Transportation Position Paper

Transportation Position Paper of April 5, 2022

Respectfully Submitted by: William Mee, Agua Fria Village, for
United Communities of Santa Fe

This position paper attempts to address the issue of Transportation in the urban area of the City of Santa Fe and the associated County of Santa Fe areas, and what is supposed to be planned by the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO).

When I worked at the State Highway Department, in the former Planning Division, they had a Library. In the Library was a report from 1950 done for the City of Santa Fe and calling out the three main things that the City needed: downtown parking; a bypass around the traffic gridlock points (it was thought to be Osage Avenue but the neighborhood fought it and it turned out to be the new road St. Francis Drive); and a parallel road to Cerrillos Road to alleviate it and carry traffic during a shutdown of the road (this turned out to be four-laned Airport Road and the planned four-lane Rufina Street—which is still only two lanes). Fast forward 50 years to the year 2000 and all the key improvements had yet to be completed. Fast forward to today, and the issues are the same.

Any talk of Transportation must include the elements of automobiles, buses, rail, bicycles, pedicabs and walking. The 800-pound gorilla in the room has always been the private automobile, and this is what degenerates any conversation about a complete transportation and well-functioning system— into a car traffic discussion which always functions on less than ideal conditions. Who wants to be stuck in traffic?

Automotive transportation is always planned on a Grid Network. To offer to the motorist several options from getting from place A to place B. When a primary essential route is overly congested, planners offer another route as a bypass or relief route. New Mexico 599 (NM599) and Interstate 25 (I-25) are such examples. NM599 in a big circular fashion offers an opportunity to get from the southwest sector (south side) to the downtown. It is a longer route but because you’re traveling between 65 and 55 mph without any stops from traffic lights you can actually get to your destination faster, than waiting for the 90 second intervals of traffic lights at peak hour traffic congestion.

So, let’s get into some definitions. “Peak hour traffic” varies from location to location but is basically when everyone goes into work in the morning and back home from work in the evening. In Santa Fe this is seen as 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. Additionally, school traffic from 2:30 to 3:30 can affect neighborhoods. Now this as a rule has been challenged by the Covid-19 shutdown, and people electing to continue to work from home telecommute and to homeschool. But in a town like Santa Fe with a large tourism industry it is often difficult to calculate the impact of those tourists. Back in the day, State Highway Department workers would stand on the side of the road and interview people passing through a particular intersection, like: “where are you going and where did you come from.” This was known as an “origin and destination study.” Now computer modeling is invoked.

Because we have peak hour traffic issues, we know that during the 24 hours of the day, we have only 4 to 6 hours of the day that traffic congestion effectively shuts down our roadways. So, for 18 to 20 hours of the day the road is perfectly fine. Additionally, we look at days of the week. Traditional work schedules are Monday through Friday, this then is the time frame that people are commuting to work and taking kids to school. Saturdays can be busy with people doing recreational opportunities, but these are not in the same location that the work and school sites are. Sunday mornings many of our areas look like a ghost town. There is a sophisticated traffic counting system managed by the New Mexico Transportation Department. These are those rubber hoses that run across a highway and report into a computer system. On an intersection there are sophisticated formulas that tell how each person either goes through the intersection or makes a left- or right-hand turn, the legs of the equation. If there is some question as to the validity of this study process, a DOT employee will physically go out and count the movements, especially those turning. The ultimate result of these traffic counts are what we call Average Daily Traffic or ADT.

Traditional work schedules have recently been replaced by the 2020 pandemic schedules and increased on-line work schedules.

There is always an effort by municipalities to under-design the roadway to save costs. Conversely, the State Transportation Department, which is also funded by the U.S. Federal Highway Administration, tends to over-design a project. This is to make projects that serve the long-term. But under-designs are kind of bolstered by this idea that roads aren’t being used for 18 to 20 hours of the day.

We briefly introduced the MPO, the Metropolitan Planning Organization in the very beginning of this paper. When a municipality exceeds 50,000 people in population it becomes an urbanized area, and each urbanized area must have an MPO to plan it. This is according to the statute and regulations of the Federal Highway Administration and its parent the U.S. Department of Transportation. The City of Santa Fe received its MPO based on the 1980 census (I was working in the Planning Bureau of the N.M. Highway Department at that time). The MPO does a 5-year plan that shows what the needs are in the area, and how the federal and state money will come in to supplement the city and county money to complete projects. Usually, MPO’s have all the jurisdictional entities within a 5-mile radius of the planning area. The Santa Fe MPO has always excluded the Tesuque Pueblo and the Agua Fria Village Traditional Historic Community (THC), which they have been formally asked to do, and almost did under the City-County 2012 Settlement Annexation Agreement.

The N.M. Highway Department and City sponsored an Arterial Roads Taskforce (ART) starting in 1994 and continuing to 2006 when a formal plan was issued. The ART planned Meadows Avenue, Governor Miles Road, NM599, the Richards Avenue roundabouts, Rabbit Road (not completed until this year), Caja del Rio Road, and CR70 Via Veterano’s. So, in a sense building a grid network of roads that people could use to access all areas of the city. The unique feature of the ART was that it had County and state elected officials on it and their respective employees, but also 25 ordinary citizens. The citizens were representing the neighborhoods and brought real life ideas on how to get from point A to point B. It is unfortunate that the City of Santa Fe discounted many of their suggestions and has not called for them to continue planning since 2007 (17 years ago!).

Before the MPO, Interstate 25 came into town, and in 1975 an idea was floated for a I-25 Intersection at Richards Avenue, the land had been obtained for the cloverleaf design and the intersection was far enough away from the Old Pecos Trail and Cerrillos Road Intersections for federal funding. All that was needed was to connect the road across land owned by the N.M. Forestry Division and Game and Fish Department. Fast forward to today and the project remains undone.

It is important for the ordinary citizen to understand all of the above. The lingo and the methodology. Because if you go to a City Planning Commission or City Council meetings, the Developer’s Planning Consultant is going to bring in their Traffic Engineering consultant and they are going to razzle dazzle the City Traffic Engineer and baffle the citizens and completely defeat the argument that a new subdivision is creating too much traffic. So be aware!

The TRUTH is that the City is not built on a Grid Pattern like most major cities are (squares of blocks of 900 feet in length like New York City is laid out on). Agua Fria, Bishop’s Lodge, Old Pecos Trail, and West Alameda were basically trails that will never handle a lot of traffic. Santa Fe is a historic City that people say has “the feel of Europe”—that is our allure for Tourists—not being a Los Angeles or a New York City. Santa Fe will never be a great city (a metropolitan area or over 250,000 in population) that has a grid network. Nothing is really straight in our city to accomplish this. We were founded on a number of connecting Native American and eventually European (Spanish) trails. Ann Lacy has written about the Old Pecos Trail in a December 12th 2021 op-ed in the New Mexican. I write frequently about El Camino Real. Both have sometimes been referred to as “donkey trails.” Then there is West Alameda and Bishop’s Lodge Road. All four historic roads will never be expanded because of the “taking” of the number of homes it would entail, the opposition of the neighborhoods involved, and the slight protections of the “trail designations” of the U.S. National Park Service. One prime example is Old Santa Fe Trail, as it comes into town and narrows — with expensive historic buildings immediately on both sides. Will the City eventually want to declare eminent domain to get those properties in order to widen the road? This has hardly ever been done in the City’s history. In fact, one such “taking” was more of a political stunt then anything else. In the 1960’s with Urban Renewal monies the Paseo de Peralta was made as a loop road. The strange curves between Galisteo and Don Gaspar Streets on Paseo de Peralta were to take out Mr. Roybal’s swimming pool. Roybal had been a City Councilor who rarely went with the click that was lining their pockets. So—payback time!

When we opposed the Blue Buffalo El Rio apartments of 500 units (at the ENN they asked for 498 units and said: “oh we could be well over 500, at 516, so we are doing you a favor”). We were thinking of using Hilario Romero’s son Pasqual’s drone to do a dramatic video presentation to the City Council; flying a drone over 8am and 5pm traffic. When there is a construction project on Cerrillos Road or an accident, the amount of traffic diversion to West Alameda, Rodeo Road, Siringo Agua Fria—-is totally devastating —bumper to bumper, traffic at a complete standstill. People losing their patience and road rage setting in. We were thinking that video be shot of an accident on one of the major streets and then how the traffic shifts to other streets and sometimes accidents happen there and within an hour the whole city is COMPLETELY shut down. This road rage was a result of one such day:
https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/police-u-turn-results-in-deadly-road-rage-on-rufina-street/article_cd376eaa-14ad-11ec-8759-13ccd1cef0f9.html?fbclid=IwAR2oZwu4tFfLvQG4UC5xOEZ9l7_KfGZKrL30rJ-QHkYMU4-BrF0VK3dCAfM

I remember once we were having a family birthday party at Il Vicino on Guadalupe Street and construction was on Cerrillos Road. The power in the City also went down at the same time during a lightning storm, so all traffic lights were off. Family members were coming through West Alameda, Agua Fria Street, Rodeo Road, and St. Francis. It took all of us 2 extra hours to reach the restaurant (which had barely opened because of the power outage also). It is amazing how fragile our entire transportation system is. To have an aerial of this traffic gridlock, would just be so striking (drone video).

