankly, this has happened before but what is different is that the theft is being watched by thousands of people on the Internet.

The people who were broadcasting the game selected the last minute of the game where the game officials cheated and posted it on the Internet which is where I saw it. To those interested, it was a New Mexico high school football game between Artesia and Goddard high schools.

Artesia won the game several times but the referees cheated which is shown on the recording. Least you think I am an Artesia supporter, no, I went to Goddard High School in the Fall of 1966. I have no dog in this controversy other than it is obviously a theft that was recorded.

If you want to see this use the search term, “The final 37 seconds of this high school football game took asurreal 17 minutes.” I have watched it a couple times and those seventeen minutes are beyond belief. Each time I watch this I cannot believe that there was no action taken by the controlling authorities.

Previously when these kinds of things happen you had to be at the game to see it or perhaps you could get a look at what each school had recorded. And even with the evidence so easily seen, the authorities are ignoring the theft and the given game stands. Sad.

What has left the always watching society is truth. We cannot get the truth back into our society because so much of our always watching society loves to cheat and lie. I’m so very sad and that’s the truth.

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

Forty-six years later and still looking for an answer

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. Is it a hoax? How could anyone be skeptical of Manmade Catastrophic Global Climate Change? That’s what I get when I write that it seems to be a hoax. The controversy started about seventeen thousand days ago.

April 22, 1970 was a pleasant Southern New Mexico day on the campus of New Mexico State University. I was a sophomore Journalism major covering the first Earth Day.

It was a shock to me when an organizer proclaimed most people on Planet Earth would be dead within ten years (1980) from Manmade Global Cooling. This would drive the temperature of Earth down.

I asked a question that afternoon that was not answered then nor has it been addressed in the forty-six years since even though I keep asking it. I’ll get to that question after I explain why I became a skeptic.

That afternoon I thought it would be nice to drop the temperature in New Mexico though it would be a problem for farmers in Canada. Occasionally, over the next few years there would be stories predicting Global Cooling but nothing happened.

Ten years later in 1980, the theory changed dramatically to identify a completely different danger: Manmade Global Warming. All people on planet Earth would be dead within ten years (1990) because the planet would become too hot. Shuckins, I thought, first cooling was going to kill us and now warming. I became skeptical and wrote that it seems a hoax to give government more power and money.

Some readers roasted me for my skepticism in advance of the theoretical roasting from Manmade Global Warming. Then ten years went by without any change.

In 1990, it was twenty years after the introduction of Manmade Global Cooling and then the change to Manmade Global Warming. The proponents of the theory now said we would all be dead within ten years (2000) unless everyone on the planet stopped using fossil fuel. Also, the word “Catastrophic” was added.

Fast forward to the year 2000 when Catastrophic Manmade Global Warming was certainly going to kill everyone on the planet within ten years (2010) per the mainstream media. But our climate didn’t change as had been predicted for thirty years.

With the Internet becoming so prevalent there came many false stories claiming vast climate changes unsupported by scientific data. Rather, political agendas drove the research where millions of dollars were awarded to universities for finding the desired political outcome: there is Global Warming.

Example: recently we learned the United Kingdom gave $11 million to the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Warming but the organization just published findings of Climate Change without doing any research. This fraud and others have been discovered but the mainstream media doesn’t care.

This is now in the category of a religion where you must believe in the political advocacy regardless of the real data. This year we’re told Catastrophic Manmade Global Climate Change is more dangerous than nuclear global war. What utter crap.

Since this is political there’s a huge push to silence skeptics. Valerie Richardson in The Washington Times April 14, 2016 wrote, “Bill Nye, ‘the science guy’ says in a video interview released Thursday that he is open to the idea of jailing those who deviate from the climate change consensus.”

Regardless, the question I have asked over and over during the last forty years has not been answered. If humans can change the climate of Earth, what’s the best temperature? Before we change Earth’s temperature we must consider what is the best for all humans?

How do we decide this issue? We have the push to lower the temperature via carbon trapping but do we want the temperature of Planet Earth to go down and have less carbon available for plant growth?

