on this page: Letters To The Editor, etc. from 2011 forward
Valencia County News-Bulletin
Saturday 31 December 2011
Opinion Section [page 5A]
County should look at other options
Well, building a hospital in Valencia County seems to be tabled for a while, at least until the three county commissioners up for re-election are replaced.
The current 'hot potato' here is planning for the solid waste program with several public meetings that were scheduled during December.
I moved to Rio Communities in 2005; and because I came from California, I did the work that it took to track down recycling options – rather tough to find in New Mexico, but they exist. I specifically did not sign up for trash pickup, and in the six years since I arrived, I have recycled all the same stuff that my neighbors pay to get trucked to the landfill.
Really, I do recycle everything. My yard is bare dirt, so I don’t have to worry about greenery. The drought was so bad this year that even the tumbleweeds never sprouted in my back yard.
I used to take basic recycle materials to the station behind Los Lunas Village Hall, but they stopped that a while back, so now I haul my basic recycle bins with me now and then as I slog up the freeway to visit Albuquerque. The city yard on Edith takes glass, cardboard, metal, and paper.
Once a year, I stomp the aluminum soda cans flat and turn a large bag in for a dollar or two. Rags go to Savers on San Mateo.
That leaves only eggshells and food scraps and a little packaging. So every week or so, I take a bag about the size of a soccer ball and drop it in the trash can where I buy gas. I take my extra plastic grocery bags and stuff them in the bin by the front door at Albertsons.
But I take this even further and pick up soda cans and beer bottles and the occasional cardboard box or phone book and toss them in the back of my car. Those get recycled too, which makes me “negative to the landfill”.
I recycle more material than actually crosses my threshold. I am a champion recycler.
For the solid waste committee folks, there are three points:
1. People who recycle, people who are off the grid, people who compost must be taken into account; any laws and-or contracts must “grandfather” them in. Without such consideration, the law or contract will be unconstitutional, in that we are not represented.
2. I understand the gradual nature of modifying Valencia County’s present solid waste policies. But the eventual goal should be to make available recycling options for the residents of the county, and especially coordinating with Belen and Los Lunas and the other cities.
One simple option would be to park the same yellow bins that are open 24 hours at the Albuquerque city yard, to park them at several locations down here, essentially piggy-backing on Albuquerque’s effective and efficient program.
3. Part of what the solid waste committee looks at should be costs, of course. The central comparison is the cost per truckload to pickup and dump trash to the county landfill versus the actual cost of parking yellow bins around the county and hauling a truckload north.
If the cost to haul and cover and manage the landfill is more than hauling recycled material, then the county would actually save money by doing the latter.
If the cost of recycling is even with or just a hair more than using the landfill, then the benefits still come from the recycle program since the landfill will not fill up so fast, nor will there be so much toxic waste (plastic, metal, etc.) sent there.
The City of Los Angeles is ranked top among the ten largest cities in America for recycling; and they are very near the state-mandated “50 percent landfill diversion” standard, i.e. half of trash goes to landfill, half is recycled.
There is no reason that Valencia County and the cities and communities within its boundaries cannot aspire to the same standard.
G.E. NORDELL
Rio Communities, New Mexico
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response to my Letter of December 31 above
Valencia County News-Bulletin
Wednesday 1 February 2012
Opinion / Letters [page 4A]
Champion of recycling
Local letter writer G.E. Nordell attempted to paint a picture of himself in the Dec. 31 issue that reflects only what he wants you to hear.
He’s obviously concerned the county will force him as well as many others to begin paying for trash pickup. Even though I may agree it could cost less, it beats the alternatives, which could be illegal dumping or burning of trash. Now, let’s get to the real reason I’m writing this response.
Unlike Mr. Nordell, I’m a native of New Mexico, born and raised in and around good old Valencia County and I remember the days when trash pickup didn’t exist and people just did what they had done down here for as long as, well, as long as they can remember.
Then trash pickup began and most balked, some complied and some never have.
Mr. Nordell says he really recycles everything, but rest assured when he does, it’s on the back of everyone who pays the price to dispose of one’s own trash.
