Heinrich to co-host strange "public safety" event TOMORROW, 2 Apr 2018

Heinrich to co-host strange "public safety" event TOMORROW -- a good opportunity to demonstrate concern about his prioritization of nuclear weapons production and the military over people and the environment

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April 2, 2018

Dear friends --

It's been much too long since you've heard from us.

Other than a much-needed week with family, we've been working hard here -- and missing many of you as the days go by, with most of our communications directed to DC and the UN, where there is resistance to the nuclear agenda.

Tomorrow, from 5-7 pm, Senator Martin Heinrich is co-hosting (with Mayor Keller) a "Public Safety and Consumer Protection Fair" at the Manzano Mesa Multigenerational Center, 501 Elizabeth St SE(map).

We are going early to tomorrow's event, at 4:30 pm, to at least be a visible reminder that there are other badly-neglected priorities, and that Heinrich's constant promotion of nuclear weapons is not what the state, the country, or the world needs. Will you join us? We have some nice signs and banners, or you can bring your own.

It is hard to strike the right tone but we all must try. When the state itself, and its most senior representatives, disrespect international law and the human conscience by promoting policies of aggressive war and the instruments of mass violence, what are we to do? Democrats, alas, are just another war party now.

Most of tomorrow's participants might be sincere as they can be, but still we find the theme of this "fair" more than a little Orwellian. Why do we need this fair? Do citizens really need a meet-and-greet with the friendly FBI, Secret Service, DEA, IRS, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms And Explosives? Is this the event New Mexicans have been longing for -- you know, the one where the future of our state, its children and elderly, and its desiccating environment, are discussed in-depth?

Maybe it is. Maybe this is what the future looks like. Maybe the Senator wants to emphasize the importance of federal law enforcement agencies, which a) wield force, ostensibly for our protection, but also b) take their orders from Washington -- situated as they are in the federal homeland security complex -- and not from our locally-elected officials.

Maybe Martin is telling us, in this rare public appearance, that now he represents the federal government in New Mexico, not New Mexico in Washington.

Apart from basking in the latest apple-pie issues, maybe Senator Heinrich is also saying that Mayor Keller, and all the others present, need to stay on his "good side." Without federal money -- e.g. that long-lost grant for the sad ART project -- where would Albuquerque be?

Like I said, we find this event creepy.

In our experience, Congressman Heinrich was the most vociferously pro-nuclear-weapons Democrat in the House. In the Senate he has more competition, but his advocacy for the nuclear weapons laboratories is rivaled only by his colleague Senator Udall.

Heinrich's primary loyalties appear to be to the military and the homeland security/intelligence complex. His other loyalties are by far secondary, as far as we can tell.

(Like Senator Udall, Heinrich affects to be an environmentalist and may even sincerely believe he is one. We like his solar advocacy, but it doesn't go beyond what is easy and convenient and doesn't accomplish much if anything for the climate. It certainly doesn't make him an environmentalist. Neither do his occasional wilderness and national park advocacy; those too are cheap and convenient greenwashing in our view. "Environmentalists" like Heinrich and Udall are why the planet is going to hell. Do they care? If they cared, wouldn't we see some evidence?)

Doomsday Forum (Ernie Sturdevant -- thank you) and Stop the War Machine (thank you) have already sent out alerts asking folks to come early to "welcome Martin 'home', as follows.

Martin’s Coming “Home”
New Mexico’s Senator Heinrich is hosting an event here on Tue., April 3 to make it appear there is help for our children, elderly and poor. Let's give this Pentagon/War Profiteer representative the welcome he deserves for his evangelical support of the agenda of comprehensive replacement & upgrade of the nuclear weapons complex which will have to come out of the budgets for children and the elderly. Heinrich has earned the public’s disdain for keeping New Mexico’s children last in education and first in poverty.

Let’s gather at 4:30 pm with signs and banners to welcome Martin “home.”
For quick background on the plutonium pit issue, please see:

LASG friends ltr (03/10/18)
Will New Mexicans allow Heinrich, Udall, Lujan, Grisham, and Pearce to sell out New Mexico to the nuclear kleptocracy?

LASG friends ltr (01/26/18)
Monday Jan 29 Santa Fe mtg (note location change!): Pu pit production; Trump nuclear and defense policies: what we can do (with simple dinner)

LASG friends ltr (01/15/18)
Pit production heating up; Jan 29 mtg in Santa Fe

Finally, the following guest editorial on this issue will soon appear:

Senators, seek help for plutonium addiction

Senators Heinrich and Udall, and Congressman Lujan, would like Los Alamos to become the nation’s factory for plutonium warhead cores – “pits,” in Strangelove jargon.

Is a factory needed? No, but that apparently doesn’t matter to them. What’s good for Bechtel (or whichever contractor gets the job next) is good for New Mexico, right?

It doesn’t matter to them that the DOE and DoD have determined that the 3,800 pits in the US nuclear arsenal will last at least 85 years, or that there are at least another 7,000 modern pits in retired warheads and monitored storage. It doesn’t matter to them that pits can be rebuilt without making new ones. They want more pits, underground factories in Los Alamos, and more money for their fat-cat contractor friends, some of which would come back to them as campaign contributions.

Our senators (and Rep. Lujan) seem quite happy that the US is planning to spend at least $1.2 trillion over 30 years, $10,525 per US household, to maintain, deploy, and upgrade or replace every single warhead, submarine, bomber, and missile. Nuclear weapons already cost taxpayers $30 billion annually, more than the total military expenditures of all but 10 countries.

Doesn’t this seem…broken? As in, predictive of doom? Not to our senators. They fight for every million. They are the giants upon whose shoulders the Trump Administration stands. The enablers.

Don’t worry, say the contractors. That $30 billion (soon more) is only a small fraction of our glorious patriotic defense budget. Mattis and Trump have requested a staggering $886 billion for defense next year – $7,508 per household, $2,717 per person, more than the total income of almost half the people in the world.

US defense spending – $1.7 million a minute – exceeds the combined military spending of the next eight biggest military spenders, most of which are US allies anyway. Not counting these eight, US military spending exceeds that of the combined rest of the world.

Have our senators thought about the opportunity costs of this – costs to the people of the United States, to the children? If so they keep their thoughts to themselves. Do they think the US can actually be sustained with such inverted priorities? Apparently they do.

Or maybe they just don’t think.

Looking now at LANL itself, why do they think that LANL, a remotely-sited research facility underlain by active earthquake faults, with an aging plutonium lab built on a narrow mesa, is a good place for a pit factory?

Senators Bingaman and Domenici, then-Congressman Udall, and LANL itself until recently, thought LANL was “not the right fit” for this mission. Can Senator Udall tune in to his inner Congressman?

Does it matter to them that 19 government resolutions have passed in northern New Mexico questioning LANL’s mission, environmental impact, and/or pit production? Does that level of opposition really augur for success in a big new high-hazard nuclear operation – especially one with no defensible mission? Or does success even matter?

Does it matter to them that LANL has failed again and again to safely manage its plutonium facility, or even to keep it running, or to manage big projects competently, or that LANL managed sent a radioactive “dirty” bomb down to WIPP, shutting the whole place down and incurring what will be about $2 billion in extra costs nationwide? That the incumbent LANL contractor has not met, twice in the past 13 years, even the lax standards required by DOE to keep the LANL contract?

Nuclear weapons and the military are not paths to prosperity, here or anywhere. Are there any who can help these gentlemen see the light?

Best wishes to all,
Greg Mello

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2901 Summit Place NE Albuquerque, NM 87106, Phone: 505-265-1200

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