Yearly Archives: 2007

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Judge Rudd

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MR on the trailIt’s very cool to see abqjournal highlight Merri’s efforts as Bernalillo County Probate Judge. In her years in office, she and her staff have taken on twice as many cases as in prior years. The court serves the general public and attorneys more effectively than ever. Never one to stop, Merri has more plans for the court in the years she has left in office.

Term limits will do what no opponent dared: boot her out of office in 2010. She’ll leave behind a great staff and model court. mjh

PS: Merri writes about probate matters every other week for abqjournal. (For a pittance, especially considering the effort and craft.) She recently wrote very movingly about her friend and mentor in Remembering Justice Pamela Minzner

ABQjournal Opinion: Probate a Little Easier

A death in the family is always painful, and any effort to ease the survivors’ burden is welcome. The Bernalillo County Probate Court is making just such an effort, with a new electronic system that makes it easier for family members to follow the progress of an estate through probate.

Instead of trekking up to the sixth floor of the county office building on Civic Plaza to check documents, or making repeated telephone calls to the court for information, members of the public can now make online searches at www.bernco.gov/probate.

Probate Judge Merri Rudd and her staff are to be commended for making a difficult process just a little easier for folks.

ABQjournal Metro: Old Probate Files Go Online
By Scott Sandlin, Journal Staff Writer

Say you are a beneficiary of your late uncle’s estate, and so is your brother— the one you’re not talking to.

You want to find out if the probate case has been filed.

Help is just a few mouse-clicks away, at a new online search feature of the Bernalillo County Probate Court, www.bernco.gov/probate.

The electronic case lookup is an innovation of Probate Judge Merri Rudd and her staff, allowing the public access to docket information on all cases filed between 1978 and now.

Bernalillo County is the only probate court in the state to offer online dockets— fittingly, because the biggest caseload is in the Albuquerque metropolitan area. The court handles more than 400 cases a year, almost double the number since 2000.

Rudd said people now can type in a name to find out if a case has been filed for a particular person— known as a decedent— or conduct more general searches on which cases were filed in a given month.

The latter function may be especially useful for creditors who need to file a claim against an estate.

Family members will be able to track the progress of a case already filed, or see if it has been filed at all. Rudd says she has dozens of calls daily from individuals wondering if a case has been filed.

Genealogists also will be able to research family histories.

Copies of the actual document still must be obtained in person at the Probate Court, on the sixth floor of the county office building on Civic Plaza downtown. They’re 50 cents a page.

Rudd, one of the few probate judges statewide who is also an attorney, has been active in reaching out to the public to explain the probate process. Her office has published free brochures on topics related to probate, including a court overview, duties of the personal representative, making claims against a probate estate, what constitutes an heir and what is real property in the probate context. She also writes a column for the Albuquerque Journal business section, helped devise do-it-yourself forms for probate filings, hosts a television show on GOV-TV, Channel 16 and has spoken to hundreds of groups about probate.

She also performs weddings.

The essence of probate is this: A dead person can’t transfer title to property. That means if someone dies and has title to property in his or her sole name, a personal representative must be appointed to represent the estate and handle the property.

The actual size of the estate doesn’t determine whether a case is filed in Probate Court or District Court, which also has jurisdiction over probate matters. Contested cases and other formal proceedings always go to District Court. Probate Court is for informal, uncontested cases.

Bernalillo County funded the case lookup system out of general funds for roughly $10,000 total, and ICON created the software. Now the office is turning to the task of making filings back to 1950 available.

Rudd, who by statute is a part-time elected official, oversees a historic domain. Among documents in the Probate Court files are documents in the flowing, lyrical hand script— and early typed documents— dating back to the late 19th century.

The oldest document in the probate file dates to Aug. 20, 1860. It is a handwritten household inventory, listing bees, chickens, rabbits, tame horses, oxen, burros and saddle blankets.

The owner also lists a house, worth $150, and land worth $13.

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NM in National Political News

All politics is local (so said Tip O’Neill). New Mexico’s local politics are attracting national interest. I recommend Chris Cillizza’s The Fix (http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/) as daily reading for all political junkies. I’ve highlighted two recent snippets below. mjh

The Fix Archive: Senate, By Chris Cillizza

N.M. Senate: Pearce’s Entry Sets up GOP Primary Clash

Rep. Steve Pearce (R) will run for the New Mexico Senate seat being vacated by Pete Domenici (R) and will announce his intentions in an letter to supporters tomorrow, according to sources close to the congressman. Pearce joins Rep. Heather…

By Chris Cillizza | October 16, 2007; 02:59 PM ET | Comments (3)

N.M. Senate: Another Democratic Opportunity

Sen. Pete Domenici’s (R-N.M.) retirement creates another major pickup opportunity for Democrats in 2008 as the state has been trending toward their party of late and the bench of candidates is deep. Democrats could barely contain their joy at the…

By Chris Cillizza | October 4, 2007; 02:14 PM ET | Comments (57)

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/senate/

The Fix Archive: House, By Chris Cillizza

New Mexico’s 1st District: Wilson’s Gone, Democrats Line Up

The dominos are starting to fall in New Mexico following Sen. Pete Domenici’s (R) retirement announcement late last week. The first major domino was Rep. Heather Wilson (R) who announced last Friday she would leave the 1st district seat she…
By Chris Cillizza | October 9, 2007; 09:45 AM ET | Comments (23)

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/house/

Dump Duhbya

Lower than Duhbya?!

