Swickard: An Overdue New Mexico Celebration

Sheriff Pat Garrett

© 2017 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.  There is a celebration missing in New Mexico. Naturally our tourist industry would love to have another festival where tourists come celebrate with us. Better, this celebration would be about a real New Mexico hero. Unfortunately, New Mexico does not currently celebrate this man and he should be celebrated.

            Over the years New Mexico has developed a large celebration involving famous western outlaw Billy the Kid. Me, I would rather celebrate lawmen than outlaws. So why not celebrate Sheriff Pat Garrett? There is so much misinformation about Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett, which is why Pat Garrett still is not celebrated.

            No longer. A new book is out written by David G. Thomas: Billy the Kid’s grave: a history of the Wild West’s most famous death marker. It’s Volume 4 of the Mesilla Valley History Series.

            The author is the son of former New Mexico State University President Gerald Thomas. David Thomas is a careful historical researcher combining a background in history and competition chess. What David learned as a chess master translates to his history research. He researches history like it is a chess match.

            There are many parts of the Billy the Kid story that I had wrong from traditional sources. David Thomas’s book clears up several inaccuracies that I had embraced. I am thrilled to really see what happened.

            Nothing is more so than the actual location of Billy the Kid’s grave. Previous reports are now shown to be wrong. It took a researcher of David Thomas’s ability to prove the location. There’s a wealth of this kind of research in the book. I was most interested in Pat Garrett.

            Over the years, I have called for some celebration of this lawman who was a Sheriff of Lincoln County then later of Doña Ana County. He is a New Mexico hero with plenty of blemishes.

            Regardless, he deserves a celebration at least equal to that of Billy the Kid. This is difficult because people are stuck in their ways of thinking from popular movies where Garrett is the villain and Billy the hero.

            This is false. The real hero was lawman Pat Garrett while Billy the Kid was a criminal who murdered people including three New Mexico lawmen. Over the last forty years I’ve written this several times. The Billy folks always point out that Garrett was known to visit taverns. And was a rotten gambler.

            While having human failings, Pat Garrett performed heroically when duty called. If Pat Garrett was living today he would provide plenty of stories for the tabloids about his drinking and gambling.

            But when duty called, Sheriff Pat Garrett didn’t shrink back. He performed his duty. Like the stories about the police and fire personnel on September 11th, Garrett ran toward danger, not away from it.

            We remember Pat Garrett mostly because he is currently depicted as the villain in the Billy the Kid movies. However, Billy’s character, by actual western standards, was that of a coward, cheat and horse-thief. The community in 1881 heaved a collective sigh of relief when Sheriff Pat Garrett finally got Billy the Kid in Ft. Sumner that July 1881 night as David Thomas’s book conclusively documents.

            As we think of Garrett, let us reflect on these facts: Garrett only used his guns to bring peace to New Mexico. Billy killed at least seven people in cold-blood. Garrett raised a family. His blind daughter Elizabeth was a nationally recognized opera singer. In 1915 she wrote New Mexico’s official song, “O Fair New Mexico.”

            We should have Pat Garrett Days. Perhaps tourists would not buy Pat Garrett trinkets the way they buy Billy the Kid trinkets, but decent folks would appreciate community values being celebrated.

            I cannot right the wrong done to Pat Garrett and to the generations of Garretts still in our community other than tell the truth about him. We need a Pat Garrett celebration to make up for the fact he was murdered foully and treated in death even worse.

            David Thomas has written a history book for the ages which tells the truth about Billy and Pat Garrett. I believe Las Cruces should be the center of the Pat Garrett Days Western Celebration.

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

Swickard: An Overdue New Mexico Celebration

Swickard: Two big problems with the minimum wage

© 2017 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.  “The real minimum wage is zero.” Thomas Sowell

             Two problems: government imposition of a minimum wage is price-fixing. Worse, it doesn’t work because people don’t live an hour at a time, they live month to month.

            It’s not in the best interest of consumers when governments price-fix the price of labor. Technically, price-fixing is when participants in a market buy or sell a product, service, or commodity only at a fixed price.

