2021 has been yet another eventful year in New Mexico, with lots of news. Through it all, the Piñon Post has worked overtime to provide New Mexicans with top-notch independent news and conservative opinion for an informed New Mexico.
This year, we have built an even bigger audience, broken important stories, and done even more to represent New Mexicans in our media coverage. Here are the most-read stories of 2021 from the Piñon Post:
On Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2021, New Mexico Stands Up! attorneys Ana Garner and Jonathan Diener, along with Norred Law firm of Arlington, TX filed a complaint and a motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO) against National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC d/b/a Sandia National Laboratory and Honeywell International Inc. in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas.
According to a press release from the group, “The Plaintiffs are employees of Sandia, and the SNL Workforce Freedom Alliance, an association of several hundred employees. The TRO motion asks the Court to enjoin SNL from firing, suspending without pay or taking any other negative action against employees for not accepting the experimental COVID vaccines.”
The complaint alleges that Joe Biden’s executive orders mandating vaccines and other pandemic “safety” measures for all federal contractors and subcontractors are without legal basis. The complaint notes that these orders are, therefore “illegal and unenforceable, as held by several recent federal courts.”
The complaint further alleges that there are no vaccines currently available in the USA that have been FDA “approved,” and therefore, all COVID vaccines are “experimental and thus cannot be mandated under federal law.” It writes that mandating PCR tests and face masks violates employees’ right to bodily integrity and right to life and liberty under the Constitution.
“Even if there were a public health emergency, no government can force or compel any human from taking a medical intervention without consent. The ‘emergency’ was a deception of tyrannical government. It is time to stop this abusive government overreach,” said attorney Ana Garner.
This is a developing story…
Emergency temporary restraining order filed against Sandia Labs over jab mandate Read More »
Over the weekend, CBS News correspondent Jan Crawford blew the whistle on the most underreported story of 2021, which she claimed resulted in a “crushing” impact on our country’s children.
“My kids hear me rant about this every day, so I may as well tell you guys. It’s the crushing impact that our COVID policies have had on young kids and children, by far the least serious risk for serious illness,” Crawford said.
She spoke about how healthy teenagers have “a one-in-a-million chance” of catching and dying from the virus, noting how they have a greater chance of perishing in a car accident.
“They have suffered and sacrificed the most, especially kids in underrepresented, at-risk communities. And now we have the surgeon general saying there’s a mental health crisis among our kids,” Crawford said. “The risk of suicide attempts among girls now up 51% this year. Black kids nearly twice as likely as white kids to die by suicide.”
“I mean school closures, lockdowns, cancellation of sports. You couldn’t even go on a playground in the D.C. area without cops shooing the kids off…. Tremendous negative impact on kids, and it’s been an afterthought. It’s hurt their dreams, their future, learning loss, risk of abuse, their mental health,” Crawford added.
In New Mexico, school lockdowns and clapping down on sports have had a tremendous impact. In April, scandal-ridden alleged serial groper Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham finally lifted a one-year ban on in-person learning.
As we previously reported:
The damage the Governor’s lockdown caused was much more painful than merely the year of education many children lost altogether. Hundreds of children in New Mexico took their own lives in 2020 and early 2021, with New Mexico ranking the second-worst state for suicides. As for teen suicides, New Mexico ranked as the fifth-highest state nationwide in 2020. In July 2020, New Mexico hit a boiling point as the state with the highest rate of suicide in the nation, with the rate for children ages 4-15 increasing by 88%.
The Albuquerque Journal reported that around 12,000 “missing” children were going without instruction at all during the pandemic.
Early in the pandemic, many students cried out about their lack of access to education, with some children having to camp outside of their shuttered school to get wifi access to complete assignments. Many New Mexico children went over an entire year without an education.
The New Mexico Public Education Department’s updated guidance includes “indoor sports is 100% mask wearing” According to the report, “Outdoor sports, including football, has now been changed back to recommended mask wearing.”
During the summer, students were forced to wear masks while running in 100-degree heat due to the edict from the Lujan Grisham regime. The body count continues to climb in New Mexico, with children taking their own lives and being the subjects of bullying because of the mask mandates. But the strict policies remain in place despite national outcry over how they negatively effect the state’s children.
CBS reporter: ‘Crushing’ lockdowns like those in NM have hurt our children Read More »
Far-left state Rep. Liz Thomson (D-Bernalillo) has long been an opponent of conservatives and pretty much anyone who remotely disagrees with her.
