An editorial from the Santa Fe New Mexican.
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Opinion/My_View_State_was_different_place_before_LANL
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28 comments:
Mr. Lujan is entitled to his opinion. Mine differs. I don't feel that LANL's past accomplishments justify allowing today's LANL to remain open.
Today's LANL is little more than an expensive embarrassment. It is rife with corruption, waste, fraud, and inefficiency. Its mission is suspect. If LANL is allowed to remain open, it will become northern New Mexico's very own version of a Rocky Flats plutonium plant.
Today's LANL needs to be cleaned up to the extent possible and shut down.
To 9:08,
Does shutting down LANL mean having Northern New Mexico revert to hardscrabble subsistence farming? If so, is that outcome acceptable to you?
If shutting down LANL causes northern New Mexico to revert to "hardscrabble subsistence farming", it is because northern New Mexico will have allowed that to happen.
Is an entitlement mentality acceptable to you, 9:21? Is crapping up northern New Mexico's environment even worse than has already been done by LANL acceptable to you, to keep northern New Mexicans working at pit factory jobs?
to 9:35,
I did not suggest entitlement at all. This thought was nowhere in my comment.
It seems that your future for Northern New Mexico (to avoid further pollution of the environment) is to rid Northern New Mexico of people and income and to reduce the life expectancy of those who stay from 80 years to 35 (pre-LANL life expectancy).
The net loss to those people who live here now, given your proposed future, would exceed $100,000,000,000.
Are you willing to write each of them an appropriate check or is your view "I want what I want. If implementing my vision fatally hurts thousands of people, tough luck for them."
9:45,
It seems your philosophy is "will do anything for money". You should have a bit more pride, or better moral ethics.
I suspect you don't work at LANL, either, from the tone of your comments. If you did work there, you would know what an unhealthy work environment has existed there for the past few years, and that it is rapidly getting much worse.
When DOE and LANS get their way and reduce LANL's portfolio to only doing pit production, it will be an even less healthy place to work. Anybody who wishes that on his fellow New Mexicans is no friend of New Mexico.
It's fairly clear that many of these
writers are not nor have ever been LANL employees or even associated with LANL in any fashion.
I think that it would be very good if we had writers identify themselves with regard to their relationship to LANL. Some of the possible categories would be:
present LANL employee
past LANL employee
LANL retiree.
prospective LANL employee
Santa Fe resident and LANL hater
DOE employee
You left out a couple of categories, 10:21:
Present LANL employee and LANL hater
Past LANL employee and LANL hater
Perhaps a sub-category for that second one:
Retired LANL employee and LANL hater.
"Retired LANL employee and LANL hater."
How about retired LANL employee who was on 1994 RIF list because he was so utterly incompetent.
Which suggests yet one more category:
Current incompetent LANL employee who hates LANL but feels entitled to a job there.
And so on.
I am someone who has and still is a LANL employee and from my perspective I and my family have benefited fiancially from having Los Alamos Lab here. The State as a whole however, has not. The high cost to the State has come in the form of gross inequity within the workforce and between a largely immigrant community in Los Alamos and the rest of the State. Money corrupts people and their elected representatives, and LANL has fueled this mindset like never before to the point that basic human needs have often been sacraficed for the benefit of LANL, including land theft, increasing taxes to provide free infrastructue for the Lab (the Lab refusing to pay its fair share of gross receipts taxes for over 60 years, environmental contamination that will haunt the area for generations. Need more convincing? Probobly wouldn't matter. LANL for some has been a golden calf to worship. It's been a false idol however, for everyone else.
LANL has been berrry, berrry goot to me. Berrry goot! ...baaaa...baaaa...
--typical lab employee
12/16/07 11:01 AM
Nope! Try reading a intro to econmics book. Everything you said is wrong.
I'm not 11:01, but I've read (and taught, even) several economic courses.
I'm afraid that I will need more convincing than your meager post provided, 11:20, before I disagreed with 11:01.
The trickle-down economics of Santa Fe's $2 billion per year tourism industry has had a far greater local impact to Northern New Mexico than LANL's approximate $2 billion annual budget.
Perhaps you should go out and purchase another Econ 101 book, and then when you finish it, get the Econ 102 edition. Two or three years of this progression might qualify you to offer a meaningful opinion.
I'll wait.
