WATER BILLS--CITY SWINDLE, PART II

The swindle is known to everyone: Water Section, Utilities Department, Utilities Board of Commissioners, City Council, City Manager.  My 10 November presentation to the Board outlined the problem with the disparity between billed water usage and the improbabilities of actual water usage, with the disparity imputed to a leak.  Councilors on the Board, Tessa Abeyta and Johanna Bencomo, seemed uninterested, fiddled with papers, and avoided looking at me.  Mayor Ken Miyagishima, all Councilors, and City Manager Ifo Pili have the facts; they received my earlier blog and have received this one.

 

Afterwards, Ray Hickman, a Board member, offered to review this problem, which has persisted for years and which Water Section personnel have insisted is mine, not theirs.  He visited on 15 November, wrote me on 9 December, and discussed its findings with me on 16 December.  When he visited, he impressed me with his engineering background and his data-analytical and problem-solving approach.  I did not expect him to discover the leak in the yard or house, where Water Section personnel could not find it.  I hoped that he could trace the problem to a data-processing error in the Water Section’s new technology.

 

Hickman had the facts.  He had the text of my Board presentation, with its copy of my latest bill, which shows October-to-October monthly water usage; he had another copy which I gave him on his visit.  I say so because, in our discussion of his letter, he claimed not to have had that bill.  I reminded him of the copy which I had given him, but he gave no indication that he would pursue my problem further—to me, a sign of bad faith.

 

The explanation of my highly variable bills for water usage is a leak, but it makes no sense.  On the one hand, the leak is a small, steady one throughout the year.  When read at any time of year, the water meter shows a flow of about 1.5 gallons per hour (GPH), or about 1080 gallons per months (GPM).  Hickman writes that “A closer study of the current data for your home shows a continuous flow rate of not less than 1-2 gallons per hour at all hours of the day.”  I believe that this “closer study” was nothing more than looking at and accepting Water Section data.  Usage ranging from 720-1440 GPM ranges from one-fourth to one-half of my average water usage of 3000 GPM.  I do not want to waste water, but I do not worry about a bill including the costs of this wasted water.

 

Hickman also writes that “A constant leak of 2 GPH should generate a puddle or wet spot somewhere visible.”  “Should”: but, as he saw, it did not, in the yard or house.  He suggested shutting off the water softener, his suspected source, with tubing discharging into a drain, and reading the meter to see if it stopped showing a flow.  Instead, I ran the tubing to a bucket; after 4 hours, the bucket held only about two or three tablespoons of water.  The reality: no leak, only a meter reporting a flow which does not exist.

 

On the other hand, the leak is a large, fluctuating one for about six months of the year; it rises to and then falls from a peak up to 12,000 GPM.  By claiming not to have the bill, Hickman says nothing about a GPH reading—it should be 16.6 GMH—which would account for such a large, long-duration surge; no data support my billed amount.  Again, I do not want to waste water, but I do worry about a bill including the costs of this wasted water.

 

Without my bill, Hickman cannot write about “a puddle or wet spot somewhere visible” of the size implied by a leak of this size.  Such a “puddle” of 12,000 GPM billed less 1,080 GPM used (12,000-1,080 = 10,980) would have a volume of 1471 cu ft (1 gal = 0.134 cu ft), enough water to fill a swimming pool roughly 4 ft x 20 ft x 18.4 ft.  Leaks of February’s 11,000 GPM and March’s 12,000 GPM could have filled two swimming pools, should have been visible, or should have produced marshy ground destabilizing my house, boundary walls, driveway, or sidewalk.  The reality: no leak of this magnitude.

 

Historical patterns are relevant though, so I am told, the Water Section destroyed its records when it installed its new metering system three or four years ago.  From 2007 through 2014, my wife and I used about 2000 to 4000 GPM, depending on whether we were watering vegetation.  Since then, as a single occupant and with no watering, my usage for half the year has averaged 3000 GPM even with the new metering system, with no increase because of a leak.  This pattern suggests that there is no leak, despite a water meter indicating water flow.  Water Section personnel on several visits and Hickman on his one visit have looked for a leak in my yard and house, have found none, but have insisted on one.

 

The persistent inability of Water Section personnel or Hickman to find a leak of any size, large or small—actual water, not meter readings—or to explain huge fluctuations suggests that their hypothesis is totally fact-free and false.  They cannot urge both a small leak and a large leak because leaks do not fluctuate wildly.  Nevertheless, they repeatedly urge me to have exploratory work done in my yard and house to find a leak; they want me to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars though, if I find nothing, they bear no responsibility for my expenses.

 

But, when I suggest that they consider whether a new system could have any number of hardware, software, or management problems, both Water Section personnel and Hickman become defensive.  The reaction is typical of bureaucrats whose arrogance is compounded by incompetence, if not criminality.  Hickman’s pretense at investigating my problem displays the fate which befalls many who are supposed to oversee or regulate public agencies: capture by agency personnel.  In this case, Hickman sought to help Water Section personnel in a cover-up.

 

The Water Section lacks evidence that the water system is actually delivering water to my property which is leaking into my yard or house.  All it has are meter readings and office computers spinning out numbers which correspond to no reality—water—on the ground.  I am being overbilled, and I am probably not alone in being overbilled.  Maybe the Utilities Department’s billing personnel have their thumbs on the scales and their hands in the till.  The City must hope that an enterprising investigative reporter does not disclose that Las Cruces, like Deming, has been padding the water bills of city residents.

