December 23, 2024

Bulletin 354: Thank you! / Fundraising drive continues / "How New Mexico Ranks"

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Previously: Bulletin 353: Ways to help support our work & volunteer opportunities; help us prevent nuclear war and halt the nuclear arms race in its tracks, Dec 4, 2024

Dear friends and colleagues --

It never stops being wonderful -- that time of year when (for us in the northern hemisphere) the light begins to grow again. Many of us will be able to take some time from our good work to be with family, or friends. Merry Christmas!

As Jonathan Schell wrote in The Fate of the Earth, "[i]f it is possible to speak of a benefit of the nuclear peril, it would be that it invites us to become more deeply aware of the miracle of birth, and of the world's renewal. 'For unto us a child is born.'"

That renewal never stops. Can we see it? Is it personal for us? We are standing at a great turning of history; our spine is an axis.

Thank you all for your support over this past year and in anticipation of the year to come. While there's a lot more war in the world than there was three years ago, we also see a renewal of resistance and of courage. Here at the Study Group, every day is a good day. "Ours," said Rumi, "is not a caravan of despair."

We are still in our end-of-year fundraising drive and we hope you will be able to help support our work in 2025 at some level. Since email is notoriously easy to miss, all of you for whom we have physical addresses will be receiving a fundraising appeal by postal mail (which might not arrive until early January).

Here is the letter most of you will receive in that mailing, and here are some highlights of the Study Group’s 2024 work you'll also receive if you are on our mailing list. You have them now, in any case! 

Our updated contribute page summarizes ways to donate, and very briefly why. Write us if you have any questions at all.

You may also be interested in our updated volunteering page. We are planning (and starting) some of our 2025 program this week, and hope you will join us after the turn of the year!

How New Mexico Ranks

A lot of people -- some 900 per year -- leave employment at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for various reasons. This topic came up at the panel discussion on pit production we hosted at the National Press Club in November (press release, video). Issues arising at work for LANL, and difficulties even getting to work at LANL, arise within the wider reality that New Mexico has poor, not to say disastrous, social outcomes relative to other states.

I asked Bex to summarize these rankings, which resulted in the following handy table, currently in its initial or "beta" version: Failing State: How New Mexico Ranks, Dec 20, 2024. We will follow with more explanation over the coming days. I want to say right away that these metrics vary a great deal in objectivity. The most important ones are however shockingly real, objective, and damning.

Suffice to say, even we were shocked by what we found. As many will testify, it was not always thus -- at least to this degree, and in this many ways.

We think LANL employees who come from afar should know what they are getting into.

There are structural reasons for these poor outcomes; everyone has their favorites. Many (including me) will find resonance with what Owen Lopez, after five years on the job as executive director of the McCune Foundation, concluded in 1999:

A root cause of New Mexico's inability to better succeed is its disproportionate dependence on federal and state tax dollars and "la politica" that flows from it. When the vast majority of jobs derive from government sources, and when poverty is so widespread, it seems inevitable that politics will have a too important influence over the well-being of New Mexico's citizens. It also seems inevitable that this imbalance will nurture a "we" versus "they" mentality, causing deep and bitter divisions in communities, no matter how small or large. Although the "patron" has typically been identified with politics in Rio Arriba County, as a representative of a statewide funding organization, my experience is that a patronage system permeates activities throughout the state; it is not solely an Hispanic phenomenon. Too much power resides in the hands of politicians and their governmental bureaucracies and commissions.

...Given the extent to which New Mexicans are dependent on government, including the organizations our foundation supports, it also becomes clear why they cannot escape the pervasive influence of the "patron" system and the political culture and mind set which it fosters. The dependence on government also creates a breeding ground for incompetence because employment too often is based on "who" you know and what favors you've done for them rather than "what" you know. When employment patronage is political and not necessarily based on competence, the educational system is undermined as well, because the extent of a person's education too often has little or no value in either securing employment or moving up through the job ranks. When the populace receives little to no value from the educational system in its search for subsistence livelihood, the educational system is demeaned.

Lopez's comments just scratch the surface, but his words carry weight.

One aspect of the situation is however crystal clear: our nuclear labs and military bases have not brought economic development. They haven't and they won't. Over decades, we have argued the reverse (see for example Does Los Alamos National Lab Help or Hurt the New Mexico Economy? Working paper, July 2006). There is even more data available today than in 2006 showing that as LANL and Sandia have grown, New Mexico has not prospered.

But for now let's just try to absorb the reality of the situation, independent of ideas about causation. That was our objective here.

Thank you for your attention, and best wishes,

Greg Mello, for the Study Group