He claims a lot of things, but one is that every week or so he takes a soccer ball sized bag of trash and disposes it in the trash can where he buys gas, but that’s probably only when he’s not sneaking out to the trash receptacle located next to our mail box area directly across the street from his house and burying his trash underneath the mail trash. I’ve watched him do it, many times.
Mr. Nordell, do you really think it’s appropriate to dump your household trash where we get our mail or where you buy your gas? Do you even remotely think the trash receptacles are there for that purpose?
He also states in his writing that his yard is bare dirt and it is, with a few exceptions. In his front yard, he stores his used cooler pads. In the spring, the tumbleweeds pile up against the east side of his house, which is not only creating a fire hazard for himself, but to his neighbors as well.
I’ve seen them pile up as high as six feet. The same thing happens in his back yard. They pile up against his fences until they’re so high they will blow over into his neighbors’ yards.
He probably looks at this as recycling too. But, I wonder if he’s ever considered what his property looking disheveled and abandoned does to all of his neighbors’ property values. Or how they feel about his weeds and trash contaminating the 'greenery' and landscaping on which they labor and he obviously holds in distain?
He then goes on with his three points. In his first point, he’s clearly looking for just another entitlement, because after all, he is a champion and he deserves it.
In his second point, he states Valencia County’s eventual goal should be making available recycling options for the county like Albuquerque’s program, you know the program that very efficiently loses money and has never been effective.
Then last, but not least, there’s No. 3 where he educates us all. The man’s a genius, makes me wonder if the reason the city of Los Angeles has been so successful in recycling could have been because he lead the way.
He must truly be the champion of recycling!
Gary Gibson
Belén, New Mexico
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Valencia County News-Bulletin
Wednesday 21 December 2011
Opinion Section [page 4A]
Letter writer doesn’t have the facts
Local letter writer Robert Sanders is in a dark hole of unreality, and he continues to dig that hole deeper – and then broadcasts his ignorance and fantasies to the readers of this newspaper.
His letter of Aug. 17 decried [elided: ad hominem] commentary, and the rest of that letter was mostly an [elided: ad hominem] attack.
His latest letter on Nov. 26 is mostly incoherent, but can be described as another [elided: ad hominem] attack.
Republicans do hypocrisy very well (and often). They have nothing to offer voters across America, and Sanders especially, since he presents no actual facts to back up his nonsense.
For a year or more, I’ve been asking here for Republican readers to present their plan to create jobs and jump start the economy, and no such letters were sent to this paper.
Meanwhile, Sanders continues to try to be cute or funny or something, with the statement 'Guess I must be wrong'. True, Sanders. You and the other [elided: fascist] Republican Party / Tea Party [elided: wingnuts] ARE wrong.
G.E. NORDELL
Belén, New Mexico
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Valencia County News-Bulletin
Wednesday 12 October 2011
Opinion Section [page 4A]
Republicans should take our criticism
Being tag-teamed by local Republicans is not that exciting, but I suppose it is entertaining for Valencia County News-Bulletin readers.
1. Is there no one, Republican or otherwise, who has a plan to pay off the Republican national debt of $25 trillion?
The current Republican Party policy of “do nothing,” just hands that burden off to your grand-children, who have a tough enough future already, what with Republican-backed off-shoring and down-sizing and re-privatization of health care and voter suppression and pollution and elimination of the minimum wage.
2. William Darcy (Letters Aug. 14) asks me to “admit” that I am a lefty, a weightless request.
I am a progressive. But since that puts me to the left of Attila the Hun and the Koch Brothers and other fascist idols of the Republican Right, so be it.
3. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were indeed created in 1978, and were just fine until the mortgage industry was deregulated by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of November 1999 pushed by Republican Sen. Phil Gramm and former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Two things to note here: Phil Gramm became a lobbyist for the Swiss bank U.B.S. in 2002, and all commodity and financial bubbles are caused by deregulation of speculative trading.
4. Darcy complains that “Democrats have had control of Congress for the majority of the post- WWII period to present.”
Well, except for the 1947-49 80th “Do Nothing” Congress, the 1953-55 83rd Congress, the 97th to 98th, the 104th to 105th Newt Gingrich Congresses, the 106th to 108th Dennis Hastert Congresses, and the last three Congresses where Republicans prevent Democratic legislation with record numbers of filibusters and permanent holds on legislative branch appointments.