PERFORMANCE POLITICS IN LAS CRUCES

Performance politics has come to Las Cruces.  One such performance occurred in a City Council meeting on 5 December.  In the portion of the agenda allotted to Councilors’ comments, Johanna Bencomo complained about the criticism which she has received from Progressive groups like the ACLU and CAFé for not supporting a proposal for a civilian police oversight board.  Her pity-party performance was not only unbecoming, but also unpersuasive because she revealed her confusions on the issue of police reform which apparently prevent her from taking any position at all and sticking to it.

 

[Note: In exchanges with some of supporters of this proposal when it was merely an idea, not a document, I opined that it was unwise as a first, not a last, step toward police reform.  I proposed smaller, preliminary steps to build public support for larger ones.]

 

I have noted before that 2 years ago, in the City Council meeting addressing the Eight Can’t Wait proposals, Council Bencomo advocated a citizen review board until, chided by the Mayor for disloyalty to the police, she promptly caved.  In short, she was for a citizen review board until she was against it.  So much for her convictions, her courage, and her trustworthiness on the issue of police reform.

 

Later, I discovered how untrustworthy Councilor Bencomo is.  At my invitation, she zoomed my meeting with the City Manager about my complaint about phony allegations.  She heard him agree that all five were false and should be withdrawn.  She heard him say that I deserved an apology.  She heard him request a draft apology from me to be sure that he got it right in the details on which I insisted.  When she learned that he offered an apology which did nothing to which he had agreed, she did not even contact him for an explanation.  If she could not even ask him why he did not keep his word, she is unlikely to question officials about police conduct.  If she does not want answers, she is likely to suppress facts about police misconduct.  When Council considered the period for cases subject to the police auditor’s review, she pointedly approved an end date which omitted my complaint.

 

During her remarks on police reform (video 3:53-3:56), Councilor Bencomo stressed that it is one of her top priorities, all the more so because of some recent serious cases of police misconduct.  But her three substantive comments indicate how unreliable she has become in matters of police reform.

 

First, she dismissed the proposal for an oversight board, though drafted by five very smart people, including at least one lawyer, as “superficial.”  The draft which I have seen, probably not a later one which she has seen, does not seem at all superficial.

 

Second, she claims that such oversight or review boards have failed everywhere.  The claim is simply false, and she should know it.  The record is mixed; for various reasons, some have succeeded, some have failed.  The reasons for failure: police opposition is constant, official support inconstant or conduct corrosive, and public support variable.  A DOJ study indicates the issues involved and the record thus far.

 

Third, and most important, she explains that her difficulty with police reform is reconciling two entirely separate considerations: on the one hand, support for the police; on the other hand, police accountability.  She criticizes her critics for not understanding their separation.  This nonsense unwittingly reveals that she cannot relate performance to accountability in police work—a disconnect which makes police reform impossible.

 

In my experience, I have found that police officers defend their “brothers”—today, they would also defend their “sisters”—when it comes to public criticism of individual officers.  But good police officers support reform efforts which raise and enforce policing standards and enable leadership to hold all officers accountable for their conduct and to retrain or terminate bad ones.  To support police—all police, good and bad apples alike—but not police reform when it is necessary is to undermine good police by protecting bad police.

 

But such is Councilor Bencomo’s preferred position: a flimsy rationalization with which she attempts to appease and please both sides of this issue; it is a script for her political performance.  Regrettably, it displays her ignorance of the relationship between performance and accountability in police work, and suggests the same ignorance in other areas of public service.  Or is Councilor Bencomo afraid to make judgments or decisions?  Whatever the reason, her inability to hold public employees accountable for their work means that she is miscast as an elected official and unfit for elected public office with responsibilities for ensuring public service.  When the time comes, voters, especially her Progressive supporters, should hold her accountable for her pathetic performance.

THE OUTBREAK OF ANTISEMITISM: EVERYWHERE, ANYWHERE, EVEN HERE

Thanks to Kanye West (aka Ye), Nick Fuentes, and Donald Trump, antisemitism is prominently featured in national media reports and editorials.  This coverage reminds those who get out-of-town news about the attacks on Jewish synagogues east and west: The Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA, in October 2018, and Congregation Chabad in Poway, CA, in April 2019.  One writer calls the outbreak of antisemitic disparagement and disrespect as well as antisemitic violence a crisis for America as well as Jews.

 

The response by Very Important People in Washington is predictable.  Some respond immediately; others wait, with fingers in the wind to tell which way the wind is blowing.  All know that antisemitism must be publicly renounced, not countenanced.  All declare that “antisemitism has no place in America.”  The declaration is absurd.  Antisemitism has a place in America, in fact, in many places in America—everywhere, anywhere, even here—because most Americans are Christians and most Christians are antisemitic.  They are antisemitic because they have been raised in a faith rooted in anti-Judaism.

 

Update: Today’s White House roundtable discussion to be led by Doug Emhoff, Jewish husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, will be a bust because it will not address anti-Judaism, the precondition and precursor of Christian antisemitism.

 

The distinction between anti-Judaism and antisemitism is that between disagreement with and opposition to Judaic beliefs, principles, and values; and hatred of or action against Jews, who accept Judaism as their religious culture—respectively.  (The same distinction exists in today’s politics, in which differences of policies between Democrats and Republicans have morphed into personalities, with insults and hostilities.)

 

Anti-Judaism originates in Christian doctrines.  The radical difference between Christians and Jews are their beliefs about Jesus as the Messiah.  His Jewish Apostles at the time and Christians ever since have preached that Jesus fulfills the messianic expectations of the Prophets and fully realizes Judaism.  Christians preach that Judaism without Jesus is incomplete or imperfect.  They preach that Christianity has superseded Judaism and is superior to it.  They have failed to persuade most Jews, but they have not ceased to seek Jewish converts by force of arms if not by force of arguments.  Ascribing their failure to the nature of Jews as a proud and stiff-necked, also an ignorant and evil, people—evil specified by imputed flaws of character (e.g., greed) or conduct (e.g., loud, pushy)—, they initiate antisemitism.  They regard or resent the survival of Judaism (15 million Jews) as a reproach to the success of Christianity (2.2 billion Christians).  Anti-Judaic doctrines arising then and reinforced since enable Christian antisemitism.