In 2007, I was part of the joint City-County Southwest Sector Planning Taskforce. The meetings were at 4:00 p.m., at the Santa Fe Business incubator on Airport Road, and I worked at the state P.E.R.A Building downtown. I knew getting to the meeting would be an issue. So, I used Cerrillos Road to get there and it took 56 minutes. I thought this is ridiculous, so I tried Agua Fria Street onto Rufina Street, and it took 54 minutes. So, I thought, maybe I am doing this all wrong—maybe the best way is not the most direct way. So, I went up Old Pecos Trail to I-25 and off at the Cerrillos Road Exit, and to Jaguar to Paseo del Sol. ONLY thirteen minutes in a big half circle.

There is needed driver education training. Like how to use the Interstate and Relief Route NM599 to save time. Like how to use a roundabout efficiently.

When all of this is mentioned, these important issues, to the City of Santa Fe land use planners and the traffic division many of them say: “oh, we don’t know, we live in Rio Rancho.”

So many times, in City Planning Commission or City Council meetings the City Traffic Engineer’s testimony is pivotal. Sometimes I wonder if they take money from under the table but that’s another issue. Yet, they have stated in the past that the number of private driveways on Agua Fria Street, say at 100 feet intervals when they should be 500 feet, make it inappropriate to serve as an “Arterial” (Another definition: An arterial road or arterial thoroughfare is a high-capacity urban road. The primary function of an arterial road is to deliver traffic from collector roads [neighborhood roads] to freeways or expressways [or our Major Arterials], and between urban centers at the highest level of service [LOS] possible). That because it once had 18,000 cars average daily traffic (ADT) in 2013, before the Siler Road Bridge was built, that it still can handle more capacity, so 13,000 is not an issue. Yet, their own definition of a maximum capacity on an arterial is 10,000 ADT. And this “capacity” is challenged by every private driveway that enter the arterial at about one per 100 feet, because people make left hand turns into the private driveways stopping traffic. Agua Fria Street was even classified as a “Major Arterial” street, under the N.M. Department of Transportation’s “Functional Classification System.” The capacity of a Major Arterial is 10,000 ADT. However, Agua Fria (El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro—the Nation’s oldest highway), has too many private driveways entering it to be safe for traffic (testimony of John Romero and Isaac Pino, both former City Traffic Engineers).

I’m sure that Old Pecos Trail has the same traffic count and congestion history. West Alameda and Bishop’s Lodge Road would be the same thing.

Then there is the issue that the City has been collecting from developers’ money to improve intersections and since City Traffic Engineer John Romero left there hasn’t been an accounting of it. This is probably millions in escrow unless the City has spent it elsewhere. Our Village Association has just asked both the City and County where the money that John Romero collected for straightening out Henry Lynch Road at Richards Avenue went.

The lack of “network” analysis (really everything described in all the paragraphs that have preceded) is something that no one is pointing out. Each new subdivision comes in and it is 900 cars a day, and everyone in City leadership poos-poos it. “Why, it’s less than 1,000!”

The thing is that 10—900’s are 9,000 cars and that becomes a whole lot more. Possibly to the point of Network Failure (think LA). Without a comprehensive study like Demographer Al Pitts did for the Arterial Roads Task Force (ARTF)—you really don’t know how much it impacts. But we drivers do! Sat in traffic lately? The Arterial Roads Taskforce has not met since 2006 because City Hall pulled the plug on it; the City Long-Term Planning Office was disbanded in 2018. There has been a set of blinders that have been installed on City Hall.

The City of Santa Fe is very weak on this overall Transportation Planning topic since the Traffic Engineer’s office was undermanned for at least a decade. There is also a confusion on whether the MPO does all the work for the City Staff—it does not. People are complaining a lot on social media about traffic (the Santa Fe Bulletin Board would be a good source). Many of the City actions (usually in favor of developers) have actually constricted traffic flow. Look at the Markana Apartments across from Home Depot on Richards Avenue. The very large roadway was narrowed and a traffic impediment installed (curb) on a curve. The developer was given right-of-way purchased by the City to benefit the developer a violation of the Anti-Donation Clause in the N.M. Constitution. This has become a standard practice for new developments coming on-line. These are “changes” that stay with us forever because pavement is too hard to change.

I truly think there is a deliberate action by the City to let roads go bad. It can be incompetence. Say by people in Public Works or others. They never replaced City Engineer John Romero and are using contracts to hire a City Engineering “position” (meaning the viewpoint and not the staff position) on each development and road project (Richards Avenue Roundabouts, Agua Fria Corridor Study, West Alameda Culvert collapse, traffic counts). I cannot imagine this is cheaper than having an actual City Engineer (what is the motive for this? maybe they can manipulate it better this way?) I think they are also not letting anyone firm get more than one contract at a time so there is a risk of “no consistency” in decisions/no following standard engineering practices. I think when you have multiple firms jockeying for position or a permanent gig—they tend to tell you what you want to hear (and maybe not the best thing for the City’s future?). For the reasons I have outlined here—this is a “failed policy.”

There are so many examples of bad traffic design in the City that just impede traffic flow:

There has been a relaxing on the pavement standards on access roads and parking lots that the City has granted to developers (Source: City Planning Commission members 2021). Yet, the roads are all dedicated to the City. It is said that in ten years all of this new construction will just collapse because there isn’t enough good quality asphalt to hold it all together. Then this cost falls to the City to bear because the roads are not of state or federal significance.

St. Michael’s Drive The recent St. Michael’s Drive Planning called for the six-lane state highway serving the emergency needs of the Hospitals, back into a two-lane road with the extra 4 lanes being bike paths, on-street parking and food trucks areas for a beer crawl. The N.M. Department of Transportation (DOT) would remove any such new roadway configuration from its service maps because it has little statewide significance. They recently refused to fix the road until the City decides what it wants to do.

Siler Road Restriped in 2018 from 4 lanes to 2 with a middle turning lane, its traffic capacity has been affected. Not sure whether the accident figures are lower. The road has not ever addressed having a four-way intersection at Cerrillos Road where a strip mall has an entrance.

Henry Lynch Road Where it becomes Richard Avenue the roadway was never straighten out despite City Engineer saying over one million dollars was collected for that purpose. In 2022-23 a traffic study was done jointly with the County, but never released to the public.

Cerrillos Road Probably the highest traveled road in the network, it works well. A DOT study in 2023, was looking at the feasibility of six-laning the roadway from St. Michael’s Drive to St. Francis Drive.

Rodeo Road The roadway still under N.M. Transportation Department authority is adequately designed but has become a major thoroughfare without any long-term planning. There are several dips that are hazardous especially in winter. Normally a roadway would have bridges to span these gaps.

Siringo Road from 1966 to 2018, was the most patrolled street there was. It had the first digital speed warning signs in the City I believe. Santa Fe High School opened in 1966 (and teenagers are easy to give a ticket to). Because St. Mike’s is across the street, the road was closed at the railroad with huge piles of dirt. The City Council always talked about kids racing if it was opened up—endless hours of discussion on it. Then it was opened up and nothing happened. Same is true of the road by the State Police Jaguar Drive. The road was closed at Meadows with piles of dirt. It was determined that racing from Capital High would occur if the roadway was opened. Then it was opened up and nothing happened. The Richards Cloverleaf at I-25 planned in 1975 and the extension of Richard’s Avenues through the former Game and Fish Property has never been done.

Pacheco Street was a dirt road for years, even though it was becoming an arterial between Alta Vista and Saint Michael’s Drive (also going through Second Street). The City only paved the road to connect it and failed to widen it or put in sidewalks in the 1980’s. The road became an alternative to St. Francis drive and the recent excessive traffic has torn it up. Many patches exist on the road and it is a constant victim of edge raveling. The poor drainage on the road causes additional problems.

Camino Carlos Real The end of the road at Cerrillos Road still requires some fixing.

Cordova Road The roadway was recently restriped and the configuration is wrong.

Two last monkey wrenches that can be present are parking and traffic calming devices. For parking, there are standard formulas for how many parking spaces are needed for various types of developments (apartments, shopping centers, single family housing, etc.). Many projects only require 20% of their parking requirements in a lot and the rest are assumed to be made up by “on-street parking”—which is very deficient in the historic Capitol City. But powerful developers are able to sway these figures and get on-street parking that then narrows the street. The ones by Capital High are basically one-lane. This is very traffic calming for a neighborhood but ineffective for getting anywhere, like to a high school in the morning. Traffic calming devices can be the same. Like on Camino Carlos Rey—always the arterial through the Dale Bellamah subdivision. Not every street can have traffic calming. Not every street can forgo common sense improvements.

When I was planning to write this in 2022, Ann Lacy said: “once I participated in a state program redesigning older state roads [that were bypassed by the Interstates]: Old Las Vegas Highway (which is the old Route 66) under the aegis of a planning mandate in the N.M. Transportation Department that required “community participation.” Folks along Highways. 285 (through Eldorado and Canoncito) and 14— along with others around the state also had some say in safety and design aspects. But in the City of Santa Fe, it’s usually about protecting what’s already been planned!”