In 1970, at the first Earth Day, I was introduced to the theory of Global Cooling. Forty-six years later I still call this a hoax designed to give power to governments. I am still upset that no one will address the best temperature on Earth question.

If telling the truth about this political hoax is a jailing offense in our country, I will serve my time in a country without a Constitutional First Amendment.

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

Swickard: Wind and solar are a-changin'

That’s the problem with the future which always creeps up on us. There are huge changes in our society coming but most people don’t see them because they don’t believe in relatively sudden technological changes.

Example: many people don’t believe wind or solar power will have any effect upon them. They see it as the government throwing money so politicians can get votes and donations. Wind or solar to them are boondoggles when the government gets involved for political reasons. And in today’s world I must agree. Today’s world.

That leaves the future of wind and solar generation which is much different and closer than most people realize. Currently, except for harvesting government subsidies these technologies are only of use in houses in the sticks where bringing a power line in would cost the same as building a battleship.

However, the use of wind and solar will change. As 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Bob Dylan wrote in 1964: For the times they are a-changin’ You must believe to see the changes coming. That may catch people and governments unaware and could mean they are today investing in the wrong technologies.

Solar and wind generation has three major shortfalls compared to traditional generation: first, the density of the power while generating it. Secondly, the continuous dependability of the power. Finally, the transmission and generation cost. All three are deal breakers for adopting wind or solar in today’s world.

There is another problem adopting the current commercial wind and solar generation. It is the thousands of dead birds smacked by wind generation blades or fried from flying into solar death rays. Our current efforts are not the way to have these technologies become mainstream.

The change that will enable solar and wind generation to become mainstream is when innovation dramatically lowers the cost to store that wind and solar power cheaply at the end-user’s home. This would allow wind and solar generation to become the technology of choice without any government subsidies.

Can this happen? Yes, here’s a way to look at that possibility of massive change.

Twenty years ago, the technology in my life involved seven different media devices. I used a Canon F1 camera, a Sony tape recorder/player; a Motorola cell phone, a Gateway home computer with modem, a digital storage unit to back up my computer files and a VHS video player plugged into my Sony television.

Seven devices that are now contained in my Samsung smartphone. And, I now have Wi-Fi which allows me as a writer to do things I could only dream of doing twenty years ago. Twenty years ago I had no idea so much change was on the horizon.

That is the same scenario for the dramatic shift to home-based electrical generation and storage. It starts with the move to power vehicles with stored electricity rather than fossil fuel. Currently, the cost per mile of an electric vehicle is above that of gas or diesel powered vehicles. But like the change in my media devices, the core issue is the cost of storage which is dropping dramatically.

Take computer memory sticks. Just a few years ago it was ten dollars for one megabyte of storage in a memory stick. Now it is ten dollars for a hundred gigabytes. All in a couple years. The same will happen in power storage which will allow homeowners to have their own wind or solar storage.

I could write more but that is enough to point out that having the expectation of oil and gas being a major benefit to budgets in years to come might just be proven wrong by the dropping storage costs in whole home batteries.

Stanford University’s Tony Seba has written about this in, “Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation: The industrial age of energy and transportation will be over by 2030.” It is a very thought provoking dialog about how technology will change our world soon.

It isn’t if conventional power will end being useful, only when. That point is when home power storage costs less than the transmission of traditional energy. Then it will make sense to change.

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

Swickard: Unspoken terrorism in New Mexico

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. This month is the centennial celebration of a large dam in Southern New Mexico that was officially named the Woodrow Wilson Dam. Nope, that name didn’t stick. We know it as Elephant Butte Dam.

The celebrations this month tell many stories about how the Rio Grande Project was started and how the engineers constructed the first phase of the dam, completing it by 1916. At the time it was constructed, Elephant Butte Dam was the largest man made dam and lake in the world. Electric generation was added in the 1930s.

But there is more to the story of this dam. If we were alive one hundred years ago we would have been aware of German sponsored terrorism in the United States. Most people remember the Pancho Villa Raid on Columbus New Mexico in March 1916 but there was more terrorism going on at that time.

