Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Letters to the editor

Take care of East Side as well as helping west

EDITOR:

I have a giant question to the City of Belen: The city has big plans to develop the West Side — that's great — but why forget about the East Side of Belen? I am referring to the well established shopping center on River road. It has not had a supermarket since Furrs moved out many years ago. The building just sits there, waiting.

How can the city establish new business if it cannot keep up the old? There would be much more faith in new establishments if the old ones were kept up. Everyone on the East Side of Belen is sorely missing a supermarket on River Road. One empty store is always an eyesore in any city.

Also, what happened to the plans of a retirement community south on N.M. 47? I know of several families who were counting on it. Since it never materialized, they moved out of the state; Belen would have kept those couples.

Please remember the East Side of Belen while making plans on the west.

Gerda Lee

Belen

What's the status of our ship of state?

EDITOR,

What is that strange ship of state plying the waters ahead? Why, it's the modern pseudo-Republican-manned ship. And, what is that strange flag on its stern? Looks sorta like a carpetbagger's skull and bones with a Southern conservative cross in the background. How strange!

Upon closer examination, the compass by the helmsman's wheel is broken, the sextant sits uselessly in its box, and, all those who had been aboard and who had the ability to "imagine or anticipate" its use have been thrown overboard. How strange!

It is certainly no longer the ship constructed by Lincoln and T. Roosevelt; in fact, it appears to be the opposite, it is hard to tell the bow from the stern; no, wait, it is the stern cutting the waves.

What do you mean, you ask? Well, even in Lincoln's and the Civil War's time, the nation was plagued with $300 patriots, war profiteers, corruption and selling substandard material, etc., to the war effort for personal gain; after the war, they were called carpetbaggers. Lincoln struggled against the staggering costs of the corruption throughout the war.

Plus, Lincoln was famous for his humbled and compassionate plea before his Creator — a spiritual man, who had never been a congregant or a member of any religious sect. But, nonetheless, whose second inaugural address, at the time, was considered the nation's greatest sermon. Note Lincoln's words: "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'" Lincoln worried about the horrors of slavery and a just judgment while his counterpart in the Confederacy, Jeff Davis, in his inaugural speeches, only mentioned property rights.

But, the Confederacy's outspoken vice president, Alexander Stephens, in 1861, knew the mind of the Creator very well and argued that the U.S. Constitution and its designers were in error. His reasoning started: "They (constitutional framers) rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error." Stephen's reasoning ended: "They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal." Did you notice the difference? Lincoln humbly addressed the Creator while Stephen's opinion spoke for the Creator, "absolutely!"

President Theodore Roosevelt, throughout his public career, while New York City's police commissioner, the state's governor and president, struggled with official corruption and fought hard for graduated income taxes and estate taxes to break the corrupt hold on government by corporation's and individual's (the carpetbaggers) vast accumulated wealth. The ship of state under Roosevelt did not carry the signal banners of freewheeling corruption, cronyism, incompetence, secrecy, fixed partisanship and, no one could have imagined or anticipated, ship's officers.

Presently, a mid-term election is once again upon the nation. The polls show that the vast majority of the nation's people believe the ship of state is headed on a wrong, fixed course. As well, the people only give the members of Congress a 25 percent approval rating; the same congresspersons manning the ship's oars, hauling the distance, further off a "true" conservative/progressive course.

What happened to the Republican Party of Lincoln and Roosevelt; many have asked this question? How did it become the party of the corrupt carpetbaggers wedded to the religion of the Confederacy — from the land, according to one Southern senator, where they refuse to do Lincoln Day dinners? What happened to the word conservative; where now it welcomes corruption of government, institutional cronyism, government secrecy and Orwellian misinformation, an uniformed citizenry, government growth, waste and spending at a historically, previously unheralded pace, and, the acceptance of a national debt soon to rival the nation's yearly GDP. Just think, soon the American people will pay interest each year on an amount equal to the national economic output — and, much more if its off-budget expenditures were honestly accounted.

For whom and how an old fiscal conservative like me should vote, a conservative who believes that a government dollar spent should always reflect a dollar's worth of value to its citizens? A conservative who believes in a constitution held separate from any faction's inerrant religious views, especially from such absolutist views that once, without humility or compassion, politically and religiously, embraced slavery and segregation and, still, claims to speak for the Creator, directly. Oh, what happened to the Republican Party of Lincoln and Roosevelt, whose few remaining members are more despised within than the hated Democrats and liberals without?

