Albuquerque hero says he's an illegal immigrant

From KRQE-TV.com - The Albuquerque man who is being hailed a hero for chasing down a kidnapper and saving a 6-year-old girl said he's an illegal immigrant. Antonio Diaz Chacón, 23, is now at the center of the debate over illegal immigration."We're just trying to take it all in," said Martha Diaz Chacón, who was translating for her husband. Diaz Chacón, who works as a mechanic, became an instant celebrity with hundreds of news stories written about him across the country and people from coast to coast wanting to send the hero their thanks.Diaz Chacón and Martha, who is a U.S. citizen, have been married for two years. The couple has been living in Albuquerque for four years. Diaz Chacón said he's tried to get his citizenship in the past but stopped after the process became too time-consuming and expensive. Still, he believes there is a reason why he was the one to save the girl Monday night. "Now that everywhere people are attacking immigrants, he thinks this happened for a reason, for people to know that immigrants aren't just criminals," said Martha. Immigrant rights groups are using Diaz Chacón's story to counter the calls for deporting all illegal immigrants. Read more

Share/Bookmark

EP Times Blog: Mexico's Latest National Embarassment...

From the El Paso Times Blog by Joe Rodriguez - The incident that has now circled the world with regards to the what happened in yesterday’s soccer game in Torreon, Coahuila will now hopefully trigger a new cause of action in the country of Mexico against the Drug War. The horrifying events that took place outside the Territorio Santos Modelo stadium yesterday when a gunfight broke out at road checkpoint outside the stadium which lead to panic inside of it will hopefully be enough of a national embarrassment for the president and his administration to go to new extremes to reduce the violence in Mexico. This most recent incident has now affected what was thought to be one of the few last safe havens from the violence in Mexico, soccer stadiums. Now more than ever people will be screaming for action to be taken in the highest levels of the Mexican government. The national sport of soccer is one of the few things that people have to forget about the violent situation that Mexico is going through, at least for a couple of hours each week. Some people will spend a considerable amount of their weekly income to make it out and support their club as for some that is the only thing they have to look forward two every two weeks when the local team plays at home. You take that away or endanger that, you are taking away a big part of some people’s livelihood. Thankfully no one was hurt inside the stadium yesterday evening. It was a cheap lesson taught to a government that will pay a very high price... Read More

Share/Bookmark

Commentary: Pro-Growth Arsenal?

From the Weekly Standard - by Irwin M. Stelzer - As if the economic news is not worrying enough, politicians around the world have decided to make things worse. The Chinese regime treated vice president Joe Biden rudely on his visit to Beijing to discuss economic issues of mutual concern—the rapidly depreciating dollar worries the Chinese, while the too slowly appreciating yuan is on Biden’s list of woes. Here, in America, Republican presidential candidates tripped over one another to display their ignorance of economic affairs, with the entire field promising Iowans and a national television audience never to raise taxes even in the unlikely event that the Democrats agree to cut spending by ten times as much. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama chided Congress for not acting on several trade agreements, neglecting to mention that he has not submitted the agreements for congressional approval lest he antagonize the trade unions. The world’s politicians have no monopoly on mischief making. Warren Buffett, the multibillionaire, weighed in with a complaint that his effective tax rate is too low, lending support to the president’s argument that “millionaires and billionaires” should pay more. Of course, there is nothing to stop Buffett from paying more: since 1843, the treasury has accepted donations “from individuals willing to express their patriotism to the United States.” But the Omaha sage says he prefers to put his billions into private charitable foundations, including three run by his children, because “they will do a better job with lower administrative costs and better selection of beneficiaries than the government.” Oh. But either deliberately or unwittingly he has lent support not to a tax on billionaires, which in any event couldn’t yield enough revenue to affect the rounding error in the nation’s debt load, but to Obama’s plan to raise taxes on individuals earning more than $200,000 per year, and families with annual incomes in excess of $250,000. As the Wall Street Journal points out, “Roughly 90% of the tax filers who would pay more under Mr. Obama’s plan aren’t millionaires, and 99.9% aren’t billionaires.” Read more