There are many more important points in the complex issue of transportation (probably more than I have covered). We often forget that “transportation” includes our Santa Fe Trails and Blue Bus bus systems, the RailRunner, bicycle planning, and pedestrians, and just all alternative forms of getting around besides the personal car, including the Airport. We forget we need equestrian trails. We usually see “transportation” as a big part of “land use” as much of the activity centers around growth and rezoning. We fail to see what other infrastructure is needed to support the roadways (parking for example).

In 2013, Isaac Pino, the Public Works Director and City Traffic Engineer John Romero, had been looking at buying a new lot for the City Public Works Department; especially when the Mayor indicated they were going to have “City Hall South” at the 13 acres that they bought from the Garcia Brothers Construction right across from Rock and Rollers. The new building was estimated at $30 million (which is now closer to $60 million). They couldn’t find a site that was within their budget, but also who wants that pile of asphalt and tractors that leak oil and diesel next to him if it’s going to pollute their well? Plus, Pino and Romero said the “level of service” would decline if they are moved from Siler Road which is centralized to the whole City, everywhere in the City can be reached in usually 20 minutes and 45 minutes at the tops. Currently, it takes 45 minutes to get to Hyde Park Road with a snowplow —which is their snowiest part of the City. If they relocated to NM599 it would take an hour and to NM14 it would take an hour-and-a-half to traverse.

It is amazing that we have gotten to a citizen-organized street repair system. Before Mayor Webber there was a system where every two years the City would ask for a $30 million bond and these funds would be used to resurface streets based on a prioritization system. In the in-between years, a City crew would patch potholes holding together the street until it got its turn on the resurfacing list (many of these crews were let go). But when you pass no audits since 2018 it throws a monkey wrench into the process.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/136461779799902?multi_permalinks=7196197630492913&hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen

The backlog in road repairs to the City of Santa Fe was OVER $150 million in Public Works Director Regina Wheeler’s report in the Infrastructure Today magazine in 2020. OVER $250 million in the Mayor’s 2022 report. Typically, these things snowball as time goes on, and as repairs are neglected it—it gets more and more expensive to repair. Who knows what figure it is now? The City usually floats a $30 million-dollar Bond Issue for roads every TWO years. The last one was $6.3 million in 2020 (they skipped the ones in 2018 and 2022 because of no completed audits). Missing $120 million in Bond Issues, also means the value of that money is probably between $150-$200 million. So, say the new figure is $300 million in repairs in 2024, at $30 million a bond issue every 2 years, it would take 20 years to fix all the roads.

Of course, it is not as simple as this—because the roads who have waited 10 years to be fixed will cost more than twice the money to fix, and those waiting the full 20 years will cost at least 4 times as much money to fix. MEANING that the average reader here will probably never see some roads ever fixed in their lifetimes. Very sad…..

Why Project 2025 makes sense for a Trump Type

Today, we are going to talk about project 2025 and how it will completely control governance by a possible Trump Administration or a future Trumpism movement in 2029 or 2033.  These people are playing the long game, the forever game.

But before we get there we need the background.  

At the 2016 GOP national convention, people were worried about Trump when he became the nominee.  He was a political neophyte never holding even the lowest of political positions.  He was this renowned businessman but when you look at his business, it was a sole proprietorship, meaning that he had no board of directors or thousands of stockholders performing oversight on his operations.  He was this lone wolf in the New York City area that many people didn’t trust.  He was a Democrat for many years contributing to Democratic Party campaigns.  He went bankrupt six times and ran casinos.  He was expanding overseas and had all kinds of Foreign Entanglements.  At one time before 2016, there was already 19 candidates in the race for the Republican nomination for president.  So there was a huge need to instill confidence and buy-in in all of these fractions of the GOP.

GOP chairperson Reinus Preibos said that he would resign his position and become the Chief of Staff in the White House.  Famously, there were the four generals that came in like: Michael Flynn, John Kelly, James Mattis and H.R. McMaster, and the whole framework of the administration was what they called “guardrails.”.   What this became was a formal plan to keep Trump informed of the right things to do and to avoid any illegalities—for a man very prone to flubs.

Already by this time, Paul Manafort was caught with his Russian ties, the pee pee tape had been out, Stormy Daniels was in the news, and Trump’s comment: grab them by the p—–; all were weighing on the minds of Evangelicals and Dominionists.  This is when they went into the Oval Office and did the “laying on of hands” to absolve Trump of all past indiscretions, and to do a prayer so that he might be successful in the future. To be their Biblical David, a great leader with a few imperfections.

We all might remember the video of Trump signing a bunch of documents divesting himself of his business interests and there being two piles two foot high next to him, and this was to address his potential violations of Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution, and two other federal laws.  The reason for this were the several books by David Kay Johnson on Trump’s sales and leases of over 4,000 housing units to Russian Nationals.  

Then there were the Trump Transition Teams, which are a good and normal practice for the effective transfer of power between presidents.  Transition Team Members poo-pooed the guidance books prepared by the Obama Chief of Staff. The Trump Transition Teams would meet all day—without their Obama counterparts (which was a first), and then after lunch, several team members would come back drunk and then start bragging about what they were going to do.  Most of the Transition Team members had business dealings with the agencies that they were critiquing. Richard, it is generally accepted that there are 136 independent agencies of the federal government; so transition is a complicated process.   Almost all of the Transition Team members were angry with those agencies and wanted to disrupt them.  Some of the team members actually had lawsuits filed against them by those agencies.  Employees at the Bureau of Indian Affairs heard Transition Team members say how they wanted to remove Native American lands from Trust status and they would quote: “get the Indians drunk and be able to buy their lands for a dime and a drink.“. The most pristine lands in the Forest Service that are near existing ski lodges and hotels would be put up for sale to the Transition Team members, as they bragged.

So let’s fast forward to January 20th 2017, when the Trump Administration takes office.  The Chief of Staff Reinus Preibos and Steve Bannon, brag about how they are operating the administration with half of its normal 4,000 employees.  That this will save a lot of money and provide a clear vision of what the government needs to do in draining the swamp. 

But the thing is if you have 136 federal agencies and if you just had one person per agency, some of those agencies probably need five people, so 300 employees minimum.  Then you have 209 countries in the world, and you could have one person for each country but there are countries like Great Britain where you probably need 10 people to handle them effectively, so 500 employees minimum.  Then you have 50 states and five people per state wouldn’t be that outrageous, so that gives you 250 people.  And you have 3,000 counties and 9,900 municipalities, and you’re going to need several hundred people to take care of those needs.  Then you have to have policy people that know about: Medicare and social security and defense and infrastructure, and on and on; so that is probably 100 people and if they each have a secretary you’re up to 200.  Then you have lobbying organizations like the Urban League and the NAACP and the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute; so you need people assigned to all of that.  This half-staffing is further complicated when half of those people leave by 2019, and you find yourself operating a White House at 25% of effectiveness.  

Then quickly in 2017 when your Transition Team members have become your agency heads—you have in the Department of Interior, a guy who forces his agency to buy all their office supplies from his office supply company without going out to bid.  Then in the Forest Service you have another guy who gets the agency to lease a building from his brother-in-law without a bid.  So scandals hit and require new staff to do ethics training.

Over time, because of Trump’s erratic behavior you start seeing Reinus Preibos and all those generals leaving, and the guardrails are simply eroding.  Lots of bad press starts happening with those scandals, and then Covid hits; and a million people die and that becomes the most deaths in the world.

Enter now, the Heritage Foundation, after the 2020 campaign losses, and they recognize that any second term of Trump will be an unmitigated disaster.  The great “guardrail plan” obviously didn’t work.  Trump is very prone to making off the cuff remarks like nuclear bombing hurricanes and how offshore windmills are killing whales; Trump even gives classified material to the Russians in the Oval Office on video.  The General John Kelly book documents how he dissuaded Trump from bombing Iran and North Korea, and had him “make nice” with Kim.  So there needs to be a total control of the President himself.  Trump is seen as being incapable of being without supervision. That the president as the figurehead of the government really only needs to sign stuff like new laws, Executive Orders, Proclamations and letters. He doesn’t need to be involved in any detailed policy discussions or really any day-to-day activities. If he really likes golf, keep him happy and playing golf. Once out on the golf course he can let the experts at the Think Tanks run the Nation.

So how to write this all up as the “new plan”? Then to get people to buy into it; because it is a totally new concept; counter to everything that has happened since Teddy Roosevelt expanded the Administrative State in 1900. You will need the acceptance of all those organizations that bought into the 2016 and then into the disappointment of the 2020 campaigns. You need people who funded the 2024 campaign and the recurring legal expenses.

Enter Project 2025…..

