Photo Credit: The U.S. Army via Compfight cc

By Peter Sleeth, ProPublica

— The top Republican and Democrat on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs are demanding more information from defense Secretary Chuck Hagel about lost Army field records from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the subject of a ProPublica investigation last year.

“Congress must have a clear understanding of the extent  of the lost records in order to safeguard the best interests of our service members and veterans,’’ the letter says.

The 12 questions posed to Hagel in the letter focus largely on the Army because it has the largest records deficit. Among other things, the congressmen want to know what happened to operational records for the 1st Armored Division and the 82nd Airborne Division and what is being done to reconstruct them.

In November, ProPublica and the Seattle Times reported that they were among numerous Army units that had lost or failed to keep battlefield records as required, making it harder for some veterans to obtain benefits and for historians to recount what actually happened.

“Operational records can be used to track the history of our nation’s military, plan for future operations and support innovative medical research,’’ Miller and Michaud wrote to Hagel.

In addition to chairing the veterans’ panel, Miller sits on the House Armed Services Committee, which has direct oversight responsibility for the Defense Department and service branches.

The department did not return a phone call seeking comment.

By Erin Rose

Photo Credit: jsmjr via Compfight cc

— More than half of released inmates in New Mexico return to prison, but a study of state prisoners suggests brain scans can predict which criminals will re-offend. Dr. Kent Kiehl, the study’s author, said he hopes his work can help reduce those numbers.

Kiehl, a psychologist at the Mind Research Network in Albuquerque, used a portable fMRI machine to image 96 prisoners’ brains at the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility in Grants and the Penitentiary of New Mexico near Santa Fe. He then tracked the prisoners for four years after their release.

He was interested in how prisoners regulate their urges. He explained, “We know that certain forms of impulsivity predict whether or not you re-offend.” When inmates go up before the parole board, an impulsivity test is one of the ways that the board determines if they are likely to commit another crime once released.

Kiehl’s study also hinged on an impulsivity measure. The test works something like this: A series of letters was presented rapidly on a screen, one at a time. The test subject is instructed to press a signal button only when the letter X appears. If the letter K appears, he’s told not to push the button.

The fMRI works by detecting changes in oxygenation in the brain. When a certain region of the brain is active, blood flow increases, just as it does to muscles during exercise. And high scores on impulsivity tests can indicate a range of disorders, such as psychopathy, bipolar disorder, brain injuries or even drug withdrawal. Very impulsive people have difficulty weighing long-term consequences over short-term gains.

Kiehl focused on activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, which sits in the very center of the brain toward the front of the skull. Research has shown this cortex plays a key role in regulating behavior and emotion.

High activity in the part of the brain being monitored indicated better emotional regulation. Prisoners that had low activity in the anterior cingulate cortex during the test—the more impulsive prisoners—were up to four and a half times more likely to re-offend.

The Cost of Prisons

Taxpayers pay dearly for the American prison system. The United States spends $74 billion per year on corrections. America imprisons more of its population than any other country in the world. Its incarceration rate is roughly the same as the Soviet Union pre-World War II, after Stalin imprisoned millions of people in the gulag system.

Caring for inmates is expensive. New Mexico spent about $35,000 per inmate last year. Comparatively, state spending per K-12 student was $10,812 in 2009-2010. And New Mexico spent only $93.37 per capita on mental health agencies in 2010.

“I use these numbers to help people realize, holy cow, we spend a lot on prisons,” said Kiehl. “The best way to reduce those costs? Through treatment.” Kiehl said corrections facilities have been receptive to his work, although he added that “I generally think the state should adopt better procedures to reduce recidivism and reduce prison populations rather than having to rely on private prisons.”

New Mexico has a higher proportion of its inmates in private prisons than any other state. The Presbyterian Church, when calling for the abolition of private prisons in a statement, argued: “Since the goal of for-profit private prisons is earning a profit for their shareholders, there is a basic and fundamental conflict with the concept of rehabilitation as the ultimate goal of the prison system.” The incarceration industry spends millions lobbying for longer sentences and harsher punishments.

Proponents of private prisons say they are more cost-effective and efficient than public prisons, and that they’re an effective way to deal with a booming prison population.

A Better Way to Prevent Crime

Many articles on Kiehl’s research reference the movie Minority Report to highlight the thorny ethics of using brain imaging to influence incarceration. In the film, crimes can be predicted ahead of time, and potential criminals are imprisoned before they’ve done anything illegal.

