Vote Complaints from Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS -- Some voters in Boulder City complained on Monday that their ballot had been cast before they went to the polls, raising questions about Clark County's electronic voting machines. Voter Joyce Ferrara said when they went to vote for Republican Sharron Angle, her Democratic opponent, Sen. Harry Reid's name was already checked. Ferrara said she wasn't alone in her voting experience. She said her husband and several others voting at the same time all had the same thing happen. Read more here:

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Voter Fraud Reports Piling In

From the Sun Journal - New Bern, NC - A Craven County voter says he had a near miss at the polls on Thursday when an electronic voting machine completed his straight-party ticket for the opposite of what he intended. Sam Laughinghouse of New Bern said he pushed the button to vote Republican in all races, but the voting machine screen displayed a ballot with all Democrats checked. He cleared the screen and tried again with the same result, he said. Then he asked for and received help from election staff. “They pushed it twice and the same thing happened,” Laughinghouse said. “That was four times in a row. The fifth time they pushed it and the Republicans came up and I voted.” M. Ray Wood, Craven County Board of elections chairman, issued a written statement saying that the elections board is aware of isolated issues and that in each case the voter was able to cast his or her ballot as desired. Read more here:

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What We Can Learn From Tejanos y Tejanas

Rob Nikolewski
From CapitolReportNew Mexico.com - Paul Gessing of the Rio Grande Foundation talks about that state on the other side of the Rio Grande — Texas — in one of his recent posts on http://www.errorsofenchantment.com/: First and foremost, it is worth noting that the two main traits of the Texas economy that differ from New Mexico are 1) lack of an income tax; 2) less onerous labor union laws in Texas. And right now that combination has made the Lone Star State one of the few states in the nation where the Recession From Hell has been pretty mild. As Rich Lowry of the National Review points out: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 214,000 net new jobs were created in the United States from August 2009 to August 2010. Texas created 119,000 jobs during the same period. If every state in the country had performed as well, we’d have created about 1.5 million jobs nationally during the past year, and maybe “stimulus” wouldn’t be such a dirty word. read more here:
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Kicking the Competitition Out of New Mexico

From the New Mexico Independent - National Health, Aetna, John Alden, and Principal all have told the state’s Division of Insurance that they will no longer write individual or small group plans in New Mexico, according to a Public Regulation Commission spokesman. Some companies discontinuing coverage will renew their customers’ existing policies, but some will not spokesman Gerald Gardner told The Independent. The companies say they need to make adjustments in their business to accommodate the nation’s new federal health care law, which forces them to expand coverage by forbidding them to deny coverage to children with preexisting conditions, among other measures. Several of the state’s largest insurers are already severely restricting new child-only policies. “After careful consideration of the recently enacted federal healthcare legislation, National Health Insurance Company has determined that it will not be able to meet the requirements set forth by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010,” president Charles Harris wrote in a letter announcing the decision. Read more here:
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Our Contemptible Congress

Walter Williams
Most people whom we elect to Congress are either ignorant of, have contempt for or are just plain stupid about the United States Constitution. You say: "Whoa, Williams, you're really out of line! You'd better explain." Let's look at it. Read more here:

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Editorial: Colleges great, but out of hand

From the Santa Fe New Mexican.com - So was a collective veil lifted from lawmakers' eyes? Seems so; at a meeting of Legislative Finance Committee members Friday came a revelation that New Mexico has too many colleges. How 'bout that? Seven four-year schools and 18 or so two-year colleges later, legislators from both parties acted is if they agreed that something's got to be done about the soaring costs of public-supported higher education. B-b-but what can be done? Here we have all these colleges and universities, each headed by elected boards of trustees or governor-appointed boards of regents, all — or mostly all — providing educational service to a state sorely in need of it. As long as oil-and-gas revenues were rolling in, representatives and senators from one end of the state to another made it a point of pride to say he or she wrangled this or that many millions during the legislative budget sessions. Now, through little fault of the colleges, the money supply has gone dry. But because so many boardmembers and administrators built so many academic empires, they and the Legislature face a grim reality. To the credit of pro-education, but fiscally realistic legislators like Sen. John Arthur Smith of Deming, there's at least a possibility that the next Legislature will take the least painful approach: budget-cutting where services are being duplicated. Read more
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NM steps up as insurers curb policies for sick kids

