Tijerina

I was on active duty with the New Mexico Air National Guard at Camp Douglas Wisconsin in 1967 when Reies Tijerina  pulled off his courthouse raid in Tierra Amarilla in his quest to get Spanish Land Grants restored to northern New Mexicans.  (I doubt they would have agreed to go back in history a little more and give those lands to the original Native American residents.)

Governor Cargo had just visited our summer encampment and returned via Air Force Jet to 'manage' the crisis by sending anti aircraft tanks into the state's northern forests.  A bit much even in those days.

I always thought Tijerina was a mixed bag.  He seemed a loose cannon to me, although his charisma and rhetoric were impressive.  I ended up covering him as a news man a few years later, before his anti semetic era, and couldn't help finding myself admiring his skill in calling for social justice.

At one point Tijerina started something called 'Brotherhood Awareness Week.'  I was supposed to moderate a half hour TV discussion between Reies and the Albuquerque Chief of Police at the time. The tension was so thick in the studio between Tijerina's supporters and police officers that I thought there would be trouble.  We started the videotaped show and it was pure hell getting those two to say anything to each other.   After 30 agonizing minutes as the show was about to wrap up, a production assistant ran in from the control room and said, "We forgot to roll the tape!"  It was like being told we had to walk through the gates of hell for a second time.   It actually provided a little comic relief and when we started over again the words came a little easier for everyone.

Tijerina was a man of his times and one that continues to fascinate people to this day.

The Invisible Happening

Tuesday the New Mexico State Legislature will convene.  Men and women from across the state will show up for this sixty day session with some ideas on passing new laws or repealing old ones.  They are all very busy but won't accomplish much because of special interest groups who spend money on friendly lobbyists who take said lawmakers to lunch everyday.  It has always worked that way, but now the influence of money is even more pervasive.

But the real issue here is that more than ever our citizens, even the 20% who might vote, will be mostly ignorant of what goes on there.  I think they just don't care or remember that the session is even occurring.  And the local media will only cover the hot button issues, like so called "Right to Work".  These are manufactured attention getters to keep people in the dark about other more important issues.  Those few journalists who are around that know how this all works will not be enough to keep us informed.

Speaking of journalists, a great has one died.  Eric McCrossen was an old-time reporter and editorial writer who believed in getting facts correct, being fair, and keeping the public interest in mind.  He always treated people with respect.  Something that is now rare at the Albuquerque Journal where he labored for so many  years.  In those days the opinion pieces, which he edited, stayed on the opinion pages and didn't leak over into the news pages.  But these are different times at that publication.

Eric was a genuinely good guy.  In today's brand of journalism there are fewer and fewer of his type around.

bush cheney rumsfeld

Watching Saturday evening news can be enlightening for the mix of commercials you will see.  Laxatives, drugs that you should ask your Doctor about, hard-on enhancers, and veteran charities.  It is that last one that is the most disgusting.

Some redneck crooner is telling us to give money to the Wounded Warriors charity.  Another commercial is from a large law firm that wants to represent the veterans who want disability payments.(and the law firm gets a third.)  A TV News story features a charity run by a priest that makes veterans into bakery cooks.

What is missing here?  Any explanation on how bush, cheney, rumsfeld and their minions were able to spend one trillion on a war with out spending adequately on returning human wreckage from the 'war for profit.'  Why is the government relying on charity to to take care of veterans?  Because spending money on that doesn't give wartime profits to the defense industry and the likes of Blackstone mercenaries.

Watch those news commercials.  They are pretty revolting.

What?

2014 was the hottest year in recorded history.  As the oceans heat up they may be in danger of dying according to new scientific studies.  And the leadership of the Republican party sees the most important issues as building the Keystone pipeline and repealing health care insurance for Americans.

Where does this all end?  I ask this as our two new twin baby granddaughters get ready to head home after 82 days in the Neonatal Intensive Care unit in Fort Collins.  Science has done wonders for Alex and Katy after they were born 11 weeks early.  We can see that scientific research and development can accomplish much.

If only it could enlighten profit motivated politicians and corporations.  But, astonishingly it doesn't.  And so the only hope left are the enraged parents and grandparents of the world who see the decline in quality of life for their kids and grandkids. 

Getting it done

We had a leak in the water main in front our our home.  The crews got on it within hours and are incredibly efficient and friendly.  I wonder if they would like to go run the Police Department and Mayor's Office.

Food for Thought

My friend Dennis Jett contributed to the New Republic Magazine today.  This is a must read if you have plans for seeing the Clint Eastwood movie 'American Sniper."