 

Anti-Judaism is acquired by Christian education and reinforced by religious observance.  At home, Christians learn about Jesus’ miraculous birth at Christmas, and his miserable death at Easter—both the sum and substance of the Nicene and Apostles creeds.  In Sunday school, they learn the more detailed story of Passion Week, during which Jews allegedly instigated the crucifixion.  In church, they learn about the Day of Judgment, when Jews either accept Jesus as Christ or are damned forever.  If they read the New Testament or listen to sermons, they know the antisemitism built into the holiest books of the faith—sharply in the Gospel of Matthew; virulently in the Gospel of John.  These stories and services, acquired in childhood, reinforced thereafter, linger in memory and cannot easily or entirely be erased.  Anti-Judaism bides its time.

 

Whether from respect for religious freedom or regard for social respectability, the antisemitism of most Christian Americans is quiescent most of the time.  But quiescence does not imply non-existence or a latency from which antisemitism cannot be aroused.  For, in some Christian venues, antisemitism continues in sermons and in proselytizing.  Proselytizing efforts—Jews for Jesus is a notably offensive effort—reflect the Christian view of a competitive relationship between Christianity and Judaism.  Christians compete alone; Jews neither proselytize nor encourage converts.  In this context, pro-ecumenical talk, and talk about a Judeo-Christian tradition, are falsified by persistent anti-Judaic positions and antisemitic proselytizing efforts.

 

Ecumenical pretense is strongest in the Catholic Church, the tormentor of Jews for nearly two millennia.  Catholics cite the Second Vatican Council’s Nostra aetate (1965) as if it acknowledged Judaism as a legitimate faith.  But it does not respect Judaism or esteem Jews.  It merely commends them for their contributions to Christianity and, in doing so, demotes them to the status of useful subordinates.

 

One passage perpetuates anti-Judaic messages in its niggardly proscriptions.

 

Although the Church is the new People of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the Word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ.

 

There is nothing positive in this statement.  “The new People of God” demotes Jews and nudges them aside as the old people of God; proscribing their presentation as “rejected or accursed” in the “Holy Scriptures”—tacitly admitting prevailing abuses in the clergy—does not proscribe their presentation as such by other means; and the condemnations of Matthew and John are the “truth of the Gospel.”

 

Another passage points to omissions with antisemitic implications.

 

Since in the course of centuries not a few quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Moslems, this sacred synod urges all to forget the past and to work sincerely for mutual understanding and to preserve as well as to promote together for the benefit of all mankind social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom.

 

Omitted is a similar statement about Christians and Jews.  Not one word acknowledges, much less apologizes for, centuries of Christian abuse of Jews.  The omission is especially notable only two decades after the Holocaust, in which the Catholic Church played no saving and possibly an assisting role.  Also omitted is one word urging Christians and Jews to work for “mutual understanding” or “social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom.”  Implied by these omissions: complacency about the horrific results of recent history and reluctance to associate with Jews in joint efforts to worthy ends.

 

Nostra aetate attempts to foist off on the world a pretense of reconciliation with Jews.  Some Jews have accepted this albeit dishonest attempt in the hope of better to follow.  But it cannot reconcile Christians and Jews.  Even so, some Catholics have believed that no such statement even pretending to reconciliation is desirable.  That was then.

 

This is now.  In a Vatican Radio broadcast at Santa Marta 50 years later (10/13/14), when one Catholic spoke only to other Catholics, Pope Francis remarked, as reported:

 

“Why were these Doctors of the Law unable to understand the signs of the times?…First of all, because they…had perfectly systemized the law…”.

 

“They failed to understand that the law they guarded and loved” was a pedagogy towards Jesus Christ. “If the law does not lead to Jesus Christ,…if it does not bring us closer to Jesus Christ, it is dead…”.

 

There is no respect in the Pope’s snide phrase “Doctors of the Law,” as if Jewish religious leaders—at the time, Sadducees and Pharisees; today, rabbis—are lawyers.  His second paragraph perpetuates the Christian doctrine of supersessionism, derogates Jewish law, and thus disparages the integrity of Judaism.  A shorter, clearer rejection of an essential feature of Judaism there probably is not.  A counter-parallel would be a rabbi declaring the Trinity hocus-pocus designed as a come-on to pagans, whose pantheon consisted of many gods.  And a clearer example of Christian competitiveness or defensiveness would be hard to find.  Otherwise, the Pope, leader of over 1.3 billion Catholics, would not find it necessary to inveigh against the faith of 15 million Jews and use insulting language to provide some measure of relief from continuing theological insecurity.

 

The New Testament is the basis for the anti-Judaism and antisemitism of the diverse array of Christians and the range of churches of a fissiparous Christianity.  Little help against anti-Judaism or antisemitism can come from either Christians or their churches until they ignore motes in others’ eyes and attend to the logs in theirs.

 

I toss out this tentative idea for addressing antisemitism by addressing anti-Judaism: If Christians believe that Jesus is the Messiah, I suggest that they believe in him as the Messiah who redeems the world and saves those who believe in him, and abandon the polemical enterprise of trying to prove by doctrine-driven interpretations of Jewish Holy Scriptures and stories of his life that he is the Messiah mistreated by his fellow Jews.

