All Stories
The Sarah Palin I knew
As a longtime Alaska journalist and resident who knew Gov. Sarah Palin and followed her political rise, I have to wonder what John McCain was thinking when he asked her to be his vice presidential nominee. Sure, she's a lot of things McCain is, was or needs. The 44-year-old is a maverick, a Republican who challenged the Alaska GOP's old-boy network and won. She is a fiscal and social conservative who opposes abortion rights. She's a photogenic former beauty queen with five kids, including one just born with Down syndrome and another in the Army heading to Iraq. She's a commercial salmon fisherman and a moose hunter and her husband races snowmobiles. But is she ready for this job?
Welcome to the New Mexico Independent
If you’ve made your way to this spot, that means you at least want to know a little more about what this corner of cyberspace is about.
Count one more superdelegate for Barack Obama
Laurie Weahkee, the recently elected Democratic Party of New Mexico superdelegate, has decided to throw her influential vote to the presidential candidacy of U.S. Sen. Barack Obama. In a wide-ranging interview with NMI, the long-time Native American activist says that last Tuesday's primary results in North Carolina and Indiana sealed the deal for her. She says she's eager for the party to unite around Obama and begin to focus on presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee Sen. John McCain.
A Chihuahua movie: What is Disney thinking?
Disney is set to release a stereotype-ridden animated movie called "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" in September. See what Albuquerque-born author Alisa Valdes Rodriguez thinks about it and give us your opinion.
The politics of beer
John McCain's wife, as you all know by now, is beer heiress Cindy Hensley McCain. What you may not know (or remember) is that Cindy McCain's father and uncle — former bootleggers — owned the Ruidoso Downs racetrack in the 1950s.
Swinging for Latinos
As New Mexico emerges as a key swing state, the two parties are increasingly focusing on the state's Latino voters as a key demographic. It’s not unusual for Democrats to win big statewide with New Mexico Latinos. But George Bush received about 40 percent of the Latino vote nationally in 2004, and maybe 37 percent in New Mexico. The big question now is was 2004 was a flash in the pan?
NEA estimates McCain pricetag
Today is National Teacher Appreciation Day, and that's great for this year. But a report out by the National Education Association (NEA) asserts there will be less to appreciate about next year if John McCain is elected president.
Richardson makes Obama's case
Gov. Bill Richardson appeared on CNN’s Larry King Live Wednesday night to debate Hillary Clinton-supporter James Carville. Carville famously labeled Richardson’s endorsement of Barack Obama an act of betrayal, even comparing Richardson’s choice to Judas’ betrayal of Jesus in an article late last month in the New York Times.
Audit raises (millions of) questions
A Democratic party media consultant received an unauthorized fee of $1 million in 2004 and more than $2 million of the contract that produced thousands of TV and radio ads prominently featuring Vigil-Giron in '04 and '06 can't be accounted for.
Widening income gap partly due to NM's high illiteracy rate
The income gap has increased in New Mexico, according to a report released last week. According to some, one reason for the growing inequality may be found in the state’s shift to a knowledge-based economy at the same time that a sizable portion of adult New Mexicans are functionally illiterate.
The big H2O transfer
The demand for water has driven up the value of Middle Rio Grande water rights more than tenfold in the last 20 years, and landowners are cashing out in what appear to be record numbers. But even as water transfers speed up, so has opposition from farmers and pueblos alike. In recent months the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has chimed in over concern for the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow.
West Siders beware
Although most people in Albuquerque remain unaware, a Texas based oil company, Tecton, has signed a lease to drill for oil on 50,000 acres of the West Mesa. Tecton has already started looking for oil, using three wells.
If Tecton strikes oil, Albuquerque residents could see more than a thousand wells on the horizon. The medical and public health communities believe strongly that this is the wrong prescription for Albuquerque. The actual act of drilling an oil well poses serious risks to Albuquerque’s way of life. Oil companies inject chemicals into underground aquifers, thus putting precious water supplies in danger. Oil wells also release toxic chemicals, increase ozone levels and smog, and contribute to air pollution.
Musharraf planning political exile... in New Mexico? (UPDATED)
Many news outlets were reporting the news that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf had announced his resignation today in the face of imminent impeachment charges. But one detail that hasn’t been widely reported is that possibility that the ex-military dictator might be moving to New Mexico. According to Shuja Nawaz, a former Pakistani journalist and International Development Agency official, that’s precisely the plan.
Albuquerque opens new path and bridge, aims to be more bike-friendly
Albuquerque opened a new bicycle bridge this week and it has plans to extend bike trails in coming years. But much more work is needed to make the Duke City the bike-friendly metropolis Mayor Martin Chavez envisions.
Behind the Food Crisis: Free Trade?
ALBUQUERQUE – A policy brief recently released by the Oakland Institute, a California-based progressive think tank, claims that increased free trade has contributed to the food crisis. In answer to the question “Who stands to gain from high food prices?”, Institute founder Anuradha Mittal answers: In fact, it is traders and middlemen who stand to gain most. Speculation in world commodities is driving prices upward, from global futures commodity trading to traders and hoarders in West Africa, Thailand, and the Philippines.
Honeybees at risk
New Mexico’s bees are faring better than in most places around the world, including the neighboring states of Colorado and Texas, where instances of the phenomenon known as bee colony collapse are decimating hives and putting beekeepers out of business. But that’s not to say bees are not threatened. “All of our pollinators are in trouble, including hummingbirds,” one expert says.
A big, dirty mess
Responding to congressional demands and a series in the Los Angeles Times in 2006, the federal government has laid out a $161 million plan to prevent the spread of radioactive contamination on sites across the Navajo nation.
The plan calls for the clean up of the Northeast Church Rock Mine near Gallup as well as a survey of structures and wells for contamination.
CD3: Lujan camp attacks Shendo
The question of frontrunner Ben Ray Lujan's sexual orientation in the Democratic 3rd Congressional District contest transfixed politicians, bloggers and others Wednesday. It also forced campaigns -- and news outlets -- to confront an issue that rarely surfaces in even the most vigorous political contests -- the relevance or lack thereof of a candidate's sexual orientation.
Hidden oligarchy
Is the American economy undergoing a historic readjustment from powerhouse to a ne’er-do-well nation down at the heel, on the brink of social trouble with a financial aristocracy thumbing its nose at vast legions of the working poor? It may well be.
And if it is, this decline stems in large part from one simple source – what I like to call holier-than-thou-art economics, a false notion in which the rich are seen as unfailingly good and the not-so-rich and poor are suspects of unworthiness, or as one politician put it recently, “whiners.”
NMI... then and now
When I walked into the offices of the New Mexico Independent in September 1971 to deliver my first column, I smelled smoke, and oily ink, and hot paper. In late 1970, Mark and Mary Beth Acuff, and a few investors, had bought El Independiente and its flat bed press. Along with the equipment came a contract to sell legal advertising which kept the Acuffs’ cash flow going in good times and bad...