What is Worse?

I am having trouble deciding which was the worse news in governance yesterday.  Here are the candidates.

1. The Albuquerque Police Department has proven they really don't give a damn what  anyone thinks of them.  Their action, in throwing out from a police shooting  incident briefing yesterday, a representative from the District Attorney's Office because the DA charged  two officers with murder will go down in history as a 'Fuck You" moment.  Essentially they have said the law and legal direction applies to everyone but them.  I am flabbergasted that this could happen and if the US Department of Justice doesn't march in by the end of the week to take over the department, then we are in trouble.  What must the honest hard working beat cop think about this?  And where is Mayor Berry and the City Council?  Their first order of business this week is to fire the Chief and find someone who can run the department as a professional law enforcement agency.

2. The Bernalillo County Commission went to the most regressive tax, the sales tax, to make up for their incompetence in managing their budget.  The poor will pay and the rich will laugh.  And our sales tax will now be 7.25% in the city of Albuquerque.  Every commissioner who voted for this made a decision that they don't want another elective office in the next ten years.  Let's hope.

The winner between these two disasters in leadership has to be the APD descent into madness.

Misc.

Everyone deserves to be represented in court with the best defense available.  The APD officers charged with murder yesterday are no different.  One of them hired Democratic Party Chairman Sam Bregman to represent him in court.  A lot of people are upset, but that is purely a knee-jerk reaction.  Bregman is a master at getting the press to come to his news conferences to hear his over the top assertions of innocence for anyone he represents.  But that is his job.  So everyone should chill out.  Except one wonders why the media falls for his sucker punch approach to polluting the jury pool.

The Bernalillo County management wants a 3/8 cent increase in the gross receipts tax.  They and their commission have decided that bringing the sales tax to almost 8% might, or might not, be a good idea.  Well, it isn't because of the regressive nature of the tax and their mismanagement of their budget.  But one has to remember that the state legislature has added to this problem by making the cities and counties make up losses for the reduction in food taxes a few years ago.  After a phase in, the local governments are now really screwed.  And the state doesn't give a damn.  It affects Albuquerque too and maybe Mayor Berry, a former legislator, should park himself in Santa Fe during the session and fight for his city.

And then there is the fact that Albuquerque's Mayor and current council, along with a feeble amount of leadership in the  business community are over seeing our city's fall in rankings once again.  So of course at the NAIOP luncheon yesterday many of the developers and builders blame the lack of a so called 'Right to Work' law in New Mexico.  And the Albuquerque Journal spends no time asking for comments from these so called 'leaders'.

Instead they have a fact free and lie filled editorial today about the need for the Keystone pipeline in a time of plummeting oil prices and rising temperatures.

Charged

The only question remaining in the case of the shooting of James Boyd by APD is the story of why it took so long to charge the officers with murder.  The DA got around to that today despite a video that showed quite clearly what happened.  There is a real story here that will unfold over time.

APD Response

We have had a lot of burglaries in our neighborhood over the last three months.  These thieves hit houses with burglar alarms because they know they have time before the police respond to get away.  On Saturday night a home was broken into that had an alarm set off.  The police were called immediately and they didn't show up for 50 minutes.

The neighborhood is getting fed up and many urge us to call APD to get better service.  That probably wouldn't help much, but a call to the Mayor's Office and Councillor Isaac Benton might help.

We have to face the fact that APD is in continued deep trouble.  The tragic shooting of an undercover officer by another uniformed officer this weekend in a $60 Meth sting is just the latest manifestation of a failed organization.  Our political leadership on this is pretty much ineffectual.  That can't be fixed until the next city election, but one action could help things.  The current and woefully inexperienced Chief Eden should bow out of the picture.  Fade into the sunset.  Hasta La Vista!  And then the Mayor can start a nationwide search for new leadership for that department.  Pay a lot if necessary and get things fixed.  Ask for help from every successful police department in the country.  They know how things should work.  In the meantime let's hope all those good, dedicated and hardworking officers stick it out.  And there are a lot of them.

Dark Side

Has the Dark Side has come to Public Service Company of New Mexico?  And I don't mean power outages.  I mean questionable business ethics.  What ever happened to that friendly guy, Reddy Kilowatt?  Was he laid off?

The story in the Albuquerque Journal this morning had it a little wrong.  They said a PNM engineer was fired for cause, when in fact he was really fired for being a whistle blower.  The whistle blower issue did get attention however and it should have.  This will play out in court.