Ready to go on January 20, 2025—with “safeguards” to keep organizations that were infighting in 2016, or maybe even in 2020, from stepping all over themselves. From flubbing up the forward “progress” to a new government, which has basically been labeled as Fascism. From turning all of our backs from the Rule of Law and the U.S. Constitution to the new form of MAGA governance. Let each of the over 100 organizations, the count right now, to stake out issues that they want to be the champions of: the old faithful abortion; the elimination of regulations (like that stuff at EPA on clean air and water for starters); the making of a Christian Nation; the changing of public education into rich kid Charter Schools and the leftovers being concentration camps for those pesky minorities (there is no longer a need to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education as outlined by Charles Koch in his 1972 Vice Presidential Libertarian campaign—just take full control of it); the elusive Trump Infrastructure Plan never implemented from 2017-2020 (whereby the contractors can only be Trump contributors); Project 28th Amendment (as proposed by the Koch Brothers to rewrite the Constitution by a Constitutional Convention seating only millionaires); state and local government revamping; the dismantling of Medicare and Social Security and their future stock market investment; the elimination of the Welfare state and Medicaid; Elimination of the Affordable Care Act (as a way to save billionaires money); Tax reduction for the 1%; the rollback of Civil Rights—with minorities, GLBT and women as the primary targets; the killing of Affirmative Action and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and Wokeism; protection of gun sales and the NRA; expansion of White Supremacy and promotion of the Great Replacement Theory; Immigration; promoting the unitary executive theory (whereby the Congress and Judiciary powers are reduced); removing the Administrative Code and Federal Register from the government in an effort to drain the swamp; and the restriction of SCOTUS and Democratic Party power. In other words, a dictatorship with the dictator, Trump, being a total facade. For all of these issues the Heritage Foundation, creator of Project 2025, would act as the intermediary when issues ran into each other or required extra-legal pushes to become the new law of the land.

A new “Vision” for the U.S.A. Made for and by the “We The Billionaires.”

Project 2025 is advertised as a great new way of governance: make government more simple—less regulations and cost. The Project 2025 looks at 30 policy areas and their associated federal agencies to come up with what is deemed as: common sense changes. Build the project up as “groundbreaking” and then just put some tiny changes in that can never be undone.

Granted this is getting into the weeds, the minutia of government operations, but it is not the only place it is done, the fifty states all have the same structures and to a lesser extent counties and municipalities. And it is working just fine in all those other places so why the need to change it? I argue because the present system favors fairness, diversity and equity, and not the billionaires. Money cannot buy the outcomes they need immediately.

Early on the creators of Project 2025 created the “Government Accountability Project” in 2020 to hire 20,000 people to establish a permanent cadre of conservative officials in the federal government. They did this by changing the federal governments definition of Schedule F in the federal Civil Service (which the Trump Administration added before they left and Biden reversed), which would allow first-time-elected Donald Trump to control these federal positions and appoint only people who took an actual “loyalty oath” to him. This was particularly important after it was apparent that they lost the 2020 Election. There would be this dog whistle they could sound and these people would make Biden fail. No one would be the wiser. After all people have been conditioned since Reagan to Hate Government.

Early on in the Government Accountability Project or GAP, was the idea that in order to Drain the Swamp and neutralize the Deep State—some of the 136 agencies would be moved out of D.C. and scattered across the country. So that if the EPA was costing your business money because of Clean Water regulations you would move it to St. Louis, where you the billionaire lives, and it would be easier for you to dismantle the agency. Plus, the scientists and lawyers at the agency would not want to move out to Laramie, Wyoming to enforce stuff against you.  So, this now has become a core principle of Project 2025. The national sales pitch on moving agencies is that it spreads the wealth of the government to all localities.

The Project 2025 is designed to learn from the “failed experiences” of 2020. The comment by Trump: “I would only be a dictator for a day”, means he would sign enough stuff in that one day to effectively remove all oversight from the Presidency. He could implement the “Insurrection Act” so no one can challenge him in any activity. The courts would be closed and the media eliminated. Checks and balances would cease to exist.

Is this really the USA you want to live in? No U.S. Constitution to protect you? No hope for your children?

The people involved in Project 2025 are like the drunks in the 2016 Trump Transition Teams—they talk a lot and brag—so this is how we know just how bad it will be. For instance, John McEntee, a former Trump aide and loyalty enforcer who is involved in Project 2025 planning, says “The president’s plan should be to fundamentally reorient the federal government in a way that hasn’t been done since F.D.R.’s New Deal.” Project 2025 director Paul Dans also mentioned the New Deal and Great Society social net programs in telling Steve Bannon that the administrative state is “completely unrooted in the Constitution.” And this is all a wonderful plan to save the billionaires tax money. But the poor without a safety net will have no choice but a 1789 French or 1917 Russian-styled Revolution to take the rich out into the street and divide their wealth (I’ve never been sure why they don’t see this).

The Administrative State, as Bannon complains—or more properly, Administrative Code, of course is in deed unrooted in the U.S. Constitution, but is grounded in the Rule of Law. It is impossible for Congress, or a Legislative Branch (Article One), to write every law that was required in the past, or is required now, or deep into the future—with the level of detail that Regulations provide. Congress has granted the Executive Branch the ability to make Administrative Law and to interpret legislative intent into a workable system of rules and regulations. The federal agencies are generally considered to be the experts in their fields. They are advertised for public input in the Federal Register. The Judiciary oversees these powers. So there are natural checks and balances.

Project 2025 affiliates are bragging how it will be a great way to attack birth control and unify the state-by-state legislation on abortion. Project 2025’s Russ Vought calls for the abandonment of a democratic norm that has long been embraced on a bipartisan basis that Department of Justice (DOJ) decision-making regarding investigations and prosecutions should be shielded from political pressure by the White House. In his first term, Trump unsuccessfully pressured DOJ officials to investigate his political opponents and back his efforts to stay in power after his 2020 defeat. His loyalists want to ensure that any future Trump orders will be carried out unquestioningly. “What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” Vought says.

The Project 2025 website has changed recently from how efficient government could be, to a: “beat back the Libs” style. Further they say: “The actions of liberal politicians in Washington have created a desperate need and unique opportunity for conservatives to start undoing the damage the Left has wrought and build a better country for all Americans in 2025. It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on day one of the next conservative administration.  This is the goal of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project. The project will build on four pillars that will, collectively, pave the way for an effective conservative administration: a policy agenda, personnel, training, and a 180-day playbook.“

Recently reporting says that Trump is in a diminished capacity.

Project 2025 is not looking at the normal governance characteristics of a good or fit president. All they need is someone to come in with a wheelchair, go up to a signing table, and print DJT (that is meaning that his usual 1 in tall signature with a marker will be replaced with this shorter thing that a diminished person can do) on a law or executive order, and everyone will call it good from the MAGA side. They can wheel him out of the office and then give him a Burger King hamburger like you would reward a dog after he’s done a trick. Project 2025 only needs a very marginal figurehead to get what it wants.

From the Project 2025 website: “Even in the seemingly unlikely scenario that Trump does not become the Republican nominee, other GOP contenders are pledged to wage the war he and Project 2025 are calling for against federal agencies.“

There are tens of trillions of dollars at risk here. So don’t poo-poo what the Project 2025 can do to your lives if you vote for Trump. The Koch Brothers and other billionaires ran a conference in Miami on how to pressure little old ladies, who weren’t using their property properly, to sell prime real estate to them. The people behind this are willing to take everything you have.

Peter Montgomery writes in Political Research Associates on how to stop this Fast Road to Fascism. Shouting this from the rooftops is the only way to defeat this. Remind people of how it impacts their freedom and is totally Un-American.

Culture Wars

“Culture Wars” seem to be an invention of Fox News, and we see how that media empire fell from grace. Ron DeSantis elevated his Culture Wars from Disney, teacher unions and GLBTQ at Universities to a race for President, and on January 21, 2024 he is gone. The man forgot how to govern for the majority and to actually produce results —like solving the insurance crisis after several hurricanes. Arising out of the “War on Christmas” the Culture War displays the same type of intolerance and prejudice. Only 2 billion people celebrate Christmas worldwide—that is only 25% of the population. So saying something like: “Happy Holidays” is considerate of the 75%. There are so many other religions that have cultural celebrations around the Winter Solstice—but don’t want the commercialization of Christmas shoved down their throats. 

I usually always start with a definition and this time Wikipedia is a great place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war

“In political science, a culture war is a type of cultural conflict between different social groups who struggle to politically impose their own ideology (beliefs, virtues, practices) upon their society.” The Republican Party in the USA has used the Culture War theme to bind its members together who were going a little soft on the abortion and Law and Order themes. 

There is a list of 20 banned books that were all on my school reading list in the 1970’s; it really shocked me to see this (like for instance: To Kill a Mockingbird; because the author Harper Lee pretended she was a man and because it “glorified Negroes”—I mean who are these book banners?). The 20 books are really the basis for “American Literature.” All the Fascist countries in WWII banned books and see what they got?

Somehow the Culture War got couched in: “who is a Patriot” and who is not. Yet, nothing could be further than the truth. Patriots fight Fascists—they don’t become them. They are the ones bringing the transparency and light to the issues—not fostering censorship and bigotry. In reality, it looks like this whole thing is based on the Great Replacement Theory—and is in fact, a racist cabal backing it all (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement). 

January 6th Planning

New info has a person firing a weapon on January 6th: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/new-jan-6-footage-appears-show-rioter-firing-gun-air-capitol-attack-rcna138137?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma&taid=65c7a81276567b000102e217&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&fbclid=IwAR0yHWrLPUcB3RKChKrET5YcCnnd6REjJMCWAKp_rbX5LqHYQjSiy-sugtM

I think the firing of a gun may lead some people to believe they have great superiority and are in the right cause; maybe this is why it was planned this way.