Share/Bookmark

Rep. Maxine Waters: 'The tea party can go straight to hell'

From the Los Angeles Times - Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) came out swinging against Republicans in Congress on Saturday as she addressed the unemployed during a forum in Inglewood. The event occurred a day after new statistics were released showing that California's jobless rate last month went up to 12%, from 11.8%. California now has the second-highest rate of unemployment in the nation, trailing only Nevada at 12.9%, and its jobless rate is well above the U.S. average of 9.1%. Waters vowed to push Congress to focus on creating more jobs. "I'm not afraid of anybody," said Waters. "This is a tough game. You can't be intimidated. You can't be frightened. And as far as I'm concerned, the 'tea party' can go straight to hell." More than 1,000 people attended "Kitchen Table Summit," which was designed to give the jobless an opportunity to vent to elected officials and share their struggles about finding a job. Read more

Share/Bookmark

Oklahoma Pre-season #1 with QB Landry Jones

Landry Jones
NewsNM note - The Oklahoma Sooners led by former New Mexico all-state quarterback from Artesia Landry Jones is the top ranked Division I college football team according to Associated Press rankings.
Tulsa World - Oklahoma starts the college football preseason ranked No. 1 in the Associated Press Top 25. It's the 10th time the Sooners are No. 1 in the preseason poll, but the program's first time since 2003 to open a season at the top. Oklahoma received 36 of 60 first-place votes and got 1,464 poll points, just ahead of No. 2 Alabama, which got 17 first-place votes and 1,439 points.
No. 3 Oregon received four first-place votes, No. 4 LSU received one and No. 5 Boise State got two. Oklahoma State is ranked No. 9, just behind No. 8 Texas A&M. Nebraska is No. 10 and Missouri No. 21. Texas is unranked in the preseason for the first time since 1998. Florida State, the Sooners' second opponent on Sept. 17 in Tallahassee, is No. 6. That's Seminoles' highest preseason ranking since 2004 when they opened at No. 5. The Sooners and Crimson Tide also rank No. 1 and No. 2 in the USA Today Coaches Top 25, released two weeks ago. The coaches poll is one of three components in the Bowl Championship Rankings, which will debut in October. The AP crowns its own champion, and its top 25 is not part of the BCS system. Read full story here: News New Mexico

Share/Bookmark

The Week in Review

We began the week with news that three elected officials sent to Washington by the citizens of New Mexico have decided they will not have town hall meetings with constituents back home for the time being. Those on the dodge are: Martin Heinrich, Tom Udall, and Jeff Bingaman. According to the Udall and Heinrich camps, security for these events is expensive and besides, they are too busy working on job creation ideas to meet face-to-face with New Mexico citizens. There is no explanation on the hiding reasons of Obamacare ramrod Jeff Bingaman. The theory is Bingaman retiring at the end of next year with a full pension and sees no reason to provide explanations for his votes.
On the other hand, Representatives Ben Ray Lujan and Steve Pearce are facing the music. Both are looking constituents in the eye when they demand explanations. Only time will tell if his decision to dodge constituents will damage Martin Heinrich’s chances to win a Senate seat. With Tom Udall’s re-election efforts out to 2014, he has some hope that disappointment over his constituency dodging decisions will fade. Gutlessness has a long history of paying dividends……at least in politics.

