Use math to tell ZIP code’s story The conspiracy charades Laws do apply
Regarding (“Find the answers,” Letters to the Editor, Dec. 12): We’ve been through this before: The reason there are so many more COVID-19 cases in the sprawling 87507 ZIP code than in any other is that it’s the largest ZIP code in the state, by a lot. Per the 1980 census, 45,890 of the 144,170 residents of Santa Fe County lived in the 87507, far more than in any other ZIP code. Anyone who lives here knows this ZIP code has grown in population over the last 10 years faster than most (and probably all) others. It’s mathematics, not rocket science.
Matthew Geyer
Santa Fe
Life as we know it is on spin cycle inside a conspiracy bubble. COVID-19 is a hoax and all those people in the hospitals here in New Mexico, U.S. and world are paid actors and the dead are fake names and numbers. COVID-19 vaccines are vehicles for “bugs” so all governments can keep track of their citizens. The 2020 U.S. presidential election was orchestrated by secretaries of state to make sure President-elect Joe Biden won — except the secretaries of red states where President Donald Trump won. But there was no fraud in blue states where Republicans won their districts along with Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on ballots that “fixed” machines counted or volunteers from outer space counted by hand. People rose from the dead and cast millions of mail-in ballots.
But the biggest conspiracy spread by naive Democrats and mainstream liberal media? Republican politicians are scared of Trump. Disregard the lunacy of all of this, but ignoring the Republican Party’s strategy is dangerous: Richard Nixon’s silent majority, Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economic policy, neo-con George W. Bush’s Iraq lies and decades of Republican white culture rhetoric.
Trump is an exquisite tool for the Republican Party’s ideal of an all-white, small government with an expensive and supreme military with nothing left for its citizens, including an honest election unless it’s voting red. Why should any Republican be afraid of Trump? Democrats have fallen into this trap for far too long, and the spin stops here, at the feet of the Republican and Democratic parties.
Marcia Wolf
Santa Fe
Eliza A. Sultan’s opinion article (“State must reform rules of child testimony,” My View, Dec. 13) was heartbreaking. I wish I could make her pain and her children’s pain go away. But I can’t. But it’s just not right to blame New Mexico’s laws. In fact, New Mexico has two state laws and one state Supreme Court rule that directly apply to the facts Sultan describes in her article. Each law and rule permits child victims to testify remotely. Each requires the judge to find that testifying in court would cause the victim unreasonable and unnecessary harm.
One law is the Uniform Child Witness Protective Proceedings Act, enacted by New Mexico in 2011. It applies to not only to a victim but to any other witness under age 16 and applies to any crime.
Section 30-9-17 is the other law that would have helped at least one of Sultan’s children, based on the facts stated in her opinion article. This law was enacted by New Mexico in 1978 and is narrower in scope than the uniform act.
It applies only to accusers under age 16, not to witnesses, and it applies only to accusers in certain sex crimes. The narrowness of this law was one factor that led to the enactment of the broader uniform act in 2011. Rule 5-504 of the New Mexico Rules of Criminal Procedure was drafted to implement Section 30-9-17 of the Legislature’s law. The rule was amended in 1988. It follows the requirements of that law.
I don’t know why remote testimony was not used in her case, but it was not because of the lack of state laws or court rules. New Mexico has both and has had them for a long time.
Jack Burton
Santa Fe