The GOP Congress is fond of saying it is NOT an Insurrection because no guns were used. But the bear spray and metal flag poles were encouraged because it is a crime to carry a gun in D.C., yet, these tools proved to be deadly weapons.  The planning that was done on Qanon websites spread this info, so that 5,000 people with these weapons can overwhelm 140 officers that were reported on by GOP House members to the Insurrectionists that took tours. 

The interesting thing is Roger Stone met in a parking garage with the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, and out of this meeting came the idea that the Capitol Building would be breeched and held and that “speed boats would race up the Potomac River with bazookas and hand grenades to take over the City and Lt. General Flynn (Mike’s brother on active duty) would move in with troops to install Trump. None of this happened but I’m sure it was told to Trump by Stone. The PB and OK were not identified inside the Capitol Building like it was a doubler-double cross????

Well, there are pictures of at least 6 people in the trees with sniper rifles. They were part of a White Supremacist group. There was a direct reason why Trump told the Secret Service to remove the metal detectors at his rally (so his people can get in).

Privatization

I thought I wrote a WordPress piece on privatization that I could share with you all, but I haven’t. But it is a common theme in many of the pieces. The theory of privatization is that with a profit motive, the entity can strive for efficiency, and that sounds as good as Trickle Down Economics (and we know how that turned out). Since the “Reagan Revolution” that the Libertarian Koch Brothers got behind, there have been “experiments” run at the state level and they invariably implode as the founders walk away with a profit. The founding privateers get tired of or bored with running a business—that isn’t the luxury that the government has.

The new Privatization model is based on Naomi Klein’s book Disaster Capitalism—whereby the industry is privatized and this is a shell to hide behind and gut out all the profits and then go bankrupt. It is never about providing better services—it is all about stealing money from the entity.

In this article, the new target for privatization is Medicare, it has a lot of money and is not as high profile as Social Security, and if privatized, Social Security can be the next target. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-republicans-privatize-medicare-1234960808/?link_id=17&can_id=957a98ad23b01e070705aa66cfa57246&source=email-re-breaking-donald-trumps-plan-to-privatize-medicare&email_referrer=email_2198165&email_subject=re-breaking-donald-trumps-plan-to-privatize-medicare&fbclid=IwAR2-repxk_4OmmIEe2iAN1qiUVgolFtdP6gVEC8fMZ6O9w2frkYOSAi9_jkMany here on this group feel that a Medicare For All system would work best—so this runs counter to that, and may prohibit it for all time. The whole George W. Bush plan of Medicare Part D which was sold as the answer to Medicare For All has been a failure.

My friend Bonn Macy says:

“It still amazes me that the GOP continually push for things that the American public demonstrably no not want.

And to be sure, the private sector can not run Medicare as efficiently and cost-effectively ad the Government. We will pay more (probably 20-30% more), get worse coverage, have coverage denied much more often, flood the courts with law suits, see Medical bankruptcies among our seniors skyrocket, and more seniors die before they need to.

Finally, I’ve paid into Medicare for more than a couple decades now. Will I be denied what I have already paid for, for all these years?”

I can remember at the New Mexico Highway Department, where I worked, that the striping crew was privatized, when it was underbid by the private entity by only a penny. The crew had heard that they were going to be privatized and that it was going out to Bid, so they put in their own bid. When the GOP Governor’s Office heard that the crew did this they put the project back out to bid, while knowing what the crew’s bottom line was. Hence the penny figure. The crew had to train the private firm which was a burn to them, and they had to turn over some of their equipment. The private firm bought a allotment of paint from a paint company that had left the paint out in freezing temperatures. The private firm painted all the striping in the Roswell area, and the next rainstorm the striping washed off because frozen paint has no integrity. And like the old adage: you get what you pay for.

Project 2025 and just how dangerous Trump is….

Project 2025 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025) started off as a way to ensure the 2024 election went Donald John Trump’s way even before anyone voted—so there would be only one outcome—and if it didn’t;’t turn out that way all hell would break loose. Apparently, Trump feels he was mistreated by entrenched election officials and federal employees—so he didn’t want it to happen again. One of the first drafts of the Project 2025 was to recruit 50,000 attorneys (as detailed by the Steve Bannon talk show) that took a “loyalty oath” to Trump to contest any election issues not going Trump’s way. 

Then Project 2025 (https://www.govtaccountabilityproject.org/post/what-is-schedule-f?gclid=Cj0KCQiAhomtBhDgARIsABcaYynD3jcWvBR47EU11cr2VhPU5d6QdNl_QtChUhyEhEpONFySijLt_twaAtPREALw_wcB) changed into changing the federal governments definition of Schedule F in the federal Civil Service (which the Trump Administration added before they left and Biden reversed), which would allow first-time elected Trump to control these federal positions and appoint only people who took a loyalty oath to him (https://www.govtaccountabilityproject.org/post/what-is-schedule-f?gclid=Cj0KCQiAhomtBhDgARIsABcaYynD3jcWvBR47EU11cr2VhPU5d6QdNl_QtChUhyEhEpONFySijLt_twaAtPREALw_wcB). A kind of 1930’s Germany Brownshirts organization. 

FROM THE GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT WEBSITE:

As the next election nears, Republicans plan to revisit Schedule F. Looking forward, the American Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups have started “Project 2025” in hopes of a Republican takeover of the White House and Congress. These groups are working to recruit over 20,000 conservative political operatives whom they will attempt to place in key positions within the federal government.

While proponents of Schedule F claim their intent is to streamline operations and improve efficiency, its implementation and potential consequences have raised valid concerns.

1. Schedule F undermines the merit-based civil service system. The civil service has traditionally provided job protections and safeguards against political favoritism, ensuring that federal employees are selected based on their qualifications and abilities, rather than their political affiliations.
2. It opens the door for political patronage and potential abuse of power. Valid concerns have been raised that positions could be filled with individuals based on political affiliation rather than competence, undermining the principle of a non-partisan, professional bureaucracy and weakening the integrity and impartiality of the federal workforce.
3. It increases politicization of the federal government. The reclassification of positions into Schedule F subjects federal employees to political pressures, creating an environment where loyalty to a particular administration takes precedence over objective decision-making and expertise.
4. It results in the loss of institutional knowledge and expertise within the federal government. Experienced and qualified professionals may be at risk of being replaced with politically motivated appointees lacking the necessary knowledge and skills. This turnover of personnel can disrupt continuity and hinder the effective implementation of policies and programs.

The Center for a New American Security has written extensively on this issue and called efforts to revive Schedule F an “unwelcome resurgence,” stating:

“The U.S. government is able to take on high-risk, high-cost ventures—nuclear security, pandemic response, environmental clean-up, food safety, and more—because civil servants are hired based on qualifications, not party affiliation.”

So this is the first part of the title that even the Federalist Society has endorsed (the creators of the 6-3 Supreme Court of the GOP [SCOTGOP]). The second part has been summarized in 238 parts by Surely Preston in the Facebook group: Latinos Against Trump (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1611702585787284/posts/3408692826088242).

So just how dangerous is Trump? 

I guess it depends on whether or not you have seen a lot of what Trump says. Then whether you believe it or not. Many people are saying: oh well, he says a lot of crazy things that the Congress or Supreme Court would never act on. But can you be sure? The GOP is totally off the rails when it comes to reason or reality. Many of them believe in destroying the Earth because they mistakenly believe it will bring about the Rapture with Jesus—or Dominionism that says that any illegal act you do will be forgiven by God if you do it to achieve God’s final purposes. So with these BAD ACTORS standing by it makes us pretty close to a 1933 Germany. Hitler and his in-crowd believed in all sorts of divine destiny, magic, astrology, numerology, and just plain fantasy—but they got pretty far didn’t they? Fast forward to 2024 and we have QAnon and its worship of Trump. 

General John Kelly’s book based on his experiences as Trump’s Chief of Staff in the White House tells us about how Trump wanted to nuke hurricanes and North Korea. Kelly convinced Trump to move away from a Preemptive Strike that would win him the 2020 Election to being Kim’s friend. And we all saw that butt-licking. Back to the Nukes—it is believed that our prior nuclear tests moved the Earth 3 degrees off of our axis. So any more activity could accelerate Climate Change. We might kill a lot of Iranians or Russians but we also might kill ourselves in the process.

So Trump is a man with weird ideas that he likes to implement. In 2021 he talked of using the military to go after the Mexican Cartel. Surprisingly, he never mentioned nukes; but maybe this was up his sleeve? The old adage comes into play: “if someone tells you who they are—believe them.” 

This article is pretty great telling us about a new motive for Project 2025: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/09/19/project-2025-trump-reagan-00115811?fbclid=IwAR2TulJ1O1ht6Swh0FUp_3THsDFnWxMfG9g9MIgsdid6aYVvvzuOPl4WdHE

FROM THE ARTICLE: ““It’s not just about 2025. It’s about ’29 and ’33 and ’37,” adds Brooke Rollins, Trump’s former domestic policy chief, who is now CEO of the Trump-endorsed America First Policy Institute. Rollins, like Dans and others who consider themselves aligned with the goals of Project 2025, believes the training program amounts to a new front in the conservative movement. In the past, she says, “the business of governing and process was not our strong suit.”

