San Juan County Jail official resigns after Las Vegas fling in county vehicle

From KOB-TV.com - By: Shaun Griswold, KOB.com - San Juan County officials are reevaluating its take home vehicle policy after one county employee took his work car on vacation. Our media partners at the Farmington Daily Times report David Stark, former chief of security at the San Juan Adult Detention Center took his girlfriend to Las Vegas, Nevada in his county owned vehicle. Stark resigned from his position on Thursday to avoid a termination hearing. Read more
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Obama to propose $1.5 trillion in new tax revenue

From the Santa Fe New Mexican.com - WASHINGTON (AP) — by JIM KUHNHENN - Drawing a bright line with congressional Republicans, President Barack Obama is proposing $1.5 trillion in new tax revenue as part of his long-term deficit reduction plan, according to senior administration officials. The president on Monday will announce a proposal that includes repeal of Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest taxpayers, nearly $250 billion in reductions in Medicare spending, $330 billion in cuts in other mandatory benefit programs, and savings of $1 trillion from the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, the officials said. Read more
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Chihuahua officials aim to improve tainted Juárez image through festival

From the El Paso Times.com - by Marisela Ortega Lozano - As victims of violent crimes in Juárez keep piling up, Chihuahua and Juárez authorities launched the 7th edition of Chihuahua International Festival, in Juárez, Saturday afternoon. "We want to throw again Juárez image throughout the world," Chihuahua's Governor César Duarte said in a statement. "The human being must be told apart from other species on Earth trough fine arts," Duarte said. The governor kicked off the festival alongside with Juárez Mayor Héctor Murguía and several officials, at Paso del Norte Convention Center in Juárez, near Las Américas international bridge. "The world must be aware about a Juárez image of life, values, full recovery, and harmony through culture and arts," Duarte said. "We are making a bet on this festival for a hope of a better future for this heroic city," he added. As Duarte spoke, several gunmen shot at a truck driven by a Juárez policewoman Saturday afternoon. The pick up truck, driven by officer, 33-year-old Rubí Ruiz Velásquez, who died, crashed into a cinder-block wall in southeastern Juárez during the attack. Read more
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Rex Murphy: The media’s love affair with a disastrous president

From the National Post - As the bad economic news continues to emanate from the United States — with a double-dip recession now all but certain — a reckoning is overdue. American journalism will have to look back at the period starting with Barrack Obama’s rise, his assumption of the presidency and his conduct in it to the present, and ask itself how it came to cast aside so many of its vital functions. In the main, the establishment American media abandoned its critical faculties during the Obama campaign — and it hasn’t reclaimed them since. The media walked right past the decades-long association of Obama with the weird and racist pastor Jermiah Wright. In the midst of the brief stormlet over the issue, one CNN host — inexplicably — decided that CNN was going to be a “Wright-free zone.” He could have hung out a sign: “No bad news about Obama here.” The media trashed Hillary. They burned Republicans. They ransacked Sarah Palin and her family. But Obama, the cool, the detached, the oracular Obama — he strolled to the presidency. Read more
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City Fines Christians $300 For Holding Bible Study In Their Home

From Gateway Pundit.com - No, this is not Iran or Pakistan were talking about…This is happening right here in the United States! The City of San Juan Capistrano, California is demanding that a Christian couple purchase a permit to hold a Bible study group in their home. They’ve already been fined. The couple insists, “There’s no singing or music. It’s meditative.” World Net Daily reported: Chuck and Stephanie Fromm already have been fined $300 for holding Bible studies for their friends at their home, and they face the potential for additional fines of $500 for each study held, according to a legal team taking their case to court. The newest conflict over Bible studies in homes in America arose in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., where city officials say city code section 9-3.301 prohibits religious organizations in residential neighborhoods without a conditional-use permit, a sometimes very expensive procedure. The code cites “churches, temples, synagogues, monasteries, religious retreats, and other places of religious worship and other fraternal and community service organizations.” But a Bible study in a home? Read more
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Albuquerque Has It's Own Buffett