Kiehl countered that risk assessments, which evaluate an inmate’s potential danger to society upon release, are already commonplace in the criminal justice system. Parole, sentencing and other decisions often hinge on such analysis, usually measured through personality tests or a clinical evaluation.

His research could lead to better risk assessments and improved treatments, Kiehl argued: Since the scans directly measure brain activity rather than relying on the test’s outcome, the results are more accurate. Still, he admitted, the science is in its infancy.

Kiehl said he’s confident  risk assessment is the best way to reduce the chance that people reoffend, but he says that many of the officials engaged in risk assessment for parole boards have little or improper training. “People have abused risk assessments to keep someone in prison. The adversarial process can distort some of the best scientific tools.”

Research at the University of Virginia confirms that that scores on a psychopathy test change depending on who administers the test. Paid experts demonstrate marked bias; when compared to psychologists testing on behalf of the defendant, psychologists hired by prosecutors tend to conclude that the prisoner is higher risk.

Developing Effective Treatments

California has evolved into a dramatic example of how crucial these assessments can be. The state, under court order to reduce prison overcrowding, has to release at least 33,000 prisoners. Part of the state’s plan to comply includes analysis to determine which prisoners it could safely release—in other words, which are low-risk.

Bernalillo County is also under pressure to reduce overpopulation at the Metropolitan Detention Center, though it’s still unclear how the jail will do so.

The goal of his research, said Kiehl, is rehabilitation—not further incarceration. “If I could give you a treatment or a pharmaceutical that reduces impulsivity and that leads to people not committing crimes and coming back to prison, that’s a fantastic thing for the inmate and society.”

Such treatments would be only one aspect of a successful release plan, he added. Many  risk factors can be treated through common-sense measures: regular drug testing, guaranteed employment, or anger or impulse management therapy. That treatment, he said, is crucial to reducing prison overcrowding and the cost to the public. A 2012 New Mexico Department of Corrections report estimates that reducing recidivism by 10 percent would save the state $8.3 million a year and reduce victim costs by $40 million.

Treatment results in the best outcome for both society and prisoners, Kiehl said. “I teach the economics of treatment. If you treat people, especially youth offenders, you can reduce the chances by 50 percent that they will come back to criminal behavior,” he noted. “That is unbelievably cost-effective.”

Research from the nonpartisan Washington State Institute for Public Policy indicates effective treatment programs cost less than $5000 per offender and return up to $20 in benefits for every dollar spent by taxpayers.

“There’s no better program—except maybe great education or mental health care—that returns economic development like that,” Kiehl said.

— Find him on Facebook or Twitter

By Marya Errin Jones

— Dead trees, skinned, dried and pressed into sheets. Cut to size, tattooed with words that leave imprints on us. Writers become our teachers and our talismans. Stories become incantations.

It’s difficult to imagine incanting over an electronic book or being transported by the numbing, arctic glare of a touch screen—some kind of dry, electric wafer that serves up data whenever we want. That’s just modernity: a lonely, 24-hour automat of the mind.

A life out of print? I don’t want it, and neither does Ariel Gore, founding editor of the alt parenting quarterly Hip Mama Zine. “I love all my media. I’m not killing my computer,” Gore says. “Print is just different, and the brain processes print differently. It’s a tactile, intimate experience.” 

Where there are babies, there are cool women who birthed them, and it seemed Hip Mama would go on indefinitely. After decades, it was no longer a baby zine, but a 20-year-old radical feminist with a good head on her shoulders. A homemade, independent, reader-written, multicultural alternative to the gender-locked, pink-and-blue-emotional terrorism many parenting magazines promote.

Gore started the zine in 1993 as a college student and a young, single mom in Oakland. She stepped away to care for her mother five years ago, raise another new baby and follow other literary pursuits. The day-to-day operations passed into the hands of a dedicated worker collective led by Oregonian Kerlin Richter. Today, Gore lives in Santa Fe.

Ariel Gore

After 53 issues, publishing awards and Hip Mama books, she wasn’t expecting her zine to have to move back in with her. But it’s also en trend for great publications to hit hard times, and it doesn’t take much to upset the balance. Some of the most widely read independent publications have succumbed to low subscription rates. Others have fallen prey to the deadly ratio of advertisement versus good content.

If Gore has something to do with it, Hip Mama will not be going out like that. When she discovered Hip Mama’s publishers were planning to go 100 percent digital, she swooped in to save her publication. It sounds superhero-y, and it kind of is. Her point of view can be heard echoing across the rooftops of the Internet: “Look! It’s a magazine! No! It’s a zine! Print’s not dead!”

