Swickard: Give until it stops hurting

© 2013 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.  A friend in college was in a discussion group when someone said, “You must give until it hurts.” My friend corrected it to: “You must give until it stops hurting.” My, that is much better. With the tornado damage to Americans this week there is a divide in the discussions between: “Oh, just let the government take care of people in need because that is why we pay taxes,” and, “Here, my friend, I will help you.” 
Government, as it gets bigger, wants to be the entity that helps because it gives government a solid mission but we Americans were born to help each other. At least my generation was born that way. I am not saying there is not a place in a disaster for government. Goodness, there are always the needs of the many at the moment of disaster, but I am thinking of all the people in New Orleans and with Hurricane Sandy that sat and sat and sat waiting on the government. When Hurricane Katrina hit a friend of mine watched for a couple of hours on television and then, because he has a restaurant background, got a big truck and lots of supplies along with a generator. He and a couple friends headed down to New Orleans and parked in a closed Wal-Mart parking lot. For a week my friend served coffee and pancakes to the great relief of the people in the area. After a while the government got going but at the time of the disaster there was a schism between the Republican President and the Democrat Governor and Mayor of New Orleans. They initially told the president that they did not want help so when they changed their minds it was several days into the crisis. But in the middle of all that politics my friend made coffee, gave out bottles of water and served up pancakes to the grateful citizens. Then, with the big truck empty, he and his friends came home. On the way home they prayed that others would help because that is what we do, we give until it stops hurting. Read column

Swickard: Give until it stops hurting

Small Fla. city wonders who won Powerball jackpot

From KOB-TV.com - By TAMARA LUSH and BARBARA RODRIGUEZ - (AP) ZEPHYR HILLS, Fla. - Some lucky person walked into a Publix supermarket in suburban Florida over the past few days and bought a ticket now worth an estimated $590.5 million _ the highest Powerball jackpot in history.
     Whoever has the ticket had not come forward as of Sunday afternoon. "This would be the sixth Florida Powerball winner and right now, it’s the sole winner of the largest ever Powerball jackpot," Florida Lottery executive Cindy O’Connell told The Associated Press. "We’re delighted right now that we have the sole winner."
     Publix spokeswoman Maria Brous said that there are a lot of rumors about who won, but the store doesn’t know. "We’re excited for the winner or winners," she said. O’Connell said Florida has had more Powerball winners than any other state but did not give any indication whether anyone had stepped forward with the winning ticket in Saturday’s drawing.
     But plenty of people in Zephyrhills _ population 13,337 _ are wondering whether it’s someone they know. Zephyrhills is a small city in Pasco County, about 30 miles northeast of downtown Tampa. Once a rural farming town, it’s now known as a hotbed for skydiving activity, and the home to large retiree mobile home parks and Zephyrhills bottled water.
     And now, one lucky lottery ticket. Read more

Small Fla. city wonders who won Powerball jackpot

US Interior Department sets new rule for ‘fracking’

From Capitol Report New Mexico - The new boss at the U.S. Department of the Interior has established a new rule for hydraulic fracturing (commonly called “fracking”) on federal lands that seems to have pleased neither environmentalists nor oil and gas producers. According to the Associated Press, new Interior secretary Sally Jewell and the Obama administration announced Thursday (May 16) that companies that drill for oil and natural gas on federal lands will be required to disclose publicly the chemicals used in fracking operations. Not surprisingly, oil and gas producers complained about the ruling, saying it’s unnecessary.
     But at least one environmental group complained too, saying the decision is a watered-down version of an earlier proposal. “It is clear what happened: the Bureau of Land Management caved to the wealthy and powerful oil and gas industry and left the public to fend for itself,” Jessica Ennis, a spokeswoman for the environmental group Earthjustice told AP. A big reason for the complaint from environmentalists hinges on the ruling calling for disclosure of chemicals to go to a group called FracFocus, a voluntary site where companies self-report.
     According to the Interior Department, domestic production from more than 92,000 oil and gas wells on public lands accounts for about 13 percent of the nation’s natural gas production and 5 percent of U.S. oil production. In an Interior report last year, oil and gas activity on BLM-managed lands in New Mexico was linked to 47,807 direct jobs and $10.9 billion in direct output. Read more

US Interior Department sets new rule for ‘fracking’