The critical matter is not who wields the gavel so much as the damage done to the commons and by whom. Republican placement of Alito and Roberts on the Supreme Court (and cowardice of the Democrats) led directly to the Federalist Society victory that is “Citizens United v. F.E.C”, which decreed the United States a fascist country in January 2010.
5. Calling me a liar because I never heard of “cut, cap and trade” is severely-twisted anti-logic and only demonstrates Darcy’s lack of integrity.
6. Robert Sanders (Letters Aug. 17) on the other hand accuses me of ad hominem comment-ary, which is then followed by Sanders’s ad hominem attack on myself. What’s the word for that? Oh, yeah: hypocrisy.
7. True, I did not take calculus, nor do I need or miss it.
8. George Soros is a straw man. If he was spending all the money that the Republican noise machine accuse him of, the Democrats would not be struggling for campaign money.
The real danger to America is the fascist Koch Brothers who are spending multiple millions to fund the Tea Party wingnuts[,] to fund the very destructive A.L.E.C. in 50 states (mostly voter suppression), re-segregate schools, and legalizing your friendly neighborhood fracking pollutors.
9. Privatization is fascism, period.
G.E. NORDELL
Belén, New Mexico
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response to my Letter of October 12 above
Valencia County News-Bulletin
Saturday 26 November 2011
Opinion / Letters [page 4A]
Is it the same letter writer or not?
I like the headline in the News-Bulletin that pleads that Republicans should take “our criticism.”
It leads another letter by G.E. Nordell. While surfing on the Internet on another matter I stumbled upon one Gary E. Nordell, a resident of high on the mesa in Belen. That Mr. Nordell describes himself as a poet, revolutionary, philosopher, author, and autodidact.
Can it be he? On the web, his authorship includes letters to the News-Bulletin that are maddeningly familiar.
Once again he claims ignorance of any redeeming value of any Republican. Still claims the Republicans are (solely) responsible for his imaginary $25 trillion dollar debt. And, Fannie and Freddie were lead down the garden path by, whom else, Republicans. Chris Dodd and Barney Frank are absolutely blameless.
I especially like his comment that Justices Alito and Roberts are, apparently, single-handedly responsible for “the Federalist victory that is ‘Citizens United v. F.E.C,’ which decreed the United States a fascist country in January 2010.” Truly new meanings for federalist and fascist!
Nordell complains that Democrats are struggling for campaign money. He is undoubtedly in contact with sources in outer space who lead him to this conclusion. It obviously doesn’t come from any media I’m aware of.
Nordell’s penultimate parting shot is the funding of “Tea Party wingnuts” who would, paraphrasing, suppress voters and re-segregate schools.
And, finally, privatization is fascism, period. This is the Nordell [that] I have read, not the Nordell philosophy of the Working Minds or the author of the detective novel, “Backlot Requiem”.
Guess I must be wrong.
Robert Sanders
Rio Communities, New Mexico
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Valencia County News-Bulletin
Wednesday 24 August 2011
Opinion Section [page 5A]
Media isn't owned by who you think
The letter printed on Aug. 6 from Robert Sanders is a pack of lies. (One true statement “I was wrong.”)
1. He parrots the right-wing demonization of the “liberal media,” yet “Thirteen newspaper chains own 54 percent of our country’s daily print media,” per Dennis Herrick, University of New Mexico. Those owners are not lefties.
ABC is owned by Disney (not lefties); CBS is owned by conglomerate Viacom (not lefties), NBC is owned by Comcast and General Electric (not lefties), FOX is owned by über-rightie Rupert Murdoch; The CW is co-owned by CBS and Time-Warner (not lefties); TNT/TBS is owned by Time-Warner; ESPN is owned by Disney and Hearst ... and on down the line.
Eighty percent of radio stations in America are owned by five chains: Clear Channel, Entercom, Citadel, C.B.S. Radio and Cox Radio – none of them lefties.
Liberal media? A few channels such as CNN deliver reality-based news, but since the middle is to the left of all right-wing propaganda, anyone who disagrees with them is slandered as left, left, left.
2. The $24 trillion of the Republican national debt disagrees with the official national debt figure because it is off the books. (Here’s a hint, Mr. Sanders: the government lies.)