That’s going to change, says her associate Doug Hoelscher, former director of Trump’s White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, who recently took over the America First Transition Project at AFPI, which is rolling out a similar agenda of its own. “Biden put about 1,200 people in the field on Day One. President Trump put in about 500,” Hoelscher says. “That shows how unready the right has been historically to govern.”

While they have a willing vehicle in Trump — not to mention the support of most of his primary opponents — many conservatives recognize they will have to compensate for Trump’s built-in liabilities. If they truly want to dismantle the “deep state” they believe they have to create, almost from scratch, a workforce that won’t sacrifice competence to Trump’s obsession with loyalty above everything else.”

Another article from December 22, 2023: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/maga-plan-attack-birth-control-surveil-women-ban-abortion-pill-1234934807/

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/maga-plan-attack-birth-control-surveil-women-ban-abortion-pill-1234934807/—titled:

Inside the MAGA Plan to Attack Birth Control, Surveil Women and Ban the Abortion Pill

Republicans’ Project 2025 blueprint spells out how they’ll leverage virtually every arm, tool and agency of the federal government to attack abortion.

FROM THE ARTICLE: “Project 2025 is an initiative of the Heritage Foundation, a rightwing think tank that has helped staff and set the agenda for every Republican administration since Ronald Reagan. It describes Project 2025 as “the conservative movement’s unified effort to be ready for the next conservative administration to govern at 12:00 noon, January 20, 2025.” 

For the last 40 years, Heritage has released a similarly detailed list of policy recommendations before every presidential contest. The organization has a strong track record of exerting influence: Reagan enacted roughly half of the recommendations his first year in office. But Donald Trump bearhugged Heritage’s agenda: In 2018, just one year into his administration, Heritage boasted that Trump had already implemented two-thirds of their policy recommendations, the most of any president since the organization’s founding.”

Surely Preston on Trump’s bad actions

FROM HIS LATINOS AGAINST TRUMP POST:

