Our view B-2 My view B-3, B-4, B-5, B-6
SUNDAY, JUNE 9, 2013 THE NEW MEXICAN
OPINIONS
WIPP: Don’t let state become nation’s nuclear dump. Page B-3
B
State email scandal shows connections
D
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Downtown Santa Fe not so tourist-friendly
M
y husband and I recently spent the weekend in Durango, Colo. In need of a book, we drove into town at 8:30 p.m. on the off chance that something might be open. Imagine our surprise at finding every single shop on Main Street open. Parking was hard to find, even though it is plentiful and free. Restaurants, bars and businesses were bustling, and we noticed that the crowds included folks of all ages. This is in stark contrast to the downtown scene in Santa Fe on any Friday night. A friend and I were downtown a couple of weeks ago and met a tourist from Chicago. She was shocked that nothing was open after 6 p.m. and wondered aloud at Santa Fe’s ability to sustain the tourist market. Have others noticed this distressing trend?
Abbie Casias
Glorieta
Not a game The Green Party of Santa Fe strongly opposes the Keystone XL Pipeline. Allowing the project to be completed would be essentially “game over for the planet,” according to James Hansen, former head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, one of the country’s foremost climate scientists. He also states that “exploitation of tar sands would make it impossible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts.” To keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius, the internationally recognized level generally regarded to be compatible with civilization as we know it, the U.S. and the world need to transition rapidly to non-carbon emitting renewable energy sources and avoid investing in infrastructure that supports fossil fuel dependence. The Keystone XL pipeline is a perfect example of an investment in fossil fuel dependence that we need to avoid. Marion Seymour
Green Party of Santa Fe Santa Fe
Protect water The mean global temperature has increased one degree Centigrade since 1910, mostly since 1980. A two-degree increase likely will lead to an end to civilization as we know it. 167 countries have agreed to a two-degree target limit. Scientists find 90-plus-percent probable that humans cause global warming, largely from our production of greenhouse gases. The carbon dioxide concentration recently set a modern record of 400 ppm. Fracturing subterranean rock (“fracking”) to obtain fossil fuel encourages burning it, which produces carbon dioxide, rather than pursuing clean sources of energy. Fracking uses great amounts of water, damages the environment and can pollute groundwater. Every drop of New Mexico’s water is precious. New Mexico’s current drought is the worst in the last 120 years. Worse drought is predicted. Please urge your county commissioner to sponsor a community rights ordinance banning fracking like the one Mora County passed (Our View: “Battle sounds over oil and gas,” May 6).
that not save an astronomical amount of money in firefighting costs? John Sternenberg
Santa Fe
Costly cuts What is the value of a poor person’s life? Many thanks to The New Mexican for publishing the commentary (“Slashing food stamps a bad idea,” May 29). Christopher D. Cook’s extensive discussion provided much helpful data in support of the SNAP program, including both economic and social justice perspectives. He clearly explained the wisdom of fully funding SNAP, showing how slashing food assistance for the poor actually costs more than providing this much-needed support. Our country needs the political will and leadership to resist short-sighted “austerity” measures which are, as Cook said so well, “unwise, counter-productive and shameful.” Kitty Sherlock
RESULTS — Santa Fe Santa Fe
John M. Otter
Santa Fe
A moving cross
A common thread I’ve noticed a common denominator between most of the recent wildland fires in this area, as I’m sure most of you have — downed power lines. Is this not an easy problem to fix? Can we not prevent future catastrophic wildfires from devastating our highly cherished recreational forest lands by putting power lines underground? It seems to me that wherever we can build a road, we can bury a power line. I know from experience that federal grant money is available for wildfire prevention on private lands. Most of this money has been used for forest thinning to prevent the severity of wildfire damage to forest and prevent structures from being destroyed. That’s all good, but what if we could use some of this money to bury or fix old power lines? Would
I read with interest about history (“History deserves a clean sweep,” June 3), but I noted there was no mention that the Cross of the Martyrs had been moved. My family moved to Tesuque about 1925. If my recollection serves me correctly at age 90, the only way into town around that time was past Bishop’s Lodge, around the “pin cushion,” across the mesa in a southwesterly direction, down the hill past the Cross of the Martyrs and across the concrete bridge (which is still there off the northeast corner of the Montgomery law firm) and down Grant Street. The cross was moved to its present location a number of years ago. Don Van Soelen
Santa Fe
avid Letterman got some cynical laughs out of New Mexico back in early 2009, when he made a brutal quip about then-Gov. Bill Richardson. Richardson had just withdrawn his name for consideration to be President Barack Obama’s secretary of commerce. This was due to a grand jury investigation of an alleged pay-to-play deal. Letterman, talking about the situation on his Late Show, characterized Richardson’s withdrawal: “You know what, I’ve been doing some stuff that may be too illegal to be in the Cabinet but just about right to keep me as governor of New Mexico.” Eventually, that grand jury never produced any charges. But the joke still stung. I thought about Letterman’s joke last week while working on a story about the recent email scandal in state government. Jamie Estrada — recently indicted on charges of illegally hijacking Gov. Susana Martinez’s emails and lying to the FBI — had been Martinez’s campaign manager until sometime in late 2009. The governor said he was fired for, among other things, reading her personal emails, which led her to believe he was “of suspect Steve Terrell character.” Roundhouse Estrada, however, has said he Roundup didn’t break any laws and flatly denies he was fired from the campaign. This week, his lawyer released several documents