            Besides causing higher prices, price-fixing a minimum wage raises employment barriers for unskilled workers since workers trade productivity for wages. If what a worker must be paid does not return an equal economic productivity, they cannot be employed.

            The media bombards us with heart-wrenching stories of abject poverty for people making the minimum wage. But people live by the month, never by the hour.

            There is no amount guaranteed other than the hour worked. The workers are injured when businesses, reacting to rising labor costs, trim the workforce hours or workers.

            Consider if someone is making $7 an hour for thirty hours a week. Their gross pay is $210 a week. If the minimum wage rises to $9 an hour, since the business labor costs may be fixed, that business may cut minimum wage employees to fifteen hours a week which is $135 a week.

            The government requirement is an hour, not a month. We live by the month. Of course, minimum wage earners may be the first cut since they have the least job experience. Then their minimum wage is zero.

            Price fixing has been illegal in our country since the Sherman Act in 1890. When has any government price-fixing worked? Soviet Union price-fixing caused low prices for groceries in empty grocery stores.

            In World War Two our government froze wages so for businesses to hire someone from a competitor they had to offer something else of value. It was health insurance which was not used much before then.

            Over the years, the health insurance industry grew into one sixth of our economy as our resources were given to Insurance and pharmaceutical companies along with lots of lawyers, lobbyists and politicians. Smaller amounts went to doctors and hospitals. Finally, we people became just the giving units to the high and powerful.

            Price-fixing by our government on domestically produced oil brought us the gas shortages and higher prices for energy in the 1970s along with the increase of economic power for the Middle East Oil Cartels.

            President Reagan stopped the price-fixing and oil prices went down. The more governments price-fix, the worse it becomes for their citizens. Economist Milton Friedman wrote, “The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.”

            My biggest concern in these Minimum Wage increases is that it precludes some people, usually very low skill or no skill workers from even getting a job since they must return in productivity what they are paid or the business will fail at some point.

            Often work hours are cut for the already employed low-skill workers which reduces their gross amount of monthly money. We used to work a standard forty hours a week. Lately it’s thirty-two or twenty-eight hours.

            The living wage is touted but what should be the amount? If it’s tied to $15 an hour and full employment of forty hours a week, that’s $31,200 a year. The government requiring a living wage means low-skill workers will never be employed since they cannot return that much monetary value to their employers.

            Now, if the government doesn’t like what I, as an employer, pays, they are free to add any amount they want to the paycheck of my employee. But I have three factors always: markets including prices for my goods, labor costs to produce those goods and the return on investment that keeps me in business.

            If you take the cost of labor over the possible return from the sale of my goods, I must either trim the work-force or close the business. That’s Economics 101.

            As President Ronald Reagan said at his first inauguration, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Amen to that.

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

Swickard: Two big problems with the minimum wage

Swickard: A better solution using an engineering idea

© 2017 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.   Our nation has been talking about the problem of immigration into our country involving people without legal status for decades. No one has done anything about it. Much of the talk has focused on the country of Mexico since many people coming into our country without legal status come from Mexico. Many, not all.

            As I said in last week’s column, the politicians for and against immigration solutions have been and are mainly using the controversy for their own fundraising. Politicians on both sides don’t want resolution of immigration issues because they themselves are making so much money fundraising on the fears.

            For all these years, what we know is that many people from other countries are bypassing our legal immigration processes. Over the years one of the plans is to build a wall. And it would appear a doer rather than just a talker, President Donald Trump, is set to build a wall between our country and Mexico.

            Don’t do it President Trump, I have a better plan. The wall is a thumb in the eye of Mexico. Plus, we are building a wall with no utility other than stopping people entering our country outside of legal processes.

            It won’t work. China found that after building the more than five-thousand-mile Great Wall of China. It didn’t work because invaders just bribed the Chinese guards to go through the wall when they wanted. Sounds like the problem Americans have with Drug Cartels bribing our authorities.

            I do not like win-loss political solutions. A wall does nothing for our country other than provide jobs building it and bribes for our authorities from Cartel members to get past the wall.