“I really don’t owe my Trump-supporting friends an apology. I’ve been critical of Trump these last several years, and am still exhausted from the experience. But to be fair, Trump wasn’t that bad…………..other than when. 1. he incited an insurrection against the government, 2. mismanaged a pandemic that killed a million Americans, 3. separated children from their families, lost those children in the bureaucracy, 4. tear-gassed peaceful protesters on Lafayette Square so he could hold a photo op holding a Bible in front of a church, 5. tried to block all Muslims from entering the country, 6. got impeached, 7. got impeached again, 8. had the worst jobs record of any president in modern history, 9. pressured Ukraine to dig dirt on Joe Biden, 10. fired the FBI director for investigating his ties to Russia, 11. bragged about firing the FBI director on TV, 12. took Vladimir Putin’s word over the US intelligence community, 13. diverted military funding to build his wall, 14. caused the longest government shutdown in US history, 15. called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate,” 16. lied nearly 30,000 times, 17. banned transgender people from serving in the military, 18. ejected reporters from the White House briefing room who asked tough questions, 19. vetoed the defense funding bill because it renamed military bases named for Confederate soldiers, 20. refused to release his tax returns, 21. increased the national debt by nearly $8 trillion, 22. had three of the highest annual trade deficits in U.S. history, 23. called veterans and soldiers who died in combat losers and suckers, 24. coddled the leader of Saudi Arabia after he ordered the execution and dismembering of a US-based journalist, 25. refused to concede the 2020 election, 26. hired his unqualified daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House, 27. walked out of an interview with Lesley Stahl, 28. called neo-Nazis “very fine people,” 29. suggested that people should inject bleach into their bodies to fight COVID, 30. abandoned our allies the Kurds to Turkey, 31. pushed through massive tax cuts for the wealthiest but balked at helping working Americans, 32. incited anti-lockdown protesters in several states at the height of the pandemic, 33. withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords, 34. withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal, 35. withdrew the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership which was designed to block China’s advances, 36. insulted his own Cabinet members on Twitter, 37. pushed the leader of Montenegro out of the way during a photo op, 38. failed to reiterate US commitment to defending NATO allies, 39. called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries, 40. called the city of Baltimore the “worst in the nation,” 41. claimed that he single handedly brought back the phrase “Merry Christmas” even though it hadn’t gone anywhere, 42. forced his Cabinet members to praise him publicly like some cult leader, 43. believed he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, 44. berated and belittled his hand-picked Attorney General when he recused himself from the Russia probe, 45. suggested the US should buy Greenland, 46. colluded with Mitch McConnell to push through federal judges and two Supreme Court justices after supporting efforts to prevent his predecessor from appointing judges, 47. repeatedly called the media “enemies of the people,” 48. claimed that if we tested fewer people for COVID we’d have fewer cases, 49. violated the emoluments clause, 50. thought that Nambia was a country, 51. told Bob Woodward in private that the coronavirus was a big deal but then downplayed it in public, 52. called his exceedingly faithful vice president a “p—y” for following the Constitution, 53. nearly got us into a war with Iran after threatening them by tweet, 54. nominated a corrupt head of the EPA, 55. nominated a corrupt head of HHS, 56. nominated a corrupt head of the Interior Department, 57. nominated a corrupt head of the USDA, 58. praised dictators and authoritarians around the world while criticizing allies, 59. refused to allow the presidential transition to begin, 60. insulted war hero John McCain – even after his death, 61. spent an obscene amount of time playing golf after criticizing Barack Obama for playing (far less) golf while president, 62. falsely claimed that he won the 2016 popular vote, 63. called the Muslim mayor of London a “stone cold loser,” 64. falsely claimed that he turned down being Time’s Man of the Year, 65. considered firing special counsel Robert Mueller on several occasions, 66. mocked wearing face masks to guard against transmitting COVID, 67. locked Congress out of its constitutional duty to confirm Cabinet officials by hiring acting ones, 68. used a racist dog whistle by calling COVID the “China virus,” 69. hired and associated with numerous shady figures that were eventually convicted of federal offenses including his campaign manager and national security adviser, 70. pardoned several of his shady associates, 71. gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two congressmen who amplified his batshit crazy conspiracy theories, 72. got into telephone fight with the leader of Australia(!), 73. had a Secretary of State who called him a moron, 74. forced his press secretary to claim without merit that his was the largest inauguration crowd in history, 75. botched the COVID vaccine rollout, 76. tweeted so much dangerous propaganda that Twitter eventually banned him, 77. charged the Secret Service jacked-up rates at his properties, 78. constantly interrupted Joe Biden in their first presidential debate, 79. claimed that COVID would “magically” disappear, 80. called a U.S. Senator “Pocahontas,” 81. used his Twitter account to blast Nordstrom when it stopped selling Ivanka’s merchandise, 82. opened up millions of pristine federal lands to development and drilling, 83. got into a losing tariff war with China that forced US taxpayers to bail out farmers, 84. claimed that his losing tariff war was a win for the US, 85. ignored or didn’t even take part in daily intelligence briefings, 86. blew off honoring American war dead in France because it was raining, 87. redesigned Air Force One to look like the Trump Shuttle, 88. got played by Kim Jung Un and his “love letters,” 89. threatened to go after social media companies in clear violation of the Constitution, 90. botched the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, 91. threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans when he finally visited them, 92. pressured the governor and secretary of state of Georgia to “find” him votes, 93. thought that the Virgin islands had a President, 94. drew on a map with a Sharpie to justify his inaccurate tweet that Alabama was threatened by a hurricane, 95. allowed White House staff to use personal email accounts for official businesses after blasting Hillary Clinton for doing the same thing, 96. rolled back regulations that protected the public from mercury and asbestos, 97. pushed regulators to waste time studying snake-oil remedies for COVID, 98. rolled back regulations that stopped coal companies from dumping waste into rivers, 99. held blatant campaign rallies at the White House, 100. tried to take away millions of Americans’ health insurance because the law was named for a Black man, 101. refused to attend his successors’ inauguration, 102. nominated the worst Education Secretary in history, 103. threatened judges who didn’t do what he wanted, 104. attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci, 105. promised that Mexico would pay for the wall (it didn’t), 106. allowed political hacks to overrule government scientists on major reports on climate change and other issues, 107. struggled navigating a ramp after claiming his opponent was feeble, 108. called an African-American Congresswoman “low IQ,” 109. threatened to withhold federal aid from states and cities with Democratic leaders, 110. went ahead with rallies filled with maskless supporters in the middle of a pandemic, 111. claimed that legitimate investigations of his wrongdoing were “witch hunts,” 112. seemed to demonstrate a belief that there were airports during the American Revolution, 113. demanded “total loyalty” from the FBI director, 114. praised a conspiracy theory that Democrats are Satanic pedophiles, 115. completely gutted the Voice of America, 116. placed a political hack in charge of the Postal Service, 117. claimed without evidence that the Obama administration bugged Trump Tower, 118. suggested that the US should allow more people from places like Norway into the country, 119. suggested that COVID wasn’t that bad because he recovered with the help of top government doctors and treatments not available to the public, 120. overturned energy conservation standards that even industry supported, 121. reduced the number of refugees the US accepts, 122. insulted various members of Congress and the media with infantile nicknames, 123. gave Rush Limbaugh a Presidential medal of Freedom at the State of the Union address, 124. named as head of federal personnel a 29-year old who’d previously been fired from the White House for allegations of financial improprieties, 125. eliminated the White House office of pandemic response, 126. used soldiers as campaign props, 127. fired any advisor who made the mistake of disagreeing with him, 128. demanded the Pentagon throw him a Soviet-style military parade, 129. hired a shit ton of white nationalists, 130. politicized the civil service, 131. did absolutely nothing after Russia hacked the U.S. government, 132. falsely said the Boy Scouts called him to say his bizarre Jamboree speech was the best speech ever given to the Scouts, 133. claimed that Black people would overrun the suburbs if Biden won, 134. insulted reporters of color, 135. insulted women reporters, 136. insulted women reporters of color, 137. suggested he was fine with China’s oppression of the Uighurs, 138. attacked the Supreme Court when it ruled against him, 139. summoned Pennsylvania state legislative leaders to the White House to pressure them to overturn the election, 140. spent countless hours every day watching Fox News, 141. refused to allow his administration to comply with Congressional subpoenas, 142. hired Rudy Giuliani as his lawyer, 143. tried to punish Amazon because the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post wrote negative stories about him, 144. acted as if the Attorney General of the United States was his personal attorney, 145. attempted to get the federal government to defend him in a libel lawsuit from a prominent lady who accused him of sexual assault, 146. held private meetings with Vladimir Putin without staff present, 147. didn’t disclose his private meetings with Vladimir Putin so that the US had to find out via Russian media, 148. stopped holding press briefings for months at a time, 149. “ordered” US companies to leave China even though he has no such power, 150. led a political party that couldn’t even be bothered to draft a policy platform, 151. claimed preposterously that Article II of the Constitution gave him absolute powers, 152. tried to pressure the U.K. to hold the British Open at his golf course, 153. suggested that the government nuke hurricanes, 154. suggested that wind turbines cause cancer, 155. said that he had a special aptitude for science, 156. fired the head of election cyber security after he said that the 2020 election was secure, 157. blurted out classified information to Russian officials, 158. tried to force the G7 to hold their meeting at his failing golf resort in Florida, 159. fired the acting attorney general when she refused to go along with his unconstitutional Muslim travel ban, 160. hired notorious racist Stephen Miller, 161. openly discussed national security issues in the dining room at Mar-a-Lago where everyone could hear them, 162. interfered with plans to relocate the FBI because a new development there might compete with his hotel, 163. abandoned Iraqi refugees who’d helped the U.S. during the war, 164. tried to get Russia back into the G7, 165. held a COVID super spreader event in the Rose Garden, 166. seemed to believe that Frederick Douglass is still alive, 167. lost 60 election fraud cases in court including before judges he had nominated, 168. falsely claimed that factories were reopening when they weren’t, 169. shamelessly exploited terror attacks in Europe to justify his anti-immigrant policies, 170. still hasn’t come up with a healthcare plan, 171. still hasn’t come up with an infrastructure plan despite repeated “Infrastructure Weeks,” 172. forced Secret Service agents to drive him around Walter Reed while contagious with COVID, 173. told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,” 174. fucked up the Census, 175. withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic, 176. did so few of his duties that his press staff were forced to state on his daily schedule “President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings,” 177. allowed his staff to repeatedly violate the Hatch Act, 178. seemed not to know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, 179. stood before sacred CIA wall of heroes and bragged about his election win, 180. constantly claimed he was treated worse than any president which presumably includes four that were assassinated and his predecessor whose legitimacy and birthplace were challenged by a racist reality TV show star named Donald Trump, 181. claimed Andrew Jackson could’ve stopped the Civil War even though he died 16 years before it happened, 182. said that any opinion poll showing him behind was fake, 183. claimed that other countries laughed at us before he became president when several world leaders were literally laughing at him, 184. claimed that the military was out of ammunition before he became President, 185. created a commission to whitewash American history, 186. retweeted anti-Islam videos from one of the most racist people in Britain, 187. claimed ludicrously that the Pulse nightclub shooting wouldn’t have happened if someone there had a gun even though there was an armed security guard there, 188. hired a senior staffer who cited the non-existent Bowling Green Massacre as a reason to ban Muslims, 189. had a press secretary who claimed that Nazi Germany never used chemical weapons even though every sane human being knows they used gas to kill millions of Jews and others, 190. bilked the Secret Service for higher than market rates when they had to stay at Trump properties, 191. apparently sold pardons on his way out of the White House, 192. stripped protective status from 59,000 Haitians, 193. falsely claimed Biden wanted to defund the police, 194. said that the head of the CDC didn’t know what he was talking about, 195. tried to rescind protection from DREAMers, 196. gave himself an A+ for his handling of the pandemic, 197. tried to start a boycott of Goodyear tires due to an Internet hoax, 198. said U.S. rates of COVID would be lower if you didn’t count blue states, 199. deported U.S. veterans who served their country but were undocumented, 200. claimed he did more for African Americans than any president since Lincoln, 201. touted a “super-duper” secret “hydrosonic” missile which may or may not be a new “hypersonic” missile or may not exist at all, 202. retweeted a gif calling Biden a pedophile, 203. forced through security clearances for his family, 204. suggested that police officers should rough up suspects, 205. suggested that Biden was on performance-enhancing drugs, 206. tried to stop transgender students from being able to use school bathrooms in line with their gender, 207. suggested the US not accept COVID patients from a cruise ship because it would make US numbers look higher, 208. nominated a climate change skeptic to chair the committee advising the White House on environmental policy, 209. retweeted a video doctored to look like Biden 210. had played a song called “Fuck tha Police” at a campaign event, 211. hugged a disturbingly large number of U.S. flags, 212. accused Democrats of “treason” for not applauding his State of the Union address, 213. claimed that the FBI failed to capture the Parkland school shooter because they were “spending too much time” on Russia, 214. mocked the testimony of Dr Christine Blasey Ford when she accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, 215. obsessed over low-flow toilets, 216. ordered the rerelease of more COVID vaccines when there weren’t any to release, 217. called for the construction of a bizarre garden of heroes with statutes of famous dead Americans as well as at least one Canadian (Alex Trebek), 218. hijacked Washington’s July 4th celebrations to give a partisan speech, 219. took advice from the MyPillow guy, 220. claimed that migrants seeking a better life in the US were dangerous caravans of drug dealers and rapists, 221. said nothing when Vladimir Putin poisoned a leading opposition figure, 222. never seemed to heed the advice of his wife’s “Be Best” campaign, 223. falsely claimed that mail-in voting is fraudulent, 224. announced a precipitous withdrawal of troops from Syria which not only handed Russia and ISIS a win but also prompted his defense secretary to resign in protest, 225. insulted the leader of Canada, 226. insulted the leader of France, 227. insulted the leader of Britain, 228. insulted the leader of Germany, 229. insulted the leader of Sweden (Sweden!!), 230. falsely claimed credit for getting NATO members to increase their share of dues, 231. blew off two Asia summits even though they were held virtually, 232. continued lying about spending lots of time at Ground Zero with 9/11 responders, 233. said that the Japanese would sit back and watch their “Sony televisions” if the US were ever attacked, 234. left a NATO summit early in a huff, 235. stared directly into an eclipse even though everyone over the age of 5 knows not to do that, 236. called himself a very stable genius despite significant evidence to the contrary, 237. refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and kept his promise. 238. Don’t forget that he took many classified & top secret documents with him when he left the White House, many of which have not been recovered & may have been compromised. And that ain’t the half of it. I’m sure there are a whole bunch of other things I can’t remember at the moment. I’m sure none of the above comes close to whatever is Hunter Biden’s laptop. But other than that. . .

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1611702585787284/posts/3408692826088242/

Just saying what I am about to post…

LANL versus Chimayo Chile and Intel versus Alfalfa

There was a young Economics Professor at UNM (name??) that gave testimony at an legislative hearing in 2015 based on a Cost-Benefit-Analysis (CBA) that if LANL had never happened and people patented the Chimayo Chile and created a co-op with a USDA commercial kitchen like the Apple Shed that was there, that they would of made more money doing this than taking a LANL Salary. LANL had brought in like $10 Trillion. So LANL salaries were a lot of money and people quit farming and the children and grandchildren basically all quit school and got hooked on drugs. These are the costs at $3 million per fatality and there have been X,000 fatalities. Then the number of DWI fatalities from LANL Christmas parties were costs at $3 million per fatality and there have been X00 fatalities. Then pollution and the costs of cleanup of the water. Then the higher incidences of cancer among LANL Employees which result in death or disability. So his figure was like the costs of $11 trillion versus $10 trillion.

He did the same thing for Intel and offsetting the Tax Breaks versus using the Intel 3,330 Acre Feet Annually of water for raising Alfalfa for dairies now in Roswell and Clovis. 