11;31AM is barking up the wrong tree if he is hoping for a rational debate on the subject of economic benefit. You'll get reactions from brown nosers like the guy who wrote this editorial (whose uneducated kids are probably now working at the Lab earning twice what they deserve, or soon will be because Daddy took such a "courageous" position kissing the Lab's rear in public with his enduring testimonial to colonial occupation), or the gifted best and brightest of Los Alamos who are convinced the world (not just northern New Mexico) revolves around them and only them. In either case, you won't get much in terms of facts or rational analysis. Sorry 11:31AM. This is the Lab we're talking about afer all.
"How about retired LANL employee who was on 1994 RIF list because he was so utterly incompetent."
Sweet Jebus, 10:48, you keep nattering on about people fired/riffed/etc for incompetence. I have never met ONE in the past 15 years.
Could you, perhaps, name one? Or else please lay off the LSD, which is making you delusional.
"Could you, perhaps, name one? Or else please lay off the LSD, which is making you delusional.
12/16/07 11:59 AM:"
Well I found this off the old Real Story Blog.
"
"BFO", Chris Mechels was laid off by LANL many years ago. Ever since
then he's been attacking Los Alamos. He's compulsive about it to an unhealthy extent. There are some "old timers" around LANL who still remember working with him back in the late 80's/early 90's. They can give you a measure of the man. From what I've heard, it's not good.
# posted by good2go : 12/12/2005 10:58:54 AM "
God bless you, Mr. Luján. Your editorial made my day. You said what many of us in Northern New Mexico have been thinking as we watch LANL being attacked and destroyed by the very politicians who manage New Mexico and our own Congressional District. Semper Fi!
Was Mechels laid off for incompetence?
> The high cost to the State has come
> in the form of gross inequity
> within the workforce ...
Eh? Is "inequity in the workforce" so evil that it's better off that there be no jobs for anyone?
The story goes that Chris Mechels was not good enough to be just incompetent!
Any day he will be hired back as an AD.
The gross inequity within the workforce comes from the lack of education in Northern New Mexico. The drop out rate in the public high schools in Santa Fe is somewhere between 40% and 50%. These people are not going to be hired by LANL at any level. They may end up working for KSL.
Mr. Lujan is probably related to House Speaker Ben Lujan and future Congressman Ben Lujan Jr. Qualifications went out the door along time ago. When your experience is black jack dealer in a casino, Deputy State Treasurer (for State Treasurer Michael Montoya), etc. This is such a disaster! I can't stomach it anymore.
and lets not forget the 1200+ NNM families that benefited this year from the LANL XMAS drive and annual United Way donations.
As a current LANL employee and "immigrant" NNM resident I feel infinitely qualified to add my 2-cents regarding the Santa Fe New Mexican article by Joe Lujan entitled "MY View: State was Different Place Before LANL." I enjoyed the article and applaud his opinion. I had never really put much thought into the notion that many other institutions in NM owe their very existence to LANL.
Also, while I agree with the message being delivered by Congress (and Tom Udall) regarding diversification at LANL the method of delivery is wrong, and I hope and prey it costs Udall HIS job. As a congressman, his job involves representing ALL his constituents which includes the people of Los Alamos. Voting to cut the LANL weapons budget as a means of forcing diversification is wrong. We cannot simply abandon nuclear weapons work and walk away. The weapons exist and need care and feeding. Furthermore, the genie is out of the bottle or coming out of the bottle around the lesser developed world.
Today's LANL needs to be cleaned up to the extent possible and shut down.
12/16/07 9:08 AM
One has to be grossly incompetent to make such a statement.
Yes current management probably failed Mgt 101, the Remedial class, but the institution contributes much to the nation, and to the world.
If I were to follow your logic - we should rid ourselves of all aspects of the government. Again, a quite ludicrous idea.
12/16/07 11:04 AM
Yet another one, jealous, because they could not meet the extremely low standard to get hired.
"It was Los Alamos that brought families together, and they saw the need to educate their children to qualify for the high-paying jobs."
What are you smoking man?
I guess maybe you're right if you think a degree from the University of Phoenix is an "education", and that being paper-pusher in the LANL Travel Office is a really prestigious job.
> ... and I hope and prey
> it costs Udall HIS job.
Yes, I too hope and pray that Udall get preyed upon.
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