            There is another way to spend that money and spend it on a better win-win solution. Rather than just build a wall on the border, build a fifteen-foot raised six-lane super-freeway along with an easement on our side for two-way railroad track construction, multiple pipelines, powerlines and cellphone towers.

            The cost of just building a wall is similar to building a fifteen-foot-high super-freeway which would act as a wall. We get the benefit of an easement on our side. My friend, former State Senator Lee Cotter, a civil engineer, first mention this to me a couple weeks ago. I really like the idea.

            One of the great improvements of our time is super-freeways. President Dwight Eisenhower was an Army Lieutenant-Colonel in 1919 when he was joined a convoy of equipment and men from the nation’s Capital to San Francisco. It took the eighty-vehicle convoy sixty-two days averaging a rate of six miles per hour.

            He vowed that if he was ever in charge, he would build superhighways. At the time, Germany was doing so with its Autobahn. Eisenhower was lifted out of obscurity at the start of WWII to become the Supreme Commander of the military and then the 34th President of the United States.

            Now coast to coast travel on freeways is only a few days. So why not put another path across the Southern Border which would allow better transportation along with more access to our country’s markets for Mexico and to Mexico’s markets for our country.

            Queen Elizabeth II said, “At its heart, engineering is about using science to find creative, practical solutions.” I agree, engineering solutions are much better to use than political solutions. Our nation, using engineering sent people to the moon and returned them safely. While politician President John Kennedy started the quest, it was engineers that achieved that mission.

            Just having a wall out in the middle of the area with nothing around it will still require constant monitoring which would also be what the freeway would require. A fifteen-foot rise would make it harder to just walk across the border, but it would not be impossible. Having traffic and regular rest stops would make it attractive to our citizens and would be heavily monitored for anyone trying to cross without authorization.

            Let us build something useful to use on both sides of our southern border while still being a barrier to those who would enter our country without legal status. It is an engineering solution rather than a political solution. I like win-win solutions.

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

Swickard: A better solution using an engineering idea

Swickard: Take the political fundraising out of immigration issues

© 2017 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.   “If you want to understand any problem in America, you need to look at who profits from that problem, not at who suffers from that problem.” Dr. Amos Wilson

             The immigration problems of the last thirty years are caused by politicians who profit from them. Both sides use immigration problems for fundraising with no intention of ever solving the problems.

            No one knows what the immigration laws are any longer so people with legal status in our country and those without legal status have no idea what government agencies are going to do.

            I am sure it is not true that we have the cure for cancer but the medical field and pharmaceutical companies are making so much money they don’t want to cure cancer. Again, probably not true but I hear that said.

            It is true that when it comes to immigration reform, neither party wants to fix this broken system since they are getting political contributions from frustrated citizens on every side of the dispute. More on that shortly.

            But what is the controversy? The immigration laws of our country, specifically, the Immigration Reform and Control Act known as Simpson-Mazzoli Act enacted in November of 1986 is not being enforced. Some people think we need immigration reform while others think we should enforce the existing immigration laws.

            What is the most unfair is that both political parties have spent thirty years fundraising and not dealing with the immigration issues. Namely, there are millions of people in our country without legal status. This is the strategy of both parties to have millions of people who are uncertain of what our government is going to do.

            Recently President Trump started an effort to deport people without legal status who have committed felonies. Both political sides are showboating the issue while millions of people, heck, the entire population of our country, both those with legal status and those without legal status have no idea what will happen.

            In a nation of laws, it is unconscionable to have laws but not obey them. I don’t blame the people in our country without legal status because both political parties have barked about the issue but only looked at it to get political contributions. We should either follow the laws, make more specific laws or amend the laws. We should never ignore our laws.

            The political climate harms our nation in many ways. First, people without legal status often do not get the legal protection of our laws because they don’t want to be involved in a legal system that will note that they are without legal status. Criminals often take advantage of these people because they rarely report crimes.

            It is unfair to immigrants who followed the laws to gain legal status to have millions of people who are jumping the immigration lines. It is especially unfair to have immigration processes that often take more than ten years. We can send people to the moon and back safely, but we cannot operate an immigration system.

