Week in Review

Susana Martinez

No doubt the story of the week at News New Mexico emerged on Tuesday when when we linked to a video depicting Governor Susana Martinez' proficiency with a firearm on our site. The video, still available on YouTube, showed Martinez knocking down one iron target after another. She performed the feat in Las Cruces last week after re-qualifying for her "conceal and carry" weapon license. It was an impressive display of marksmanship by the Governor. The video went viral on the Internet within 48 hours of our show. You can see if here if you missed it. We enjoyed played the audio of her bullets hitting their targets all week to the delighted chuckles of listeners all over the state.

We actually began the week posting a profoundly insightful column by columnist and contributor Marita Noon. Her column addressed the importance of having reliable oil and coal energy sources at our fingertips so we can PREVENT all sorts of national disasters associated with loss of electrical power. Noon cited an absurd statement made recently by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The gaffe-prone Reid said coal and oil are “killing” us.

No doubt New Mexico Senators Bingaman and Udall as well as Representatives Heinrich and Lujan agree with Harry Reid, since they vote virtually lockstep with him to drive up traditional energy prices. We cannot wait to see who or what these elected officials blame next, when the naive national energy policies they routinely support continue to make it much more likely that New Mexicans will have to endure energy blackouts and higher gas prices.

Al and Tipper

We saw where Al Gore said if you agree with the premise of the previous paragraph you are just like a “racist.” Enough said. No wonder Tipper told increasingly big Al to hit the bricks.

Early in the week News New Mexico announced an agreement to make the brilliant political cartoons of Tony Branco part of our standard content on this site. We began posting Branco cartoons on Monday courtesy of conservativedailynews.com. We actually sought out the originator of these remarkable cartoons and are thrilled to now be associated with Branco. His talents are boundless and the appearance of his cartoons each day is reason enough to make newsnm.com your homepage. Please tell your friends and family. Each day we find ourselves anticipating what Tony will serve up as much as we do our first cup of coffee.

Charles Ponzi

Texas Governor Rick Perry got in trouble with every media outlet (except Fox News) this week for calling our Social Security program a Ponzi scheme. We decided to look up the phrase, “Ponzi scheme” via an online encyclopedia to see what it says. Turns out the cash flow structures of Social Security are a perfect match for the definition of a Ponzi scheme. We can’t help but repeat that there is a financial boot kicking all working young Americans everyday and maybe we should at least ask our elected officials to remove the steel toes.

In a related story early this week, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was Rep. Ben Ray Lujan’s guest in Santa Fe. Both Pelosi and Lujan are serial Ponzi scheme “deniers.” Predictably they locked arms at a press conference and disputed the fact that the government is actually running a Ponzi scheme. Apparently Lujan and Pelosi wanted to make it clear they believe any effort to gradually reform a bankrupt system is a bad idea.

There was a double dose of bad news for the Obama administration late in the week. First came yet another dismal “no jobs” report that showed that there is no economic fruit to be harvested from the massive Keynesian stimulus plan that was promoted by President Obama. Of course job seekers should not be so simplistic as to blame the impact of the naive economic policies solely on the president. Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Jeff Bingaman, Tom Udall, Ben Ray Lujan, and Senate wannabe Martin Heinrich all voted for the hair-brained borrow and spend schemes too. It truly was a community (organizer) effort.

The second news item that came late in the week could eventually prove equally ominous for various officials in the administration. It seems there is now email evidence detailing the botched “Fast and Furious” gunrunning debacle. And apparently these communications reached the “highest levels” at the White House just before a cover-up ensued. It seems that DOJ and ATF have been trying to obfuscate the facts surrounding the death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

And in what could turn out to be a somewhat related note, a Deming gun store owner and his family were arrested on charges by federal law enforcement officials late in the week. Many suspect, given that operation “Fast and Furious” appears to be nothing more than a botched attempt at tearing down 2nd Amendment rights, that making gun store owners look bad is part of the DOJ plans to further divert attention away from the scandal. All alert observers should take charges filed against these southern New Mexico business people with a huge grain of salt. The burgeoning “Fast and Furious” scandal is now threatening to take down Attorney General Eric Holder and many of his associates. And DOJ and ATF are looking for scapegoats. It would seem that any American business that directly serves those who still “cling to their “bibles and their guns,” are on notice.

Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk issued a decision on Friday concerning a tribal gaming application made by New Mexico businessman (and Bill Richardson confidant), Gerald Peters. Peters, working on behalf of the Pueblo of Jemez, made an application that attempted to take off-reservation advantage of gaping holes in the tax laws that apply to tribes with operations on their reservations. Peters’ group was wisely denied permission to develop a class III gaming facility nearly 300 miles from the Jemez reservation boundaries. With the ruling the Interior Department probably short-circuited a scheme that might have cost the New Mexico state government tens of millions of dollars in lost gaming tax revenues not to mention thousands of jobs in the city of Sunland Park. Huge tax revenues currently come from Sunland Park Racetrack and Casino and surrounding businesses. Had the Peters scheme gained Interior Department approval (and also been allowed to pass by the governor’s desk), the lost gaming tax revenues would NOT have been replaced by the off-reservation casino revenues. Immediately after the ruling, collective sighs of relief could be heard from the city of Sunland Park, New Mexico and other taxpaying entities in the area.

And finally, in what has to be the front runner for the Hypocrites of the Year Award story, the radical environmentalist group “New Energy Economy” filed a ridiculous motion to force the recusal of three Environmental Board members for what it called “bias.” We recall there once was an un-elected EIB that was stacked with completely biased job-killing environmentalists under Bill Richardson. Those zealots managed to do to New Mexico what its elected officials refused to do. The board enacted outrageous “rules” that would have permanently crippled paycheck providing industries all over the state. The radicals justification for insisting on economic suicide can be summed up as follows: They were engineering a unilateral effort to “Save the Planet” no matter what it costs. And now it seems that since the current EIB has silly members that somehow think saving jobs and paycheck writing businesses in the state is more important than propping up a dumb idea, the New Energy Economy types believe there is a “bias” at work. The most comical aspect of this motion is the name of these Kool-Aid drinkers selected for their organization. They are not "new," they know nothing about viable and affordable "energy," and they only thing they can do to the state’s “economy” is…. kill it.

Week in Review