The official national debt is $14,465,000,000 (and may be $15 trillion by the time that this letter gets printed).
Add to that the $5.4 trillion of the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac mess and the $2.7 trillion stolen by the Republicans Reagan-Bush-Bush from the Social Security fund, and you already have $22.6 trillion that the U.S. taxpayer gets to pay back someday.
Those and other debts are off the books so that Republican fools can write letters denying the reality that your grandchildren will get the bill to pay for Republican misfeasance.
3. No Republican has yet offered here or anywhere else a viable solution to paying off the Republican national debt of $25 trillion, which is why the current Congress is earning the title of “The Deadbeat Republican Congress.”
4. Sanders’ non sequitur about “traditional values in the housing market” points to the traditional values supported by the Republican Party — greed, ignorance, slander, greed, oppression, war, and greed.
5. Tsk, tsk, Mr. Sanders. “Thou shalt not bear false witness.”
G.E. NORDELL
Belén, New Mexico
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response to my Letter of August 24 above
Valencia County News-Bulletin
Wednesday 14 September 2011
Opinion / Letters [page 5A]
Democrats have contributed to debt
So Mr. Nordell once again rants against Republicans. Too bad he refuses to be intellectually honest.
One needs only to look at individual media contributions for the 2008 election cycle, where donations to Democrats vs. Republicans was 15 to one in favor of Democrats. No bias there.
To deny that Chris Matthews, Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson, Keith Olbermann, et al, are not liberals requires a measure of naivete or complete distortion of the facts in monumental proportions.
All of the above named are self-confessed liberals. It appears that Mr. Nordell’s denial of their leftist leanings is cause for embarrassment to him. Come Mr. Nordell fess up, are you really not a leftie?
As to you’re assertion that only Republicans are responsible for our debt is a true whopper. Democrats have had control of Congress for the majority of the post WWII period to present.
To hold them totally blameless is moronic as well as untruthful. I will be the first to disparage big spending Republicans as well as Democrats. Why can’t you be that honest in your assessment of our debt problem?
You also state incorrectly that Reagan and the Bushes are completely responsible for looting Social Security. If you knew your history, you would know that the sacking of Social Security began in the Johnson administration.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were creations of the Democrats by the Community Reinvestment Act of 1978 which was subsequently watchdogged by Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, who as late as 2008 assured us that both were solid.
You have also chosen to not mention cut cap and balance, which is a path to fiscal responsibility. A lie of omission is still a lie, so please don’t lecture us on the truth.
In closing, let me last visit your comments on the housing market. Mr. Sanders rightly points out that the markets will and should determine values. Only when the government interferes do we get bubbles. It has nothing whatsoever to do with your assertions.
I know Bob Sanders to be an honorable and truthful man of great intellect. Before you try to smear someone look in the mirror.
William C. Darcy III
Rio Communities, New Mexico
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second response to my Letter of August 24 above
Valencia County News-Bulletin
Saturday 17 September 2011
Opinion / Letters [page 4A]
Letter writer is still getting his facts wrong
In my book, Mr. G.E. Nordell is a star! His letters are wonderful in so many ways.
His most recent letter is a case in point. He lists correctly the nominal ownership of many of today’s media and concludes that none of them are 'lefties'.
I guess Mr. Nordell never took calculus and learned about derivatives. He failed to take a second step and point out the degree to which the 'lefty' George Soros controls liberal media and tries to control it all.
Soros has spent some $50 million dollars 'educating' young people to be journalists — you’re right, very left-leaning 'journalists'.
I hesitate to call them that when they are so suborned by the cynical Soros.
Nordell continues to report his own set of numbers, 'facts' he call{s] them, including the $24 trillion national debt. If he were to report the unfunded liabilities of his favorite entitlement programs he could report nearly $100 trillion debt.
That’s a tenth of a quadrillion dollars, Mr. Nordell. This he calls Republican malfeasance?
Continuing in like vein, 'the deadbeat Republican Congress'. I guess our two Democratic senators might disagree.
I did learn something new from this comment: We now have a unicameral Congress. No Senate. I guess he can claim that he mis-spoke. The diatribe goes on and on ad infinitum.
Well, as I said, Mr. Nordell is a star. No other writer to the News-Bulletin can compare!
