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Recent
Articles
The Two Faces of Bill Richardson,
The "Clean Energy" Governor's Nuclear Ties
by Leland Lehrman
The Corporate Prison
Boom, Immigration and The Law
by Tilda Sosaya
What is a Culture of Peace?
by Louise Diamond
Diplomacy the Watchword,
Ambassadors Converge on New Mexico
by Leland Lehrman
Gary
King: "We Are All Constituents"
by Stephen Fox
Holocaust or Hoax, The Global Warming
Debate Heats Up
by Leland Lehrman
The Hunting Fallacy
by Cyril Christo
Impeachment Limerick
Richard Arthure
“Powerbrokers” (Legislative
Leadership and Lobbyists) in Control of Conference Committee
by Stephen Fox
NM Senate Joint Memorial
to Begin Process of Prohibiting Production of New Nuclear Weapons in
New Mexico
by Leland Lehrman
Legislature is a “Brain
Trust” to Accomplish All We Need in New Mexico
by Stephen Fox
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Peace
or War, Renewables or Nukes and Coal
New Mexico
Must Decide
by Leland Lehrman
 The
politicians line up along an unmistakable axis. Domenici for war, nukes,
oil and coal. Bingaman and Udall for renewable energy and peace. Bingaman
and Udall can be criticized for their ongoing support of the nuclear
components of Los Alamos National labs, but at least they are now aggressively
promoting a federal Renewable Portfolio Standard. Senator Bingaman’s
landmark energy legislation will require 15% of the nation’s energy
to come from renewable sources by 2020. As we go to press, Domenici
is blocking it with a filibuster, having lost his vote to include nuclear
and “clean” coal as “renewable energy.” Democratic
staff indicate that they have only 56 votes so cannot get “cloture,”
or a final vote on the bill without four more Senators.
Domenici’s actions are devolutionary, but predictable.
 But
Santa Fe’s own progressive Democrat, Rep. Tom Udall, surprised
everyone recently when he voted, and lost, to fund the “reliable
replacement warhead” - code for new nuclear weapons at Los Alamos.
In a subsequent conference call, Udall suggested that he didn’t
want to cut the funding because of lost jobs in Los Alamos and Española.
He did, however, indicate that he was focused on changing the mission
of the labs from nuclear weapons to non-proliferation and other peaceful
science (renewable energy, public transportation would be great). Representative
Udall should be able to find broad support for extensive peaceful science
funding in the Democratic House, and need not vote for more nuclear
weapons at all.
Udall’s conference call also generated poll numbers. These numbers
were very encouraging: 84 percent of those on the call wanted the lab’s
mission to change away from nuclear weapons. This number is even more
significant because the majority of the people on the call were lab
employees or relatives.
The most encouraging recent event on the renewable energy scene was
Ben Luce’s decision to abandon “insider advocacy” style
renewable energy activism. The Sun News joined him at his recent press
conference announcing his change to a courageous, public form of direct
action designed to “Break the Grip” of corporate influence
on the New Mexico Legislature. At that press conference, Ben introduced
his new organization “Break the Grip”and made his unpleasant
experiences with the Administration and the Legislature public. He exposed
the corrupting and stalling effect that New Mexico’s largest public
utility, PNM, has on clean, renewable energy development. Excellent
coverage by the Associated Press, the New Mexican, the Journal and the
Tribune highlighted Ben’s concerns about the ongoing relationship
between PNM executives and the New Mexico political leadership, as well
as their constant efforts to derail renewable, efficiency, and low-income
energy legislation. Ben was careful to make clear that he had been as
vocal about his concerns as he could to Administration and Legislative
officials during the legislative session, but that they had simply disregarded
the broad consensus of New Mexico activists and citizens in favor of
a straightforward PNM agenda.
Break the Grip’s emerging policy initiatives are focused first
on reforming the Legislative and Electoral processes as a first step
towards creating a Legislature more responsive to the people and less
to corporations. Here are some of the specific proposals from BreaktheGrip.org
on political reform:
· A Paid Full-Time Legislature: No more part-time, volunteer
legislature that is dependent on the “expertise” of corporate
lobbyists.
· Publicly Financed Elections: No more corporate donations.
· Fair and Open Committee Hearings: Real access for the public:
o Committee hearings that stay on schedule and are advertised well in
advance.
o Televised hearings.
o Full access for video-recorders.
o Full opportunity to testify by members of the public.
· Prohibitions on private communications with paid lobbyists:
Communications should either take place in public, or via written correspondence
that is available to the public.
Break the Grip’s recommendations on energy policy are as follows:
· Repeal Inappropriate Legislation from the 2007 Session (Transmission
Authority, flawed Renewable Energy Standard, Clean Coal incentive, rollback
of low-income protections)
· Repeal of the 2005 Efficient Use of Energy Act
· Call for PNM Audit/Delay of PNM’s Ratecase (Request to
increase rates)
· Call for Weatherization Funding
· Call for Halting of Current Building Code Upgrade Push and
Open Building Code Development
· Electric Utility Reform: Major new regulations or Utility Municipalization.
· Democratization of Utility infrastructure, including aggressive
use of distributed energy and efficiency.
The response from compromised politicians to efforts to stop war and
promote clean energy are basically the same: “We can’t do
it now, but we’ll talk about doing it slowly later.” But later
never comes, and we need peace and renewable energy now. There is no
time to wait on peaceful, renewable energy, and Break the Grip’s
push to accelerate the process is a true blessing.
Leland Lehrman can be reached at (505) 982-3609 or leland.lehrman(at)gmail.com
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