 

I render a harsh judgment on antisemitism in Christianity and Christians.  I respect both up to, but not beyond, the point at which they articulate antisemitism and act in ways which derogate, disrespect, and abuse Jews.  I publish this harsh judgment because I want Christians to avoid behaving as many did in Nazi Germany.  From the earliest years of its regime, many Christians, latently antisemitic, ignored the little antisemitic events which, in aggregate, incrementally led to the acceptance of and prepared for the Final Solution.  I want them not to demean themselves afterwards as many Germans did with shabby excuses for tolerating or supporting the Holocaust.  Later, shocked and guilt-ridden by horrendous consequences of their antisemitism, many Germans, trying to exonerate themselves by pretending to innocence, claimed that they knew nothing.  I have heard this dishonest, cowardly defense of family relatives.  Its tacit claim is that ignorance denied them the opportunity which they would otherwise have courageously taken to resist.  There is no absolution for this lie.

 

In Las Cruces, senior officials in government—council, administration, law office, police department—were complicit in or tolerant of antisemitism in my minor case, with the tacit approval of informed Christian citizens.  I remind the latter of Dr. Martin Luther King’s words in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”: “We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”  I doubt that such silent people are good people.

 

My concerns: indifference or inaction before a major episode of antisemitism here and the sequel of conventional, hypocritical official pronouncements expressing shock and dismay when evasion or cover-up cannot serve, and of conventional, hypocritical personal statements of pious regrets by Protestants and Catholics alike.

 

 

 

For more of my blogs mainly on economics, education, politics, and religion go to firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com/.

LAS CRUCES COUNCILORS FAIL GOVERNMENT LEADERSHIP

Las Cruces touted its first City Council with all six Councilors female.  A fair question is whether this all-female cast of Councilors has achieved any qualitative improvements in city government or city services.  I consider only public safety and public works.

 

If Johana Bencomo is typical, the Councilors are subservient to Mayor Miyagishima.  As I have noted before, when she spoke in support of a citizens’ police review board, the mayor scolded her for being disloyal to the police, and she immediately and contritely withdrew her support.  Since then, given his aggressive opposition to police reform, they have opposed a citizens’ group formally constituted and empowered to review police performance.  They have also failed to exercise oversight themselves or to enact policies and practices to define and support police professionalism.

 

If Casandra Gandara’s close friendship with City Attorney Jennifer Vega is typical, the Councilors take their lead from Vega on matters affecting public safety.  The sisterhood is strong but fecklessness in avoiding public discussion of three important episodes:

 

The choke-hold killing of Antonio Valenzuela by Officer Christopher Smelser and the City’s $6.5 million, City Attorney-approved settlement of the lawsuit.  As part of that settlement, the City agreed to several reforms.  They have not publicly questioned whether the LCPD has complied with them.  No questions, no answers, no transparency, no accountability.

 

The mauling and maiming of Julian Valenzuela by a K-9 loosed by LCPD Officer Mathew Dollar on the victim after he had surrendered.  They have not publicly questioned why the Officer Involved Shooting Task Force, a self-serving police organization answerable to no one, exonerated Dollar.  No questions, no answers, no transparency, no accountability.

 

The killing of Amelia Baca by Officer Jared Cosper and the City’s $2.75, City Attorney-approved settlement (a federal suit is still pending).  They have not publicly questioned why the Officer Involved Shooting Task Force decided not to charge or exonerate Cosper and, instead, referred the case to the local District Attorney.  No questions, no answers, no transparency, no accountability.

 

To ask these questions, the Councilors would have to question Police Chief Miguel Dominguez about LCPD’s conflict-of-interest participation in and leadership of that task force and, in the Baca killing, LCPD’s biased public-relations audio-visual of the event.  They would have to risk the Mayor’s accusation of not supporting the police.

 

Despite large settlements paid by the City, the Councilors have not publicly discussed the problems arising from self-insurance, which the Mayor touts.  He has to.  Otherwise, he would have to admit that the city is uninsurable.  No insurer takes the risks of large settlements for incidents of police misconduct so frequent and egregious that premiums would not cover them.  The City’s response is to take the City Attorney’s advice—easy for Council, costly and risky for citizens—to deal with police misconduct: make settlements rather than undertake police reform.  That is, she urges Councilors to reject reform, approve settlements subsidizing police misconduct, and keep taxes high to pay for them.  Through the sisterhood, Vega thus imposes excessive costs on Las Cruces.

 

The Councilors have been unconcerned about ineffective, expensive public works projects.  They tolerate obvious managerial and technical incompetence—project failure, wasted resources, environmental damage—on a large scale.  They tolerate squandering taxpayer money and reducing funds for social programs which they profess to support.  Again, they likely fear that the Mayor will accuse them of disloyalty to City employees if they discuss staff incompetence.

 

An outstanding example because of its size is the failure of a flood-control project by the Public Works Department under David Sedillo and his deputy Tony Trujillo.  It shows poor leadership, and arrogant and incompetent staff.  Years ago, as Trujillo knows, PWD held public meetings to explain an over-designed, over-priced plan; ignored citizen input for a simpler design at lower cost; then last year adopted and executed a different, over-designed, over-priced, three-phase plan.  When the $500,000 first try at Phase 1 failed, PWD ignored more citizen input and, for an additional $100,000-plus, doubled-down for more of the same.  With Phase 1 a failure, Phases 2 and 3 are on hold.  City Manager Ifo Pili will likely repeat the Garza administration’s management strategy; abandon project, fund no remedial action, let site degradation continue—the city’s environmental policies be damned.  It could have been worse; had citizens not intervened, PWD would have cut down mature trees on the site—just because.  (Nor do Pili and Sedillo care about trash dumped on city property.  For over 6 months, they have promised citizens to require the farmer-lessee to remove piles of useless irrigation tubing and a long-abandoned tractor.  Peeved with me, they refuse to honor their promises by enforcing municipal codes.)