The use of the ad hominem argument, the outrageous manufacturing of facts, the attacks on our institutions, is simply without equal.
Oh, yes. I almost forgot. Mr. Nordell is right again about one thing: the government lies.
At least he is putting me in good company!
Robert E. Sanders
Rio Communities, New Mexico
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Albuquerque [New Mexico] Journal
Sunday 17 July 2011
Op-Ed Page [page B3]Here Lies John Q. Public's Job
The G.O.P. Economic Meltdown of 2008 continues to wreak havoc on the lives of New Mexicans. President Obama's first major business was the Stimulus Package, which was of course watered down by the Republican Party. The new Republican-led 112th Congress has in six months not produced one jobs bill, and in fact have de-funded 27,000 federal jobs.
This newspaper ought to start a new weekly column: "Local & State Jobs Eliminated by the Republican Party's Economic Policies". Just list the businesses and the body count, or [it will] take up too much space.
G.E. NORDELL
Belén, New Mexico
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Valencia County News-Bulletin
Saturday 16 July 2011
Opinion Section [page 5A]
The real problem is Republican debt
Republicans, tea baggers, fascists, independents and other Americans lose all credence when they merely repeat right wing propaganda supplied by the oligarchy who own virtually all the
media.
What is particularly disgusting is that they actually believe that the objective facts are not available, and secondly, their repeated violation of the commandment “Thou shalt not bear false witness,” which makes them hypocrites. And they do this in the national media and in this local venue, for all their neighbors, co-workers, and family to see.
Dennis Schlessinger’s letter of June 25 is filled with too many lies to count, starting with “Our country is broke simply as a result of decades of liberal policy.” Horse feathers!
Ronald Reagan became president in 1981; the national debt was $1 trillion (which included the entire Vietnam War). After 12 years of Reagan-Bush, the national debt was quadrupled. Bill Clinton balanced the budget and produced a net surplus – something that no Republican president of the last 100 years even tried to do.
George W. Bush became president with a national debt of $5.7 trillion. He left office having run up the most debt of any person in the history of mankind, handing Barack Obama a Republican national debt of $25 trillion.
The G.O.P. economic meltdown began with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage bailout of August 2008, after which Barack Obama became the Democratic Party candidate. The Wall Street sub-prime mortgage bailout of October 2008 was signed by Dubya, and helped get Obama elected in November. The Detroit automaker bailout of November and December 2008 was also signed into law by Dubya.
Then Barack Obama became president on Jan. 20, 2009.
Simple choice: Republican lies or objective (and verifiable) facts.
Nor has the $25 trillion Republican national debt grown under the Obama administration, partly because G.M. and Chrysler paid back much of their loans. The interest on the Republican national debt is at least a $1 trillion per year, and is basically extortion money handed to the oligarchy for nothing.
The federal debt ceiling and the annual federal budget (with or without a deficit) matters little when the real problem is the Republican national debt that presently stands at 165 percent of G.D.P.
I have asked repeatedly in these pages for a Republican to step forward with a plan to pay off the $25 trillion Republican national debt, and not one of them has done so. In the six months of this Republican-led Congress, they have produced not one jobs bill, and in fact keep proposing shutdown of departments that inspect food and drugs, protect the environment, and educate your children. Republicans are against the worker and the citizen, and they do the bidding of polluters, war profiteers, usurers, and slave mongers.
Failing any plan put forth by the right, we will have to implement the only one on the table, which is the liberal, progressive, left wing agenda: Jobs, jobs, jobs. Children, children, children. Green, green, green.
Unemployed? Under-employed? Losing your house? No health care? Ask a Republican for help.
G.E. NORDELL
Belén, New Mexico
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response to my Letter of July 16 above
Valencia County News-Bulletin
Saturday 6 August 2011
Opinion / Letters [page 5A]
National debt isn’t Republicans fault
I thought the News-Bulletin had made a mistake and published the same letter by Mr. G.E. Nordell for a second time. I was wrong.
Everyone who disagrees with Mr. Nordell is wrong, wrong, wrong. But, there may be hope for change.
Mr. Nordell includes left-leaning media among those owned by “the oligarchy who own virtually all the media.” That surely includes the New York Times, MSNBC, CNN, Huffington Post and a bunch of other news outlets, as well as Fox.
