Favor y Fun: Opinion page is empty of facts, full of crazy

Congratulations to the Taos News for its new humor section Favor y Contra in the Feb. 9 edition. The opinions are so crazy that you just have to laugh at ideas published in this section; or as a friend of mine calls it, the “angry Anglos” part of the paper.

Start with the cartoon that is completely factually wrong. On Feb. 6, three days before the next edition, Gov. Martinez signed a bill to fund the state court system. Additionally, in a message to lawmakers, Martinez also said she would schedule a meeting of the state board of finance to consider the courts’ request for emergency funding and would “work with them to find recurring savings.” So we now have fake cartoon news.

Then we follow with opinion pieces that reflect the predictable radical progressive hysterical reactions to federal and state politics. Just after the election, Saturday Night Live ran a skit called “The Bubble,” about liberals living in a detached echo chamber of their own idealism. It was funny and ironically true. These are the kinds of fantasy opinions regularly published in the news. Ideas like: the president will start a civil war, or that any concerns about unlimited immigration are all racist.

There is the opinion piece about controlling flaring of gas and oil wells, even though we have none in Taos County. According to the Clean Air Task Force website, “Without pipelines in place, or when the pipelines can’t handle all the gas, they simply flare it off.” So if we need more pipelines to accomplish this policy, why does the news keep celebrating more anti-pipeline demonstrations and policies?

The funniest ideas were the ones about great new progressive policies.

These ideas included increasing taxes and laws on the state energy industry. You know, the industry that contributes 25 percent of all state revenues to fund schools and medical care. Or the proposal of new state carbon taxes that would raise the costs of gasoline, propane, electricity, and all food products by up to 100 percent. Yep. Taoseños would love that. Progressives propose that these new taxes would be spent for “education, affordable housing, and infrastructure.” And who would decide and manage these new funds? The same state legislators and county commissioners that screwed up the Questa water system, and that cannot fix Gallina Canyon Road. Would you support these policies?

Then there’s the progressive proposal to increase property taxes for commercial properties and expensive homes. There are already too many empty storefronts in town. This would kill local businesses. The main industry in Taos is tourism. Many homes are owned by people who live out-of-state. These taxes would discourage business and tourism; and new taxes based on personal income levels or property valuations would certainly be legally challenged.

Maybe the most bizarre writings related to the liberal epiphany is that their policies and histrionics might be self-defeating to the majority of citizens. A shared conceit of both far ends of the political spectrum is that they are morally superior to everyone who disagrees with them. But the insults, name calling, and violence have more recently come daily from the far left. To justify punching someone in the face, burning buildings and cars, attacking police, ridiculing the president’s family and calling everyone a racist, fascist, bigot, etc., is really just producing the opposite effect of its intent.

This is some silly stuff. I can hardly wait for next week’s edition.

Forde is a resident of Valdez.