Goldman Sachs and Greece Secretly in Bed

Bloomberg - Greece’s secret loan from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) was a costly mistake from the start. On the day the 2001 deal was struck, the government owed the bank about 600 million euros ($793 million) more than the 2.8 billion euros it borrowed, said Spyros Papanicolaou, who took over the country’s debt-management agency in 2005.

By then, the price of the transaction, a derivative that disguised the loan and that Goldman Sachs persuaded Greece not to test with competitors, had almost doubled to 5.1 billion euros, he said.
.Papanicolaou and his predecessor, Christoforos Sardelis, revealing details for the first time of a contract that helped Greece mask its growing sovereign debt to meet European Union requirements, said the country didn’t understand what it was buying and was ill-equipped to judge the risks or costs. “The Goldman Sachs deal is a very sexy story between two sinners,” Sardelis, who oversaw the swap as head of Greece’s Public Debt Management Agency from 1999 through 2004, said in an interview. Read full story here: News New Mexico

Goldman Sachs and Greece Secretly in Bed

Out on Bond Into Mayor's Office

Capitol Report New Mexico - One of the weirdest elections in the country was held in the little border town of Sunland Park on Tuesday (March 6) as a mayoral candidate who is facing charges of extortion defeated a rival who received a lapdance from a topless woman in his campaign office days before voters went to the polls.

Sunland Park City Hall

Mayor pro tem and city council member Daniel Salinas – the extortion guy — defeated Gerardo Hernandez – the lapdance guy — 637-553 in unofficial results Tuesday night while a third candidate — Jose Luis Hernandez, who is unemployed and whose own parents had a Salinas sign posted in their home – received 66 votes. So how is a guy facing felony charges going to do his job?
“My attorney has to change some of the bond restrictions that we have right now,” Salinas told KVIA-TV Tuesday night. “It might take a couple of weeks when I hopefully can step foot in city hall.”
But this thing may not be over for a number of reasons.
First, New Mexico law forbids anyone convicted of a felony from holding elected office and Salinas is facing charges that he tried to blackmail Gerardo Hernandez into dropping out of the race.
We’ll get to that later because there are a number of other threads to this story. Read full story here: News New Mexico

Out on Bond Into Mayor's Office

Martinez Vetoes Judge's Pension Relief

KOB TV - Gov. Susana Martinez has vetoed a proposal to shore up the financing of pensions for judges and magistrates.
The Republican governor said Tuesday the bill would require taxpayers to pay more for the retirement programs, which receive about half of their funding from court docket fees.
The bill would have increased the government's payroll pension contributions but partly offset that by shifting docket fee money to the state's main budget account, which would cover the employer's pension contributions. Read full story here: News New Mexico

Martinez Vetoes Judge's Pension Relief

Courtesy of Conservative Daily News

     

janice2012.us

Agenda 21 Revisited

Jim Harbison

As many of you know I began to alert the public about UN Agenda 21 last year and began speaking out about the threat it imposes to private property rights and our Constitutional guaranteed freedoms. Many labeled me as just another conspiracy theorist. Unfortunately, many in the community still know remarkably relative little about Agenda 21 and its implications including most of our elected officials.

Agenda 21 is a UN developed plan purportedly about saving the environment - however it is not about conservation. it’s about control. It comprises initiatives that are as insidious as they are ambitious.

Its ideology stresses that “the rights of the people are granted by the government” which is in direct conflict with the American Constitutional concept that the “rights of the people come from God and the rights of government are established by the people”. According to Agenda 21 doctrine American sovereignty is a social injustice and is therefore unsustainable.

It has been implemented, without the approval of Congress, through Presidential Executive Orders like EO12852 and EO13575 and complemented with unchecked bureaucratic agency regulatory zeal. These agency policies have the effect of law. Using the coercive Sustainable Development zoning policies the EPA, HUD, BLM and local governments’ control, regulate, or confiscate private property to force people to move into high density multi-family urban housing complexes. Read rest of column here: News New Mexico

Agenda 21 Revisited

GOP Calls on Egolf to Release Tax Returns

Yesterday the Republican Party of New Mexico called on State Representative Brian Egolf (D-Santa Fe) to release his tax returns and let his Occupy friends see if he pays his "fair share" on his investment income derived from big corporations and Wall Street, or whether he pays the 15 percent Egolf's friends have slammed Republicans for.
The GOP says Egolf inherited his wealth from oil and gas corporate earnings and lives in a Santa Fe mansion and has frequently protested with the "99%" crowd.
"It's disappointing that Democrats are so determined to divide New Mexicans. But for a wealthy trust funder like Brian Egolf to act like he's part of the "Occupy Movement" is hysterical. Rep. Egolf has decided to make class warfare his signature issue, so New Mexicans deserve to see whether Brian Egolf is paying what his liberal friends define as his 'fair share' of taxes," said Republican Party of New Mexico executive director Bryan Watkins.
Watkins said Egolf preached about protecting minority voting rights, while simultaneously pushing to increase the Anglo percentage of his own district to protect himself from a Democratic primary challenge.