Mr. Nordell continues to report a “$25 trillion Republican national debt.” If that were correct, we breached the current debt ceiling 10 years ago, and the current argument in Congress about raising it to $15 trillion or so is meaningless.
According to Mr. Nordell, President George W. Bush came in to office with a national debt of $5.7 trillion. That is correct. He handed President Obama a debt of $10.4 trillion, an increase of $4.6 trillion at the end of Present Bush’s two terms in office. A really bad record.
President Obama has increased the debt from $10.4 trillion to $14.4 trillion, an increase of $4 trillion in two years. A new bad record, one that no future president will likely worsen. These are the facts that Mr. Nordell continues to deny.
It took about 30 minutes to get the facts online. Readers can do the same.
So where is the lie, Mr. Nordell? Who is reporting the objective (verifiable) facts? Please, point me to a source where I can find verification of your $25 trillion Republicans debt. I’ll be waiting.
You conclude “Ask a Republican for help” if you are unemployed or losing your house, or have no health insurance.
You might better ask why President Bush and President Obama broke the bank with their profligate spending and outlandish increases in entitlements and destruction of traditional values in the housing market and everywhere else.
Robert E. Sanders
Rio Communities, New Mexico
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Valencia County News-Bulletin
Saturday 25 June 2011
Opinion Section [page 4A]
New hospital will save lives regardless of site
The people opposed to having a hospital in Valencia County bring in all sorts of untruths, but mostly seem to wallow in willful ignorance.
Mr. Metcalf’s recent letter, for example, contains several errors.
1. Valencia County has roughly 70,000 citizens and no hospital. Let us hope that no patient in any reader’s family dies on the long freeway trek to Albuquerque before the new hospital opens for business.
The ambulance ride may be 20 or 40 or even 60 miles or more. Any medical facility within Valencia County is a vast improvement over no facility, and there is enough ambulance business to keep two companies hopping.
2. The land in Rio Communities is a donation (i.e. no cost), and the citizens voted 70 percent in favor of paying for the hospital’s construction.
3. I repeat: In order to obtain (a higher reimbursement rate from Medicaid and Medicare) for such a hospital, it must be more than 25 miles from another (hospital with the same services); Los Lunas is too close to the V.A. in Albuquerque and Belen is the proper distance.
4. Chili’s restaurant is not 'surviving', the parking lot is full from afternoon to quite late and all day on weekends. Where else is there to go for such social life?
With an actual hospital inside Valencia County, why does anyone think that people in pain and suffering will transport themselves over the empty miles of Isleta Pueblo, and not drive across Belen River Bridge?
5. The 'mule and Land Rover' remark about UNM-VC is pathetic, as anyone knows who ever tried to park there during the school year.
Here’s a new question: How many trips and how many miles a year do the two ambulance services log taking emergency patients to Albuquerque? They probably will not want to provide a count for the year of the number of passengers who died en route or were D.O.A., but that would be a good thing to know.
The Belen hospital, by whatever name, will save lives.
G.E. NORDELL
Belén, New Mexico
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Valencia County News-Bulletin
Saturday 16 April 2011
Opinion Section [pages 4A-5A]
The hospital site has already been chosen
1. More than 70 percent of Valencia County voters want a hospital here, and are willing to pay for it.
2. The Valley Improvement Association is donating 62 acres of land next to the Belen River Bridge. (Donate neans free.)
3. The folks who seek to prevent the hospital are deeply interconnected, and some of them hope to make money from land sales.
So here’s what I want to know:
A. How much has the anti-hospital group’s silly lawsuits cost the county and/or the district attorney?
B. Is there even a 60-acre field anywhere on the west side of Belen?
Criteria here include near one of the three freeway exits and far from the noise of the railroad.
C. Which of the so-far-suggested sites are subject to flooding off the West Mesa and which are not?
When the anti-hospital faction offers 60 acres of free land, with all modern utilities already in place and no chance of flooding, then they will have standing in this discussion.
G.E. NORDELL
Belén, New Mexico
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Valencia County News-Bulletin
Saturday 19 February 2011
Opinion Section [page 5-A]Hospital has to be 25 miles from one
James Rickey bloviates about the impossibility of a hospital sited in Rio Communities being economically feasible. What he really wants is for the new hospital to be in Los Lunas, merely because he lives there.