Make-Believe Reagan : Rolling Stone, by Matt Taibbi

It’s only after you run into this lobotomy act ten or eleven times that you start to see the dark essence of Fred Thompson. He is hard to dislike on a personal level: Unlike the overconfident district attorney he plays on Law and Order, the real-life Thompson comes off as a halting, humble, accidental celebrity who’s really just dern glad to be here. And his personality seems consistent with his Goldwater-era ideology: A believer in limited government, he seeks to achieve his ends by getting his frankly limited self elected to the White House.

His politics, though, are another matter. As a political animal, Thompson embodies the twisted core of the Sean Hannity/Rush Limbaugh era: He looks you right in the eye with that aw-shucks face of his and tells you shit that just isn’t true about who we are as a country. In his first few days on the campaign trail, he paces back and forth in front of crowds of Iowans and assures them without blinking that “we have the best health-care system in the world” — and you sit there wondering how the hell he can get away with saying that when America’s infant mortality rate is behind fricking Slovenia’s.

But by then Thompson is talking about how France and England are desperate to copy our market-based system of health care. And then he’s on to Iraq, where we “went in for the right reasons” because Saddam was planning a “nuclearized Middle East” that “would have defeated all of us,” assertions that leave the bad-news-weary crowd dewy-eyed with approval. Thompson represents the essential bullshit at the heart of modern conservatism: The fantasy that we are the benevolent envy of the world must be believed at all costs, no matter how much waste or mayhem or loss of young lives is suffered in deference to it.

That’s what Thompson is selling: a double dose of Middle American delusion. He’s a Grade A nice feller who isn’t running for president, even though he is, in a country that doesn’t launch unilateral and unwarranted invasions, even though it does. …

Standing on a riser in front of his bus, Thompson lays his Goldwater rap on the Decent Folk who have come to the park, telling them that the best thing government can do for the poor is to help them help themselves. “A government big and powerful enough to give you everything,” he declares, “is also powerful enough to take away anything.” The crowd cheers. [mjh: This is a direct quote from Raygun. Does his audience know or care?] …

What Thompson offers is a chance to drag the presidency itself into that bubble, leaving ugly reality behind. His campaign is basically a referendum on what America wants out of its president. Do we want an executive who solves problems and tackles issues, making decisions that are grounded in reality? Or do we want a lead actor to star in a television show about a fantasy America of our own creation, an America where poverty and war and insecurity can be solved simply by keeping them off camera?

That is a heavy, heavy question, a theme straight out of dystopian fiction, and those of us who would vote for reality should be chilled by Thompson because we know that even if America votes for the fantasy, someone is still going to be running the reality.

In the case of Thompson, that someone would be a slick frontman who might play the part of a Goldwater small-government Republican but in reality has made his living as an extravagantly paid pimp for government welfare. As a professional lobbyist in the 1980s, Thompson worked on behalf of Westinghouse, which was seeking billions in federal subsidies for nuclear power plants. (He conveniently leaves that part of his past out when, in his campaign speeches, he mentions nuclear power as one of the “other fuels” that “have to be part of the solution.”) He also lobbied for the deregulation of the savings-and-loan business — a Reagan-era move that helped lead to the infamous collapse of the industry. And between 2004 and 2006 he earned $760,000 lobbying to cut the asbestos liability of Lloyd’s of London.

Thompson is frequently compared to Ronald Reagan, with plenty of justice. Like Thompson, Reagan projected for voters a fantasy America, one that didn’t need to feel bad about Watergate and could still kick ass, despite having just been whipped by 2 million pajama-clad Vietnamese. But underneath Reagan’s goofy cowboy act was a raging ideologue, a deadly serious political force that also pitched to voters grandiose dreams of endless riches and world conquest. The dream America bought from Reagan was wrongheaded and stupid, but it was at least a big dream, a dream commensurate with the breadth and power of the American empire. The people who bought it were mean and overconfident, but they were at least still living on planet Earth.

What Thompson is selling is escapism, pure and simple. He’s selling America not as a vast adventure epic but as a timid, forty-seven-minute made-for-cable movie about a folksy small-town dad — a fantasy that makes no sense at all in the context of a massive militarized oligarchy currently occupying half the world’s deserts on borrowed money.

The people who are buying this fantasy are buying out of fear, because they can’t bear to look anymore. They’ve simply given up trying to deal. If Thompson wins — and he very well might — that’s what it’ll be: total surrender. The lowest we’ve ever sunk.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16546031/makebelieve_reagan/print

Dump Duhbya

the erosion of majority rule

Harold Meyerson – The Silenced Majority – washingtonpost.com

In the past several years there’s been great concern about the erosion of individual rights as a consequence of the Bush administration’s “war on terror” and war in Iraq. I share this concern. But the administration’s critics, myself included, have been remiss in noting a development even more corrosive to American democracy — the erosion of majority rule.