What Do We Love?

Paper cuts are the worst—they’re sharp, there’s hardly any time to bleed. But you feel it, and no Band-Aid can take away that pain. We’ve all watched as newspaper after newspaper was gutted, leaving hollowed-out newsrooms dependent on the AP Wire. The notion of Hip Mama folding has sparked a grassroots effort to keep the zine going, and a refusal to accept the steamroller of progress that has crushed so many independent information sources.

“It’s hard to make a print endeavor work,” Gore says. “We’re indie writers; we have to remember why we came here. No one is getting rich here, so we have to ask ourselves, What do we love?” Gore has taken over as editor, and quarterly issues of the zine resume in October. There are also plans to expand coverage of politics, social justice, arts and food. The relaunch will involve few sacrifices, the main change being no more full-color covers.

Gore also launched a Kickstarter campaign to help underwrite initial production costs and alert worldwide Hip Mama readers to the magazine’s revival. If readers invest in the campaign, the rewards are guilt-free, non-sweatshop items. Some of the incentive levels include a one-year subscription to Hip Mama. With 18 days to go, the campaign has already surpassed its goal.

Gore says monies above and beyond the goal will go toward paying contributors more. “Artists should be paid for their work.”

For Non-Moms

It’s reassuring—even life-affirming—to know that mothers, children and families are coming together to help revitalize the magazine they love.

At the same time, you don’t see your average single woman sparking up a Hip Mama for her reading pleasure in the park or coffee shop. What’s in it for those feminists that have “been to paradise but have never been to me?” What’s in it for women who are childless and, like me, living on the brink of infertility, unlikely to produce biological offspring?

If we’re being honest, this society has little use for a single, childless woman, no matter what she gives back to planet Earth. If she’s not managed to replicate herself, she is of little use at a play date. Sometimes single women whose friends have children become unnecessary extremities, part of the space shuttle that breaks away when the launch is complete. Our beacons of, “Let’s hang out sometime” rarely echoed back.

We’ve suddenly become alien as we drift away from family life, orbiting the edges of space. The effort to reconnect seems too great to attempt.

“It’s really easy to leave our friends behind,” Gore adds. In favor of diverse models for parenting, Gore says the zine supports the inter-generational development of family time, rather than the lockdown of the nuclear family model. The old paradigm can seem like a 24-hour theme park world of obsessions.  “There’s a horrible tendency to make everything excessively kid friendly,” she says. “That annoying, mainstream parenting that can suck you in, having to share every time your kid takes a shit.”

In the Hip Mama universe, old models and structures of parenting give way to new methods of child rearing that can include friends, domestic partners, godmothers—a family of one’s choosing.“It’s not about a specific family structure,” Gore says. She intends to continue to help Hip Mama readers build their own blueprints for parenting that reflect feminist ideals. The zine pushes against the sterility of an insidious, digital future in favor of a tactile, intimate, inky, sometimes messy community.

“Mothering is really hard, and you’re going to perpetuate what you’ve come from, but we can retrain ourselves,” she says. It does indeed take a village of radicals—and her beloved print zine—to raise a child.

Related Zines:

Tomas Moniz started RAD DAD after reading Hip Mama.

The East Village Inky is another long-running mother zine.

*****

Marya Errin Jones creates hybrid performances using lo-fi puppetry, electronics, paper, fabric, photo copiers and computers. She is a zinester and the producer of the third annual ABQ Zine Fest coming this fall.

By Marisa Demarco

I carefully packed up my gear, worried that the heat in my no-AC van would melt my homemade electronics. I grabbed some clean socks and drove north on Friday, May 10, for the Denver Noise Festival. This year was the fest’s fourth, and performers traveled in from around the U.S. and other countries, too.

People ask me all the time: What is noise music? It is what you think it is—atonal, electronic, so super mega loud. (There are exceptions and variants, of course; that’s pretty reductionist.) This fest is blessed with a heroic sound system, which means every performance pushes volumes unheard elsewhere.

Low end is my favorite end.

I try to wear earplugs since I’ve been listening to loud sounds for a decade +, but I mostly hate them. Many of the tones go missing when they’re trying to make their way through those little cushions in my ear holes. I know it makes health sense, but it doesn’t make other sense to obstruct the magnificent sonic waves propelled by monolithic speaker stacks with 2-cent foam buttons from Walgreens. I find myself unconsciously taking them out or just forgetting to put them in altogether. When I’m old, I’ll get an ear trumpet. Or—fingers-crossed—scientists will figure out how to re-grow tortured cilia in my cochlea. For cheap.