            Yes, I know that it doesn’t operate so that politicians can use the fear, uncertainty and doubt to drive their fundraising efforts. I see a whole lot of dysfunction that is intentional.

            So, what to do? Obviously, stop using immigration issues for fundraising. We will never get viable solutions when “There’s gold in them ills.” I see three possible actions which will be opposed by the political animals because they will reduce fundraising.

            First, before enacting immigration reform go back and see what was wrong with the 1986 Immigration Reform Act. Is it a problem of enforcement or wrong solutions? Second, endeavor to not have a shadow society since that isn’t good for anyone except politicians. Finally, find ways to have win win solutions instead of the normal political one side wins while the other side loses.

            I often say to never use a political solution for a non-political problem, be it education, the military, the economy or immigration. Finally, the political trolls on both sides who only want to call people names and make our society unpleasant, they cannot be part of any solution. We must make our society better despite the actions of our fundraising politicians.

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

Swickard: Take the political fundraising out of immigration issues

Swickard: A state government too big to cut

© 2017 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.   It’s amazing watching the New Mexico Legislature. They want to name the Green Chile Cheeseburger as New Mexico’s Burger. But they are ignoring that Texas is about to get New Mexico’s crop water in court so the only Green Chile available for burgers may come from Colorado.

            And that’s not all. The Legislature was called into session primarily to deal with a large amount of money missing from the budget. The first thing said by some leaders in the House and Senate was that the New Mexico Government is too big to cut. Too many New Mexicans have been hired to fire any of them.

            They got that from the banking crisis of 2008. It worked for the bankers then and seems to be working now. Thanksgiving will be awful if some of the state worker cousins gets laid off and other do not.

            Since the state government cannot be cut, taxes must be raised. That is exactly what the citizens do not want. But the next election is many months away and many of the leaders in the Legislature didn’t have an opponent in this last election so the citizens have no control.

            Making it worse is the betrayal in the Legislature. Years ago, Governor Bill Richardson, who spent every second running for President of the United State had a plan to make New Mexico better and get lots of press while doing it. The food and medicine tax was abated while that amount of money was made up by raising fees.

            He was celebrated for his plan which almost got him to Washington but for a few details. New Mexico was out the money for his run at the Presidency but no one seems to care. Anyway, that Bill Richardson plan compensated by increasing fees for the loss of revenue from the tax on food and medicine.

            The rank and file New Mexicans paid the same amount of money out of the family budget each month but people who were struggling daily would struggle less. Fast forward to today where since the Legislature cannot cut the too big to cut state government they are going back to taxing food and medicine, but the fees are going to be raised also.

            To make us feel better, if that is possible, the Legislature is not putting all of the taxes back on food and medicine. But the counties were supposed to be held harmless by Richardson’s taking the taxes off food and medicine. The Legislature was supposed to make up the loss of taxes. Then the Legislature decided to not do that but let counties raise that money themselves in taxes. Already then taxes doubled since the fees were raised.

            The revenue was neutral when taxes were taken off food and medicine and fees to the state were raised. Counties then raised the taxes in their county since the Legislature would not share any of that extra state money from fees. Now the Legislature is bringing back taxes on food and medicine while raising the state fees even more. Essentially, the citizens got taken three times.

            And what the Legislature this session was supposed to do is fix the economy and find a way to deal with the loss of so much water in the Texas lawsuit. Without water for crops there isn’t going to be Green Chile, onions, alfalfa and Pecans. There will be plenty of pecan firewood for sale.

            These things will make the state much less attractive for businesses. Taxes going up and minimum wage going up. You know the minimum wage is price-fixing. It’s fixing the price of labor. Politicians don’t care.

            What’s the tipping point in New Mexico? The edge where many businesses and citizens leave? When enough leave, the budget crisis gets worse. Can’t cut the state government because it is too big to cut. If New Mexico had enemies who wanted to harm the state, what would they do differently in the Legislature? Nothing.

