A4 Sunday, June 14, 2015
Opinion
Roswell Daily Record
We truly live in the Land of Enchantment
Not far from Cloudcroft in the Lincoln National Forest is a tiny community called Weed. It’s not named after a particular “pharmaceutical” plant that’s gotten a lot of attention in the newspaper lately. Rather, it is named after W.H. Weed, a New York merchant who set up a branch store in the area in the 1880s. If you go to Weed’s website, weednm.org, you will see a photo of two horses grazing in front of Weed Baptist Church. The community has a second church and a thrift store, but not much more than that. Not a whole lot of action in Weed except for its annual bluegrass festival in July, which I’m told draws thousands from across the state. Weed doesn’t have a newspaper, but there is a woman who puts out a monthly newsletter called “The Hitchin’ Post.” A PDF version of the newsletter is posted on the website. Along the top of the first page is a banner that states: “If You’re Lucky Enough to Live in the Mountains, You’re Lucky Enough.” Ah, yes. It’s the simple things in life that matter most.
Timothy Howsare Ripcord into Reality We desert dwellers in Roswell aren’t quite that lucky, but at least we can look to the west — and depending where you’re standing — “Scout Mountain” in the Capitans, the closest mountain range to the Alien City. Being closer to the mountains is a big part of the reason why I wanted to move to Roswell from the mostly flat and barren Texas Panhandle. As I’m finishing this column on Saturday, the Weather Channel website says its 85 degrees with 43 percent humidity in Roswell. I would have guessed 95 degrees with 60 percent humidity. It’s nice to know that the coolness of the mountains is just 70 miles away, even if I won’t make a trip up there this weekend. In the year I’ve been in Ros-
well, I have made several weekend overnight trips to nearby mountains, both in the Sacramento and Capitan ranges. While I have stayed in Ruidoso a couple of times, I prefer a place with less commercialism. I like Cloudcroft for its small size and high elevation of 9,000 feet. The views of the White Sands from some of the lookouts along the hiking trails in the Lincoln National Forest are spectacular. Though Capitan doesn’t have the elevation of either Ruidoso or Cloudcroft, I like it for its quaintness. I always feel like I’m going 40 years back in time whenever I stay there. As a newspaper editor, I pretty much work seven days a week, even if just an hour or two from home on my laptop. Partly to ward off job burnout, I try to get out of town at least one weekend a month. The other reason is I love New Mexico and the Southwest in general. To those of you who were born and raised here: please don’t ever take for granted the natural beauty of our state. We live in a place where people from the East Coast or Midwest (I’m an Indiana
native) will save up all year just to come to New Mexico for a oneweek vacation. A couple weeks ago I was having a conversation with our new advertising manager and general manager, Tom McDonald, who shares my love for New Mexico. As many of you know from his weekly columns, Tom is from Arkansas and moved to Las Vegas, New Mexico several years ago when he was hired to run the Las Vegas Optic. The way Tom describes it, you can be driving for hours across hundreds of miles of open desert and then — wham — you’re in a canyon or climbing a mountain switchback. How true. Some of my weekend trips have taken to me places farther away than Lincoln National Forest. In the southern part of the state, I’ve been to the White Sands National Monument, the Organ Mountains near Las Cruces and the Guadalupe Mountains just across the Texas state line. A couple of the man-made attractions I’ve visited are the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo and the Trinity test
site on the White Sands Missile Range. This Thursday I am looking forward to a guided tour of Carlsbad Caverns by staff members from National Cave and Karst Research Institute in Carlsbad. This will be my first time in the caverns since a family vacation while I was in middle school (it’s been so long that the caverns were probably still forming). I’ve visited the northern half of the state as well. I’ve been to Santa Fe, the Santa Ana Pueblo and Las Vegas, where I first met Tom in person. Having lived up north for several years, Tom recommended a few places I should visit, like Taos and some of the towns along what’s called the Enchanted Circle. Two weekends ago I took Tom’s advice and visited Taos and the Taos Pueblo (the oldest continuously inhabited community in the U.S.) and the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge. I continued north on the Enchanted Circle and stopped in Questa, where I spent some time at the visitors’ center. The village’s
See HOWSARE, Page A5
Editorial Executive compensation, ever higher, ever less justifiable By almost any measure, one of the least-successful movements of the past decade has been the effort to rein in executive pay. “Say on pay” laws haven’t worked. Tax reforms haven’t worked. Shame hasn’t worked. The latest evidence can be found in studies of 2014 pay packages of executives of publicly traded firms done by Equilar, an executive compensation research firm, for the New York Times and the Associated Press. The Times reported that median pay for the 200 top-paid CEOs was $17.6 million, a growth of 21 percent in one year. Pay raises fall off considerably below the top 200, though the CEOs will not have to apply for food stamps. The AP reported that the median for the heads of 338 firms in the Standard and Poor 500 that had filed 2014 proxy statements before April 30 was $10.6 million, up just $100,000 over the previous year. Median gains are driven upward by extraordinary pay packages at the very top. No. 1 was David Zaslav of Discovery Communications, who took home $156.1 million in total compensation in 2014. What Variety calls the redneck reality shows on the Discovery Channel have been very, very good to him. Indeed, 2014 was a good year to be in the entertainment business. Six of the top-paid CEOs ran TV, movie and cable companies. America’s Top Moguls (which would be a nice reality show) used to make cars and steel and employ millions of people. Now they make reality shows that the unemployed