Trump

His racism against Mexican/Latino men, women and children should always be remembered in this famous quote.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) 

The Best Way

The APS Board bit the bullet and forced a resignation of the hapless new School Superintendent Luis Valentino.  He showed the good sense to get out of town with an unspecified buy out, which when he was hired said he would never ask for.  But, this was the best possible outcome.

Now Secretary of State Diana Duran should also resign, on her own, before her life becomes even more complicated than just having a gambling addiction.  She should do it immediately to save us all some tax payer money on further investigations.  Trust in the system governing voting and campaign reporting needs to be rebuilt.

And, Governor Susana Martinez had better get a wide ranging consensus on who she would appoint to serve out Duran's term in office.  For everyone's sake it better be a bipartisan appointment of someone who believes in getting people to the ballot box.  We will watch this closely.

And inquiring minds still want to know who ratted out Duran.  Perhaps a fired employee?

Deftly Done

Attorney General Hector Balderas handled the Secretary of State issue very professionally.  It would have been easy to hold a grandiose news conference to blindside the Governor on her good friend's problems.  But he called and briefed her.  Then he sent a news release out on a Friday afternoon about Diana Duran's stupendous alleged gambling and money laundering problems.  Then he left town so no one could get comments from him.  It was deftly done.

It should cut the republican party off at the knees on any charges of grandstanding.  

Questions to Be Answered

Before I begin, look at the front page of the Journal today in which the alleged gambling fiasco and money laundering by the Secretary of State is so prominent.  At the bottom of the front page there is an ad for a casino.  An astounding thing.  Those casinos march on even after causing so much damage to gambling addicts.

Attorney General Hector Balderas's  charges against the Secretary of State Diana Duran are probably going to lead to all kinds of other issues.  Time will tell.  Here is a list of items that I think need some clarification.  Especially given the $450K plus money that was churned through slot machines and tables at our state's numerous casinos.

1.  Where did all the money she had come from? (She reported raising $356K for her last campaign)

2.   Was it all from siphoned campaign funds, or were there other sources?

3.  If she jiggered the campaign reports for herself, did she do it for anyone else?

4.  The Governor's muted response is weird and weak.  Is she somehow vulnerable?

5.  Who tipped off the AG?  That will be a story in itself?

6.  Will the media take a look at the GOP's bad week given the fines paid by Sandia Labs for Heather Wilson's illegal lobbying?

7.  And finally,  guffaw, will the Governor somehow blame this on Bill Richardson?  And will Maggie Tolouse Oliver say I told you so?

House of Slots

Remember earlier this week when, in posting on the APS disaster, that it 'just doesn't get any better than this."?  I was wrong.

Now our republican Secretary of State Diana Duran has been charged with 61 counts of using campaign money for  personal use, and it appears according to AG Hector Balderas, that she used the money in casinos around the state.

If this were a Netflix series it could be called "House of Slots."

Judgement

The famous SCI FI novel, "Childhoods End" by Arthur C. Clarke concerns the arrival of aliens known as Overlords who will prepare the human race for its next jump in evolution.  The Overlords would never approach a civilization unless it showed respect and love for the other lesser species on their Planet.

The actions of Governor Susana Martinez and State Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn in allowing the existence of leg hold traps to obliterate mountain lions and other wildlife is just too much believe.  This is the most cruel and inhumane action anyone could take against native wildlife.  These two officials, both extreme right wing republicans, have shown their true selves in allowing such actions.  We would fail to pass any test by the Overlords for advancement.

They may have a lot of people fooled into thinking they are acceptable public officials, but for many of us who love nature and decency, we know that they are totally lacking in morality.  

Misc.

Of course we can be assured that  the APS School Superiendent will now keep his job since the Chamber of Commerce announced support for him, as well as their bedmates at the Albuquerque Journal Editorial Board.  Now, I am convinced that the Governor's Office is involved in this mess because Susana gets what she wants from those two groups.  It seems logical anyway.

The Governor has just had a giant dent put in her armor, and she probably doesn't realize since she has done nothing.  I mean that the national animal rights groups could well descend on New Mexico because Susana's Game and Fish Commission has just approved the barbaric practice of trapping our indigenous mountain lions in leg hold traps.  This is repulsive to most everyone I know and the Governor just sits and does nothing.  It will backfire soon if she doesn't do something to stop it.