There was even an attempt to destroy Elephant Butte Dam which historians note but isn’t mentioned in any of the celebrations. New Mexico author Eugene Rhodes wrote a story of this attempt entitled, No Mean City, in the May 17 and 24, 1919 Saturday Evening Post.

Rhodes died in 1934. In 1975 there was a collection of his stories published: The Rhodes Reader: Stories of virgins, villains, and varmints. This is where I found the story. The book is still in print at Amazon.com.

The September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center was not the first major terrorist attack on New York City. There was a large terrorist attack on New York City at 2:08 a.m., July 30, 1916. The target was a huge munitions supply terminal called Black Tom Island.

German terrorists attacked Black Tom Island because it was shipping ammunition, powder and artillery shells to the Allies. These were loaded onto ships bound for France and Great Britain.

In 1916, America was technically neutral in the European War. However, America leaned heavily toward the Allies by supplying munitions to the French and British. The German High Command considered America an enemy so they created a terrorist organization inside America.

The German saboteurs started fires in the ammunition transportation areas. The resultant blast leveled Black Tom Island and peppered the Statue of Liberty with shrapnel. Citizens in the New York City area were terrorized by the explosions that broke most of the windows in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

The story is detailed in a 1989 book by Jules Witcover, Sabotage at Black Tom: Imperial Germany’s Secret War in America, 1914 -1917.

The perpetrators were agents of the German government. In that era, the largest terrorist supporting government in the world was Germany. There were more than fifty major acts of terrorism in the United States from 1914 to 1917 sponsored by the German government.

That same month, German agents attacked the Senate Chamber of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. Several people were killed in that attack. Financier J. P. Morgan was shot but survived a terrorist attack. America struggled with how to control terrorism.

But what is not part of that discussion was the attack on New Mexico’s Elephant Butte Dam. After talking to several historians, it seems plausible that the ultimate aim of the destruction of the dam was to keep our country home dealing with this instead of coming to the side of France and England. Our country already had ten thousand soldiers in Mexico trying to capture and bring to justice Pancho Villa.

Even though the Germans were engaged in the destruction it appears there was an attempt to make it seem Mexico did this because of our invasion of their country. Or, worse, British agents did this to try to pin it on Germany.

In 1993 I wrote a screenplay, Hero’s Choice: between duty and honor lies every hero’s choice. Unfortunately, the eight saboteurs were killed in the attack on the dam so much of what I could write had to be fiction because there were no German survivors to tell their side of the story.

Still, in celebrating the one hundred years of Elephant Butte Dam, we should acknowledge some of the rest of the history. It was a dangerous time back then as it is now.

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

Swickard: A nice society without punching

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. As a youngster, I had hopes for when I grew up that technology would help America become a better place to live. It was standard dinner table conversation to talk about the advances of technology. Why, we even had a telephone. That was something that my grandparents never had on the ranch.

When I was seven we were at my grandparent’s ranch and witnessed the first object sent into space, the Soviet Launched Sputnik as it flew West to East. My uncle said to me, “Remember this moment for the rest of your life because with that up there our world is changing.”

We didn’t have pavement at the ranch south of Carrizozo so it was a long dirt road to go to Alamogordo. When we were just North of Tularosa there was an overpass which was paved and then the road was paved the rest of the way into town. We would all say at once, “Ah” and revel in how smooth the road was when paved.

When I was eleven we even got a television set, black and white of course. And then the world was at our call by getting a kid to turn the channel changer or deal with the volume or smack the side when the picture would roll.

I was one of the side smackers when the horizontal oscillator would go out and the picture would roll. My brother and I would jump up and smack the roll out of the television until it stopped rolling. Occasionally, the television would just go dark. Go figure.

We were a community with good and bad people, with saints and sinners side by side. But there was an overarching rule that people had to act decent within the community or would be cast out. The reason I am thinking fondly of a kinder gentler time is because I am up to my neck in rude people.