From the New Mexico Independent - by Trip Jennings - Four of the state’s major health insurers plan to limit the number of new insurance policies they write for children with preexisting conditions, prompting the state to take action earlier this month to ensure youngsters potentially affected won’t go without health coverage. New Mexico threw open the doors of its high-risk pool to youngsters upon learning that the insurers were, in effect, largely walking away from writing new child-only insurance policies. The nation’s new health care law prohibits insurers from denying coverage to children under 19 with preexisting conditions, but insurance companies fear that means families with sick kids could sign up for policies right before extremely expensive treatments, leaving them with no choice but to cover the sky-high bills. Read more
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Censorship Shovel: NPR Digging Deeper and Deeper

Mona Charen
From National Review by Mona Charen - I appeared on the public-radio program On Point this week with National Public Radio ombudsman, Alicia Shepherd, and listened to her defend NPR’s firing of Juan Williams. NPR, the listener is invited to conclude, has no bias, but Juan Williams, a liberal with occasionally heterodox views, is too conservative for NPR. Ms. Shepherd was in an impossible position and seemed to know it. Right out of the box, she acknowledged that the “manner” of Williams’s firing — a phone call with no face-to-face discussion permitted — was wrong. The actual termination, she went on to assert, was completely justified. It wasn’t just what Juan Williams said on The O’Reilly Factor but a “pattern” of comments over the years. This was the “last straw.” Read more here:

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Cradling Minnows and Kicking Family Values Part I

Rachel Pulaski
By Rachel Pulaski - Jeff Steinborn (D) 37th District State Representative, land conservationist and Director of the Southern NM Wilderness Alliance is campaigning for re-election. Recently Jeff attacked his opponent Terry McMillan M.D. (R) in his first campaign flier. In the flier Jeff Steinborn accused Terry McMillan of not paying his property taxes on time. Soon after Mr. Steinborn made these allegations public his opponent’s wife Jodie McMillan was forced to come forward revealing her personal and private information in order to defend her husband’s good name. This is Mrs. McMillan's statement regarding Mr. Steinborn allegations:
“As the spouse of Terry McMillan MD candidate for State Representative District 37, I was saddened and disappointed at the content of the first mailer from Jeff Steinborn’s campaign. The mailer represents a weak personal attack, which is unfounded in the facts. My father passed away last Oct., and with the inheritance, I retired the debt in Nov. Because of the timing of the transactions, the escrow account was closed before the Nov. property tax was paid. When I was notified by the county tax assessors, I paid the taxes promptly. It is a sad sign of the times that political campaigns focus on tawdry personal attacks rather than open discussions of the issues. My hope it that in the future, Jeff Steinborn’s campaign will focus on the issues that concern New Mexicans; our poor economy, joblessness, high taxes, border control”. - Jodie McMillan
What type of man criticizes a bereaving daughter, especially on the basis of a 30 day late payment regarding a deceased father’s estate? Mr. Steinborn obviously has never been late making a payment on anything, at least one would think after making such a brutal and insensitive attack. I find this disheartening coming from our State Representative, it shows a serious disconnect with the general public and a blatant lack of respect for family values and privacy. Does he honestly think the citizens of this state care about a 30 day late payment? Since the recession, many New Mexicans have been late paying their bills or are having problems making their mortgage payments on time; some residents are even losing their homes to foreclosure. New Mexicans are suffering and struggling to feed their families, meanwhile Jeff Steinborn is mocking it. These are real issues Mr. Steinborn and not ones to be satirized.


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Teague to Appear on NewsNM

Harry Teague
Congressman Harry Teague will appear as our guest on News New Mexico on Wednesday October 27th at 8:00am. Teague is a freshman Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives. He faces former Congressman Steve Pearce in his first re-election bid. Please e-mail your questions for Congressman Teague to contact@newsnm.com

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