A child of the 1950s learned so many things that are obsolete

A child of the 1950s learned so many things that are obsolete—–

At the New Mexico Highway Department, now called the Department of Transportation, I learned how to call the girls at “dictation services” and I would speak into the phone and 24 hours later it was delivered back to me through interagency mail as a typed document. Also there, I used the mail chute to deliver mail to the mail room for mailing out.  In south building 1, also known as Planning, in the old State Police headquarters, there was a dungwaiter, which ended up at the old divisional library. The Library was a place that kept every report that the Highway Department had done and you would turn over all your research books that you obtained to develop that report.

The Library was connected to the N.M. State Library which is the repository service for the federal government. You could order any book from anywhere in the world.

In computers, I learned COBOL Fortran and DOS programming languages. I excelled in Lotus 1 2 3 until it was replaced by Excel. I learned the entire suite of Word Perfect until it was replaced by Microsoft Word.

The State of New Mexico, had a bunch of short one day computer classes for its employees. So I took things on desktop publishing and creating graphics in computer assisted drafting and so many other topics that are now completely obsolete. I am the most trained person that now knows absolutely nothing of use.

The first computer we had in the home was Pong. It was a ping pong game. Then eventually this led to the Tandy Computer from Radio Shack. In 1980 at work, the personal computer came into being and it was replacing the mainframe computer. But you still had to submit coded information and order to get it started and to enter data. So all the personal computers were actually linked to the mainframe.

I learned how to make coffee on a campfire until it was replaced by Keurig.

My grandfather Charles Krahe showed me how to make their favorite “Republican Great Depression of 1929” dessert. It is called “sugar bread” and you toast it and butter it, and then pour regular sugar on top. This was a dessert that his parents and most kids had during a time of great poverty.

I learned how to gently double wind the wrist watch until it was replaced by the cell phone.

I learned how to call the operator to place a long distance call that would be charged to my phone bill, now you can call anywhere in the world and it’s free.

I had to carry a dime in my wallet because if you ever needed to use a public phone booth it cost the dime to bring up the operator. It later went to a quarter and then almost every phone booth disappeared. The phone was invented by Alexander Bell, so all the phone companies were part of the Bell system. Ours in New Mexico, was called Ma Bell. Then it was AT& T—the American Telegraph and Telephone Company.

My parents had their phone bills stolen when they were elderly, so they got some late charges, and I had to call the phone company the U.S. West. This was the year 1999. The service representative immediately complimented how they had been customers since 1965. Then explained how they were leasing a rotary phone and an outside bell ringer for dozens of years. It was $29.95 a month for the lease. They explained that could turn in the equipment except that it was so old that it’d just be better to throw it away in the dump. Then I could go to any store that sold phones and buy a touchstone phone and plug it into the wall.

Speaking of dimes, my friends and I were down on the Plaza and of course for the last hundred or 200 years there’s never been any restrooms. At the La Fonda the restrooms cost 10 cents to go into a stall. There was a little change thing right on the handle. They had no urinal. So we tried to go over the great marble walls they had and it was too high, and then we tried to go under it and it was only about 4 inches from the ground. So we left the restroom and went downstairs and there was a steam radiator and we peed on it: sizzle, sizzle. I guess the time was used to compensate the people that clean the restrooms but hell we were just kids.

Speaking of having to pee; my friends Jimmy Lynch and Joseph Arceo were going with me to Harvey Junior High, a building built by the Works Progress Administration in 1935. The building was converted to the District courthouse and then the new County Administrative Building. We were on an extended lunch hour and walked up to the new State Capitol Building. They threw us out and wouldn’t let us use the restrooms. Joseph said he had to pee and he was just going to pee on the circular sidewalk around the merry Round House as journalist Ernie Mills used to call it. We told him that state police were inside the building and it was illegal to do such a thing. Then he said watch me. So he started to piss on the Capitol sidewalk. Jimmy and I started running and Joseph started running and he was still peeing and so you can imagine what happened to him. We all got away and that was funny.

We lived on a farm-ranch by Cerrillos, New Mexico When the milk cow got too old to give milk we started using powdered milk. I think I’m so short today because I had milk issues. My mom started buying a gallon of milk from the grocery store (the place where high school kids would “sack” your groceries; it was a very high paying job because you were covered by the Union). There were quarts of milk and gallons of milk; no half gallon yet. My mom would take our bull calves to be slaughtered for meat. They would give her the innards from the cow and she would store them in a 3 gallon bucket in the refrigerator until she would cook them up or the dogs. The sweetbreads would immediately turn (curnh) the milk sour. So I had a difficult time getting that taste out of my head and I never liked to drink milk.

When we had Daisy the cow and milked her, her excess milk could be turned into cheese or butter which was a very hard process involving a lot of turning of the milk with a paddle and then separating the different parts of the milk by straining it. Older cows failed to produce what they called buttermilk, the heavier cream, so at some point we could no longer make butter. We had obtained Daisy from Archie West for $50 who had loaned her last to the Hendersons in the valley, who had small children. Daisy was a Jersey- Gurenesy milk cow. She had already been used by several families for milk for their children. In the late 1970s, there was a rush on beef and Archie was rounding up some cows near our house to sell, and he suggested that we sell Daisy before she died because she was over 30 years old. So we did and we got $80 for her. Daisy hadn’t thrown a calf in the last two years, so it was time.

Daisy had provided us many calves like our first was Dickie and we had a rug made out of him. He was so sweet because you could rub noses with him in the corral (at this time I was about 8 years old). Daisy because of the milk cow in her, had a large bone structure, and so her calves would get very big. After Dickie came another boy, that we never really named, because you’re not supposed to get attached to your beef animals. But Daisy had Brandy and Wild Thing. Brandy provided us with three bull calves that weighed in pretty heavy when we had them butchered. Brandy had a prolapsed uterus and it was hanging out of her backside, and we really couldn’t get anything done about it so we had to sell her. Wild Thing had some unusually long horns and like to throw them about all the time. She had more bull calves and then finally gave birth to Red.

Daisy had horns that were tipped, and she would drop her head down when other cows came around her looking like she was going to do a little action. But whenever we had a Roundup with Gene West’s 300 Hereford cows, Daisy would be leading the entire herd. I wasn’t sure if the other cows knew her and respected her because of her being on the range for so long or what it was. With Brandy and Wild Thing on either side of her, it was like the Mafia on parade. They would lead all of these cows right into our corral where the branding would happen.

One year Gene West suggested that Brandy and Wild Thing’s horns be tipped, so that they didn’t grow anymore out of control. Brandy had one that was coming back around towards her head. So we had some cowboys there and they roped them several times, and finally hauled them against a post, where they could secure there heads and saw off the horns. But even with tip horns they still led the crowd.

There was a large metal drum like the kind you see the three kinds of popcorn sold for Christmas. It was labeled “Charle’s Chips.” These were the first potato chips sold in our area. My mom used the old containers to store her flower and sugar.

There weren’t too many types of cereal available: there were Quaker oats, shredded wheat and corn flakes. Rice Krispies came along and that was Grandpa Charlie’s favorite cereal so I started eating that too. Then all of a sudden in the seventies there were all these sugar products like Lucky Charms and Captain Crunch to appeal to the kids.

There weren’t too many soft drinks available. Coca-Cola and 7UP and Pepsi Cola, Fanta Orange and A& W Root Beer. Sometimes you could get Nehi. Then Sprite and Mountain Dew came along.

Santa Fe was a very backward Town compared to the east and west coasts. We only had one or two types of grocery stores and they switch from Your Food Stores to Piggly Wiggly. Then finally Safeway came into town. Then Furr’s and Foodway.

After World War II A lot of people opened businesses because under the GI bill you could get a loan for school or alone to open a business. People that have been a medic in the Army opened pharmacies. People that had been a cook opened hamburger stands. Many open general stores and in Santa Fe there were 26 of them, each in its own neighborhood. These stores carried people on credit and would offer them barter with them for food products. They often carried candy because that was a good steady market. Some branched out into liquor sales because a liquor license was only $50. Now they are a $500,000 minimum.

On San Francisco Street, there were six movie theaters but they were very small and one was called like the Alley. Each theater was only about 50 feet wide. The Alley was actually named for Burro Alley and not the fact that it was so thin and long. Two of them were Spanish language theaters.

When we first had our black and white TV we had three stations: KOB channel 4 KOAT channel 7 and KGGM channel 13. Then PBS channel 5 came. There was a TV antenna that we called rabbit ears and occasionally you would have to adjust them and sometimes you tried to link them together with aluminum foil or various contraptions to get better reception.

I remember going to Uncle Duke’s house in New Jersey and they had a cable provider with hundreds of stations from New York City. I spend hours up at night flipping through the channels it was just amazing.

Getting old….

What Happened to the New Age?

GM posted on the Thom Hartman Radio Show: “The Age of Aquarius really got sidetracked somewhere!” Ain’t that the truth. I was born in 1958, so I missed the whole Hippie Revolution but always thought it would result in lasting positive change. Instead many Hippies left to Wall Street and turned out like Steve Bannon.

Coke’s commercial

The New Age was supposed to be one of Love and Innovation.