They may be unscathed, but not unaffected. The ongoing slaughter is killing the future dreams of bringing this city back to a more peaceable and civilized place.

And, yes, it is the drugs. Look at every one of these dreadful killings of recent years and you will find most of them either directly or indirectly involved drugs.

The ongoing aberrant and abhorrent behavior is especially striking for a metro area of only 900,000. This is not Chicago or Baltimore, populated as they are by millions.

But here we are with a five year old girl dead at her father's hand, an 11 month old infant dead and again the father arrested and the shooting of an 8 year old girl, now in critical condition, the cause of which is under investigation.

What to do? There is no panacea but there are solutions that could prevent future carnage. Let's go back to what early childhood activist and KUNM-FM radio host Stephen Spitz offered blog readers on March 5. It should resonate even louder today:

NM's early childhood programs remain minuscule. For example, the state's Home Visiting program, for children prenatal to 3, presently serves 3,500 kids out of a total client population of 70,000. Numerous studies have found that home visiting gets the biggest bang for the buck, particularly for "at risk" children, such as the 82% of NM births which are Medicaid qualified. In short, ECE needs to be dramatically expanded if we hope to address the state's economic, education, and social crises.

Spitz adds that if the parents are running amok, an extra set of eyes visiting the home can serve as a deterrent to extreme behavior. Such visits can reach out to parents and show them how to deal with their frustrations in parenting, and home visitors are out in the community interacting and learning what's going on in other households where children may be endangered. And such visits can be the first step in intervening in parental drug abuse that can lead to child abuse.

Widespread home visiting will cost tens of millions, but the money is there--in the nearly $18 billion Land Grant Permanent School Fund. The proposed Constitutional Amendment that would ask voters to tap a small portion of it (about $150 million a year) passed the House in the recent legislative session but again stalled out in the Senate. There will be another try next year.

New Mexico has dug itself into a deep and ugly hole. Just when you think we might be climbing out we're pulled back in by the gruesome reality.

Governor Lujan Grisham and Children Youth and Families Department Secretary Blalock come to office at a time of ever increasing peril for a large swath of the state's population that is struggling economically and with drug-induced wreckage. That we are in the middle innings of the crisis and not the closing ones is self-evident. They have the money from the oil boom and the skills accumulated from years in public service to start digging out of the hole. The question is whether they and the state have the necessary determination and willpower. 

TRAIL DUST

Rep. Ezzell

ABQ Dem Rep. Deb Haaland confirms the insider view that she will not leave her House seat to make a run for the open US Senate seat up for election next year. . . Possible northern Dem congressional hopeful Valerie Plame is already getting hit with oppo research. This from the WaPo in 2017:

On the first full day of Rosh Hashanah, unmasked CIA officer Valerie Plame tweeted out an article entitled, “America’s Jews are driving America’s wars.”

Plame later apologized for the tweet.

Our Alligators report that ABQ GOP City Councilor Brad Winter is headed toward announcing a re-election bid for this November's city election. He is the longest-serving councilor, having been first elected in 1999. There is no announced Dem opponent yet to take on Winter, 64, who last year lost a race for a state House seat. . .

Roswell Daily Record reporter Alex Ross comes with this political stinger:

At a Roswell Chamber of Commerce luncheon state Rep. Candy Spence Ezzell, R-Roswell, said state Sen. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, D-Albuquerque, "has her head up her butt" for introducing a bill that would have temporarily banned fracking in New Mexico. 

Come on, Candy. Everyone in Roswell knows walking around with your head up your butt is what you do to prep for the Friday night rodeo rides. . . 

Yeah, now we're blogging New Mexico.

This is the home of New Mexico politics.

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(c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2019