Thomson has long been known for her personal attacks against fellow New Mexicans, demeaning them as “uneducated” for asking questions about the virus jab and claiming in one rant, “Anyone who continues to back the orange traitor (apparently referring to President Donald Trump) after the terrorist attack, is forever branded with a scarlet S for seditionist.”
She also called concerned parents asking questions about the jab for their kids “low iq voters.” Then, Thomson snitched on fellow citizens to the attorney general regarding pandemic mandates.
She then compared law enforcers to the Ku Klux Klan and called law-abiding gun owners “thugs.”
Now, she has continued in her personal and explicit political Twitter rants, this time jabbing at 45th President Donald J. Trump.
Thomson shared a post reading, “When you say ‘Let’s go, Brandon’ you might as well advertise yourself as a nearly politically illiterate, unoriginal, cult-following fool who wandered willingly behind the flock of the loudest voices around you into hating a man that you don’t actually know anything about.”
The post continued that Trump was a “flagrant piece of s**t.”
Thomson wrote, “This is spot on.”
During the recent special legislative session dedicated to redistricting, Thomson responded to her fellow legislators who said the maps being proposed were partisan and gerrymandered. She said, “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.” Thomson now appears to continue to have a “fit” on Twitter over President Trump, who she still can’t stop hating.
Legislators hurriedly passed hundreds of millions of dollars in federal pandemic cash for leftist pet projects during the second special session, such as $10 million to build electric vehicle charging stations and $15 million to the Department of Finance and Administration for “energy-efficient affordable housing.”
But for one Democrat senator, all that spending wasn’t enough to fulfill his wish list of priorities he thinks New Mexico needs.
State Sen. Bill Soules (D-Doña Ana) wants even more investments in social programs, including an expansion of the Public Education Department, which has already been under fire for its overreach in local school boards.
Soules wrote that he wants to “[e]xpand our Public Education Department (and thinking) from K-12 to include the nurturing of future students in the developmental phase of infancy and early childhood. Fully fund prenatal and infant care and services and all early childhood programs for 100 percent of infants.”
He wants to also “[f]und county-based capacity-building centers committed to identifying gaps in the vital services in rural and urban areas. Invest in the community schools model to make every school fully resourced for our most vulnerable students.” It is unclear what exactly he means by “county-based capacity-building centers” for “vulnerable” students, but he doesn’t give a price tag.
But possibly one of the most costly investments Soules imagines be done with federal dollars includes, funding “a bullet train to move consumers from Santa Fe to Las Cruces, plus Mexico and Colorado.”
A bullet train is one of the most expensive investments imaginable. According to Forbes, for Amtrak to create a high-speed rail train in its Northeast Corridor route, it would cost $500 million per mile. Forbes writes, “High-speed rail is the ‘fetch’ of transportation ideas.”
More conservative estimates of $154 million per mile for a bullet train, would mean a price tag of over $34 billion just for a bullet train from Albuquerque to Las Cruces (about 222 miles).
While many leftist legislators propose costly new initiatives for New Mexico, many working families in the state are still struggling to get back on their feet following brutal pandemic lockdowns from scandal-ridden alleged serial groper Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. The Governor’s lockdown resulted in at least 40% of small businesses closing and New Mexico remains one of the states still with a high unemployment rate.
Dem senator wants fed dollars spent on costly bullet train, PED expansion Read More »
Via The Daily Trumplican:
On Christmas, 45th President of the United States Donald J. Trump released a Christmas video sharing his best wishes through previous Christmas speeches and holiday moments from the White House.
Watch the Christmas greeting here:
President Trump released the following Christmas statement:
I want to wish a Merry Christmas from myself and the entire Trump family to all Americans as we celebrate Christmas.
Today, we celebrate the gift of life and the abundant blessings provided by the birth of Jesus Christ. As we join together with our loved ones, let our hearts be full of love, our minds rest with peace, and our futures be marked by the boundless potential made possible by our faith and our great nation.
For years, politicians like Sen. Ben Ray Luján, scandal-ridden alleged serial groper Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, and others have complained about a lack of access to broadband in New Mexico, citing Tribal communities specifically in the Navajo Nation who lack this access.
Despite claiming to have passed millions of dollars in federal cash to provide such a service to these hard-to-reach rural areas, not many improvements have been made years and months after supposed funding went to broadband access.