Capitol Report New Mexico ran an interesting story documenting the level of taxpayer subsides per passenger at some of the state’s rural airports. Alamogordo topped the list of towns with the largest passenger subsidies. Averaging less than two passengers a day at the Alamogordo airport, taxpayers are funneling more than $3,100 per ticket for passengers there. Can you say “pork?”
Just as reports from the southern hemisphere revealed there are record cold temperatures in New Zealand (following record cold temperatures here last winter), we received news that Evergreen Solar went belly up in Massachusetts. The bankruptcy filing came despite $58 million in “green job investments” in Evergreen by that state. Amazingly, Governor Deval Patrick said he does not regret losing that much of the taxpayer’s money. Another report from Seattle showed that $20 million in federal grants to provide “green jobs” through the retrofitting of 2,000 homes, yielded just fourteen jobs (mostly administrative) while a whopping total of 3 homes were actually retrofitted. There seems to be no end to stories of record cold temperatures around the globe in 2011 while America continues to borrow and blow taxpayer dollars in the name of saving the planet from global warming.
Speaking of government waste, Rio Grande Foundation Executive Director Paul Gessing released a well written expose on the biggest white elephant in the history of New Mexico this week. The financial disaster known as the “Rail Runner” continues to be the New Mexico train wreck that keeps on taking. After we talked about Gessing’s column on the show on Thursday we were reminded by a physician and loyal listener that Governor Richardson’s original transportation nightmare investment in Eclipse Aviation was also a disaster. Our staff did a little homework on Eclipse Aviation and found that it’s CEO (and the company itself) were both contributors to Richardson’s campaign coffers. The New Mexico taxpayer’s loss was $20 million on that deal.
We noticed a little rumbling within the rank and file of AFSCME in the state. AFSCME is public employee union organization. It seems that some local members were upset that AFSCME endorsed town hall averse Martin Heinrich without much consideration of the Hector Balderas candidacy for U.S. Senate. We will have AFSCME’s Carter Bundy on the show Tuesday to explain the advance endorsement of Heinrich by AFSCME and the reaction by some of the locals.
Hector Balderas
And finally, we took note of the fact that after considering the near 50% dropout rate and the non-college bound students exiting high schools in New Mexico, that 83% of those remaining needed some form of remedial education work before entering college. The only thing clearer than the absence of aggregate academic achievement is the anticipation that the entrenched power structures in public education will tell us the solution to this sticky problem is more taxpayer money.
Our guest list for the show next week is terrific. We have state GOP Executive Director Bryan Watkins on the show Monday. Steve Henke of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association and Carter Bundy will join us Tuesday. Dalene Hodnett from the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau is scheduled for Wednesday. Jay Lininger from the Center for Biodiversity will be on Thursday. And Representative David Doyle from Albuquerque will return to the show again to finish out the week with us on Friday.

Share/Bookmark

Berry Vetoes Bill Calling for Fed Probe of APD

Richard Berry
KRQE - Mayor Richard J. Berry is not happy about the idea of a possible federal probe of the Albuquerque Police Department and a string of police shootings. Thursday he vetoed a bill from the Albuquerque City Council that asked for the U.S. Department of Justice to meet with APD to see if it needs to open an investigation. A few weeks ago the council narrowly endorsed the call by several community groups for the feds to come. But in the end, the council vote and the mayor's veto really do not mean much. There have been 19 shootings since January of last year, 13 of them deadly. In September the mayor paid an outside firm $60,000 to look into what the police department could do better to cut down on the shootings. He said his office is already tackling the issue and that is one of the reasons he vetoed the council's request. Berry also said there is no need to call in the feds, because they are already holding meetings in Albuquerque to see if they need investigate APD. The DOJ said they held the meeting at the request of citizens and community groups, not the city council. Berry said the council asked for something to be done, but the wheels are already in motion with the outside firm. Read full story here: News New Mexico
Share/Bookmark

Thanks to Oil and Gas, Hobbs Gushing Tax Revenue

KOB TV - One New Mexico city is generating sales tax revenues lately that are outpacing some cities with populations more than two and a half times its size. Two straight months of record tax revenues show Hobbs is now generating more money than places like Rio Rancho, Roswell and Farmington which all have much larger populations and higher tax rates. Oil and gas is still the corner stone of the Hobbs economy, but officials got the suprising numbers that show other sectors are driving large tax revenues. "Commerce is absolutely great in Hobbs and one of our first indicators is out gross receipts tax distribution from the state," said Grant Taylor of the Hobbs Chamber of Commerce. Just this week, Hobbs received a record $5.4 million in sales tax distribution. That beat last month's all time record of just over $5 million. "In fact, what that does for us, that ranks us 4th in the state for gross receipts tax distribution to municipalities," explained Taylor. Read full story here: News New Mexico
Share/Bookmark