This first all-female cast of Councilors may mark the arrival of gender equality in City government, but they have not improved the quality of city government.  They care not about the causes and costs of police misconduct and the costs of public works fiascos.  They prefer public silence to transparency and accountability.  So they decline to ask questions, get answers, and enact public policies and city ordinances; and to supervise the City Manager and, tacitly, the Police Chief.  They prefer an amiable City Manager slack in exercising managerial authority, tolerant of staff arrogance and incompetence, and reluctant to hold anyone accountable for poor performance and wasted resources.  But, to City Council’s relief, Pili is no “militarist” who manages more than backscratches.

 

Because their inaction betrays their lofty words, these Councilors impose undesirable consequences of their fecklessness on citizens.  They avoid police reforms; citizens still fear undisciplined police officers.  They accept wasting funds on failed public work; some citizens—homeless, hungry, or unhealthy—thus have no roof over their head, no food on their tables, and no doctors to treat their problems.  They are too scared to ensure the proper allocation and application of resources to public services and too uncaring to meet urgent human needs.  They have not even asked the City Manager how his war on poverty is going, but, then, they have no way to measure progress or failure, and have to take him at his word that filling potholes and improving lighting on East Madrid counts.

 

Touted as the City’s first all-female cast of Councilors, they impede greater public safety or public works, and increased assistance to the need.  Are they impediments because they are female?  No.  But touting this cast of Councilors for being all female does invite scrutiny of their performance in light of continued government deficiencies.  Plainly, in two important areas, they do not measure up, and none of them is going to.

WATER BILLS--CITY SWINDLE?

On 10 November, I addressed the Utilities Board of Commissioners chaired by Edmund Archuleta about my bills from the Utilities Department for monthly water usage over the years.  (Usage shown on its bills differs from usage shown on its monitoring app UtilityHawk.)  My concern is not only the charges themselves, but also the possible bilking of citizens by systematic overcharges.

 

The Department’s and the Board’s explanations for an annual bell-shaped curve of water usage typify the response of City of Las Cruces government to citizen complaints.  It never makes mistakes, citizens always make mistakes, so it has nothing to admit or explain.

 

In the case of excessive water bills, the Department and the Board propose various explanations, however implausible, for my problem and let me alone assume the costs of verifying or refuting them.  The City takes no responsibility for the costs imposed if they are refuted.  Meanwhile, it never considers a problem on its side of the meter, continues collecting revenues—a form of taxation without the name—to which it may not entitled, and enjoys the sanction of Councilors, currently Tessa Abeyta and Johana Bencomo, who sit on the Board.

 

 

In 2007, I bought a property with a stone wall on three sides, no pool, and a house built on a concrete pad.  It had a drip irrigation system which I immediately tore out; I watered by measured bucketfuls until new vegetation was established by 2014.

 

Between 2007 and 2014, my wife and I used water in the usual ways: indoors for drinking water, bathing and showering, flushing toilets, doing laundry, cooking, and using the dishwasher; and outdoors for watering new shrubs and trees.  Our water usage averaged 2000 to 4000 gallons per month throughout the year, with seasonal variations.

 

After my wife and I divorced and she moved out in 2014, I used water for the same purposes except that I stopped using the dishwasher.  Yet the water usage reported on my bills not only did not decline, but actually increased.  Some months, it was at the usual level; other months, it rose to or fell from spikes.  My latest water bill reports October-through-October usage in these thousands of gallons:

 

2, 2, 6, 9, 11, 12 (March), 8, 8, 6, 5, 3, 3, 3.

 

On two or three different occasions since about 2018, staff from the Department have inspected my house—baths, showers, toilets, sinks, dishwasher, hot water heater, water softener—and found no leak.  I told them that I had taken out a drip irrigation system, so they did not look for one.  My plumber has probed or dug the ground in the front yard around the meter box and between it and the front walls of the house, and found no evidence of water.  The Department has changed the water meter, with no noticeable difference; it shows a steady leak of about 1.5 gallons per hour.

 

 

The Department offers two explanations for this bell-shaped curve.  A new one: a still-buried drip irrigation system unknown to me, with no visible connection or control box.  The old one repeated every time staff inspect the premises: a leak, though leaks do not swell and shrink by a factor of six on an annual cycle.

 

Simple arithmetic shows that a leak cannot account for monthly water usage reported in my bills.  A leak of 1.5 gallons per hour would amount to 36 gallons per day.  Rounded to 40 gallons a day, the leak for a 30-day month would be 1200 gallons.  If that much water leaked, the range of water usage would increase from 2000 to 4000 gallons, to 3200 to 5200 gallons, a range of water usage far below a range fluctuating from 6000 to 12,000 gallons over six months.

 

Again, simple arithmetic shows that a leak of 11,000 gallons in February and 12,000 gallons in March in my residence or on my property could not escape detection.  One gallon equals 0.134 cubic inches; 12,000 gallons equals about 1,604 cubic feet of water.  That volume of water would fill a pool 4 feet deep, 20 feet long, and 20 feet wide.  That much water in my yard would turn it into quicksand.

 

During my presentation, Chair Archuleta offered a another possibility: a neighbor tapping into an outdoor faucet and using my hose attached to it.  I am sure that a near-retirement nurse with no pool on one side and an elderly retired couple on the other with a hot-tub would not appreciate his gratuitous slur of water-pilfering.  Of course, the possibility still leaves open where the water presumably diverted to their property went.