I went out to a shooting range today with a friend to practice long range marksmanship.  He shot at 600 yards, I shot at 200.  I did well with my sixty year old scoped .270 hunting rifle.  He had a state of the art long  range gun and grouped his shots in a four inch circle.I have always been shooting sports kind of guy.  I was a member of the NRA as a kid learning gun safety.  I was an avid upland bird hunter for years and a clay shooting enthusiast.  I got to be pretty good.  But then when the NRA and the unrestricted weaponizing of America took over, I just lost interest.  But as today showed, I didn't lose all of the skill.

We talked out on the range about what it would take to close loopholes in the gun laws.  I said that the shootings yesterday, since it involved journalists, might finally create some velocity on the issue.  Dead school children didn't do it, but pretty young reporters got everyone's attention.  And sure enough there are a lot of journalists crying for action now, rather than just reporting another murder.

Gun Sales

Another crazy disgruntled employee decided to off his coworkers on live Television.  The victims were young TV News employees.  Very sad.  The killer then attempted suicide.  Three dead and one wounded.

The winner in all this will be the NRA and gun manufacturers who will see a surge in fire arm sales.  But, maybe another winner could be a media who will wake up to the gun craziness in this country, now that some of their own are victims.

This whole situation is like being told you have lung cancer and that smoking more tobacco might help.

Astounding

I don't see any real hard evidence yet that Governor Martinez and her hapless Public Education Head Skandera arranged the hiring of the APS school Superintendent.  But I am suspicious that they had their way there only because they are now blaming Bill Richardson for a lawsuit filed against them by the whistle blower at APS that was threatened by the Superintendent.  Remember the Super's email to  Skandera?  The sophomoric quote from them said, "These are false and unsubstantiated claims being peddled by a disgruntled APS employee who served under Bill Richardson and clearly has an ax to grind.” 

This juvenile rhetoric is the signature response to any thing that might harm the Governor's carefully constructed facade.  It is getting pretty nauseating.

And of course, the Albuquerque Journal has totally buried former GOP Congresswoman Heather Wilson's complicity in illegal lobbying for Lockheed Martin's Sandia Labs Management Contract.  It will cost the taxpayers $4.5 million.  If that had been a democrat  there would have been photos and condemning quotes on the front page for weeks.  It just shows how you can not trust the coverage of political news by the Journal Editor Kent Walz.  He is the GOP mascot for New Mexico.

Something the GOP Presidential Presidential Candidates Never Read

I am pretty sure I have violated every one of these.

Grist

It just doesn't get any better than this.  Now we find out that Heather Wilson, our former Congresswoman and stalwart GOP right-winger has cost us dearly.  Lockheed Martin, which exists on federal tax money paid by us folks, will need to pay a $4.5 million dollar fine because they improperly paid Wilson to lobby for them and get them a no bid contract to manage Sandia Labs.  Let's see if this story gets legs.  But she is the ABQ Journal's darling so don't count on it.  And the rest of the media is busy with orgasmic coverage of the APS meltdown to even think much about anything else.

And who can blame them?  If you wrote a novel about this it would get one star ratings on Amazon because no one would find it believable. But, truth is stranger than fiction.

And now we find out this recently APS deputy Superintendent Jason Martinez had even more problems that charges of sexual predation against children.  They include domestic violence and assault with a deadly weapon causing injury.  The DA in Denver is thinking of revoking his bonds and throwing him in the slammer.  But first New Mexico AG Hector Balderas is being quick to say he needs to do an investigation too.

And of course the School Board is stretching out the agony of whether to fire the new Superintendent Luis Valentino.  They won't meet about it until next Thursday after a five hour Sunday meeting.  Odds are that he will resign by the since I am pretty sure he doesn't want to be seen in public....ever again.  Meanwhile teachers have to by their own school supplies.

Deeper and Deeper

The crap gets deeper and deeper at APS after a newly hired deputy superintendent was fired after it was discovered he was a child sexual predator up on charges in Colorado.  The three month tenure of the Superintendent Luis Valentino now looks pretty shaky to me, especially after he blamed his Human Resources Department for the mess, when in fact it looks like he was warned about the situation numerous times.