The IRS wants YOU — to share everything

From the Politico.com - by David Nather, Tarin Parti and Byron Tau - The Internal Revenue Service asked tea party groups to see donor rolls. It asked for printouts of Facebook posts. nd it asked what books people were reading.
     A POLITICO review of documents from 11 tea party and conservative groups that the IRS scrutinized in 2012 shows the agency wanted to know everything — in some cases, it even seemed curious what members were thinking. The review included interviews with groups or their representatives from Hawaii, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas and elsewhere. The long-awaited Treasury Department inspector general report released Tuesday says the agency itself decided some of its questions to conservative groups were way over the line — especially the one about donors.
     The report shows that top IRS officials put a stop to some of the questions in early 2012, including the ones that asked tea party groups who their donors were, what issues were important to them and whether their top officers ever planned to run for office. And they told the investigators they planned to destroy the donor lists that had already been sent in.
     But interviews with members of the groups paint a more dramatic picture than the bland language of the report, which just says the IRS “requested irrelevant (unnecessary) information because of a lack of managerial review, at all levels, of questions before they were sent to organizations seeking tax-exempt status.”
      “They were asking for a U-Haul truck’s worth of information,” said Toby Marie Walker, the president of the Waco Tea Party. Some groups even gave up in the face of the IRS questions. Several of the groups were asked for résumés of top officers and descriptions of interviews with the media. One group was asked to provide “minutes of all board meetings since your creation.”
      Some of the letters asked for copies of the groups’ Web pages, blog posts and social media postings — making some tea party members worry they’d be punished for their tweets or Facebook comments by their followers. Read more

The IRS wants YOU — to share everything

NTSB wants to lower legal BAC levels

NewsNM Swickard - I'm with MADD - zero point zero is the only reading that makes sense. From KOB-TV.com - by Joseph Lynch, KOB Eyewitness News 4 - Right now if you get pulled over with a .08 Blood Alcohol Content or higher, you go to jail.

     But the NTSB wants to drop that limit even lower. If it was up to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, a point zero- zero behind the wheel is the would be the only acceptable blood alcohol level. The group said what the NTSB is proposing is a step in the right direction. The agency would like to see the national standard point .08 brought down to .05, but it's just a recommendation. Sonia Lopez of MADD New Mexico says it's never easy.
     "Every time that we do some type of legislation or policy we always get - We always get opposition from the alcohol industry and from the restaurant association."
     To become law, the recommendation would have to be passed by New Mexico Lawmakers and signed by our governor. Rio Rancho Police Seargant Nichlaus Onkyn says a lower BAC will lead to more arrests at DWI checkpoints. And even if you blow less than a .05, that doesn't mean you're off the hook.
     "If we are able to determine that an individual is truly intoxicated and that they are impaired due to their consumption of alcohol or drugs, it doesn't matter the amount of alcohol or drugs in their system."
     According to the DWI Resource Center in Albuquerque, the average person who is arrested for DWI has a BAC of .16 Read more

NTSB wants to lower legal BAC levels

ABQ makes list of best mid-sized cities

Albuquerque is on another top ten list and unlike some, this is one you want your town to be on. 

The city is among the Top Ten Mid-sized American Cities of the Future. The list is the product of analysts from Foreign Direct Intelligence (FDI), with an international list of business and banking clients.

Albuquerque is ranked ninth not too shabby for a city that’s still struggling to recover from the recession. 

FDI analyzes cities all over the western hemisphere and ranks them for economic potential, human resources, cost effectiveness, infrastructure, business-friendliness and foreign direct investment potential. 

Other cities in the top ten include New Orleans, Louisiana, Richmond, Virginia, and Quebec City, Canada.

ABQ makes list of best mid-sized cities

Pearce introduces bill to expand WIPP mission

New Mexico Republican Rep. Steve Pearce has introduced legislation to expand the mission of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad.

 Pearce says that because the plant is only tasked with handling radioactive waste generated by the Department of Energy as part of a defense mission, it is running out of material to process. And that will mean a loss of jobs. 

Pearce says that under his bill, there would be no change in what type of waste WIPP handles. The site currently processes exposed materials like gloves, clothing and tool, from federal facilities like Los Alamos National Laboratory. But it would be allowed to accept transuranic waste from the federal government as a whole.

 Pearce says WIPP has demonstrated great success, safely removing more than 85,000 cubic meters of waste from Department of Energy sites around the country.

Pearce introduces bill to expand WIPP mission

Las Cruces surpasses 100,000 mark

According to statistics maintained by the City of Las Cruces, the city’s population surpassed the 100,000 mark as of April 1. 

The milestone was reached during the period between July 1, 2012 when the population estimate was 99,665 and April 1, when the population was estimated at 100,984. 