Click on any of the links below and pump this shit like they do in the future. Don’t be shy with yer volume knob.

Denver Noise Fest 2013 Performers

Ozone Leash * Whitey Alabastard * Sisto Rossi * Flower of Flesh and Blood * Body Garden * Arago’s Wheel * Juice Machine * Mariela Rossi * Blood Rhythms * Zoologist * Dental Work * Gasman * IT-290 * LSD * Mobdividual * Page 27 * XOME * Pop Culture Rape Victim * Thirteen Hurts * S.N. * Crank Sturgeon * Newton * Wapstan * Nookleptia * Dromez * The Nothing * Fatale * Pulsating Cyst * Leveret * Breakdancing Ronald Reagan * Novasak * Sex Milk Instrument * Captain Howdy * Sleep Dial * Echo Beds * Haunted Sound Laboratory * Arvo Zylo + Little Fyodor + Clayton Counts * Rest In Satin Silence * Of Earth And Sun * John Gross * Crab Lab * Down On Knees I’m Weak * Wind Does * Pythian Whispers

And here’s some footage I shot of Mariela Rossi from Portland:

Levi Chavez

— UPDATE: Four of six motions were made available to the public at a hearing on Wednesday, May 22.

Lawyers representing local media appeared in court last week to make a stand against the sealing of pre-trial motions in the case.

The trial is slated to begin in June. Chavez, a former Albuquerque Police Department officer, is facing two felony charges relating to the death of his ex-wife: murder and tampering with evidence.

Judge George Eichwald

One court document was made available to the public during the May 15 hearing. Judge George Eichwald also reversed his position and lifted a blanket seal he had ordered on all future motions filed before the trial begins.

Another six sealed court documents were considered on Wednesday, May 22, after lawyers combed through hundreds of questionnaires given to potential jurors. Defense attorney David Serna said a random sampling of 47 questionnaires showed 24 people had a fixed, negative opinion of the case. He read examples out loud one by one.

There’s also a danger that people who hadn’t heard of the case when they filled out the questionnaire went home and Googled it, he said, dredging up biased characterizations and misleading information about Chavez.

Lawyer David Serna

Serna blamed extensive media coverage for the jury selection problem, citing scores of reports that appeared on television news outlets around the state and in the Albuquerque Journal. This, he said, was justification for making pre-trial motions secret and for closing further hearings on the topic.

Eichwald denied Serna’s request to close the hearings. Last month the judge accused the prosecution of rousing reporters to cover the case. “Every time we have a hearing, your office calls the media,” he said. Valencia County Assistant District Attorney Bryan McKay denied doing so.

The Albuquerque Journal, the Valencia County News-Bulletin, the Associated Press, KOAT, KRQE and KOB fought the secrecy measures Eichwald ordered on April 22. Media attorneys argued the defense has a constitutional burden to prove there is a good reason to prevent the public from accessing records relating to a criminal case. “The public has a special interest in this case; the first-degree murder and evidence tampering charges being brought by the state against a police officer,” their motion stated.

They also pointed out that the sealed records repeat information that’s part of a civil lawsuit against Chavez, so those accusations are already out there. Finally, they said, the defense has to show there aren’t other methods available—such as extensive juror vetting—to protect a fair trial.

The trial was moved from Valencia County to Sandoval County in December for that purpose. But, said Serna, local media outlets are far-reaching, and their reports are broadcast all over the state.

Lawyer Charles Peifer

Attorney Charles Peifer argued that there’s a difference between potential jurors who’ve heard of the case and those who’ve formed an opinion about it. Concern that press coverage will taint the jury pool is pure speculation, he said. “The finding should be that there are less restrictive means available,” he concluded.

The motion also states that sealing court records without justification is a violation of the First Amendment:  “Without access to court proceedings and documents, the public has no way of knowing how courts are carrying out the administration of justice that is fundamental to American government.”

NOTE: A little bit of Gwyn Doland’s explanation of how she got into the news biz (she started as a chef, then discovered she’d grown to love writing about food) is cut off. But other than an abrupt start, this is a fascinating discussion of open government and where journalism is going.

By Marisa Demarco

— Today, Monday, May 20, we launched our first live Google Hangout. Compass editors spoke with two sunshine champions: Gwyneth Doland is the former executive director of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, and Alexa Schirtzinger is the editor in chief of the Santa Fe Reporter, an alt.weekly and “the feistiest newspaper in New Mexico,” according to her Twitter bio.