            We will find out what Green Chile Cheeseburgers made with Colorado green chile taste like since the Legislature is doing nothing to replace the water lost to Texas. At least the green chile isn’t coming from New York City.

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

Swickard: A state government too big to cut

Swickard: From video games to real revolution

© 2017 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.   It seems we, as a nation, are becoming more violent and aggressive. Several of us were talking after the Super Bowl that many of the commercials were very violent. People killing people seemed to be most shown. And it seems to reflect the way people are acting in our society.

            Perhaps we are just oldsters who pine for the good old days of a different century. But today many people are beyond aggressive as seen on Facebook and on our highways. When I was younger this behavior would get you a punch in the nose at the very least.

            It could be something else. I remember writing a column in 1993 that included:

            He was six years old with an innocent angelic face. As I was talking to his mother I noticed him looking at a sales catalog so I asked, “Did you see something you want for your birthday?”

            He said, “I want this video game.”

            The game seemed extremely violent. I asked, “Why this game?”

            He said, “It’s got the very best fatalities.”

            “Excuse me?” I must have heard wrong.

            “It has the very best fatalities,” he repeated. I asked, “What makes for the very best fatalities?”

            He grinned. “When blood spurts out, their bones show and their skin burns off while they die.”

            I was very shocked by this small child wanting the very best fatalities. His mother told me most young kids feel the same way about those games which is why there are so many violent games on the market.

            There has been concern about what appears to be increasing violence in our society. I believe the reason we have so much violence in America is that many Americans simply like violence. The enjoyment of violence is a many year product of the entertainment industry.

            There are gentle people and violent people here in America. It is hard to spot any difference in their general appearance. The lambs and lions lay down together but only one gets up. The lions enjoy violence while the lambs do not.

            There are times when violence is the only option. Still, even after thousands of years, the same blood lust central to the society which enjoyed going to the Roman Coliseum to watch gladiators kill each other, is alive in our own society.

            In a few years, the young boy who likes fatalities may move to real death on the streets. At the murder trial a lawyer may call his mother to the stand. She will admit she allowed her son to enjoy violence. Society must decide what to do with him once it has been established how much he enjoys the very best fatalities.

            That’s what I wrote in 1993. Over the years, I have seen many young people who are far more aggressive than people in past years. There is also the anonymous ability of some people to be jerks without getting the punch in the snout they deserve.

            Which takes us to the violent protestors that have sprung up in the last year in response to police actions and Donald Trump being elected President of the United States. The police are the police and as to the election, like it or not there is no way to go back. Donald Trump is now the president of our country.

            But we are seeing people block highways, set fires and generally throw a tantrum over the election results. They are blocking ambulances and damaging property. People are randomly being assaulted as our society is moving toward ever more violence.

            There is a concern that another Civil War is breaking out with those people unable to accept the results of the November 2016 election. They are acting out against the society. One state, California, is talking about leaving the United States but it isn’t that easy since the people of the state are citizens of the entire country.

            Could it be that so many of these protesters are acting out roles that they have experienced in video games and so are divorced from reality. That easily could be. I don’t know why they seem to enjoy the chaos they cause. But this won’t end well for any of us.

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

Swickard: From video games to real revolution

Swickard: It's raining hard so use the $15B

© 2017 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.  I was wrong recently when I wrote about not using any of the New Mexico Permanent Fund. It’s a resource for when New Mexico runs out of money from the extractive industries. New Mexico has saved a portion from every oil and gas dollar made in a rainy-day fund.

            Proponents of raiding the Permanent Fund are looking for a small percentage to politically increase the number of people working for New Mexico in Pre-school education and family support. They say the $15 billion is just waiting for a worthy project.

            Let’s take it all right now. New Mexico is dead last in almost every category. We as a state are on our backs in a pond with a rock on our chest looking up at the sky with lifeless eyes.

            New Mexico cannot compete against other states because of our problems in education, transportation, job creation, fighting crime, poverty and other measures. Businesses are moving from the Snow Belt to the Sun Belt but not to New Mexico.

            We have billions of dollars for a rainy day. If this isn’t a rainy day I don’t know rainy days. The leaders of New Mexico need to take most of that $15 billion fund and use it wisely.