A fundamental premise of democracy is that elections matter. That belief is being tested today as it seldom has before. In 2006, the Republicans were swept from power in Congress because the American electorate had had it with the war and with Congress’s unquestioning acquiescence to President Bush’s blind and obdurate faith in the eventual success of the American mission. In responding to the election by sending more troops to Iraq and keeping these troops there until the limits of our manpower compel their return next year, Bush merely doubled down on his unwinnable bet on his unwinnable war. …

If Democrats are to win in 2008, it will be because they represent a decisive break, not a partially veiled continuity, with George Bush’s policies, and with his war policies most of all. The Democratic candidates, Clinton especially, need to assure voters that their voice matters more than those of the Beltway theorists who supported the war at the outset and still can’t contemplate ending the occupation. They need to assure voters, in short, that they take democracy in America seriously.

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Music to My Ears

I don’t listen to the radio much any more, other than NPR. Consequently, I don’t discover new music as easily as I once did. I remember, as recently as 10 years ago, listening to a tune on the truck radio, desparate for the DJ to tell me its name. (So passe in the age of XM, etc.) About that same time, I had a flush of new music when a music video channel appeared on regular broadcast for a few months (The Box). Coincidentally, I saw a lot of Christian music videos then. Now, you gotta pay for JC.TV — word! More recently, there was Caliente, then Pepsi Música.

The Web has been most valuable to me in looking for music *after* I’ve discovered it elsewhere. That’s how I found Julietta Venegas after hearing her perform at the end of Escándalo. They didn’t have to introduce such a famous star, except for the benefit of yet-another ignorant American. I searched through a lot of Web pages for “que lástima” — an understandably common phrase — which was all I could recall from that haunting tune (“Me Voy”).

With this almost random process, it is unusual that I’ve been hooked in rapid succession by two very different tunes of late, both thanks to TV. (Thank you, TV, friend and secret lover.) First, is the tune played behind a commercial you’ve probably seen. The tune is “Stuttering” by Ben’s Brother of the UK. I was HOOKED by the first few seconds of that song. (I also like the animation of the commercial.) I tracked it down at www.myspace.com/bensbrothermusic .

Last night, flipping the channels, I was arrested by the very cool look of Aleks Syntek on Univision. I know, soul patches ain’t what they used to be, but that’s just part of his special amalgam. The tune was “Historias de Danzón y de Arrabal.” www.myspace.com/alekssyntek . mjh

PS: If you’re looking for new music similar to other music you already like, I recommend www.pandora.com. (My selections: http://www.pandora.com/people/info6955 )

PPS: I must be the only person on the planet who spent almost 15 years deeply into HTML and Web design *before* setting up a MySpace page. But, I’ve arrived: http://www.myspace.com/techeditor . (Don’t look for frequent updates, except as I run across other MySpace pages I like.)

NADA - New American Dark Ages

Deep Thinkers Limbaugh and Goldberg

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If you want to enrage conservatives, say anything about Lush Limbaugh. Really — anything other than the worship he expects from his self-described Dittoheads. Lush is a petty, bombastic and bloviating scold — among the worst of a large ilk. Is there anyone on the left who is his equal in power? No.

Now, it happens that I believe Lush has said countless things worse than his recent “phony soldiers” fart. He intentionally sticks his thumb in somebody’s eye every show — it’s why frustrated, impotent and mean-spirited people love him. Was he caught judging all soldiers who oppose the war? Of course: Lush is pure judgment, god’s wrath. But, who cares what Lush says or thinks?

I’m inclined to say the same about Jonah Goldberg of the National Review and liberal-rag, the Albuquerque Journal. But, I have to highlight one small piece from a recent Goldberg column as this week’s WTF?!

Jonah Goldberg on Rush Limbaugh & the Dems on National Review Online

All that matters is that Democrats get a free hand — thank you, mainstream media — to do what they’ve spent years denouncing as the worst, lowest form of politics. And, unlike Republicans in most cases, the Democrats actually know they are lying. They just don’t care.

Did Goldberg really say Republicans don’t know when they are lying? (While impossible, it might explain some of the madness.) Or is it just that Republicans don’t lie and Democrats do? As Republicans look at the world, which is worse, an anti-patriot (traitor) or liar? Never mind — who cares what these self-appointed judges — these corporate tools — think. mjh

NADA - New American Dark Ages

Conservatives for Government Spending

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Oh-my-gawd! In the following paragraph, Charles Krauthammer, paleocon, stresses the value of the Federal government spending LOTS of money. I agree with him, but never expected him to agree with me. Is the sky falling? Aren’t there any real conservatives anymore? (Kidding.) mjh

Charles Krauthammer What Sputnik launched

We had no idea how lucky we were with Sputnik. The subsequent panic turned out to be an enormous boon. The fear of falling behind the Communists induced the federal government to pour a river of money into science and math education. The result was a vast cohort of scientists who gave us not only Apollo and the moon, but the sinews of the information age — for example, ARPA (established just months after Sputnik) created ARPANET, which became the Internet — that have ensured American technological dominance to this day.