Schirtzinger and Doland have both been in the trenches fighting for open government in New Mexico in the last year.

The Santa Fe Reporter uncovered a mass of private emails from members of Gov. Susana Martinez’ administration concerning public business. Doland was many folks’ first or second phone call as issues of the First Amendment and freedom of the press sprouted around the state. She was on hand to advise members of the CNM Chronicle when the college’s administration started yanking newspapers from the stands.

Schirtizinger and Doland also both announced this month that they’ll be leaving their posts. Schirtzinger will be researching funding solutions for local journalism having been awarded the Knight Journalism Fellowship. Doland says she’s looking forward to returning to her writing career. She’s also an instructor at UNM.

A big thank you to Joe Cardillo for the technical and creative support.

By Alex Escué Limkin & Rebecca Limkin

—Summer 2018

I sit with my son on my lap overlooking a dusty depression, a swath of brown erosion bordered by thorny Russian olives and dense saltcedars. “What is this place?” my son asks me.

“We used to call this place the Bosque,” I reply. “I brought you here to help you imagine what this used to look like, and why we try so hard to protect the patches of wild nature that still remain.

Photo Credit: Driving in Heels via Compfight cc

“Before you were born, your mother and I would take walks here alongside the Rio Grande in the shade of the cottonwood trees. We would park just off of Tingley Drive or by the BioPark and wander into the woods. There were many small trails, and we were familiar with all of them.

“There were no cars here, no sirens, no machinery, no boardwalks, no asphalt. We could take off our shoes and cool our feet in the water on hot summer days and feel like we were in the middle of a wilderness—even with the road just a few hundred feet away. The parking lots didn’t intrude into the Bosque, and there were no paved paths, trash cans or restrooms alongside the river. This all used to be trees, and the trees were filled with wildlife.” I waved my arm behind us.

“There were hundreds of different water birds and other animals that sheltered here: migrating geese and ducks and cormorants and herons and egrets, not to mention beavers and porcupines, muskrats and fish.”

“What happened?” my son asks.

“A mayor called Berry thought that the Bosque was not being used enough, so he hired a team of advisers to come up with what they called ‘improvements.’ The team decided that by building parking lots and bridges, boat launches and restaurants, people would come and spend money here.

“The mayor believed people wanted convenience and entertainment from the Bosque, not wildness or to feel the natural world around them. He seemed to think that people were afraid of touching the earth with their bare feet.”

“Did it work?”

“On one hand it did. More people came in their cars to buy things, but it lasted only a short while.

“The very year the mayor proposed his plan, the city fire department restricted access to the river because of the threat of fire. In the same year, the entire region was in a historic drought. There was little snowpack, and we hadn’t had our regular monsoons.

“Despite that, the mayor forced his development onto the Bosque, bringing huge earth-movers and dump trucks that ran for months, laying down tons of concrete and destroying habitat. A spark from one of the vehicles caused a fire that ravaged the area. The only trees that survived are those that can withstand fire, like these saltcedars.

Photo Credit: jared via Compfight cc

“After awhile, no one wanted to come here anymore. The wildlife fled or starved, and the remarkable feeling of being in a wilderness within a city, the feeling that your mother and I loved, was gone. That’s why it looks like it looks today.”

“Didn’t anyone try to stop him?”

“We did what we could. We attended meetings, we wrote letters, we called his office, we chained ourselves to a cottonwood. Our neighborhood association, and many others, signed resolutions opposing his plans. But in the end, the mayor won.  This is what his victory looks like for the Bosque.”

We stood up, pulled the tumbleweed thorns from our shorts, scowled at the boat launches tilted in the dry riverbed, and headed home.

*****

For more information on Mayor Berry’s plan, see riograndevision.com

Register your opinion at townhall.cabq.gov

Or contact the Mayor’s Office at 505-768-3000 or theplan@cabq.gov.

Author Alex Escué Limkin is forming an action and advocacy team, DVR-6, specializing in the recovery and aid of homicidal and suicidal veterans in the backcountry. He blogs about his experience as an Iraq veteran at warriorswithwesthusing.org.

The author as a baby with her older sister Gabriela and brother Robert in the family van. Their mother usually made the van comfortable for the long trips to Mexicali.

By Alejandra Alarcon

Coachella Unincorporated / New America Media

COACHELLA — Like a lot of other families living in the Eastern Coachella Valley, when one of our family members fell sick, it meant driving about a hundred miles across the border into Mexico, to the city of Mexicali, to get taken care of by a doctor. The only other option, it seemed, was not being taken care of at all.