But one man, who many on the far-left hate, Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, may just have solved the broadband issue that politicians have been bickering over for years as a talking point to court voters in these areas where broadband access is scarce.
According to a new report from iTech Post, “SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket delivering a new batch of Starlink satellites into space. The launch was held at the Vandenberg Space Force Station in California, bringing a stack of 52 Starlink satellites.”
SpaceX’s mission is to offer internet access to practically everyone in the world, CNET reports.
The company has few rivals, including OneWeb, which has far fewer satellites than SpaceX. SpaceX had 1,791 satellites in September 2021 versus OneWeb’s 648 satellites. Musk’s company is expected to only grow and with that growth create more global access to the internet.
When asked if SpaceX Starlink will work on the Navajo Nation, Musk replied, “Absolutely.”
Following this news that gives new hope for internet access in places like the Navajo Nation, state Rep. Stefani Lord (R-Sandia Park) wrote on Twitter, “This is excellent news for the Navajo Nation and New Mexico. SpaceX Starlink Satellite Launch: Elon Musk Promises Internet Coverage Even in Navajo Nation.”
She added, “Elon Musk will also launch satellite phone services to improve coverage.”
Others applauded the news as well, with conservative activist Elisa Martines writing, “@elonmusk doing more for Native Americans than freeloading Senator Karen,” referring to a spat between Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Musk, where the billionaire called the far-left politician “Senator Karen” after she wanted Musk to pay billions more in taxes.
The move by Musk comes after the New Mexico Legislature created a gaping loophole in state law that allowed Musk to open a Tesla showroom inside of New Mexico — just not in the state. He opened the Tesla location near the Nambe Falls travel center on Tribal land. According to one report:
In 2019, Tesla tried to push a new law in the state with the help of some favorable legislators, but the local car dealer associations flexed their political muscle and it was dropped.
But Tesla has now found a loophole.
The automaker managed to open its first store and service center inside an old casino north of Santa Fe, and they did it by partnering with the first nation of Nambé Pueblo and opening the location on their tribal land.
Elon Musk likely just solved the broadband issue in New Mexico Read More »
While New Mexicans suffered one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates, record-high inflation, and soaring gas prices Michelle Lujan Grisham traveled to Scotland for a “climate change” summit called “COP26,” which focused on funding climate change extremism through cooperation between global stakeholders.
At the Scotland event, scandal-ridden alleged serial groper Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced radical job-killing proposals she aims to ram through the 2022 Legislative Session that will not only cripple New Mexico’s energy economy but will harm the poor in significant ways. Many of her cabinet secretaries and staff joined her.
At the time, the Governor’s spokeswoman Nora Sackett bragged about how the taxpayers would not be funding the trip, claiming a climate change dark money group would be footing the bill instead.
However, once Lujan Grisham arrived back in New Mexico, Inspection of Public Records Act requests revealed that in early November, right after she got back from the vacation-style “climate” excursion, the taxpayers footed the bill for a swanky seven-person dinner party at the Governor’s Mansion.
According to the documents obtained in the IPRA, the taxpayers paid Abobo Catering $1,057.27 for the party, totaling over $150 for each person’s expensive meal.
The menu included “[s]ous vide and butter-basted beef tenderloin with roasted vegetable Napoleon and rosemary red wine demiglace.” Dessert included a “chocolate pear tartlet with hazelnut crisp.” According to the memo, the bar, bar supplies, and “dinner wine” were provided by the “client,” i.e. possibly the taxpayers in another form.
There is no mention of this gathering on Lujan Grisham’s public schedule.
Western States Director for the pro-energy group Power The Future wrote regarding the Governor’s lavish taxpayer-funded meal, “As if her junket to Scotland wasn’t enough, the Governor decided the taxpayers also need to foot the bill for an extravagant dinner. For Michelle Lujan Grisham to spend days demonizing our energy industry in Europe only to turn around and use the funds it generates for a lavish dinner tells you all you need to know about her hypocrisy.”
Throughout the pandemic, Lujan Grisham has broken her lockdown orders to buy lavish jewelry and she spent thousands in taxpayer dollars on $200/lb Wagyu beef steaks, fine wine, and liquor. This all came as New Mexicans were forced to stand in bread lines during the holidays due to her strict 75-person capacity limit in grocery stores.