Rickey dances around the one central determining factor: Potential government funding requires that any planned new hospital be at least 25 miles from any other hospital, specifically one with a functioning emergency room.
Too bad, Los Lunas, your entire town is within the 25 mile restriction, i.e. too close to the Albuquerque V.A. hospital facility.
The only land offered for free in the Belen area is the Rio Communities location, and that is also the only site with pre-existing infrastructure, such as water, sewer and cable communications.
The next time that someone dies during the EMT dash up Interstate 25 to Albuquerque, the bereaved family should keep Rickey’s regressive anti-hospital stance in mind. He and the sorry anti-hospital petition and lawsuit gang might be candidates for a wrongful death lawsuit, based on their efforts to prevent and to delay building of the much-needed and voter-approved medical facility.
G.E. NORDELL
Belén, New Mexico
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response to my Letter of February 19 above
Valencia County News-Bulletin
Wednesday 23 March 2011
Opinion / Letters [page 4A]
Voters didn’t approve the hospital site
In his letter of Feb. 19th (“Hospital has to be 25 miles from one”) one G.E. Nordell alleges that, in his words, “What he (James Rickey) really wants is for the new hospital to be in Los Lunas, merely because he lives there.”
Hmm. In my letter of Jan. 26, I wrote in part “. . . a hospital anywhere in the county would fail financially within a couple years after opening.”
In my letter of Jan. 29, I wrote in part “It will be hard enough scrounging up doctors for any hospital, much less the Rio Communities location.”
I have never said or written that I favored any hospital in the county, including one in Los Lunas. The point of my recent letters was that no hospital would succeed in Valencia County. But one in Rio Communities would fail sooner than in other locations.
My letters had nothing to do with an issue Nordell brings up in his letter about a require-ment about a new hospital having to be at least 25 miles from an existing hospital. I never mentioned that issue in my letters. The subject has no relevance to the content of my letters.
Later in his letter Nordell writes: “The next time that someone dies during the EMT dash up Interstate 25 to Albuquerque, the bereaved family should keep Rickey’s regressive anti-hospital stance in mind. He and the sorry anti-hospital petition and lawsuit gang might be candidates for a wrongful death lawsuit, based on their efforts to prevent and to delay building of the much-needed and voter-approved medical facility.”
Unbelievable. Comments like these will erode whatever support remains for a hospital. It will also hinder supporters of the hospital in 2014 when they will need to cajole voters to support a continuation of the hospital tax, if the subject is still active.
Regarding his comment about “voter-approved medical facility,” in 2006 voters were faced with a referendum for a tax for a hospital for which, at that time, no sites had even been discussed. The site was chosen later.
Yet hospital supporters crow about this vote, attempting to convince county residents that the vote for the tax (76.19 percent approval) was support for the Rio Communities site. Did not happen.
Had any location been listed on the referendum, the tax would have likely failed and the architects of the tax proposal probably knew that.
On the subject of where we live: it is worth noting that Nordell, who lives east of Belen, is only a two or three minute drive from the proposed hospital.
If perchance a hospital is ever built it could offer some very useful services to residents, such as cholesterol and blood testing, and educational classes, such as anger management.
James Rickey
Los Lunas, New Mexico
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Santa Fe New Mexican
Tuesday 8 February 2011
Letters To The EditorWhy act surprised?
Why the pseudo-debate? The state already [gave] $100 million in tax breaks to the oil-and-gas industry, and Gov. Susana Martínez is attempting to offset that crime by cutting $25 million from New Mexico's film-incentive program, a program known to provide jobs in New Mexico. The Republicans continue the same job-killing Reagan-Bush-onomics that caused the worldwide economic meltdown, and everyone who voted for Martínez is to blame.
G.E. NORDELL
Belén, New Mexico
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MovieMaker Magazine
Winter 2011 issue, Letters, page 18
The Economics of Language
In reference to Jennifer Straus's article "The Subtle Art of Speaking In Tongues" in the Fall 2010 edition:
Americans resist all dubbed films, especially in the 'heartland' between the coasts. And English-language films with and without subtitles are often considered insults in certain sub-markets: "How come you don't make movies in Spanish?"
