Last Week's Key Polls
Maher Offers One Progressive's Take on Casey Anthony
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| Bill Maher |
If you’re a working-class American who still votes Republican then you don’t get to bitch about that verdict.” The HBO host noted the divide in the country – half voting for Republicans, the other half for Democrats, but said it didn’t make sense for them to do so when government offers so much.
"Yes, Republican base, you are just like that jury. It’s pathetically clear who’s killing the middle class but you keep letting them get away with murder.”
Read full story and watch video here: News New Mexico
The Week in Review
| Fire Damage at Ruidoso Downs |
We started off the holiday shortened week on a lighthearted note with a story about the Coney Island public toilets rationing toilet paper. Apparently public policymakers in the New York area have not figured out how to prioritize their budgets let alone calculate the cost of hiring a person to actually do the rationing of toilet paper. The result of this policy is sure to lead to a bad "end."
We posted an op-ed piece early in the week calling for a return to common sense forest management practices. The commentary was written by Congressman Steve Pearce just prior to his visit to our studio. We questioned the congressman on many topics including the subject of his op-ed piece. We learned that New Mexico now has: (1) very few jobs left in the timber industry, (2) virtually no tax revenues from the timber industry, (3) diminished cattle grazing in NM forests, (4) less revenue for the state from grazing leases, (5) less revenue from rancher's income taxes, (6) a devastated spotted owl habitat, (7) billions of recently burned trees, (8) the dirtiest air anyone can ever remember. With these facts in mind, maybe the radicals who have managed to insure public policies that don't control forest fuel loads (under the guise of saving the planet), will re-think some of their most extreme positions on forest management. Without public outcry a shift seems unlikely. We had Dr. John Fowler on the show again on Wednesday. He is a specialist in forest management. Fowler said that good forest management "science" is still being ignored by decision-makers running the U.S. Forest Service.
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| Hector Balderas |
We learned a bit more about the "Fast and Furious" weapons story that is quickly becoming a huge scandal for the A.T.F. and mother ship U.S. Justice Department. With the use of federal stimulus funds, we American taxpayers were unknowingly supporting state-sponsored gunrunning. And not only was this taking place in Arizona, the State of Florida was also a hot spot for allowing huge caches of weapons to fall into the hands of known gangs of criminals. Predictably, very few people in the Obama administration are talking about what appears to be one of the biggest blunders in federal law enforcement history. Perhaps now, we have a better understanding of what was meant by the stimulus funds being "targeted." The good news is ATF and Justice Department officials now seem to have their "shovels ready" for the upcoming congressional hearings on these bizarre decisions. And on an unrelated border note, government officials now admit the terror organization Hezbollah is entrenched in Mexico. Maybe they bought some of those ATF approved guns.
Late in the week we posted an op-ed piece that appeared in NMPolitics.net. It was written by Valencia County Democratic Party chair Lisa Chavez. Chavez reached the inexplicable conclusion that Susana Martinez, John Sanchez, Andy Nunez, Dianna Duran, and anyone else in favor of a voter I.D. law, is in favor of intimidating and disenfranchising Hispanic voters in New Mexico. We have unconfirmed reports that Chavez was actually able to write the entire op-ed piece while keeping a straight face.
Several media outlets reported that New Mexico Attorney General Gary King pocketed nearly $55,000 in campaign contributions from former Governor Bill Richardson not long before he supposedly investigated pay-to-play allegations against Richardson. Recently lawsuits were filed against the A.G. for these serious conflicts of interest. We noted on the show Friday that the first thing any self-respecting law office does before taking a case, is make sure there are no conflicts. Apparently one of the first things an Attorney General in New Mexico does when gathering campaign contribution money is to make sure he or she creates them. For a solution to money corrupting efforts to engage in best practices, see the 28th amendment proposal here.
Update on Chicken Manure Dumping on State Trust Land
From capitolreportnewmexico.com -A follow-up on the story Capitol Report New Mexico broke back in May concerning a gigantic dump of chicken manure on state trust land in Doña Ana County: Carlos Orozco received two tracts of public trust land that totalled 733 acres in exchange for $28,000 and 41 acres of property near Ruidoso. Two years later, according to KOAT-TV and the Journal, Orozco sold 93 acres of his new property for $750,00 and in 2008 he sold the rest of the property he had received from the state for a reported $320,000. So Orozco ended up pocketing more than $1 million for land he received from the state that cost him $172,000. In the meantime, the 41 acres the state received in the deal has gone unleased and has generated no money. More News New Mexico
Johnson Blasts Socially Conservative Group
From capitolreportnewmexico.com -A socially-conservative group based in Iowa has circulated a pledge among the candidates running for president in 2012 asking each candidate to promise to agree to a number of issues, including to ”promise personal fidelity to my spouse,” as well as a host of other committments such as ”a steadfast embrace” to the idea that marriage is between one man and one woman, and promoting safeguards for military personnel from “inappropriate same-gender or opposite-gender sexual harassment, adultery or intrusively intimate commingling among atttracteds (restrooms, showers, barracks, tents, etc.).” More News New Mexico
Front Yard Garden? Face 93 Days in Jail
The Agitator - Their front yard was torn up after replacing a sewer line, so instead of replacing the dirt with grass, one Oak Park woman put in a vegetable garden and now the city is seeing green. The list goes on: fresh basil, cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, cumbers and more all filling five large planter boxes that fill the Bass family’s front yard. Julie Bass says, “We thought we’re minding our own business, doing something not ostentatious and certainly not obnoxious or nothing that is a blight on the neighborhood, so we didn’t think people would care very much.” But some cared very much and called the city. The city then sent out code enforcement.
“They warned us at first that we had to move the vegetables from the front, that no vegetables were allowed in the front yard. We didn’t move them because we didn’t think we were doing anything wrong, even according to city code we didn’t think we were doing anything wrong. So they ticketed us and charged me with a misdemeanor,” Bass said . . .City code says that all unpaved portions of the site shall be planted with grass or ground cover or shrubbery or other suitable live plant material. Tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers are what Basses see as suitable. Read full story here: News New Mexico
Santa Fe County Sherriff Audit a Disaster
Fast and Furious: ATF Gunrunning
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| Brian Terry |
Plouffe: "Most People" Won't Vote Based on Unemployment
Rasmussen Poll: 72% Favor Free Market Economy Over One Managed by the Government
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