Mayor's Race, Toyota and the Carpet Guys

There was a lot of coverage in the media this morning about the Mayor's race in Albuquerque and controversy over the nominating signatures of candidate Judy Espinosa. See my blog earlier this week about that whole process. I can't support Judy's backdoor attempt at getting qualified for the ballot by going to court to get her paltry few signatures approved. Why didn't she just collect enough signatures so that she could qualify like everyone else? I don't think this is helping her candidacy that much because it shows a lack of planning and execution.

I got an email early today about Eric Griego holding a news conference about setting up wireless Internet Service for the city. I thought that showed some good thinking on his part, although wireless is only a partial answer. It really is an amenity, but a good one.

Then two hours later I got another email saying the news conference was cancelled. The word cancelled was incorrectly spelled. Of course, I never misspell in this blog, do I?


There are eye opening stories on the business page of the New York Times today about Toyota and their business philosphy. Read it here and here.

Essentially, Toyota's expected profits were down a bit because amongst other things they are investing in hybrid engine technology. The key word is investing here. You know, research and development. We used to do that in American industry.

The Times says, "A strong yen, high steel prices and investment in hybrid engine technology forced profits down for the second consective quarter. Kurt Sanger, Japan automotive analyst from Macquarie Securities and other analysts predicted that Toyota’s profits would start rising again in the second half of this year."

I had a great conversation last week with a very successful businessman who said the entire management team at General Motors should be fired for being stupid. My son Justin said pretty much the same thing after attending a meeting in Washington at which a GM manager gave a speech that made him look clueless about the future of transportation. Add to that the bottom line mentality over the next quarters profits and it looks like the American automobile industry might be doomed.


Well, the carpet guys are here. This a picture of Jose and his partner who are full time employees of the carpet company I am using. They are both from Michocan, Mexico and have been working with the company for five years. They are doing work that many Americans won't do and they say are happy to be doing it. There was a great article in the New York Times today about the plight of retired Mexican workers. While most of these workers have paid taxes for Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid they likely will not get any benefits. How fair is that? Read the story here.


They will be working here for two days and they are working very hard.They managed, somehow to cram all of the furniture from two bedrooms, the dining room, and living room into the kitchen.