The solution is Simultaneous Bilingual Film Production., which is economically smart and a tradition since early sound films. The "Garbo Talks!" ad campaign was about a film that she made in both English and German, Anna Christie. Count also Paul Kohner, Buster Keaton, Cantinflas, Preston Sturges, Hal Roach, and Sidney Lumet as having done the same.
I discovered the phenomenon when I went to see a repeat of Claude Lelouche's And Now My Love. The original release was in French with subtitles, but the years-later second showing was a print filmed [not dubbed} in English.
The economics are simple, and may even be as cheap as dubbing and-or subtitles.
G.E. NORDELL
Belén, New Mexico
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Valencia County News-Bulletin
Wednesday 2 February 2011
Opinion Section [page 4A-5A]
There are no oligarchs in Valencia County
It seems that Robert Sanders has only ad hominem attack as a strategy for fomenting fascist propaganda in his letters. His latest is another visit “Through The Looking Glass,” i.e. Humpty Dumpty’s comment that “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
Sorry, words have objective meanings; Sanders has no clue (and just likes to use big words that he does not understand).
Here are a few very important facts for readers who actually read for comprehension.
1. The oligarchy is the top 1 percent of the population, USA and elsewhere. The word means “rule by the owners”. Since the 1 percent owns 65 percent of everything, and the wealthy class – the top 20 percent of taxpayers – owns 85 percent, those are the oligarchs.
Aside from Walmart and Warren Buffet’s BNSF, there are no oligarchs in Valencia County, they live elsewhere. Sanders’ concept of a “liberal oligarchy” does not exist except in his fetid fantasies.
2. The official unemployment rate is just under 10 percent nationwide. That means that the true unemployment rate is twice that, or 20 percent, with pockets much higher, such as around 25 percent in New Mexico and Detroit, and 50 percent on Indian reservations and among Afro-Americans under 25.
The official figures are suspect because they are derived by the Bureau of Labor Statistics from 1,000 'random' phone calls made each month – real data is filed quarterly by states and employers. The calls are made to land-line numbers only, which leaves out the many who cancelled land-line phone service because they have no income.
3. With 20-25 percent unemployment, all those folks and their spouses and their kids live below the poverty line. Sanders accuses me of being inaccurate, but that gives him the excuse to ignore the issue. Lyndon Johnson’s War On Poverty legislation cut poverty in half in America; the Reagan-Bush war on the middle class “doubled” poverty in America.
4. Sanders doesn’t like the class war concept. Too bad: the class war is perpetual (and the revolution is never over). During the post-war boom era, 35 percent of workers belonged to unions and corporations paid 35 percent of income tax revenue – key word “economic boom.”
Reagan busted the unions in 1982, and his anti-reason “trickle-down theory” economics is still in effect, foisted on the U.S. taxpayer by the pro-fascist Republican Party. Now unions are about 12 percent of workers (and those mostly low-income service workers), and corporations pay between 5 and 7 percent of income tax revenue – key word “deficit.”
The middle class is working two jobs to keep their head above water, banks and oil companies announce record profits, and 40 percent of G.D.P. derives from day-traders of the stock market casino (which profits [are pocketed by the oligarchs]).
The average American has lost 15-20 percent in real wages since 2000. In the last 10 years, the median income statistic shows a $5,000 decrease. Bushenomics was hemorrhaging 800,000 jobs per month when Dubya left office, and Obama’s efforts (thwarted by “Just Say No” Republicans) are just barely keeping net jobs steady.
Now the Republican Party is proudly announcing that they will end Obama’s health care and reduce Medicare, they will take away Social Security, and they will cut the minimum wage in half.
No Class War?
5. Sanders calls Brian Colon a carpetbagger without evidence. Susana Martinez was raised in El Paso, went to college in Texas and Oklahoma, and moved to Las Cruces as an adult. (Colon was raised in Valencia County schools, went to college at NMSU and UNM, and he has accepted no bribes from Texas oil barons.)
Not a class war? Sanders is deluded. Liberal oligarchy? Poverty not important? Climate change can be ignored?
But what else would you expect of the self-appointed local apologist for the fascist Republicans and their owners, the oligarchy? Being pro-fascist is delusional by definition.
G.E. NORDELL
Belén, New Mexico
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