This has to be an eye opener for the School Board who have backed themselves into a corner by supporting their new pick to run one of the largest school districts in the nation.  The new revelation will weigh heavily on them in a meeting they have scheduled for today.

At the end of the day it is evident that the new APS boss just let it get away from himself as he tried to take over, but he has really blown his credibility and should be given a graceful exit.

In a comment on my post yesterday someone opined that this is why we should have looked for a local person to fill that job.  That is the same kind of thinking that got us Gordon Eden as the new APD police chief.  We can see how that has worked out.

So, if a new search is needed for someone to head the schools, don't just look inside New Mexico, but let everyone with qualifications have a shot at this most important post.  A line on a map shouldn't rule anyone out of the process.

And then we can all put our attention back on the well being and instruction of our students.

Heads Please

When government screws up it is usually no different than when private entities screw up.  Think the recession caused by America's bankers.  That  was a big one.

So is the hiring of a deputy school superintendent charged in Colorado with sexual crimes against children, by the new APS Superintendent.

It is time for heads to roll.  The School Board should find new leadership immediately.

Jared and Josh

Corporate media and corporate America just love it.  Distractions that is.  Think about the amount of airtime and column inches given in the last few days to Jared Fogle of Subway sandwich fame and Josh Dugger of reality TV fame on their sexual crimes.  Celebrity is a two edged sword in modern America.  And that is the way the ultra conservative one percenters and their owned media want it to be.  It keeps people in ignorance in order to ensure profits.

Today there was a story on how 2015 will surely be the hottest year in recorded history.  Our scientists are worried that global heating is happening much faster that originally predicted.  And yet this story will get less attention than Jared and Josh.  And then there is Donald Trump to take up the slack.

Fair is Fair

There are some republican legislators demanding that an independent group look at the long term problems that might occur with the release of hard rock mining waste into the Animas River by the EPA's screw up during remediation efforts.  That is a fair request.  But only if the same legislators demand the same kind of investigation into the long term effects of fracking for increased oil and gas production in the same regions of the state.  Will those Farmington legislators do the right thing in asking for this assessment?  Oh, Hell No, because that would involve profits.  The same kind of profit motives that lead to the mine waste and abandoned mines all over the Rocky Mountains.

Reading

I am an avid science fiction reader and my favorite authors include the regulars like Asimov, Clarke, Haldeman, Baxter, Robert Charles Wilson, Maria Doria Russell,  and many others.  I have read most of everything they written.

I have found a new author, Cixin Liu, a revered Chinese writer whose concepts of the future are bold and innovative.  I am currently on the second book of his beloved Trilogy in China that started with "The Three Body Problem."  In the second volume, "The Dark Forest", in which mankind is trying to prepare for an Alien invasion force that will arrive in four hundred years.  The aliens apologetically let earth know that they really need the planet since theirs has become unlivable because of a dying sun.  They are incredibly advanced are pretty sure they will walk over us.

Liu really lets one in on the the way the Chinese think in his books.  That is, the long term view of everything they undertake.   Not the way we are doing things in this country.  We look to the next quarters profits or the next election in which email is the main issue discussed rather than climate change or poverty.

One of his characters posits,

"The outcome of natural biological evolution requires at least twenty thousand years to manifest itself, but human civilization has just five thousand years of history, and modern technological civilization just two hundred. That means that the study of modern science today is being done by the brain of primitive man."

Now, that is pretty scary when you really think about it.  And one can only wonder if it is worse than that given the state of our politics and media.  Think Donald Trump here, and the news directors and producers of broadcast news.  

Things Won't Work Out

There were a couple of stories in the Albuquerque Journal today that were more alike than not.  One concerns religion and the other concerns mine waste.  In both cases the taxpayers will end up paying because people think things will work out, when they won't.

In the mine waste category we are finally seeing the media stepping up to the fact that the good leaders of Silverton, Colorado did not want mine waste cleaned up under Superfund designations because it might hurt tourism and future mining operations.  They thought things would work out.  Things didn't, and astonishingly some of those leaders are still resisting adding these sites  to a cleanup list.  Real poster kids for the boom/bust cycle of western resource extraction.