 

Given their efforts to deflect responsibility by imagining implausible explanations of reported wildly fluctuating water usage, the Department or the Board may soon imagine a George-Soros-funded, space-based tractor beam which draws water from my property up to the drought-plagued planet from which came The Man Who Fell to Earth.

 

In the meantime, the Department wants me not only to ignore these spikes, which I pay for, and consider only the most recent, a 3000-gallon month, but also to agree that the curve of annual water consumption with its spikes in years past will not recur.  Despite its insistence that a leak must be on my side of the meter, the lack of evidence means that no leak is there to be found, certainly not one fluctuating wildly.

 

My conclusion: My problem arises in the Department, in its hardware, software, policies, or personnel.  It persists because, after several years of complaint, it would be embarrassed to admit a mistake, and the Board, with Councilors on it, serves to spare it, not serve citizens with competent and honest government.  Worse, my problem may be one shared by many others who have long been overcharged, as I have been.

 

My recommendation: a technical analysis, an accounting audit, a forensic review of both the analysis and the audit—all independent—, and a public report to the City Manager and the City Council.  Also help for those who cannot face the facts, cannot admit a problem, and cannot adopt a reality-based approach to both facts and problems.

WHO REMEMBERS AMELIA BACA?

 On 16 April, Jared Gosper, a veteran LCPD police officer, killed Sra. Amelia Baca.

 

Every police agency involved—LCPD, DASO, NMSUPD, and NMSP—worked to absolve this killer.  LCPD Police Chief Miguel Dominguez resorted to a PR film which presented the 75-year-old Hispanic woman with dementia in a bad light and her killer in a good light.  Despite the conflict of interest, six LCPD officers, including Dominguez, sat on the task force which sent a secret report to Third District Attorney Gerald Byers.  He ducked the decision to prosecute the killer by sending the case to NM Attorney General Hector Balderas.  After today’s election, Banderas will decide not to prosecute the killer.  Such is justice in New Mexico.

 

Las Cruces was briefly excited by the police killing and the film of this killing.  A few people protested for a day or two at Picacho and Main, not far from LCPD headquarters.. Then, they went home or moved on to another cause.  They have forgotten Sra. Baca.

 

City officials—Mayor Miyagishima; Councilors Kasandra Gandara, Johanna Bencomo, Gabe Vasquez, who had touted police reform; City Manager Ifo Pili; City Attorney Jennifer Vega—have stayed silent.  They have forgotten Sra. Baca.

 

The Las Cruces Sun-News and its investigative reporters, Justin Garcia and Algernon D'Ammassa—, after headline-grabbing articles, dropped the subject.  They have not reported or commented on the task force composition or the DA’s decision to turn the case over to the NMAG.  They have forgotten Sra. Baca.

 

Two VIPs dropped the subject.  One VIP, Peter Goodman, first wrote an on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand column: poor Sra. Baca, who suffered dementia; poor Officer Gosper, who awoke with no intent to kill.  He then wrote to advocate a Civilian Police Oversight Board.  Later, he joined other VIPs to lobby local officials, lost, but wrote nothing about lessons learned from their resistance to police reform.  Nor did this now-and-then lawyer write about the handling of this case by police and prosecutors.  He has forgotten Sra. Baca.

 

The other VIP, Bobbie Green, president of the local NAACP chapter, joined other VIPs to lobby officials for a CPOB.  She did not lead chapter members to protest the killing of a Hispanic woman of color, push for police reform, or support the CPOB proposal.  She has forgotten Sra. Baca.

 

Apparently, those who have forgotten Sra. Baca do not value the life of an elderly Hispanic woman killed by a police officer or condemn another police execution of a harmless citizen.  Otherwise, they would have remembered her by pursuing police reform.  I have not forgotten Sra. Baca, scorn those who have, and hope that her family will receive the justice due them.

ANTISEMITISM HERE AND NOW--IS A POGROM COMING?

“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the Jews.”  I misquote Shakespeare; in Henry VI, part ii, Jack Cade, leading a populist rebellion, wants to kill all the lawyers.  Given a joke current in New England decades ago—every Jewish family has one lawyer, except those which have two or three—, kill the one, kill the other, it almost comes to the same thing.

 

Dana Milbank’s recent editorial “American Jews start to think the unthinkable” (The Washington Post, 28 October) reports that some Jews are beginning to think of leaving America and going into exile.  Some people hope that they do—or else.  As Trump warns American Jews in obvious mobster lingo, they had better cozy up to him “before it is too late.”  “Too late” for what?  What would this dictator-would-be do if it were “too late”?

 

Nothing in the recent surge in antisemitism elsewhere—none yet reported in New Mexico—surprises me.  By the time I was 10, I had taught myself that America could turn antisemitic in a fascist revival.  I had read about Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent’s 1920s diatribes on Jewish plans to control the world and about Father Coughlin’s 1930s antisemitic and pro-fascist radio broadcasts.  I had read newspaper stories of the 1945 discoveries of the death camps--the starvation, overwork, beatings, tortures, medical experiments, murders, incinerations—designed for Jews.  I had heard about anti-Jewish residential restrictions in my hometown, Shaker Heights.  The legacy of my early self-education is forbearance in the face of antisemitism, now accelerating and increasing the chances of a pogrom in America.

 

But most Americans know little about Holocaustic antisemitism in fascist Germany for three reasons.  One, Auschwitz, the icon of antisemitism in Europe, teaches nothing about it.  Two, the atrocities are so horrific, so enormous, and so long ago and far away that they make perpetuation by a state or acceptance by its people incomprehensible or unimaginable.  Fact: Germany, a modern state, became genocidally antisemitic, and its cultivated, educated people accepted genocide for Jews.  Three, atrocities resulting from antisemitic polices start small, then worsen exponentially.  Fact: antisemitic leaders slowly harden those with moral or religious principles to the coarseness required to accept ever more brutal behavior toward Jews.  With antisemitism rife in their history, always latent, sometimes overt, Germans quickly adjusted to barbarities against Jews.