But it is rather astounding that this engineer's sense of right and wrong manifested itself  in the current corruption of corporate America.  The fact that a highly experienced power plant manager would see something wrong in padding the books to get a higher rate of return from the utility's customers is refreshing.  Maybe the Public Regulatory Commission should invite him in for a chat.

I hope this gets a lot more attention from everyone in the media and public interest groups.  Especially from PNM who looks rather dishonest right now.  And I hope PNM can find the leadership to lead the country into new ways of providing power in an ever increasing renewable energy way.

But, as I always point out in PNM's favor.  The lights always go on when I flip the switch.  So their engineers must be doing something right.  So why fire them?

Get Real

I don't like our Governor and her minions, but that doesn't mean when they have a good idea that I will work against it.  State Senator Michael Sanchez should do the same.  He is still fighting the bill that would end social promotion in our schools. Those social promotions almost garuntee lots of future problems with these lagging students.

But if the Governor wants this to pass she also needs to be serious about extra reading and early childhood programs that will make social promotion an unneeded tool.  Mainly I would suggest strong reading programs with faltering kids in the first and second grade.  It has been proven that it works, especially if the parents are part of the solution.  Six weeks of this instruction during the summer would work miracles.

Tax the Journal

The Albuquerque Journal continues their pogrom against the poor.  Now they are supporting the imposition of the gross receipts tax on food, because it will lower the tax rate overall.  Let's do a case study.  A poor mother needs to spend $2000 on food.  Right now she pays no tax on that.  A more well off citizen pays $2000 for a flat screen TV and he pays at a 5% rate....$100 in taxes.

Now reimpose the food tax so the overall rate of 5% can be lowered to 4.5%.  The poor mother will spend $90 in sales tax and the rich guy will get his flat screen for $10 less because his tax will be lower.  That is what such a regressive tax would do.  And it shows the complete disregard by the Journal owners, the Lang Family and their right wing editor Kent Walz, for many New Mexicans.  They seem to forget their favorite leaders have led New Mexico to the bottom of the pile in well being.

I think a pretty good way to get back at the Journal would be to repeal the law that exempts them from having to pay a sales tax on the sale of their newspapers.  Any bright moderate legislator could take this one on.

And the Mayor, business leaders and the Journal are all ganging for the passage of the so called 'right to work' bill.'  Another way to keep wages down for the poor. 

Misc.

Would it be fair to say the upcoming session of the New Mexico Legislature might be chaotic?  Of course it would.  As the republicans  take over the House of Representatives they are cooking  up a recipe for disaster as they remake the committee memberships.  Anyone with a D beside their name will most likely be shuffled off to a committee where they have no knowledge of the issues.  And the institutional knowledge that is so important will be lost.  There is going to be some really bad legislation introduced and possibly passed.  The new Attorney General Hector Balderas will need to keep a close eye on all of that legislation so he will need to quickly hire some attorneys to replace the ones he fired.  Without their eyeballs on the legislature there will be bad laws passed.

Newly minted Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn has cancelled some land auctions meant to stimulate solar energy production on state land.  In a terse announcement yesterday he gave no reason for the cancellations of the bidding process.  Would someone look into at the Albuquerque Journal?  There might be good reasons for this, but we can already see the lack of transperancy at the land office under Dunn's newbie administration.  My guess is that he is doing this for the ranchers who hold the grazing leases on that land.  They probably want undue compensation for giving up their highly subsidized use of the land.  But, hopefully he is just trying to get a bigger chunk of the revenue for the Land Office.  The cowboy hat might be a hint!  We will see.

The Police

I pretty much know what the Mayor in New York is feeling right now.  He is bewildered by the NYPD police force who don't seem to give a damn about the perception they leave about themselves in showing such disrespect to their civilian leadership.  When I was Mayor in Albuquerque I experienced the same attitude from many, but not all, officers who didn't like me bringing in a new chief from the outside.  This behavior should trouble all citizens who have entrusted these men and women with protecting the population.  When such poor judgement is shown with such arrogant behavior then it is frightening.

The shootings of officers in the performance of their duties are now getting more attention than some months ago.  The media seems to be trying to make up for all the bad press that police have recently received.  Some of it was warranted, some was not.  But this is certainly turning into an ever widening rift of police versus community.

A lot of frustration of working people and the poverty stricken might be aimed unfairly at police.  The real problems in this country are not the police but the ever widening division of wealth.  But, the police are making it easy for many to view them suspiciously by turning their backs on the people who citizens voted for in a democratic process.  It is as callous as American corporate treatment of its workers.