can watch to kill time. If there’s any good news, it’s that the CEOs in the Equilar-AP study earned a mere 205 times the average worker’s wage. Average wages have risen slightly, so the number is down from 257 in 2013, the AP calculated. The AFL-CIO says the 2013 ratio was considerably higher, on the order of 331 times the average worker’s. Whether it’s 205 times or 331, it’s markedly higher than the 30-to-1 ratio in effect in 1978. CEO pay rose 937 percent between 1978 and 2013, reports the Economic Policy Institute. This nicely tracked the rise in income inequality. American workers have less because the bosses, and the shareholders they slavishly serve (the wealthiest five percent of Americans own 70 percent of stocks), have more. All of this has been enabled by the takeover of American government by corporate America, made possible by campaign finance laws. When democracy becomes a plutocracy, this is what you get. As the economy teetered toward collapse in 2008, there were calls to Do Something About This. Clinton-era tax reform already had failed, as firms learned to pay executives less in cash (which couldn’t be written off) and more in “performance pay” (stock options and grants) that remained deductible. The Dodd-Frank Reform Act of 2010 contained provisions giving shareholders a “say on pay.” At least once every three years, shareholders get to vote on financial compensation packages for executives. For the most part shareholders have blithely endorsed the decisions of compensation committees and boards of directors. And why not! What’s tens of millions See EDITORIAL, Page A5
‘Blackfish’ dark truth or a dirty lie? Millions go to SeaWorld to learn more about sea life and get closer to killer whales. But fewer go now because the documentary “Blackfish” exposed what one reporter called “the darker side” of SeaWorld. The movie, which CNN bought and ran over and over, tells how greedy businessmen take baby whales from their mothers and imprison them in small aquariums, where the frustrated animals are a threat to each other and their trainers. “All whales in captivity have a bad life,” says a biologist in the film. “They’re all psychologically traumatized.” “Blackfish” is persuasive. Watching it made me agree with the protesters who shout, “SeaWorld is synony-
John
Stossel Syndicated Columnist mous with cruelty!” SeaWorld wouldn’t talk to CNN, but they did talk to me. I will be showing their responses on Fox News this weekend. I asked SeaWorld why they separate whales from their mothers. “We haven’t done that in 35 years,” says Kelly Flaherty Clark, SeaWorld head trainer. “We have no plans to do it again, and the film implies
that we’re doing it yesterday.” SeaWorld says much of “Blackfish” is deceitful. “The things they describe just didn’t happen.” “Eighty percent of the whales that we care for were born right here,” says head veterinarian Chris Dold. “The key difference between what our whales experience and what killer whales in the wild experience is the fact that ... our trainers work with them every day.” I was most disturbed by a “Blackfish” scene that plays the mournful cry of a mother whale whose baby was taken from her. But it turns out the “baby” was an adult with kids of her own. “Blackfish” faked the scene by adding “sound effects that aren’t even appropriate to a killer whale.”
“Blackfish” also claims captive whales’ droopy dorsal fins indicate that the whales are miserable. But whale expert Ingrid Visser says killer whales in the wild have collapsed dorsal fins, too. The director of “Blackfish” and others who appear in the film would not talk to me, but biologist Lori Marino, who’d said that “all whales in captivity have a bad life,” did. I pointed out that life in the wild is rough, too — there’s competition for food, sex, life itself. She answered, “these animals evolved over millions of years to be adapted to the challenges of the wild, not with living in a concrete tank. ... They need space ... and a social life.” See STOSSEL, Page A5
Atherosclerosis is No. 1 cause of premature death DEAR DOCTOR K: You mention atherosclerosis in many of your columns. Could you explain what this word means? DEAR READER: My readers ask me many questions about atherosclerosis, and for good reason: It is the No. 1 cause of premature death in developed nations, including the United States. Atherosclerosis is a narrowing of the arteries. Arteries are blood vessels that supply fresh, oxygen-rich blood to the heart, brain, intestines and other organs. The narrowing is caused by the buildup of plaques in artery walls. The plaques are filled with LDL cholesterol — so-called “bad” cholesterol. As a plaque grows inside the wall of an artery, it
Ask Dr. K United Media Syndicate begins to block the flow of blood. At first, the blockage is so slight that there are no consequences. But if a plaque grows very large, it can starve the organ fed by the artery. Another, more sinister, thing can happen with a plaque. Even if it is not big enough to block blood flow, that can change in an instant. Here’s how: The plaque has a cap of
fibers that hold in the cholesterol. If there is inflammation inside the plaque, it can dissolve the fibers. Suddenly, the cap ruptures, spilling cholesterol into the inside of the artery. That can promptly cause a clot that completely blocks the flow of blood. Without oxygen and other nutrients that are carried in the blood, the organ’s cells may die or suffer severe damage. This is how most heart attacks and many strokes happen. (I’ve put an illustration showing how atherosclerosis can lead to a heart attack on my website, AskDoctorK.com.) There are many things you can do to reduce your risk of atherosclerosis. For example: • Don’t smoke.
• Maintain a healthy weight. • Eat a healthy diet that is rich in vegetables and fruits; use healthy fat oils — monounsaturated (olive) and polyunsaturated (safflower, peanut, canola) — for cooking; and emphasize fish and plant protein sources (soy, beans, legumes). • Exercise regularly. • Control high blood pressure. You may need medication to do this. • If you have diabetes, control your blood sugar. High LDL cholesterol is a big risk factor for atherosclerosis. If diet and exercise alone do not bring your cholesterol down to target levels, you may need medSee DR. K, Page A5