A heartfelt thank you
Editor:
The family of Faviola and Hedy Lopez would like to extend our warmest and heartfelt gratitude to our family and friends, the community and Calvary Chapel New Harvest members for their generous donations at the loss of our home and all our belongings in a house fire on March 29.
Your prayers, acts of kindness, your various donations and words of encouragement will never be forgotten. Thank you all for your love and thoughtfulness that has blessed us so much in our need. You have truly been God’s shining light in what otherwise might have been a very dark time.
May you reap a hundredfold of blessings.
Faviola and Hedy Lopez
Los Lunas
What about the majority?
Editor:
The Supreme Court handed down a chilling ruling regarding children who are convicted of murder. The court has decided that kids who have committed murder are not worth redeeming, training or rehabilitating.
Furthermore, by vacating previous procedures regarding juveniles, they gave the green light to any judge to put any child in jail for the rest of their natural life, regardless of the circumstances. This, to me, is the antithesis of a criminal justice system that formerly meted out punishment but also allowed for rehabilitation and redemption for some people who had been convicted of crimes and gave specific rules for sentencing, rehabilitation and incarceration limits for children under 18.
If a 14-year-old boy who impulsively murdered someone is going to be judged as if he were a calculating 50-year-old adult, then thrown into an institution that won’t protect him from bad company, with no hope of ever getting out, why not just go ahead and drown him like an unwanted litter of kittens? That’s cruel, isn’t it?
It’s equally cruel to continue to feed the prison pipeline and feed younger people into the very lucrative prison industry, forever. The SCOTUS has deemed that children who kill are unwanted/irredeemable and must be locked away at taxpayer expense for as long as the system can keep them hopeless, suffering and alive.
We really must revisit our commitment to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There is no value to incarcerating kids for their entire lives for a mistake they made while too young to know better. The SCOTUS ruling is wrong.
If we can give more representation to states with larger populations, we must also recognize that an expanded Supreme Court is necessary as well. It’s legal and it’s time to restore a balanced SCOTUS by adding two to four more appointments this year.
Otherwise, we are likely to see more of our rights as citizens wrested away from us by a few members of society who now have the ear of the court to promote their own agendas and business interests. Their vision for our country doesn’t include kids or the majority of Americans and is as cruel as drowning innocent kittens in a ditch and then blaming it on parents and taxpayers.
Michelle Tafoya
Los Lunas
Our water matters
Editor:
Re: News-Bulletin article on April 29 regarding decimation of desert in Los Lunas.
We are greatly concerned about the wasteful water usage to mitigate the blowing sand on the 300 acres of denuded land owned by Sierra Vista on N.M. 6.
It is a well-known fact that our state is in a severe drought and wildfires are burning in several locales. We should use water wisely!
The owner of Sierra Vista scraped bare this property with plans to develop a new residential neighborhood in the coming years. As a result, sand and dust have been blowing into Jubilee and further east for almost one year and there is no end in sight.
Water trucks are being used daily with no positive effect, and we learned from this article, the village of Los Lunas has sent its water trucks to aid in this futile endeavor. (Is this usage of equipment from our village possibly a way to admit its error in granting permits for this project?)
Is it not time to recognize a serious problem and do something about it?
Thomas and Nelda Lobb
Los Lunas
(Editor’s Note: The village of Los Lunas has not yet issued any permits for the Sierra Vista subdivision. The Los Lunas Village Council conditionally approved the development’s preliminary plat if the buffer area between the proposed subdivision and Jubilee is developed and the problematic mound of dirt is graded.)
The Valencia County News-Bulletin is a locally owned and operated community newspaper, dedicated to serving Valencia County since 1910 through the highest journalistic and professional business standards. The VCNB is published weekly on Thursdays, including holidays both in print and online.
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April 18, 2024
