News New Mexico

Maxine Waters - Ethics Troubles......Bush's Fault

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA)

Embattled Rep. Maxine Waters on Friday blamed the Bush administration for her ethics problems -- saying she had to intervene with the Treasury Department on behalf of minority-owned banks seeking federal bailout funds -- including one tied to her husband -- because the Treasury Department wouldn't schedule its own appointments. The California Democrat said in a Capitol Hill news conference -- an event rarely held during a congressional recess -- that she reached out to then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson in late 2008 when his department failed to respond to the National Bank Association's request for a meeting.The question at this point should not be why I called Secretary Paulson, but why I had to," she said. "The question at this point should be why a trade association representing over 100 minority banks could not get a meeting at the height of the crisis." But the House ethics committee, which is investigating Waters for allegedly improperly using her position for personal gain, says in its report of charges that when the meeting was held, the officers of only one bank came -- OneUnited. Read more here:

Gubernatorial Campaign Finance Update

Diane Denish

Campaign financing sources have been updated through June for both of New Mexico's gubernatorial candidates. Though the amounts collected from her contributors have ballooned, Diane Denish's top sources of support remain the same. Lawyers and lobbyists lead the way for Denish. According to the website: followthemoney.org, the Lt. Governor has received $368,910 from these two intertwined groups in 2010.

Susana Martinez

The funding sources for Dona Ana County District Attorney Susana Martinez come from vastly different segments when compared to Denish. The biggest contributor to the Martinez campaign coffers are home builders. Martinez has received $452,550 from various home builders and only $54,297 from lawyers and lobbyists. The Denish campaign does not even list home builders in its top fifteen sources. Denish has still raised over a million dollars more than Martinez according to the site.

Violence Will Continue on Border

EL PASO -- No region has felt the devastation caused by the Mexican drug cartel wars more than El Paso and Juárez, and the violence is not about to end, a federal agent said Thursday during a conference on border security. The cartels now want to dominate society, said Alonzo R. Peña, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deputy assistant secretary for operations. "We believe it (the violence) is going to continue to climb," said Peña. "What the cartels are doing is no different than what we are seeing in other parts of world. It is barbaric and extreme, and it will continue." Read more here:

A Mass Murderer on His 84th Birthday!

Humberto Finova

While the MSM reports on Fidel Castro’s 84th birthday, Townhall will report on some of the tens of thousands of his countrymen who cannot celebrate birthdays. Seems only fitting. Upon arriving in Havana, Jan. of 1959, after an utterly BOGUS guerrilla war, (The New York Times had breathlessly reported of “thousands dead in single battles!" The official tally compiled by the U.S embassy after two years of “ferocious civil war!" was 184 dead on BOTH sides, half New Orleans' annual murder tally)--at any rate, upon entering the Cuban capitol, the gallant Che Guevara (beaming and strutting over his appointment –Hot Damn!--as Castro’s chief hangman!) immediately recognized the moat around Havana's La Cabana fortress as a handy-dandy execution pit. At Babi-Yar, Hitler's SS had to dig one. Here Che Guevara and Fidel Castro had one ready-made and so they put their firing squads to work in triple-shifts. Read more here:

Linda Chavez - Stop the Racial Pandering

Linda Chavez

Harry Reid has stuck his foot in his mouth once again, this time suggesting he doesn't know "how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican." Really? You can't be both Hispanic and Republican? I guess Marco Rubio, Susana Martinez, John Sanchez, and Brian Sandoval -- to name just the top tier of Republican Hispanics who have won their party's nomination for statewide office this year -- had either better quit the GOP or change their names. This kind of racial stereotyping is offensive. Liberals have engaged in it for years, but conservatives aren't immune either. Read more here:

Thomas Sowell - Bean Counters and Baloney

Thomas Sowell

The bean-counters have struck again-- this time in the sports pages. Two New York Times sport writers have discovered that baseball coaches from minority groups are found more often coaching at first base than at third base. Moreover, third-base coaches become managers more often than first-base coaches. This may seem to be just another passing piece of silliness. But it is part of a more general bean-counting mentality that turns statistical differences into grievances. The time is long overdue to throw this race card out of the deck and start seeing it for the gross fallacy that it is. At the heart of such statistics is the implicit assumption that different races, sexes and other subdivisions of the human species would be proportionately represented in institutions, occupations and income brackets if there was not something strange or sinister going on. Read more here:

$600 Million for Border Security

The U.S. Senate passed and sent to President Barack Obama a $600 million plan to bolster security at the U.S.-Mexico border, providing 1,500 new Border Patrol, Customs and other agents, communications equipment and unmanned aircraft. With Congress on its August recess, the measure was passed without opposition today in a special session attended by two Democratic senators, Charles Schumer of New York and Ben Cardin of Maryland. The House passed the bill by voice vote two days ago.

The measure, which now goes to the White House for Obama’s signature, will increase border security spending by 10 percent in the current fiscal year ending Sept. 30. Obama has tried to boost funding as Republicans criticize him for not doing more to stem violence fueled by Mexican drug cartels from spilling over the border. Read more here:

A Basic Lack of Understanding Pricing

Competitive Landscape After Insurance Regs.

In light of public outrage over a controversial 21 percent rate hike on 40,000 New Mexicans by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Mexico — and revelations the increase may have been based partly on exaggerated losses — the New Mexico Division of Insurance is moving require insurers to submit more information, including rate histories, when filing new rates, according to Division records. State governments across the U.S. are struggling to control health insurance rates in the midst of a recession that has left increasing numbers of Americans unable to pay climbing monthly premiums. The Obama administration is offering states help in beefing up oversight and the division has applied for a $1 million federal grant to overhaul its regulation of health insurance rates. Read more here:

The one and only goal right now for New Mexico schools

Posted on NMPolitics.net - by Michael Swickard, Ph.D. - *note - at left - my daughter Kimberly "sweetface" being read to in 1985. She attended Hillrise Elementary in Las Cruces.

August is roasting time in New Mexico: fresh-picked green chile and the New Mexico public schools for their Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) numbers. We take green chile most seriously – Big Jim or Sandia? Two sacks, will that be enough? Make it three, no four… Meanwhile, most New Mexicans shrug at the AYP numbers indicating three of four New Mexico schools are not making the prescribed annual yearly progress. When I look at the numbers I see something far more ominous in that half of all New Mexico students are not reading at or above their own grade level. Reading is THE core educational activity in schools. Any dysfunction in reading has broad long-term implications for students. At the very least they do not get all of the instruction since 80 percent of instruction is in written form. At the worst they become turned off to education and form the nucleus of the drop out problem, which is sometimes framed to be about half of the students. Hmmm, half do not read to grade level and in some districts half of the students drop out. While half the students are not reading at least at grade level their textbooks are carefully written for their grade reading level. Further, tests are first a test of reading level and then a test of the subject matter. So half of the students are not reading at the level of the material being presented or of the tests they are taking. Read more

Martinez on improving education

Here is the education plan by Susana Martinez. Contrast it to my column on improving public schools - read here.

By Susana Martinez - We start reforming our education system on day one of the Martinez Administration. There is nothing more important we can do than implement real reform in our schools. The measure of our success will be when all New Mexico children have an opportunity to receive a quality education that allows them to chase and realize their dreams. We need to build real accountability into our education system. We have bred a culture of low expectations and we are failing a generation of young minds. This is entirely unacceptable. My approach to education will be to get more dollars out of the bureaucracy and into the classroom, hold students to high standards by eliminating social promotion and enacting other reforms, increase accountability and provide our best teachers with merit-based pay increases. It is time for bold change in education. Read more

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