 

Note: My subject is antisemitism, but the same principles and practices applied to other groups, whether social (Roma, Sinti), religious (Jehovah’s Witnesses), racial (Blacks especially but not exclusively), political (socialists, communists), national (Poles, etc.), gender (LGBTQ), or medical (the disabled).  They apply to a society’s outliers and others stigmatized.  We have outliers right here is America.  Among those stigmatized here: Jews, Blacks, Hispanics and Asian-Americans, and LGBTQs.  Trump’s mocking a reporter with a disability or RNC chair Ronna McDaniel’s mocking Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senatorial candidate with a stroke-induced speech impediment is no aberration.  The party is built on a diverse array of forms of abuse, as their anti-people policies imply.

 

So what about America and Americans?  Has the country and its people become used to antisemitism?  Is the concept of America as a “Christian nation” justifying the growth of antisemitism?  The increasing number of antisemitic episodes and the lack of prompt and unqualified repudiation by elected Republican leaders and officials mean that they know two things: the country and its citizens already tolerate antisemitism, and they can exploit antisemitism for their political purposes with impunity.  (Progressives do not use antisemitism in their campaigns for office.)  Republicans have succeeded in anesthetizing the righteous, and arousing and emboldening the rest.  Trump’s appeal to his base, most members of the Republican Party, and other voters under his sway have already forsaken America’s first foundational value, the equality of all people.  Any departure from that value is necessarily a step prompted by and taken toward bigotry.

 

Antisemitism is one such step.  As I have blogged, institutional racism is the result of its essential pre-condition, individual racism.  Likewise, other kinds of bigotry, including antisemitism.  Antisemitism begins, not with death camps and furnaces, but with slurs and violence.  It spreads when people ignore or deny such evidence of antisemitism in their community, neighborhood, circle of friends, and family—unless they themselves utter or act them.  Then this popular toleration enables antisemitic miscarriages of justice by the legal community—police, prosecutors, judges.

 

I recently asked a lawyer in the Governor’s administration about the circumstances prompting the Governor’s executive order about antisemitism.  The lawyer did not know.  I said that it did not apply to government personnel acting antisemitically in the exercise of their duties.  I gave the example of five false code violations alleged by a police officer who saw a Jewish star on my house but tolerated by city officials to resist the obvious inference about the officer’s motive.  The lawyer’s prompt response: antisemitism.

 

The 3-year-and-counting refusal of the Las Cruces mayor, all councilors, two police chiefs, and, notably, the city attorney to admit the facts and rectify the wrongs identifies each as an antisemite.  The mayor and councilors excluded them from police review; the LCPD closed my complaint without mentioning them; the city attorney defied them by asserting counter-factually that the violations were valid.  Worse, when the city manager admitted the facts and agreed to apologize for the false charges, the city attorney intervened to stop him from doing so.  Rule of thumb: antisemites never apologize for words or deeds offensive to Jews.  Their acts of omission or commission identify these officials as tenacious antisemites.

 

Is there a link between the antisemitism of Las Cruces officials and a pogrom?  Not if citizen disapprove of and protest antisemitic speech and acts.  But if they become more numerous and widespread, these antisemitic public officials will act in support of trends which play to their propensities.  They will do more of what comes naturally to them.  The exception to the rule of law in my case will likely become the rule in other false but more serious allegations against Jews, with jailing, penalties, and worse to follow.  In Las Cruces, with citizens indifferent to or tolerant of the abuse of law by their antisemitic officials, a pogrom is quite possible.  Will there be one?  Maybe.  If so, I may live to see it.

 

The lesson: Auschwitz ends what the antisemitic begin and the morally tainted or weak abide.

TWO CHEERS FOR THINK NEW MEXICO'S REPORT ON THE STATE'S PUBLIC SCHOOLS

I have been a supporter of Think New Mexico (TNM) for most of my time living in New Mexico.  Fred Nathan and his staff are gifts to the state.  Typically, their work in most fields addresses a single topic in a single report with sensible proposals.  In this years-in-the-making report A Roadmap for Rethinking New Mexico’s Public Schools, their work addresses and makes legislative proposals on ten topics, some different, all listed differently on the website and in the report.  (My words are “problems” and “solutions.”)  Most of this work is mostly sensible, but only mostly; it would be unrealistic to expect perfection.  The report has many strong points and a few weak ones.

 

TNM’s report includes ten problems, none new, and excludes others, some important:

 

1.         Optimize Time for Teaching & Learning

2.         Improve Teacher Training

3.         Revamp the Colleges of Education

4.         Enhance Principal Pay & Training

5.         Upgrade School Board Quality

6.         Right-Size to Smaller Districts, Schools, & Classes

7.         Maximize the Benefits of Charter Schools

8.         Provide a Relevant & Rigorous Curriculum

9.         Depoliticize Student Assessments

10.      Pay for These Reforms.

 

These problems, discussed with current data to support proposed solutions, are familiar ones because TNM has chosen to restate problems rather than to rethink them—the title notwithstanding.  The choice is a smart one.  For TNM’s intended audiences—legislators first, the public second, and policy analysts not at all—, restating rather than rethinking the familiar avoids resistance to the unfamiliar.  Whether proposals bundled are more likely to succeed than proposals aggregated serially is the question.  TNM’s strategy is to propose many and to hope some prosper.  Past success implies that TNM knows best.

