Greetings From The Socialist Workers Paradise of New Mexico
Free Stuff!! Right under our noses!! Does Sean Hannity know about this??
Jesus was a socialist.
Oliver Markus Malloy, Inside The Mind of an Introvert
New Mexico is a beautiful place, in an oddly anonymous sort of way. Stuck between Arizona and Texas, almost no one knows it’s there. But it’s SO much more than just a wide spot on I-10 between Kingman, AZ, and El Paso, TX. There aren’t a whole helluva lot of people living there, and it’s not known for much except for being the birthplace of the atomic bomb. Despite that, New Mexico is the sort of place those who want to drop off the map or off the grid often end up. It answers the question, “Whatever happened to Grandpa and crazy Uncle Ed?”
Those of us who watched “Breaking Bad” are familiar with the Land of Enchantment, and I almost got a job in Albuquerque once upon a time. It’s a calmer and more relaxed alternative to Arizona’s Valley of the Sun.
Yes, a couple of decades holed up in the Sangre de Cristo mountains will turn a person into an iconoclast…not that there’s anything wrong with that. Now that Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is busy turning New Mexico into a socialist worker’s paradise; perhaps there will be more crazy Uncle Eds moving to the Land of Enchantment.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom…pointed out that New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham “during the pandemic basically turned our state into a woke utopia,” listing a number of Lujan Grisham’s accomplishments like free college, legal weed, protections for abortion and gender-affirming care, and more.
Well then! That’s pretty damned impressive, so we decided to look at what Lujan Grisham has been up to, especially since New Mexico is the setting for the weekend’s other big blockbuster, Dr. StrangeBarbie, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Build The Bomb.
It’s an impressive list:
At the top of the list is the bill Gov. Lujan Grisham signed in 2022, making in-state college tuition-free and easily accessible for all New Mexico residents. The program is open to all state residents regardless of income and immigrants regardless of immigration status. (Cue the Right-wing righteous outrage in 4…3…2….)
In March, Gov. Lujan Grisham signed H.B. 7, which guarantees gender-affirming care and abortion services for all New Mexico residents. In April, the Governor and legislature followed H.B. 7 with legislation protecting healthcare providers and patients from prosecution or lawsuits in other states. This was done to protect folks from the anti-abortion Nazis next door in Texas.
In 2021, the legislature passed a bill mandating paid sick leave for New Mexico workers. The new law guarantees one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours of work, up to a maximum of 64 hours per year. Lujan Grisham and Democrats in the legislature are working to revive a bill that would provide up to 12 weeks of paid family or medical leave. The bill failed in this year’s session, but they hope to give it another go.
Solar tax credits were improved over and above federal limits.
New Mexico now has dramatically lower (and sometimes zero) co-pays under Obamacare.
The Land of Enchantment now has legalized weed. Like many states (including my home state of Oregon), New Mexico has recognized that weed taxes can provide a significant boon to state and local tax bases. This despite Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) doing his best to embarrass Sec. of the Interior Deb Haaland at her confirmation hearings over legalizing weed in New Mexico. All it did was demonstrate what a stiff, ill-informed asshole the Senator from Wyoming is.
Oh, and New Mexico also has free school meals (FREE STUFF?!??!!!).
Until recently, Republicans could hardly have cared less about New Mexico. To them, it was a God-forsaken patch of desert that no one knew about and even fewer cared for. Now they hate the Land of Enchantment as the embodiment of a Socialist Worker’s Paradise ©.
WHY, IT MIGHT AS WELL BE NORTH KOREA!!
First, there’s nothing paradisical about New Mexico. It’s beautiful, but it’s also one of the poorest states in the country on a per-capita basis. The state’s median household income ranks 45th in the nation; no one will mistake it for L.A. County, knowhutimean?
Paradise? Not hardly.
Second, all Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has done is what she feels government should be doing- taking care of its citizens. Instead of involving it in personal medical decisions, New Mexico’s government allows its citizens to make those decisions free from government interference. That means women have the right to make their own decisions in consultation with their doctor when it comes to reproductive healthcare.
Regarding gender-affirming care, Gov. Lujan Grisham understands that government isn’t the entity that should be making those types of decisions. Those are medical, personal, and moral decisions best left to individuals, families, and doctors. All government can do in that situation is screw things up, as they do in so many other red states.
Frankly, it’s none of their damned business…and Democrats in New Mexico get that. Many may not support abortion or gender-affirming care personally, but they also understand they don’t have the right to deny it to others.
So, while Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been getting a lot more attention (the Wolverine State does have more White nationalists and freaks who hate her), Gov. Lujan Grisham has quietly gotten a lot of good things done for her state. And what she’s done has been impressive.
I have a brother who lives in a suburb of Albuquerque, and his politics are somewhat to the right of Matt Walsh, so we don’t discuss politics. I imagine he hates what he sees in his home state, though. As a kill-’em-and-grill-’em, let’s-put-the-fun-in-fundamentalist Christian, he no doubt sees New Mexico becoming a socialist hell-hole with abortion on demand and forced gender transitions.
No doubt at clinics with drive-through windows run by socialists who hate America…and probably got their medical training in North Korea.
[T]he useful idiots, the leftists who are idealistically believing in the beauty of the Soviet socialist or Communist or whatever system, when they get disillusioned, they become the worst enemies. That’s why my KGB instructors specifically made the point: never bother with leftists. Forget about these political prostitutes. Aim higher. [...] They serve a purpose only at the stage of destabilization of a nation. For example, your leftists in the United States: all these professors and all these beautiful civil rights defenders. They are instrumental in the process of the subversion only to destabilize a nation. When their job is completed, they are not needed any more. They know too much. Some of them, when they get disillusioned, when they see that Marxist-Leninists come to power—obviously they get offended—they think that they will come to power. That will never happen, of course. They will be lined up against the wall and shot.
Yuri Bezmenov
Yeah, the Soviets always took this socialism thing WAY too seriously, knowhutimean??
And free lunches?? Why, the next thing you know, they’ll be giving away free college educations!! And free abortions and gender-affirming care. Oh, the humanity….
Hey, wait a minute….
It’s like I’ve always said; if we can conduct two wars simultaneously halfway around the world, then we sure as Hell can afford to feed, care for, and educate our citizens here at home. That’s not “SOCIALISM!!!!” That’s setting our priorities where they should be and using our tax dollars here at home.
I’d say that Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has her priorities straight and that the people of New Mexico are damned fortunate to have a leader like her setting the tone for their state.
A colleague of mine, now retired and returned home, is a native of New Mexico. The number of people who don't understand it is a state in the union. Folks often spoke in wonder of how his English was so good, with hardly any accent. He's even had officials ask him for his passport when they saw his NM id.