Taos Bandidos Reflect the Majority Culture

Los Vendidos en Taos

Close to home, KCEC members are in a desperate fight with the Coopsters, a gang of trustees and their CEO, who exploit a near monopoly on electricity to secure federal loans for diversified adventures in everything from Propane gas and, now, the Broadband market on entertainment, information transfer, and “intelligence gathering.” As the Coopsters transfer federal dough from taxpayers to their own private pockets, they aim to raise rates and the salary of the CEO—as well as the income levels of their own majority—all at the people’s expense.

The people’s trustee, Virgil Martinez, says, “we need some honest people at the Coop.” According to Virgil, CEO Luis Reyes, is actively campaigning against Virgil and others who want to see a new era of accountability installed at the Coop.

Vote for Virgil and Martin, Los Martinez (es) in Questa on the 9th of May and on May 14th for Andy Vargas in Taos.

If tiny Mora can call out the oil and gas industry, we Coop members can call out and vote out the Board of Trustees of KCEC. While these trustees cash checks and turn a blind eye, local muggers—no video surveillance here–go undetected with the people’s purse—some $200 grand, lost. Remember when the muggers beat up Coop clerk in Penasco? It’s not the first time lax security has turned into injury and loss for members.

We need honest management and well-trained employees—like the guys who promptly corrected an electrical problem at my meter recently and did it quickly with no fuss or muss. (Most trustees can’t change a lightbulb without calling Luis!)

Aqua es Vida!

Abroad, we Americanos are in a fight with the corporate fascists of democratic capitalism for the very air we breathe and the water we drink or with which we nourish our animals and vegetables. Yesterday at Moby Dickens Book Shop on Bent St. in Taos, author Jack Loeffler, who wrote a book about Ed Abbey, discussed his new collection of essays, Thinking like a Watershed. (The patron saint of “monkey wrenching,” see below, Edward Abbey, edited El Crepusculo, the predecessor to The Taos News.)

During the Q&A, Taos’s own John Nichols and Loeffler, two old friends, writers, and activists, lamented the exploitation and ubiquitous failure of capitalism as the global combine gobbles up the remaining resources on the planet.

Nichols asked, seriously but rhetorically, whether there are any thinkers today on whom to focus, like, say Karl Marx, someone who might, he implied, have ideas that could turn people’s heads and hearts away from capitalism. Loeffler mentioned Wendell Berry and speakers for Native American traditions, who embody what we might call the “small is beautiful” way of life, so peculiar to the Southwest, especially Pueblos, Hopis, and Navajos, who observed the limits of Mother Nature in the years before Manifest Destiny and big capital got hold of the tribes and traditions.

The surviving exemplars of the Southwest might serve as guides during the coming “die-off” of humanity–as billions perish due to climate change and capital’s out-of-control appetite. The “die-off” seems like a promising if difficult solution. We can see the precedent at Chaco and the subsequent diaspora as evidence of history repeating itself.

As the Boy Scouts up at Philmont might say, “be prepared.” Dig a grow hole, put in a grid garden, build a rock’n cairn catchment system (condensation at night, water in the morning). While we’re surfing the drought here in New Mexico and tiny Mora is fighting back, the flow from the Rio Grande and the San Juan-Chama rivers is diminishing.

The “Call” has been made on the Colorado and the trickle down is going to the urban monsters in Arizona, Nevada, and Southern Cal.

Modern Monkey Wrenchers

Activist Tim DeChristopher is the award winning monkey wrencher, who was indicted for “paper monkey wrenching” at BLM oil and gas lease sale in Utah and thrown in jail for bidding on oil and gas leases in an effort to call attention to the “illegal” sales of the peoples’ resources during the Bush era. Subsequently, the Obama men prosecuted and jailed DeChristopher—though he raised the money to pay for his successful bids.

Recently, DeChristopher recounted his experience and the hypocrisies, a familiar tale, of the anti-constitutional practices of the US justice system, on Amy Goodman’s radio, television, and Internet show. A documentary on the case is about to go nationwide.

Now, according to a press release, like DeChristopher, mighty Mora County, only forty miles east of Taos here in northern New Mexico, has thrown down the gauntlet and stood up to Gas and Oil America. To wit:

“The County Commission of Mora County, located in Northeastern New Mexico, became the first county in the United States to pass an ordinance banning all oil and gas extraction. Drafted with assistance from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), the Mora County Community Water Rights and Local Self-Government Ordinance establishes a local Bill of Rights – including a right to clean air and water, a right to a healthy environment, and the rights of nature – while prohibiting activities which would interfere with those rights, including oil drilling and hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” for shale gas.” Contact: Thomas Linzey, Esq. (978) 282-0110 tal@pa.net for information.

Whether its oil in the gulf or natural gas everywhere, coal in West Virginia or data mining and storage in Bluffdale, Utah, the ubiquitous capitalists and Homeland Security cops will stop at nothing to mine the earth and disturb your peace of mind–as the operatives pluck your voices from phones and text messages from your computers.

Surveillance and Stool Pigeons

A recent book, Subversives (et al), by Seth Rosenfeld and reviewed by Adam Hochschild in New York Review of Books, discusses Ronald Reagan’s rise to power, due, in part, to his role as stooge for J.Edgar Hoover’s FBI—he named names and came down hard on free speechers and dissenters. Though the right wing loves the legendary illusionist, who played the president, Reagan won no academy awards.

How long does any candidate for president or leadership last in America—think Kennedy, Malcolm, Martin, Kennedy: if said leaders represent popular reforms and criticize the National Security State or Capitalism’s mandate for profits and subsequent imperial adventurism? Eh? You can bet your life on that one.

A former FBI counterterrorism agent, Tim Clemente, acknowledged this week on CNN that every telephone conversation that takes place on American soil “is being captured as we speak.” Commentator Glenn Greenwald said Clemente’s remarks mean “‘[N]o digital communication is secure.’ ”— “To describe that is to define what a ubiquitous, limitless Surveillance State is,” Greenwald adds. (Truthdig.com)

If you’re reading this, the FBI knows it. Soon, Luis, Manuel, Bobby and Los Cuates will have access to your email, phone, and your private viewing habits. Make your thoughts public and vote the rascals out! Speak truth to power. They can only turn out your lights! Candles are cheap and plentiful at the Dollar Store.