            Don’t use it as a political bonus for those politicos who won elections such that the winning party members all get thousands of dollars. That would not change anything in New Mexico except for a few people who would now have new boats.

            The Permanent Fund was created by extraction of energy in our state. Oil and gas built the fund over the years. As a nation, our energy industry allows us to have the society we have. Without abundant and inexpensive energy, our nation and New Mexico would not be doing well, even as well as last place New Mexico.

            There are three problems that need to be addressed with the $15B or a large percentage of that money. They are: energy availability at a good price, water availability at a good price. Finally, New Mexico needs a sustainable economy.

            First, let’s consider energy. There are huge changes in the nuclear power generation industry such that the horror of Chernobyl or Fukushima nuclear problems are not appropriate to consider. Why? Because those were first and second generation nuclear systems that failed.

            We are considering fifth generation systems that are very economical and safe. By economical the price of a small modular unit is about $3B to generate 550 MW of power. New Mexico needs three units so they can take one offline for maintenance without disrupting the state.

            Here is what will change New Mexico. Nuclear plants run best at 100 percent so there would be lots of extra power available at times. What to do with it? The first task of excess power is the desalinization of brackish water which New Mexico has lots of to turn into good water.

            New Mexico could have abundant good water for Agriculture at essentially very little cost. Lots of jobs and businesses would follow inexpensive power and plenty of good water. What else to do with the extra power from the three units?

            New Mexico could make hydrogen fuel for the coming generation of clean hydrogen vehicles. The money from electric, water and hydrogen would go to the budget with some rebuilding the Permanent Fund.

            The fund could jump start the state’s ability to attract good companies who would provide good jobs for New Mexicans. To have plenty of good water is essential along with plenty of money for transportation infrastructure. Finally, all the improvements must be sustainable. That’s the tough part.

            Regardless of which political party holds the reins of power, the structure of improvements must be impervious to political design. Not sure we can do it, but we can try. Currently, New Mexico has all that money sitting doing nothing but functioning as a rainy-day fund and giving some money to the budget.

            It is time to make a radical change in the structure of New Mexico’s future. It will take both political parties and the citizens voting to make this happen. If not, New Mexico will continue to be last in everything.

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

Swickard: It's raining hard so use the $15B

Swickard: The right to have rights

© 2017 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.  “… that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Thomas Jefferson

             We have a national conversation going about our “rights” in society. In 1776, the three were life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness which in earlier drafts read the pursuit of property. During the time of President Franklin Roosevelt there was a push to increase the rights.

            In 1941 Roosevelt spoke about the four freedoms considered four rights that should be available to all Americans. They are: the freedom of speech, freedom to worship God, the freedom from want and the freedom from fear. The controversy was freedom from want and fear. Is it even possible to be free of wants and fears?

            Later Roosevelt proposed eight additional rights: the right to a useful and remunerative job. The right to earn enough money. The right of farmers to have a decent living.

            Also, the right of businessmen to have freedom from unfair competition. The right of every family to a decent home. The right to adequate medical care along with the right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment.

            Finally, there is the right to a good education. Not any education, a good education.

            So, do you have a right to clean water and air? Do you have a right to transportation? Do you have a right to retire when you wish? Do you have a right to entertainment?

            The problem is that some rights come with a price tag. Someone must pay, whom will that be? If each of us has the right to a good education, do we have to pay for it? Is it a right and other Americans must provide this or medical care regardless of if we pay because it’s a right?

            That is a slippery slope when we start taking the productive ability of Americans and without compensation giving their productiveness to other Americans. It is like the notion of a one hundred percent tax on some people. Sounds like government would get lots of money but that is not true because if we were taxed at one hundred percent, taxed such that we received nothing for working, it is likely we would quit.

            It’s a convenient talking point that all Americans have a right to adequate medical care. Do they have that right without compensation to the people providing the care? Do care professionals have a right to be compensated? Where is the line?