Jim King

My longtime friend and native of Albuquerque, Jim King, who lives in Mexico City and runs some entrepreneurial businesses stopped by this morning.  He secretly had been working on a novel for years and it was recently published by Amazon.  It is a horror story based in Albuquerque and is constantly referencing people and places in the city.  Visit his webpage to learn about him and his book.

Tanking Budgets 2015

The news from the Bernalillo County Commission that its budget could possibly suffer a 20% shortfall over the next couple of fiscal years is highly disturbing.  Cutbacks and more taxing would be needed.  But the question is, how did the Commission let it get to this point?  It is a massive failure in their management system that things would get to this point.  County government has always been pretty invisible because there is no one person accountable for occurrences like this one.

And as oil prices continue to fall Governor Martinez's free ride over the last four years will come to an end.  She has a seemingly peculiar lack of management skills on the state level.  It hasn't hurt her so far but I don't think even her pogrom against immigrant's drivers licenses will shield her from criticism for her lack of preparations over the last few months.  Of course the legislature will share in this meltdown.  In fairness, who could see this price decline continuing as it has?  But the Martinez administration looks like the deer in the headlights.

And in the Albuquerque's Mayor's office a feeble bond program shows our victimization by the Marty Chavez administration and their raiding of property taxes to pay for ongoing city operations, rather than using this money for major projects, as was always done.  It is a system that will hobble our city's ability to upgrade public works and projects to make us a player.

It will be interesting to see how everyone handles these frighteningly real budget meltdowns in 2015. Meanwhile those well paying federal jobs still look viable as a cushion, despite the Governor's and Mayor's dislike of government.

The Editor of the Journal

Here is what editor Kent Walz of the Journal and the Lang family think about Americans.  It was written in an editorial this morning.

"Let’s face it. Many Americans just won’t work as carpenters, framers, drywall installers, bricklayers, roofers and painters. They won’t pour concrete or lay adobe. It’s honest work, and the pay is pretty good. But it’s just too hard. It’s easier to collect government bennies, play video games and get subsidized insurance."

This is pretty hard core stuff.  Even for the Journal.  It certainly shows the class bigotry and hate that rules that newspaper's editorial pages.  How can anyone even work there anymore?  Oh, I forgot, they are too lazy to pour concrete.  And, ironically, the Journal wants so called 'Right to Work' legislation to pass to kill unions.  Without unions the pay for concrete pouring jobs will go even lower and why would Americans want those kind of jobs?

Proof?

When will we get proof that our right-wingers really hear from corporations who say they won't move to New Mexico because we don't have so called "Right to Work" laws. They never identify these people and our sap media never asks. They just take it at face value. And so that legislator and apparent working man hater, Sander Rue, who has introduced such legislation should be made to identify those companies that he talked about. There is only one reason for such a law to be passed, and that is to eradicate workers unions.

The new Attorney General, Hector Balderas, has provided proof that he is good at wielding an axe.  His summary firing of over 40 employees was a bit over the top.  It was a PR disaster that really did not have to happen in such a manner.  I am surprised.  He could have asked for everyone's resignation, and then offered to have them apply again to ascertain whether or not they were experienced and efficient state employees.  Yes, they were all at will employees, but little thought was shown in giving them their pink slips.  Some of them probably will walk off with strong institutional memory that Hector could use.  They will also walk off with a real dislike of the new AG.  That didn't have to happen.

Maybe the first person Hector should hire now is an experienced public relations officer who might show him how to do things with class.  

Favorites

My favorite movie of the year was "The Imitation Game".  My other close favorites were "Interstellar, Grand Budapest Hotel, Railway Man, Calvary, and Fury.  All the other movies we saw were popcorn movies, although "Hunger Games" was pretty good.

On TV everything good we watched was on Netflix, Amazon or Hulu.  We have binge watched "Mozart in the Jungle, Alpha House, The Assets, Hinterlands, Black Mirror" and a few others.  I have also enjoyed FX's "American Horror Story."

Our viewing habits are inching us towards dropping the 250 satellite channels for good.  Just doing that would save $150 a month.  And we would put up an HD antenna on the roof to get those few good network shows.  But not until the final season of "Mad Men.'

My best reads were, "Under the Skin, The Bone Clocks, Blood and Thunder, American Elsewhere, Dreamers of the Day, The Three Body Problem, The Martian, A Calculated Life, The Madonnas of Leningrad, and Revival."