Richardson has clear plans for future nuclear budget

Editor,

I personally don't see anything contradictory or wrong in Gov. Bill Richardson's statement as a presidential candidate about wanting to chop $57 billion off the nuclear weapons budget or as governor asking for some of Los Alamos budget cuts to be reinstated.

The latter he is supposed to do and probably his staff did so at the request of the laboratory administrators. To me, this is all very refreshing, and I surmise that the real Richardson is the candidate who has seen the light in continuing such profligate nuclear spending unabated. Perhaps this is some kind of new epiphany he has undergone in the wake of his many successful speeches about his exit-Iraq-now strategy, which has been published and quoted very widely and is far more advanced and well thought out as a plan than any of the other candidates' plans.

The GOP response was a predictably indignant non-sequitur, as if to say in shocked high dudgeon, "How dare any major politician question the squandered billions Los Alamos National Laboratory is wallowing in, like a hog at the public spending trough?"

The next governor's press conference might clarify all of this.

Stephen Fox

UNM alumnus