            Usually at a traffic accident, each of us is obligated to help, but is it a right for injured people? By getting into an accident do they have the right to compel us to act? Perhaps, or is that an ordinance rather than a right? Different things when we call that a right.

            Years ago, I was working as a school photographer and that day set up at an elementary school in Tucumcari, New Mexico. During the morning, a rough looking hombre walked up to the seat and before sitting down said to me, “I’ve got a Constitutional Right not to smile.”

            I said, “You’ve got it Bud.” He was happy and looked happy as I took the picture. I understood that he didn’t want one of those cheesy pictures. He wanted dignity. I was glad to give it to him but I didn’t think it a Constitutional Right. It was professional.

How do we deal when two people with rights are in conflict? It is like the question: if one endangered species is eating another endangered species what should we do? It is tough to decide since if you do not let the first species eat that species will die. And if you do then the other species becomes more endangered. It is fundamentally the same issue with rights.

            The Income Tax which came about in 1913 takes part of your productivity. It is considered the right of society to take your productivity. How much of a right is there? Can you take most of someone’s wages because of the supposed right of redistribution? Very slippery slope. Maybe we should go back to only three rights.

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

Swickard: The right to have rights

Swickard: Automatic voter registration for everyone

© 2017 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.  One thing that drives some people in our country crazy is that about half of our citizens either do not vote in our elections or worse, are not by choice even registered. A new plan has emerged in several states to have everyone eighteen and older automatically registered to vote.

            Here is the reasoning: the states have computers that can hold lots of data so automatically registering anyone in the state would be easy to do. But would it be wise? I have been on record as saying that voter registration drives do not impress me since just being registered does not guarantee that people will vote.

            And if they do not care to vote I really would rather they not. Just pulling the lever so we could say more people voted does not help our country in any way.

            Perhaps what we need to do is show what happens when people do not vote. Certainly, some would point at President Trump. Relax, I voted for him or more truthfully, I voted against someone else.

            But people are moaning that they cannot understand how a man such as him could be elected president. Truthfully, he was elected by a weak candidate and the millions of people who stayed home or did not even register to vote.

            So, some people would like to make voter registration automatic. Every person of adult age would always be able to vote. The rub is that most who didn’t vote this time would not vote next time.

            Maybe there needs to be compulsory voting. You must vote in every election. It would be like having to serve in the jury pool. You know, I just thought of a great plan: why don’t we take all those people who don’t vote and vote for them.

            Everyone registered as a Democrat or Republican would be an automatic straight vote for that ticket if they, themselves, do not vote. It would be one hundred percent participation or look like it.

            An extension of that concept would be the concept of proxy. If registration is compulsory, then we citizens should be free to give a proxy for our vote to someone we trusted. They would listen to the debates and research the candidates carefully while we get to spend our time on our Fantasy Football League.

            Or, since the vote is our own, we could sell our vote. Someone who cares and gave us a hundred dollars would be welcome to our vote. Why not? Is it our vote or not? About half of our adult population has already announced by not registering to vote that they don’t give a John Wayne Mickey Mouse Darn about the elections. Let us citizens sell our vote to someone who does care and will pay for it.

            OK, so I am mostly kidding here but the notion of having automatic registration is for real. Let me mention some issues: the sticking point is not registration, rather it appears to be the notion that the will of each and every voter might be corrupted by voter fraud.

            Example: a television station in El Paso had a story about an effort to help residents in a senior care center vote in an election. The seniors were happy that this very nice woman came by their center and handled all of the paperwork.

            The camera recorded one old geezer who said he hadn't voted since that time he voted for Ike. The interviewer then asked him, “So if you do not mind telling us, who did you vote for today?”

            The man looked blank. “Gosh, I don’t know. The wonderful lady took care of that.”

            To me it seems likely the very nice lady was able to vote a couple hundred times for her own candidates because everyone was so focused on these geezers and geezerettes voting and they were not thinking about voting being an expression of choice.

            Quite a can of worms if we mandate registration and voting for all citizens. What is wrong with citizens having the freedom to not do it? Or not even being registered to vote? It is not a problem with me since to vote is to care.

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

Swickard: Automatic voter registration for everyone