According to Tom Murphy, MPO Officer for the Metropolitan Planning Organization they estimate population by tracking building permits for housing units. Housing units are identified as single family, multi family, townhouses and triplexes. 

Las Cruces surpasses 100,000 mark

America’s forever unsuccessful war on drugs

© 2013 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. “The only justification is always in terms of the existence of innocent victims. In the case of drugs, the major effect of drug prohibition is to multiply the number of innocent victims, not to reduce it.” Milton Friedman 1991
     The prohibition against alcohol took most of a hundred years to reach its final stage in the 1930s. Then the society gave up on prohibition and settled for alcohol regulation. A surprising thing happened when the same forces of the society who pushed alcohol prohibition applied the same prohibition logic to recreational drugs. Sadly they have gotten the same result from drug prohibition as they did from alcohol prohibition.
     Albert Einstein contended the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So how long do we intend to be insane?
     When I arrived at college in 1968 even my cow college had people doing illegal drugs. It was common knowledge that recreational drugs were readily available at “reasonable” prices. Today, at the same college, drugs are still readily available at “reasonable” prices after more than forty years of the War on Drugs.
Many people over the decades looked at the results and recognized the efforts were not effective and did more harm than good. Yet the efforts continue unabated. The sticking point is the principle that society should not allow people to hurt themselves. So we incarcerate millions of American citizens, “For their own good.”
     Like alcohol prohibition, the Drug War has had three results: first, crime organizations have grown large and influential. Secondly, police enforcement and incarceration has become an industry. Finally, more people take drugs than before. More people started drinking during prohibition than before. Prohibition made our nation a nation of drinkers. The Drug War seems to have increased the number of drug users.
     So why not stop the Drug War? Two reasons: first, no politician wants to face reelection accused of being soft on drugs. Secondly, the Drug Wars are an industry for our government.Read full column

America’s forever unsuccessful war on drugs

Monday Guest wrote Ranch Horses

Note - we will interview Steve Monday at 7 a.m.. 

From The Westerner - by Steve Wilmeth -

     Bailey nickered at me through the 4:30 dark silence. They had all come to me as I switched the lights on to start to feed. Three bays and a seal brown chestnut that live over the corral fence with us in Mesilla. I worked through the routine keeping them quiet and settled as they got their morning feed.
     I stood there and listened to them eat momentarily before I climbed through the fence and turned the lights off. I went to get ready before I saddled and loaded. We were going to gather.
First light
      Leonard had called to tell me he had nine riders that could start on Friday morning rather than Saturday. That would give us a head start and make Saturday, when the bigger crew would arrive, more efficient.
“Good deal … let’s do it.”
     When I came out onto the back porch at 5:30, no horses were seen. They were all standing in the far corner of the arena when I found them. They know what feeding at 4:30 brings.
     I decided to take Tom. Since we were only going to pen enough cattle for Leonard and me to start sorting early Saturday, we would be finished by midday. One horse would do.
     Tom’s a dark bay horse that weighs 1250 pounds. He’s tall at 16 hands and somehow that kind of horse has become taller for me. He is a big mover and can cover country. At times he can be timid, but he is very versatile. He watches a cow with instinct but he tends to work too fast if allowed. When he’s fresh he’ll get faster and faster.
     I now match saddles to our horses. Good horses, like pickups, are too expensive to hurt. Paying thousands of dollars for a horse with a one size fits all saddle is no longer preferable. Tom gets his own saddle and I will even swap that out to reposition pressure points if he works days in succession.
     He stood there as the gentleman he is as I saddled him. He only disagreed when I brushed his mane too hard. He lifted his head and backed his ears. I reminded him he was going to endure that bit of grooming. If the trailer gate is open I can throw the lead rope over his withers from 25 feet away and he’ll load himself. All our horses have pretty much come to that point. As ranch horses, they know the difference in a ride versus a long trot anywhere. They’ll ride.
     In the trailer, you can’t feel him. He’s quiet as a church mouse and will drop his head and doze as we drive to the ranch. As I unloaded him, he was interested briefly in one of the other horses that would start with cowboys from that point of the gather. He knows them but doesn’t spend much time with them other than during times of work.
      We scattered, set our spacing, and started our drive. Tom was relaxed. He worked as he always does in the open. Stay out of his mouth, get lighter and lighter with pressure, and move him laterally with your legs. He does the rest and he does it well.
     I let the rest of the world go away. The morning was a joy. Read full column

Monday Guest wrote Ranch Horses