several documents that indicate Estrada remained in contact with the campaign for many months after he left, even receiving kind words from Martinez and others. Shortly after leaving the Martinez campaign, Estrada announced he would be running in the Republican primary for the southern District 5 Public Regulation Commission seat. So who ran the Estrada campaign? Campaign finance records from 2010 show that his political consultant in the race was Lincoln Strategies, which at the time was the company of none other than Jay McCleskey, Martinez’s political consultant. In fact, out of the $15,959 Estrada received in public funding, $15,224 of that went to Lincoln Strategies. Estrada went on to lose the primary to Ben Hall, who went on to win the general election as well. So why would McCleskey agree to help Estrada’s campaign if Estrada was such a bad egg? And why would Estrada want to hire McCleskey if there were hard feelings with the Susana camp over being fired? Surely nobody said, “You know what, Jamie’s been doing some stuff that shows he may be too much of a suspect character to manage this campaign, but just about right to put him on the Public Regulation Commission”? McCleskey said in an email: “On the Martinez campaign, it was clear for some time that Estrada would never be the permanent campaign manager. He was being replaced by Adam Deguire and was resistant to it. There were several efforts made to help him with a graceful exit, including my firm agreeing to work for him in his PRC campaign, after he was unable to get a job with the [Mayor Richard] Berry administration. Ultimately, Estrada was abruptly fired before he could leave on his own terms.” Martinez didn’t endorse Estrada’s PRC candidacy, McCleskey said. The bigger picture: Another name familiar in Republican circles popped up in the email investigation last week. That’s Anissa Galassini Ford, who served as Martinez’s personal assistant during the 2010 campaign. According to FBI documents unsealed last week, investigators looking at various Internet communications determined that Ford was in frequent contact with Estrada as well as Jason Loera, a Democratic consultant who recently was charged with possessing child porn — which the FBI found while searching Loera’s computers for the governor’s hijacked emails. I looked at Ford’s Facebook page and came across a nice looking photo of Ford with Mitt Romney posted last August. The photo has a watermark for the professional photographer who took it: Enrique C. Knell — yes, Gov. Martinez’s spokesman, who has worked as a professional photographer. Knell said last week that he shot the picture during the 2010 campaign. One person was cropped out of the photo on Facebook, however, he said: Susana Martinez. Contact Steve Terrell at sterrell@sfnewmexican.com.
‘Lone Ranger’ latest Hollywood take on Native people
I
’m anxiously awaiting the release characters, and on a Saturday night, of The Lone Ranger in about especially if the moon was full, their four weeks, and I’m particularly personalities came out in vivid color right before my eyes. We interested in seeing Johnny had our own versions of the Depp’s portrayal of Tonto. Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, As I’ve mentioned before, The Wolfman, Betty Davis, I don’t have a problem Lucy and Desi, Judy Garland with Depp playing Tonto, and even Burt Reynolds. although I do have a problem with the stuffed dead But obviously my mom crow he wears on his head. felt stoic Indians were someThat’s a little over the top. what attractive — her favorite character was Tonto, I was asked once what Harlan played by Jay Silverheels Hollywood taught me about McKosato from the Mohawk Nation. Indians. As a kid, one of the Commentary She mentioned that she even first things I learned was that had met him once, but she the Indians in the movies always seems to change the subject sure didn’t act like my full-of-life relawhen I press her on details. tives from Oklahoma. There was not much stoicism when my family would I admit that I always believed Elvis get together. These people were true was Native American. After seeing
him play a half-breed Kiowa in the film, Flaming Star, I was convinced that his jet-black hair and high cheekbones came from his Native side. But my suspicion was only confirmed years later, after his death, when I called Graceland and found out he was part Cherokee. When it came to fights between Cowboys and Indians in the movies, there were some things I had to see for myself. For instance, when I would hunt with my white buddies, I always watched closely to see if they could shoot two quails or rabbits with one bullet, like John Wayne in Stagecoach. One shot, down went two Indians. Where in the world did they learn to shoot like that? But Hollywood’s movies weren’t all bad. The day I saw Burt Lancaster
Editorial page editor: Inez Russell Gomez, 986-3053, igomez@sfnewmexican.com Design and headlines: Brian Barker, bbarker@sfnewmexican.com
play the world’s greatest athlete in Jim Thorpe: All American, I knew playing sports was my calling. After all, both Thorpe and I come from Sac and Fox bloodlines and in the Indian way that made him my grandpa. And there were actually Native people in that movie who looked like my relatives and sounded like my relatives. Too bad there weren’t more movies like that back in the days. Another thing I’ve learned about Hollywood and Indians over the years is that they rarely let us be ourselves. A couple of exceptions to note are Chief Dan George’s role in The Outlaw Josey Wales with Clint Eastwood. Who remembers his “endeavor to persevere” line? I thought Graham Greene’s character in the remake of Maverick with Mel Gibson years ago was hilari-
ous and worthy of an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. People laugh, but one of my favorite movies of all time is still Dances with Wolves. I was talking with my uncle Saginaw Grant (Sac & Fox/Ioway) who has been living in Hollywood for many years now, working as an actor with a string of films to his credit. He is really excited about the new Lone Ranger film. He said he has a speaking part, and we’re hoping the scenes don’t end up on the cutting room floor. So I will have one of my real relatives in the upcoming Depp movie. So, we’ve come a long way when it comes to Hollywood and Indians, but we still have a long way to go. Harlan McKosato is Sauk/Ioway and Director of NDN Productions.
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