Omaha World Herald - He's an octogenarian businessman who enthusiastically goes to work every day, owns a successful company, has deep family roots in Omaha and has been a stockholder in Berkshire Hathaway Inc. for more than 50 years. His name is Buffett. But this is George, first cousin of the more famous Warren. At age 82, George Buffett is a success in his own right, with parallel careers in business and politics in his adopted home state of New Mexico. He was an early investor with his cousin and kept his Berkshire stock while building a business that started with machines that make snow cones and cotton candy.
George Buffett
He was an alternate delegate at the 1952 Republican convention that nominated Dwight Eisenhower for president, although he favored Robert Taft instead. He battled what he calls "crooks" in the New Mexico Legislature and suspects political enemies set a fire that nearly burned up his business. His piñon nut brittle candy is praised by fans on the Internet. "I'm doing it my own way," George Buffett said. Read full story here: News New Mexico
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Union and Liberal Activists Urged to Gear Up

KOB - TV - Democratic lawmakers are urging labor unions and liberal activists to start gearing up for next year's legislative elections. Rep. Brian Egolf, a Santa Fe Democrat, told a labor rally at the Capitol on Saturday that Democrats are facing a "mighty headwind" going into the 2012 election season. The rally was held as the Legislature met in a special session to draw new boundaries of congressional, legislative and other districts for elective offices. Egolf said next year's legislative elections are particularly important for Democrats because the House and Senate can serve as a check against the policies of Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, whose term runs through 2014. Read full story here: News New Mexico
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Win One for the "Fibber"


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Open for Business: Joblessness Rate Continues to Fall in NM Bucking National Trend

Susana Martinez
KOB - TV - New Mexico is bucking the national unemployment trend. The Bureau of Labor statistics report the jobless rate decreased a tenth of a point to 6.6 percent in August and fell 1.9 percent from the same time in 2010. The national unemployment average was unchanged between July and August at 9.1 percent. New Mexico was one of 12 states to report unemployment decreases over the previous month compared to 26 states which reported unemployment increases. Read full story here: News New Mexico
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The Week in Review

In an article that ran in the Santa Fe New Mexican we learned that the twenty-four positions in the “Public Relations” department of the governor’s office have been eliminated. Apparently, unlike her predecessor, Martinez is more confident her constituents will know whether or not she is doing her job without employing an army of fifty-one people on the payroll to explain things to them.
With a strong consensus in Santa Fe that the Special Session is slow moving, Representative Brian Egolf decided to offer his views on the process. It would seem tht Egolf resents the fact that most of the GOP was growing tired of standing around while Ben Lujan and Michael Sanchez bottled up all legislation and dominated re-districting. Accordingly, Egolf decided to quote from the book of Matthew in the Bible on the floor of the House. We actually think the Book of Job would have been more appropriate for the GOP, but what the hell.
Several news stories exposing the horrific operating record of the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions surfaced this week. First, Senate Democrats accused Governor Martinez of engaging in “risky business” because she wants to tap into state reserves to replenish the funds the Workforce Solutions Department uses to pay unemployment claims. While the addition of new money is going to have to come from somewhere, apparently some Senators in the Democratic Party find it to be a much less “risky” proposition to simply reach into employer’s reserves rather than those held in Santa Fe by state government.
And it was with a great sense of irony that we ran across a U.S. Department of Labor report on Thursday that showed that New Mexico ranks 3rd amongst all states in improper payments of unemployment claims. According the federal government findings, New Mexico’s Department of Workforce Solutions shells out more than $60 million a year for bogus claims. And of course this gaudy total does not include a claim being paid to a disgraced former state Corrections Department employee who plead guilty to 30 counts of taking bribes. It would seem under current laws in the state if you lose your job because you were stealing from the government, you can simply go to the Department of Work Solutions and get your replacement cash there. Thus far we have not seen a single politician on either side of the aisle call for an immediate and complete overhaul of a state department that discourages work, rewards idleness, and punishes every employer and working person in the entire state. Workforce Solutions? Hardly.
In a story that illustrates why the incentive structures for schools and teachers should be taken away from the government monopoly and put into the hands of the consumers, the state announced plans to check for possible cheating by teachers. It seems that some teachers may be changing student test scores. The state says it will now spend about $70,000 on an "erasure-analysis program" to check for suspiciously high numbers of erasures on standardized tests. Adjusted for inflation, we spend three times as much on the government run education monopoly as we did a few decades ago. And of course we get less for more. Read rest of column here: News New Mexico
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