GOP Calls on Egolf to Release Tax Returns

Susana Vetoes "Anti-Big Box Store" Bill

Gov. Martinez

From New Mexico Watchdog -In a move that will spark protest from the political left, Gov. Susana Martinez vetoed Senate Bill 9 on Tuesday (March 6) — a piece of legislation that the bill’s sponsor Sen. Peter Wirth ( D-Santa Fe) said would close loopholes on so-called “big box” retailers headquartered outside New Mexico and require them to change the way they pay state taxes. “While proponents of this legislation may have had a few particular corporate targets in mind when pushing for this tax increase, the result would be much broader and raise taxes on businesses like grocery stores,” Gov. Martinez said in a statement. “Increasing taxes on grocery stores, clothing retailers, and home improvement stores, while choosing to cut taxes for a different set of corporations – such as large banks, casinos, payday loan companies, or any other large corporation that pays corporate income tax – is not only misguided and arbitrary tax policy, but it’s also not the way to foster economic growth in New Mexico.  More News New Mexico

Susana Vetoes "Anti-Big Box Store" Bill

Courtesy of Conservative Daily News

     

janice2012.us

Gov. Martinez OKs bill creating medical marijuana fund

Susana Martinez

Carlsbad Current-Argus - SANTA FE - Neither Ripley nor countless New Mexico residents would believe it, but Republican Gov. Susana Martinez signed a marijuana bill on Monday. Martinez, who was a prosecutor for 25 years, spent half her lifetime fighting the war on drugs. She took office as governor after the state already had a law permitting marijuana to be used for select medicinal purposes. Now Martinez has signed Senate Bill 240, creating a medical cannabis fund to cover the program's costs. Producers of marijuana for medical treatment pay the state fees of $10,000 to $30,000 a year, said Sen. Cisco McSorley, who sponsored the bill. Rather than the money going into the state's general spending account, it will be maintained by the Department of Health as a specific fund to pay for administration of the medical marijuana program. "It means the few New Mexico taxpayers who objected to their money going toward the medical marijuana program no longer have to worry," said McSorley, D-Albuquerque. He said he worked on the bill with Martinez's secretary of health, Dr. Catherine Torres, but had no contact with the governor regarding the bill. Read More News New Mexico

Gov. Martinez OKs bill creating medical marijuana fund

The Sanchez Dictatorship is "Highly Partisan"

Steve Fischmann

This is the time of year when soul searching is done by those who make their way to Santa Fe. So what’s behind the recent rash of announcements from elected officials that they are bowing out? The explanations given by Senators who are stepping down in Dona Ana County should serve as a wakeup call.
Both Cynthia Nava and Steve Fischmann are loyal Democrats. They cited a “partisan” atmosphere in Santa Fe as their reason for quitting. A partisan atmosphere?
Two pieces of legislation come to mind.

Mary Helen Garcia

A bill sponsored by Representative Mary Helen Garcia that would have halted the widely discredited practice of social promotion in public schools offers plenty of insight. The bill had bi-partisan support in the legislature for two years and this year was supported by the necessary funding. Unfortunately, the bill had two fatal political flaws. First it required the blessing of self-serving union leaders. Unions tend to be opposed to all educational reform that don’t include more money for…..unions. Second, and more important, the Governor was one of dozens of elected officials working across the aisle in favor of the bill.

Mary Kay Papen

Another bill that contained a simple liability waiver for Spaceport America put the power of the trial lawyers within New Mexico’s Democratic Party on full display. With several hundred million dollars of taxpayer investments already made in the Spaceport, the trial lawyers managed to choke off the bill, which was sponsored by Democrat Mary Kay Papen, who also happens to be from Dona Ana County.

It is a good bet that the departure of Senators Nava and Fischmann reflects their frustration with the highly partisan attitude of Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez. The last two sessions the behavior of Sanchez has bordered on obsession. His actions would not allow any elected officials in his party to work across the isle to accomplish anything that might lead to Susana Martinez getting credit.

Michael Sanchez

Make no mistake about reasons behind several of the resignation announcements from elected officials. Most of the people went to work in Santa Fe in the hopes of finding common ground. And they were completely fed up with the dictatorship of Michael Sanchez. Ultimately these people realize that little can be accomplished as long as Sanchez holds a leadership position. Sadly, the Democratic caucus has enabled Sanchez. And in doing so, they have allowed him to waste a lot of people’s time over the last two years.

The Sanchez Dictatorship is "Highly Partisan"