Commentary: It's a beautiful, cool desert morning, and the garden is thriving.
Many families in Doña Ana County live in poverty. Half our nation's citizens own less than what the 400 wealthiest do, largely because of inherited wealth.
Obscene.
Half our country struggles, with an average net worth of $11,000. That average means many have nothing. Dividing up what those 400 have would give everyone more than $750,000. Not saying we should do that; but this widening gap isn't Nature, or God's Law. It's tax and other policies that politicians approve to help the rich and powerful.
There's plenty of room to tax extreme wealth for the benefit of the general public – and still leave rich folks very well off. (We did that in the past, and most countries do it now.)
In the old South, the wealthiest whites kept folks in line by pitting poor whites against Negroes. In recent decades, those with obscene wealth – and indifference to the rest of us and our Earth – have kept the rest of us from looking at the economic reality by setting us bickering over skin colors, religions, and sexual mores, and, more generally, fearing others, particularly immigrants and asylum-seekers.
The gentleman in the White House should be impeached. The Mueller Report lists numerous crimes, and by muzzling witnesses he is stonewalling Congress, daring the House to take him to courts he's packed with rabid partisans.
Each day brings a new study showing that the alleged “alarmists” have underestimated the imminence of climate-change's destruction of the world as we know it.
Even if the scariest scenarios are exaggerated, we're already facing serious problems. The Big Money folks profit from ignoring the problem. Why else would our government deny what most other countries have agreed is our greatest challenge?
My wife comes in to tell me the torch cacti are putting on their beautiful but fleeting show.
Voters mostly don't like Mr. Trump and don't agree with Republican policies. A slim majority favors impeachment. Will 2020 bring change?
The Democrats may self-destruct. Personal ambitions have resulted in too many candidates (some of whom should run for or retain senate seats) turning the nomination process into a Saturday Night Live skit.
The huge financial power of corporations and rich folks seems likely to influence which of these two-dozen candidates gets nominated. Wall Street is already picking its favorites.
The Democratic quandary is simple. On the one hand, Mr. Trump is destroying our nation and environment. Four more years would leave our judges more extreme (and often unqualified), the wealth gap wider, our air and water more polluted – and make sure we'd miss a critical window of opportunity to minimize the climate disaster.
Trump didn't create income inequality, pollution, or government corruption. His self-absorbed clowning distracts us from graver dangers.
We need a much more systemic change than Joe Biden, great guy that he is, would attempt. How do we choose among candidates with varied rhetoric about real change (which they're unlikely to accomplish) and candidates we feel (or experts say) are our safest bets to end the destructive Trump experiment?
Fortunately, it's time to go play pickleball and run around for hours, banging a ball and forgetting Washington exists. But first I work awhile in the garden. Even in our hot, dry desert, the compost worms are more productive than the political ones.