What to do, what to do? I know; remain independent; go vote this November for a change in direction; vote to dry-dock the ship of state for badly needed repairs; for a new working compass; for new signal banners; for new constitutionally sworn ship's officers who can imagine and anticipate and who, in emergencies, can use a constitutional sextant; and most importantly, for new corruption resistant rowers who can row the ship of state with true ethical strokes, rowing around the corrupting currents of divisive partisan ideologies and amoral wealth influence, with 90 to 100 percent of their oar-strokes (votes) pulling the ship by it's bow!

Terry Mehaffey

Los Lunas

Keep your priorities straight through life

EDITOR:

I believe that everyone should have an order of importance in their whole living of life and pay a large price for breaking this law of order! When you are young and always, God is No. 1. Your parents are No. 2. You are No. 3, and then come your relatives and friends.

When you mature, God is still No. 1, but you are No. 2, your spouse is No. 3, your children are No. 4 and then come your friends and relatives. If you don't look after yourself, how you help any of the rest? If you place your children above your spouse, you are in deep (trouble)! A lot of mothers tend to do this, to everyone's sorrow!

Doctors and judges are often asked to play God, in the line of their professions. A lot of them think they are God and are insufferable to everyone in their vicinity! If they think they are God or have no conscience and don't give a hoot, they are not hurt or affected personally. If they feel deeply and are concerned for others, they pay a price also; they often become alcoholics because playing God is abhorrent to them! So be kind and understanding to them, in their pain, because they are simply caring human beings and need all of your help and understanding. ...

If all of us follow the Order of Importance, we will seldom get into difficulty, but there is no iron- clad guarantee of anything in this life!

Charles H. Rundles

Belen

Tour del Rio Abajo helped by many folks

EDITOR:

The Tour del Rio Abajo would like to thank all the participated in the runs and bike tour this year. I would like to especially thank our volunteers who manned the water stations: the Cub Scouts Pack 130 of Belen, the Business Women of Valencia County, Enchantment Little League All Stars, the Valley Improvement Association, Theresa Scott and Val Tabor. Thanks to Larry Padilla from Los Lunas High Cross Country for timing the race and Mr. Garcia from Belen High and Ms. Padilla from Valencia High cross country. We would like to thank all the Belen Noon Optimists who helped organize the event including Mandie Trujillo, Daryl Reyner, Mike Carrol, Ken Carson, Michael Calderon, Pavlos Panagopoulos and Julie Hutchins.

I would also like to thank our sponsors Belen Sand and Gravel, South Valley Development Corp., Financial Network of Belen and Larry Vigar of Loews for providing the fruit and Water King of Belen for the water. See you next year on Sept. 30, 2007.

Larry Marshal

Tour del Rio Abajo Organizer

Belen

Plame's life on line in undercover work

EDITOR:

H. Stansell's gleeful repetition of bogus right-wing talking points does not change the facts.

1.) Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA agent, and her life was on the line when she traveled on CIA business — she could have been shot as a spy.

2.) Plame's "brass plate" cover operation was closed down the day Robert Novak's second article was printed, based on information given to him by the White House. The purpose of the Brewster Jennings front company was to conceal investigations of WMD around the world. Foreign agents were killed because this information was made public.

3.) The Plame-Wilson civil suit will indeed go forward; nothing has changed, except that they can add Armitage as a defendant.

4.) Rove, Cheney, Libby and Dubya are still guilty of multiple counts of treason. That Armitage was first to commit treason does not excuse later acts of treason by others.

The analogy is this: Mr. A shoots Mr. Z in the back, then Mr. B shoots Z, then Mr. C shoots Z, then Mr. R shoots Z — ALL are guilty of murder, not just the first shooter.

Concerning the outing of Joe Wilson's wife, the whole Bush Gang is guilty of treason and other felony crimes, committed as part of a conspiracy orchestrated by the White House. When the Democrats regain control of Congress and Constitutional law is restored, the Bush Gang will be impeached and removed from office.

Gary E. Nordell

Belen

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