But because of health care reform efforts in the United States today, young people won’t need to go without health insurance the way I did. The scenario is finally beginning to change. At least, it can change—if people are made aware of the health services right in their own community available through federal health care reform.

“We owe it to our country to inform the citizens to take advantage of all these resources that are available,” said Ronnie Cho, associate director of public engagement for the White House, during a speech about health care reform that I attended in Washington D.C. as a reporter in April 2012.

Cho is right. For the Affordable Care Act to make a difference, people need to first be aware that health care is an option for them. People need to know that they can afford to visit a doctor, without having to travel more than a few miles from their home.

When my family would go to visit relatives across the border in Mexicali, we always took advantage of the opportunity to stop by the Mexican pharmacy to buy medicine for ourselves, as well as for our friends and neighbors who always requested some.

As a child, I thought those trips to Mexicali to visit the doctor were the only way: It was just what people did. Later on, my father got a job with a new trucking business that gave him medical benefits, including family coverage. Because my dad worked for a lot of different trucking companies during the years, and because there were lengths of time when he was unemployed, our health care situation was never stable. But at least for those few years, my family and I received the best health care we’d ever had.

“Young people are relatively healthy, so they think, ‘I don’t need health care,’ until something happens and they actually need it,” said Cho.

Again, Cho got it right. I can remember my worried mother, back in 2008, telling my little sister and me that we once again did not have health insurance and would have to resume our trips to Mexicali. In retrospect, I never minded the long trips to the doctor or dentist’s office. In fact, I never worried about my health. My parents always had medicine from Mexicali available in our cabinets for emergencies. For my siblings and I, it was not something that got in the way; we believed it had to be done because there was no cheaper option.

The irony is that even though being uninsured felt normal to me and my siblings growing up, it is families like ours that need insurance the most. We live in the unincorporated communities of the Eastern Coachella Valley, most of us are Latino, many (like my parents) are immigrants, and many make a living as farmworkers or do some other type of physical labor. We are especially in need of the protections provided by health insurance, because of occupational hazards and other health risks associated with living in an area where people lack money and resources.

The Affordable Care Act will be fully implemented on Jan. 1, and it will help families like mine take control of our medical insurance by providing options and a sense of security. Health care security at one time seemed impossible to imagine. The health insurance that for so long seemed like such a special privilege will now become available to more people than ever before.

The ACA was put into place in part to make sure insurance companies cannot end your coverage plan when you need it the most, cannot bill you into debt, cannot discriminate due to pre-existing medical conditions.

The ACA will secure medical insurance for American citizens after changing jobs or getting laid off. It will require insurance companies to cover the cost of mammograms and cancer screenings. And for the first time, young adults will remain eligible to be covered under their parent’s or guardian’s health insurance plan through the age of 26, even if they are married.

As a result, 3.1 million young adults are now covered along with their families, and more than 107,000 Americans with pre-existing conditions who didn’t previously have insurance, are recieving health coverage, according to federal data.

If you know where to look, it is free and simple to apply for affordable or no-cost medical insurance programs such as Medicaid and the Childrens’ Health Insurance Program (CHIP). They cover medical services that include doctor check-ups, emergency care, hospital care, vaccinations, prescription drugs, vision, hearing and dental.

There was a time for a lot of us living here in the Eastern Coachella Valley when driving across the border seemed like the easiest and most affordable way to access health care. Fortunately for many of us, that no longer needs to be the case. Our communities can have the security of health insurance that for so long seemed just beyond our reach, if we just know where to find it.

*****

To see if you qualify for Medicaid or CHIP, or to apply online, visit: http://insurekidsnow.gov

To find out what is your best insurance option for your specific demographics and needs go to: http://finder.healthcare.gov

— Want to know all about local government but don’t want to spend a couple of hours digging through our archives? Tune in to our new podcast “Local Government Matters.”

Compass editors sat around Carolyn Carlson’s kitchen table a couple evenings ago and talked about the major issues this year for the City Council and Bernalillo County Commission. In the background are Carlson’s finches, providing a real live twitter feed. (If you haven’t yet, follow us on nonfinch Twitter, @nmcompass.)

Carlson is our City Council reporter. I cover the Bernalillo County Commission. Compass Managing Editor Margaret Wright led the discussion.

The intro and outro music is public domain, source: Brian Boyko. Passionate music lover that I am, it’ll change every week.