When technology gave us a connection to most of the seven billion people on Earth I never thought that I would regret that technology. But I do since it seems to have brought out the very worst in our citizens. In the older days including when I lived as a young man in several small communities there was a price to pay for being rude to someone.

Often it was a punch in the snout. And since everyone saw everyone at the Post Office and the local café if you were snarky to someone there would be an immediate consequence from that person and likely several of the town elders who didn’t like that kind of behavior.

But we have a society that screams rudeness because even if you do not like the way you are treated it is next to impossible to find the culprit and administer the thrashing that the skunk deserves. So many citizens just write something snarky back and the circle continues.

Worse, in politics it is required for people to lose whatever tiny bit of genteelness and be as rude and disgusting as their vocabulary allows, all in the name of politics. Where will this end? Who knows?

Kids learn potty words from watching movies and are incredibly inappropriate with each other and adults. Yes, I understand that there is free speech, but that just means someone can say that your mother is a big pile of dog snot legally. And often illegally you will punch them in the snout. But not if they are online and there is no way to bring them to a moment of atonement.

The worse thing about this rudeness in politics is we Americans who inherited a mighty fine nation from our parents and grandparents are not being good shepherds of that trust. Rather, we ignore the incredible debt being place around the heads of our children and grandchildren while we complain that we haven’t gotten enough political plunder for our votes.

All I do now is shun those rude people when I notice them on Facebook or at a meeting. I have reached a time and station in life where punching people in the snout is not an option. Maybe I should design an app called the Snout Puncher.

Email: drswickard@comcast.net - Swickard’s newnovel, Hideaway Hills, is available at Amazon.com

Swickard: Arresting citizens before they commit crimes

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. “…society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind. It is really extraordinary that our people refuse to apply to human beings such elementary knowledge as every successful farmer is obliged to apply to his own stock breeding.” Former President Theodore Roosevelt, 1913.

It is revolting that the philosophy of eugenics from the past is raising its head again. Reasonable people destroyed the eugenics movement in the last century but we must confront eugenic thinking as it rises again.

Note: America should take Theodore Roosevelt off Mount Rushmore and replace him with the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., or movie star and WWII B-24 pilot Jimmy Stewart. I respect Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln but despise Progressive Era eugenicist Theodore Roosevelt.

In the late 19th and early 20th century the Progressive Era Movement embraced the philosophy of eugenics as a method of improving the dominant population by weeding out what elites considered undesirables. The German Nazi Party took eugenics to an extreme by killing millions of people.

Fast forward to elites in today’s society advocating eugenics without the name. Example: people are saying the government must stop crime before it happens by identifying those undesirables who are going to murder, rape and rob in the future.

They say an all-powerful government is needed to insure our safety. Already the elitist government can take property from citizens who are neither charged nor convicted of a crime. It is called, Civil Forfeiture, which the elites in government love for the power and money it brings. That leads to something even worse.

In the website American Intelligence Report, Kristan Harris reports: (Chicago) Police are arresting people for crimes they’ve not committed yet using a new computer algorithm software that identifies criminal behavior and predicts future crime. Suspects were arrested this year as a result of being put on a predictive policing Strategic Subject List and Chicago Special Order S10-06 which equips law-enforcement with the ability to arrest citizens before they commit a crime.

My concern is that the government will extend this to other classes of citizens. With the bitter fight for gun control in our nation perhaps the government will start with gun owners. They are already tagging members of the military and former members as potentially dangerous.

But it isn’t just now that this is mainstream. Bill Mauldin in his 1947 book, Back Home, wrote: During a period when veterans were big news, every time an ex-soldier got himself in a jam the fact that he was a vet was pointed out in the headline… But the sad fact was that such headlines gave added impetus to the rumor that always appears in every country after a war that the returning soldiers are trained in killing and assaults and are potential menaces to society.”

There isn’t more of a betrayal than to send citizens into battle and then view them as a class of killers who are dangerous to the society because of what they learned and did to protect our freedom. Today the leaders of our country, in general, didn’t serve in the military nor do their children serve.

