OPINION: Talk of the Town

Fixing doctor shortage would benefit NM

I’m neither a Supplemental Food Assistance Program benefit recipient nor a medical professional, but rather a patient in need of medical care. If the governor can mandate a special session to deal with the issues associated with SNAP benefits, why can’t she deal with the lack of medical professionals in New Mexico. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and all the representatives in Santa Fe were elected to represent all New Mexicans, please do your job for all of us and not the lobbyist representing malpractice attorneys.

Angelica Martinez

Albuquerque

Shutdown isn’t helpful to Americans

Political commentators will spend months analyzing the recent government shutdown to try to determine whether it was the Republicans or Democrats that “won” the politics of it. However, for everyday Americans, we can easily see two results. The first result is that everyday Americans lost. Those employed by the government lost wages and benefits. Many were forced to continue to work even though they weren’t being paid. And American citizens lost because government services we all depend on — safe air travel, national parks, government offices and staff — weren’t available to us.

The other result is that the president’s priorities are now clear for all to see. While most government employees went unpaid, the president made sure that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were paid so that they could continue shooting pellets at ministers peacefully praying in the streets, firing tear gas at children celebrating Halloween and arresting American citizens. The president found millions to pay for National Guard troops to stay in barracks in Illinois and Oregon even though the courts wouldn’t let them on the streets; millions to buy Gulfstream jets for Kristy Noem; millions to pay to fly him and his staff to Mar-a-Lago every weekend for golf and parties; and billions to aid Argentina.

However, the president couldn’t find any money to assist people in getting health insurance or to provide food for struggling families — many of whom are employed but not earning enough to support their families. He even went so far as to take his case to the Supreme Court try to prevent paying the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. For a man who campaigned as the champion of the working class and promised to be president for all Americans, I find those to be interesting priorities — and not beneficial to Americans.

Arthur Flicker

Albuquerque

Op-ed on Israel-Hamas war missed the mark

“Israel must be held accountable for violence,” screamed the headline in bold face print in the Opinion section of the Nov. 2 Sunday Journal. This headline certainly missed its mark following the ceasefire that is hoped to end hostilities in Gaza.

Author Samia Assed failed to mention what started the conflict two years ago. Marading terrorists crossed the border into Israel and massacred more than 1,200 innocent civilians and took around 250 hostages. Of those hostages, about 170 survived a brutal imprisonment, while 81 died in captivity. Assad made use of the usual hot-button words of “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” “subjugation,” ad nauseam.

Assed failed to mention that the terrorists hide in tunnels burrowed under hospitals, schools and places of worship. Command centers were found in hospitals and apartment buildings. Missiles targeting Israel are fired from school yards. Hamas terrorists used citizens as human shields.

Assed’s steps toward true peace are well-taken except for “a political process centered on Palestinian sovereignty and the right of return.” The descendants of the thousands of Arabs (who now call themselves Palestinians) who fled during Israel’s war of independence now number in the millions. Allowing “right of return” would decimate the Jewish state demographically.

The Palestinian leaders have been offered an independent state encompassing the West Bank and Gaza many times. However, the leaders held out for a “right of return.” A Palestinian state from the “river to the sea” is preposterous. The situation is not as bleak as Assed makes it out to be. Thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank commute to Israel for work every day. Once the terrorists lay down their arms and recognize the existence of a Jewish state, the Palestinians can share in Israel’s prosperity without security restrictions.

Steven Epstein

Albuquerque

Get behind changes to oil and gas rules

All New Mexicans need to get behind and voice their approval of Modernizing Bonding & Cleanup Rules at the New Mexico Oil Conservation Commission. I testified recently and my message was simple: If you drill it, you clean it up. The existing bonding levels were never capable of funding the cleanup costs. This cost has been dumped on us. The result: poison in our air, land and water and a $100 million cost with much more to come. Enough.

Gregory Petty

Albuquerque

Reservoir project idea threatens community

The Federal Energy Commission is evaluating a proposal that would gravely damage the tiny historic community of White Oaks, in Lincoln County. The proposal calls for the development of two massive reservoirs drawing on local spring water. Water would be spilled from the upper dam over turbines to generate electric power The reservoirs require 110-foot dams, each over 5,000-feet long. The project is slated to be built on National Forest, Bureau of Land Management and private land. The water would be drawn from mountain springs located above White Oaks, jeopardizing well water in the community. The “Barber Springs Pumped Storage Project” came as a complete surprise to local residents and local officials. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will consider a preliminary proposal for the project on Nov. 21. There has been no press coverage of this project to this point.

Edmund McWilliams

White Oaks

Boat strikes are murder — plain and simple

The Trump team’s annihilation of, so far, eight boats and their crews in international waters are extrajudicial killings. So far, we do not execute drug traffickers, even those who have actually been found guilty in a court of law.

For the administration and the mostly servile news media to refer to these boats as “suspicious drug smuggling boats” is a self-serving claim that is totally without any basis in fact. If tomorrow the news outlets begin to refer to you being a “suspected child molester” equally absent of any shred of actual evidence, you may spend the rest of your life trying to refute the claim. Your innocence will not matter. In the meantime, you will have lost your job and probably some friends. And that would be a tragic and terrible turn in your life, but you would still be better off than those men who were incinerated in an instant by the U.S. military while in neutral waters. We have only one word for these strikes, and that word is murder.

Michael Stewart

Santa Fe

New US refugee policy not a good look for US

The U.S. has reduced its refugee quota from 125,000 to 7,500 in 2026. This is a staggering reduction, given the commitments of other western countries, and in a world with many needy refugees fleeing unimaginable horrors.

Many applicants have been on “hold” for years, including those already vetted under rigorous security checks, such as Afghans who supported the U.S. military. More alarming is the new priority for white South Africans, who will make up the majority of the new 7,500 quota.

President Trump says that whites in South Africa are being slaughtered and their farms illegally confiscated. So, what are the facts in South Africa today?

• 31 years after independence, white South Africans, comprising 7% of the population, still control most of the country’s wealth.
• Whites own 72% of private farmland, and 66% of business managers are white.
• Within South Africa, whites have their own territory called “Orania.”
• A former apartheid political party “The Freedom Front” competes openly in elections at the local and national level.

I worked in South Africa for many years including during the 1994 end of apartheid elections, and visit annually with family and friends of all races who happily continue to reside there. What was striking was the generosity shown by Black South Africans toward their fellow white citizens, after the cruelty of apartheid.

In my work financing Black business, I often collided with the apartheid state, including being unlawfully detained in Johannesburg’s John Vorster Square detention facility. Nelson Mandela set the tone for post independent South Africa, and famously said, “An injustice or indignity against an individual or group, diminishes all of us.” I’m not sure what he would make of the U.S. prioritizing white South Africans as refugees. Certainly not a good look for the U.S.

John Bloomfield

Albuquerque