Albuquerque Mayor elect Berry's transition is a big yawner so far and it may well be indicating his style as a leader. He is not issuing hourly news releases nor is he getting his face on the evening news. One can't even be sure that there is any concerted message being conveyed on the type of administration he will be leading. It certainly won't be a fast paced one even if he wanted it to be. The city budget will not allow it.
The libertarians over at the Rio Grande Foundation have really showed their hand by coming after Lt. Governor Diane Denish. They are accusing her of improperly using federal funds that flowed to the state. This wingnut foundation also sent their mascot, James Scarentino, over to our office at the Natural Resource Trustee to do investigations into how money was spent during the administration of Congressman Martin Heinrich. Martin held this job for about two years before I returned to it. We got a request for public documents from the Foundation. After spending a lot of time and money in assembling them, Scarentino came over and spent 90 minutes looking over them before leaving with no copies. Just a big shoulder shrug. (Scarentino had been fired as executive director of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance when Heinrich was on the board there.)
We can look forward to State Environment Department Secretary Ron Curry sticking around New Mexico for a while. The Obama administration sadly picked another Texan to run Region 6 of the Environmental Protection Agency. Ron was a very strong contender for this position. This administration is falling into the trap of bending over backwards to keep red states happy when in fact those folks will never ever vote for Obama. I plan on saying a lot about this kind of thing in the next few weeks and it won't be pretty.
2 comments:
The same slippery slope that applies to "job category" would apply also to time out. You say one day is not enough, two? three? Any number will be arbitrary and therefore essentially indefensible.
The Rio Grande Foundation is apparently populated by Republicans who realize that their brand name is so depreciated that they have to adopt some other label. I wonder how many of them will ever vote Libertarian, and what tiny percentage voted for anyone other than McCain in the 2008 election.
Even the components of their name - "Rio Grande" and "Foundation" - appear designed to invoke environmental, progressive, or charitable values. Apparently prideful avarice and fearmongering are no longer effective in attracting votes.
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