After her taxpayer-funded Wagy and fine wine spending, she gave what some characterize as an apology, saying, “When people are struggling, should it be fair that residents (of the governor’s mansion) literally have a locked-up grocery store closet … that has libations and catering stuff and food?”
“I don’t want New Mexicans to feel like I don’t take seriously their hardship,” she added at the time. It does not appear she is taking their hardship seriously now, as at least 40% of small businesses in the state have been closed and New Mexicans still struggle to survive, especially as winter is coming and the cost of staying warm has risen exponentially.
The Piñon Post reached out to the Governor’s office for comment but has not yet received a response. If a statement is provided, this story will be updated.
As NM families struggled, MLG had swanky taxpayer-funded dinner party Read More »
Despite health care workers laboring throughout the pandemic without either a COVID-19 shot or a “booster,” scandal-ridden alleged serial groper Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has mandated not only the original inoculation but a booster for health care workers.
In early December, Lujan Grisham’s regime claimed, “[a]lthough experts caution that much remains unknown about the new variant, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week amplified its recommendation on COVID-19 booster shots, saying all vaccinated adults ‘should’ receive one either six months after completing a Pfizer or Moderna series and two months after a Johnson & Johnson shot.”
“The amended state public health order, issued Thursday by Acting Health Secretary David R. Scrase, M.D., will require those categories of workers to receive a booster shot,” the directive instructed.
Now the far-left state of California is following suit, mandating booster jabs for all healthcare workers.
“CA will require healthcare workers to get their booster. As the Omicron variant continues to spread — we’re stepping up efforts to get more people boosted and keep Californians safe,” claimed embattled California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Twitter.
“With Omicron on the rise, we’re taking immediate actions to protect Californians and ensure our hospitals are prepared. More to come in our official announcement tomorrow,” he said.
It appears Newsom is taking his directives from Lujan Grisham, who is the chair of the Democrat Governors Association, despite her alleged sexual assaults on multiple men — similar behavior to what led to the fall of Democrat former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
During the pandemic, Lujan Grisham has shuttered small businesses, targeted health care workers with mandates, killed at least 40% of small businesses in New Mexico and was caught repeatedly skirting her COVID-19 guidelines.
MLG mandates boosters for healthcare workers — Newsom follows suit Read More »
Scandal-ridden alleged serial groper Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s key spokesman, who has remained at the center of many of the Governor’s crises, Tripp Stelnicki, is jumping ship from the administration ahead of the 2022 election.
According to the Albuquerque Journal, Stelnicki “told the governor in his resignation letter he was stepping down to prioritize his mental health.”
“A position of trust like this is too important – to you, the people who serve you and the people you serve – to be occupied by someone who cannot give 110%,” Stelnicki wrote in the letter.
Stelnicki is well known for his condescension of New Mexicans and rudeness to members of the press, including a KOB 4 reporter who asked him basic questions about the Governor’s “red to green” plan to lift harsh restrictions. He wrote:
Did you read the attachment to the news release yesterday and find it confusing? Please let us know if we can help you understand it. Three colors is not confusing. Checking a website— or asking your county to check a website—once every two weeks is not difficult.
During the interview with KOB, he claimed long, cold bread lines outside of grocery stores over the 2020 holidays due to Lujan Grisham’s restrictions were a “minor inconvenience.”
The Piñon Post reported on the long lines prior to the interview with KOB after the Governor’s office told KOB 4 that the lines were just “Republican talking points.” The office also claimed, “The state is not forcing anyone to stand in a crowded line, as you suggest.”
Stelnicki is also well-known for calling the Republican Party a “death cult” that wants more New Mexicans dead of the virus.
“You don’t have to ask the death cult their opinion or publish their quotes. False equivalence now is actually life or death. There is no ‘both sides’ to this. There is one group preaching accelerated illness & death because they ‘love’ ‘business’ & if you can’t see through that?” he wrote.
After Stelnicki’s announcement, Lujan Grisham claimed she was “lucky” to have him. “His intelligence and strategic thinking have helped in countless tough moments, and he has played a key role in our collective, ongoing push to better serve New Mexicans through good, proactive government,” she wrote.
Stelnicki’s departure is just the latest in a long line of other administration officials jumping ship, including cabinet secretaries, senior advisors, regulatory personnel, among others.
MLG’s spokesman who called GOP a ‘death cult’ quits over mental health Read More »