 

Still, the report disappoints in two ways.  One, some discussions lack comprehensive or rigorous analyses.  Perhaps familiarity breeds complacency.  The other, they do not acknowledge that similar problems exist in other states which do not rank as low as New Mexico does in student academic performance.  This fact justifies thinking less about the problems of public schools and more about the problems of public education.

 

Two related reasons explain this silence about public education.  One, its problems involve the two essentials of education, curriculums and teachers, matters both complex and controversial.  The other, as a result, TNM’s board lacks consensus on solutions.  So TNM addresses problems readily susceptible to solutions and assures report readers that its proposals would improve student academic performance.  Incremental improvements in student academic performance are likely but also likely to leave the state lagging.

 

 

Methodology is most peoples’ big yawn, but legislators need to consider the data—selection, diversity, abundance, reliability, etc.—used to support any proposal before accepting or rejecting it.  One example of methodological infelicities is TNM’s proposal for smaller schools.  TNM selectively adduces or omits, or uncritically accepts, pertinent evidence.  Full disclosure: Fred and I have crossed swords on this issue and continue to maintain our positions.  Fred claims that small size improves academic performance; I claim that size is a minor factor if all else is equal—which it never is.  He is wrong but trendy in doubling down!

 

First, one size cannot and does not fit all, and thinking so reflects a parochial approach to the issue.  Correlations in something as complex as education cannot be one-dimensional; even so, correlation is not causation.  Some large schools have done very well, and some small schools have done very poorly.  Shaker Heights High School is a large public high school which, in my day, ranked among the ten best in the country; despite enormous demographic change, it is still highly ranked.  Two decades ago, its neighbor, Cleveland Heights High School, slightly larger and quite good, used Gates Foundation money to create four schools within the school; a few years later, the effort was abandoned as a failure because of management difficulties, administrative overload, and friction among schools and their students.

 

Second, one-dimensional comparisons cannot prove the merits of small over large schools.  TNM’s lists of New Mexico schools which have done best on reading and math tests show small schools dominating both lists.  However, the only measure is size.  Other measures shaping student academic performance like demographic and socio-economic data are lacking.  For instance, Cloudcroft has such plusses; its median income is about 30 percent higher than the state average and the percentage of its Hispanic population is less than one-third that of the state’s Hispanic population.  TNM’s one-dimensional comparison is biased, unreliable support of its small-school proposal.

 

 

TNM’s report is flawed in addressing two other problems: teacher training and colleges of education.  No one should expect teacher training to improve teachers or teaching, for two reasons.  One, released time is for programmatic, administrative, professional, and legal matters.  Two, internships or practicums focus on classroom experience in class management, administrative procedures, teaching methods, and teacher-student and teacher-parent interactions.  Neither provides subject-matter help.  So teacher training can facilitate classroom operations but cannot improve teacher competency in subject matter.

 

TNM’s proposals to “Revamp the Colleges of Education” are paperwork solutions which cannot solve their problems.  These colleges will not be revamped by continuing the accreditation on the basis of curriculums consistent with best practices for teacher preparation.  The accreditation process does not ascertain whether college curriculums, even if consistent with best practices, train graduates prepared to teach their subjects.  Nor will they be revamped by maintaining high-quality licensure exams, which focus on instructional skills, not subject-matter knowledge.

 

TNM avoids the problem of colleges of education, which are state-funded failures because they do not ensure that prospective teachers are subject-matter competent.  They do not offer courses themselves or require courses in other colleges to ensure that their students have subject-matter competence in the subjects which they will teach presumably in compliance with state-defined curriculums.  For example, these colleges do not care that, although the state English curriculum requires instruction in grammar, elementary school teachers do not know the grammar which they are supposed to teach.

 

 

TNM’s report omits two important problems: continuing teacher incompetence in the subjects which they teach and the deficiencies of the Public Education Department (PED).  Courses in educational theory, psycho-social development, or classroom skills, and commitments to equality, diversity, or multiculturalism, cannot compensate for subject-matter ignorance.  The problem is most acute in the elementary grades in which teachers are expected to provide the foundations of the four major academic subjects: language (reading and writing), mathematics, social studies, and science.  These teachers do not meet expectations.  Thus, since only one-third of fourth graders have learned to read with proficiency, two-thirds of them in subsequent grades will be unable to read to learn with proficiency.  TNM cannot say so because its board members will not say so because they would be messengers delivering an unwanted message and get beaten for doing so.  But, until the problem is addressed, New Mexico public education will continue to fail students, parents, and the state’s economy.

 

TNM’s report commented adversely about PED but did not dedicate a section to its many problems for, I suspect, another political reason: its education expert is a recent hire from PED, and TNM did not want him to appear to be—he is not—a disgruntled and vindictive former employee.  Although PED is bad in ways too numerous to enumerate, much less elaborate, here, one of its major deficiencies needs immediate attention.  It is a closed shop which communicates with other closed shops or educational professionals and operates in isolation from and in contempt of the public.  Thus, its revision of the social studies curriculum outraged citizens throughout the state for good reasons.  This misfire alone should be sufficient to prompt a legislative review of the department.  TNM should have said so and much more.

 

 

The value of this TNM report is that it brings together constructive ideas to improve New Mexico’s public schools.  Most have merit—I refuse to back down on small schools—, deserve serious consideration, may require refinements, and need cost-benefit analyses.  The low- or no-cost proposals deserve support although their implementation will not likely result in significant improvement in student academic performance.

 

Unfinished business remains.  Somehow, the legislature must rethink the issues at the center of public education—curriculum and teacher quality—as well as the missions, purposes, and operations of colleges of education and the Public Education Department.  The need for board consensus on proposals solving problems of this controversial nature may render TNM incapable of providing the legislature with impartial, expert assistance.