Returning veterans are not treated well for their sacrifices and as Bill Mauldin pointed out it goes back into World War Two and beyond. Journalist Tom Brokaw in his book, The Greatest Generation, praises the soldiers of World War Two fifty years after they served.

But we have the 1947 words of Bill Mauldin to remind us that WWII soldiers faced an ungrateful society when they came home. As did the Korean and Vietnam soldiers.

The politicians who see our former military members as dangerous and take action before these men and women do something are as bad as all of the eugenic progressives combined. We are already betraying our former soldiers by having a Veterans Administration that is shameful in provided care.

Who knows what will come of the Chicago “arrest them before they commit a crime” but I sense that former military and gun owners are in the cross-hairs of this all-powerful government. Their eugenic moves must be stopped. And we should honor our military and former military members. Without them America would not be a free nation.

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

Swickard: Budget special session possibilities

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez will call a special legislative session because of lower oil and gas revenues than projected. If there are budget cuts, will some government workers get fired? Or will there be a tax increase a month before the November election? Both solutions may cost votes for legislators in close races.

Cutting the budget usually means someone loses their government job because much of the state’s budget is used to hire people. Often the way those people in charge respond to budget cuts is to fire the most crucially important people first because the citizen outcry may protect their budget.

Organizations often target doctors, EMTs, fire and police along with in-classroom educators. That always gets lots of citizen outcry and media attention.

Years ago in Albuquerque there was a budget crunch in the police department so they fired the street policemen in the worse section of town. Did they touch administrative people? No, because the citizens of Albuquerque wouldn’t care if those employees were fired.

The citizens of Albuquerque capitulated and added more tax revenue to the budget rather than lose critical police protection. Some politicians claim that everyone employed by the State of New Mexico is essential to the state. They proclaim loudly to the media that taking any money away from existing programs will result in catastrophic damage to our state.

The talking point: there are no workers on the state’s payroll who are not completely essential. Further, we citizens will be told we must consider that state employees are just like us with bills to pay and kids to raise so being fired is featured in the media reports letting us citizens know that firing state workers will destroy lives.

Another option being discussed is to increase taxes. That way no one is fired. But in the middle of an election voters can express displeasure quickly. Increasing taxes is unlikely this time.

One thing not being discussed much is that they can raid the New Mexico Permanent Funds. Some people call them “Rainy day funds.” The quick way is to confiscate needed financial resources from the New Mexico Tobacco or other small funds.

The two funds with plenty of money are the New Mexico Land-Grant Fund created in 1912 and the 1973 created New Mexico Severance Tax Fund. It is dangerous to take money from these funds because these two funds are set to provide about one seventh of the entire New Mexico budget next year.

It is not easy to raid these funds because legislators in the past realized the glimmering pot of money would be quite attractive to politicians who only thought short-term. States like California had vast financial resources which were taken in a short-term political frenzy years ago. Now California is close to bankruptcy.

New Mexico’s budget increased more than fifty percent under former Governor Bill Richardson from 2003 to 2010. It went from about four billion dollars to almost seven billion dollars a year.

The long-term solution is to increase the economy and the budget will be corrected as long as New Mexico doesn’t elect another free spender like Richardson. There is never enough money for free spenders.

New Mexico revenues are down because the oil and gas industry is cyclically at a low point. It is a cycle but the government increase is linear. There are always difficulties when the energy resources go down.

Roy Blunt wrote, “The shortest path to more American jobs is more American energy and more jobs that relate to American energy.” That is what New Mexico needs however the problem for New Mexico politicians is that the environmental lobby has lots of power and does not want New Mexico to increase energy jobs.

So the source of money from the energy sector may not be politically available to some legislators. There are no other easily increased revenue sources. Raising taxes usually results in people and businesses leaving the state thereby actually lowering collected revenues.

New Mexico’s government is still far larger than just a few years ago with the same number of citizens. Ultimately New Mexico’s state government is about creating jobs and political power. Tough decisions cannot be avoided at this time.

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

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Forty-six years later and still looking for an answer

Swickard: Wind and solar are a-changin'

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