Scandals Never Die, they just fade away…and come back as ghosts to haunt you!
“Easy is the descent into Hell, for it is paved with good intentions.” John Milton, Paradise Lost, published 1667.
At the national level, members of the Congress and the Executive Staff at the White House conspire to approve of assassinations, wiretapping, torture, financial fraud, and the transfer of wealth from the poor to the plutocrats. Few are punished for transgressions. The Euro-American scientific community has contributed much in the way of technology to corporate profits yet the captains of industry support know-nothing climate and vaccination deniers, turning reality on its head.
Reality has become what you see and hear on smaller and smaller electronic screens i.e. TVs and phones.
Here in New Mexico, the largest city has been exposed as a hot bed of crime aimed at the people as cops gun down the homeless and helpless. The shock troops operate adjacent to Sandia, a national defense lab just south of LANL, the mother of the atomic bomb. The laboratory at the Duke City has become the leading edge of “the conceptual art of confusion,” which redefines “reality.”
Though a few radical students and activists protest, their message relies on outdated reason and the free press, the voice of an American Studies professor, and a small online newspaper La Jicarita, from El Valle in Taos County. A hit TV show, “Breaking Bad,” popularized the manufacture and sale of Blue Meth and made a national hero out of an outlaw high school chemistry teacher in Albuquerque. A recent article in the New Yorker magazine focussed on APD cops who killed the grandson of a local woman here in Taos.
The investigative reporter for Channel 13 KRQE, one Larry Barker, has discovered yet another do-gooder board and agency, Tri-County Community Services here in Taos, which board and CEO have been stealing from Peter to pay Paul. Not long ago a state Veterinary Board confirmed that the Taos animal shelter and its supporters had turned a blind eye to the abuse and neglect of animals in the outlaw vet case. Taosenos have also joined the national dialogue about “Ferguson,” what with a white cop screaming and breaking out the windows in a black woman’s van, while a second cop tried to shoot out the tires of her vehicle as she fled. Now the DA wants her in jail?
But the DA himself has problems. The Supreme Court’s Disciplinary Board has charged the Taos DA and his subordinate with professional misconduct, in the “hometown subpoena case.” Due to violations of the procurement code, the Town of Taos is coping with mold, leaking roofs, and collapsing walls at the Town’s Youth and Family Center, while the Chamisa Verde low-income housing project, which has violated local and state ordinances, is also being investigated. Recently, Taos County’s Section 8 housing scandal ended when the director went to prison tho’ many of her colleagues escaped prosecution.
Last year’s overwhelming vote in municipal elections for a new mayor was partially about saving the community from Kit Carson Electric Coop’s movida at the Command Center and its pernicious influence over Town Hall. While the Coop pretends to be progressive and green, and has instituted the wonders of Broadband, paid for by millions in grants and loans, the CEO and Trustees have used the fiber network “contracts for cuates” program as a political gold rush aimed at extending its influence.
The Abeyta/Taos Pueblo Water Settlement signals the next big series of movidas coming down the Rio Grande and dribbling out from the streams of the Taos County Watersheds. The gold attached to H2O, some $130 million, will be a boon for the politically influential in 2017. Controversy around the agreement has already exposed the foibles of community leaders in El Prado, the Town of Taos, and on the Rio Lucero ditch and Taos Valley Acequia Association as water rights hijacking begins. Some of the dough initially was aimed at a “slush fund” for Tribal Leaders, who operate outside the limelight, due to tribal sovereignty. Some of the money is aimed at drilling wells, which benefit private property alongside acequias and the Vega, which belongs to influential property owners. But who is looking out for the Rio Grande except for a rafter, a fisherman, and a water maven?
If you sit on a board or deal with politicians and try to do the right thing, you, too, will be exposed. Do-gooders, who try to launder their dough or their consciences, will find out that the stains don’t disappear with the application of Clorox. When you try to “fix” the system, the alleged wrong-doers, who work, say, at CRAB Hall, will file fraudulent lawsuits that are ultimately settled by “no-fault” insurance companies.
Money meant for school children ends up at the Taos Mountain Casino. Call it “poetic justice.” A Taos County Commissioner once said about rationalizing historic property crimes aimed at Taos Pueblo: “We didn’t steal the land, we took it by conquest.”
As local traditions mix with Anglo-American law aimed at buttressing the dominant society, the perception of right and wrong, like reality, becomes confused and results in a mixed bag of moral and ethical conclusions. Self-righteousness does not make you right even as the DA drops homicide charges against somebody because he or she is one of La Buena Gente.
Crime in Taos amounts to a vast community conspiracy. If you were a pesky insect, you could even call it a custom. As Virgil used to say, “I feel sorry for Taos County.”