And then there are the folks and elected officials in Belen who will use  taxpayer money to keep their religious beliefs front and center on government property in the form of a Nativity scene that is clearly unconstitutional.  They will fight a lawsuit by the Freedom from Religion Foundation, (I am a member), that would seek to keep Christianity in front of all other beliefs on public property.  Things won't work out here either no matter how hard they believe they are right.  So, a priest and a mayor will do everything wrong in pursuing this issue.

So we have a very few people making decisions both inside and outside of government that will end up costing the average taxpayer money and headaches.  

Good for the Goose, Good for the Gander

The only time Governor susana martinez comes out on the side of the environment is when she gets to lash out at the federal government.  Her great  concern over the EPA foul up on trying to clean up abandoned corporate poisonous mill tailings is one more example.  Here is her quote from a press releases.

 “As the river begins to clear up, there are still many questions left unanswered by the EPA,” she said in a written statement. “New Mexicans deserve to know the long-term effects this environmental catastrophe will have on our communities, our agriculture and our wildlife.”

Okay, that 's fair.  But if it is fair for the EPA, why isn't she showing the same concern for foul ups by the oil and gas industry?  Or the coal industry?  Because she is a corrupt politician who takes care of her corporate campaign money spigots.  Of course, you will never see anything from the media that might show this.  They are too busy with their lost dog stories.

I did not make a mistake in not capitalizing the Governor's name.  I do this with george bush, dick cheney and the rest of that crew too.  It is just my way of showing  their ineffectual and disastrous performance as public officials.

Misc.

While all of the republicans whine about Trump, or taxes, or wanting more wars, Hilary Clinton makes a move to get the young people to vote for her by coming up with a reasonable avenue for seeing kids who want college educations can get them.  She is certainly thinking about giving young people who might occasionally wander into a voting booth a little more motivation.  She caught all those other guys flat footed.

And then there are the bail bondsmen in New Mexico who want to make sure things stay just the way they have been in getting people out of jail.  It makes them huge amounts of money and they don't like the idea of reforming the laws that control issues around granting bail.  If the legislature fails to act, then we know exactly who runs the House and Senate Chambers.

Senator Martin Heinrich and Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona have introduced a bill to reform the 1872 mining law.  Good for them.  That that law lets miners take public hard rock minerals out of the ground and pay nothing for it.  Then they leave a mess behind with inadequate bonds to clean up the poison tailings.  It will be interesting to see if our hapless Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn will support the reform.  He is unable to get fair market returns on State Resources when he has to compete against the feds who charge nothing.  That  much revered Senator Pete Domenici always fought against such reform.  Now he has buildings named after him.

Land Office Malfeasance

Is the State Land Office under Commissioner Aubrey Dunn inching towards malfeasance?  One might think so as we watch Dunn stick it to the sportsmen and conservationists in this state.  He is attempting to raise the price for sportsmen to go on to state trust lands to hunt and fish.  A 500% increase has been laid down in order to increase the Land Office's revenue from such activities to around $2 million dollars.  There is no doubt that the Land Office must charge for such activities under the Enabling Act and Constitution.  500% is over the top.

Especially since Dunn  has made no effort whatsoever to raise the revenues that cowboys pay to graze their livestock on these same lands.  But Dunn fancies himself a cowboy and good ole boy, doesn't he?  The grazing fee has not been raised by any decent amount since I served as Land Commissioner back in the 80's and 90's.  The livestock boys really do own the land commissioner.  The total revenue gleaned from grazing is only $6 million a year on about 9 million acres of surface land.  And much of that is now in pretty good shape due to the wet spring and summer.  Think of it, 25 years with out an increase in grazing fees!  And in fairness, that goes for all of the Land Commissioners during that time period.  Commissioners who just did want the headache of extracting a fair market return on grazing lands because the cowboy's lobby is so strong.

And so for a few days of hunting the land office will gouge the Game and Fish Commission, while the real hard users on state land, the cowboys, get away with huge subsidies from the beneficiaries of the trust lands.  That would be the schools of New Mexico.