Category Archives: loco

As Tip O’Neill never said, “All politics is loco.”

loco

The Company She Keeps

This may be all we need to know about Susana Martinez: She is in bed with the devil.

Swiftboat financier gives big to Martinez; Weh loans his campaign another $600K « New Mexico Independent
By Matthew Reichbach 5/28/10 7:52 PM

Bob J. Perry, the Texas developer behind the anti-John Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for “Truth” [mjh: emphasis added] 527 group gave $450,000 to the gubernatorial campaign of Susana Martinez and airline service company owner Allen Weh loaned his campaign another $600,000. Those are the highlights of the most recent campaign finance reports, available now on the Secretary of State’s website.
Perry and his wife’s donation of $450,000 is nearly two-thirds of Martinez’s $720,000 haul in the three-week fundraising period that ran from May 4-25.

Swiftboat financier gives big to Martinez; Weh loans his campaign another $600K « New Mexico Independent

alBAHquerque

A Finger in the Eye

Another recycled post for Earth Day 2010 (originally posted 3/28/07):

Billboards are a finger in the eye. An erect middle finger. A billboard is a selfish and cowardly statement. It says anonymously, “my profit is more important than the environment.” It places personal gain ahead of community values. Every billboard in the world should be pulled down by angry mobs.

Tijeras Arroyo billboard

Isn’t this picture beautiful? Doesn’t it make you proud to live in New Mexico? The mighty Tijeras Arroyo is already doomed by Mesa del Sold. In the meantime, enjoy the view. As you drive this stretch with its dozen billboards, notice most are for Clear Channel, the owners of most billboards. Buy stock and demand they get out of this business.

Farther south, Isleta shows what Indians really think of Mother Earth, with their dozens of billboards north of Los Lunas. No stoic native with a tear in his eyes at the sight of all the garbage — those are dollar signs.

Where’s your shame? mjh

‘Billboard King’ Reid Looks to Leave Mark on Senate War Funding Measure By Elizabeth Williamson, Washington Post Staff Writer
Continue reading A Finger in the Eye →

loco

You Should Care About This Judicial Contest

Judicial Candidate Faces Ethics Complaint
By Mike Gallagher
Copyright © 2010 Albuquerque Journal
Journal Investigative Reporter

Most appellate court election campaigns in New Mexico are understated and don’t generate much buzz in the legal community or beyond, and it is rare for a judicial candidate to run while under the cloud of ethics charges and a malpractice lawsuit.

But that is the case with attorney Dennis W. Montoya, a lawyer with offices in Albuquerque and Rio Rancho who is seeking to unseat Appeals Court Judge Linda Vanzi in the Democratic primary election.

The election contest isn’t their first confrontation.

Vanzi, while still a state District Court judge in Albuquerque, filed a complaint against Montoya with the board that investigates allegations of attorney misconduct. …

Vanzi and Montoya will face off in the Democratic primary June 1. There is no Republican in the race, so the winner of the primary wins the seat on the Appeals Court. …

The case also highlights an unusual aspect of New Mexico’s merit selection system of judges.

Before her appointment to the district or appellate court positions, Vanzi submitted her name to a judicial nominating commission, which screens applicants, reviews credentials and recommends several nominees to the governor to consider for appointment. Questions include disciplinary complaints.

But legislators insisted that any appointed judge stand for election in one partisan contest after that appointment. Judges face only retention votes in subsequent elections.

As a candidate in the partisan race, Montoya has not gone through the same vetting process as Vanzi. …

ABQJOURNAL NEWS/STATE: Judicial Candidate Faces Ethics Complaint

Lawyer Draws Rebukes From Federal Judges
By Mike Gallagher
Copyright © 2010 Albuquerque Journal
Journal Investigative Reporter

"The conduct of Mr. Montoya in the case at bar, like his conduct in the three above referenced cases where Mr. Montoya was personally sanctioned or his clients were sanctioned as a result of actions taken by Mr. Montoya, fell well below the professional standards expected of attorneys who practice in federal court," Johnson wrote.

"Having failed to learn from the experiences of being sanctioned by Judge Parker, Judge Armijo and Judge Garcia, Mr. Montoya can now add me to the list of judges who have sanctioned him."

Johnson ordered Montoya to pay the more than $12,000, plus interest to the opposing attorneys.

Montoya appealed, and the appeal was denied.

He declined to comment for this story, saying it wouldn’t be appropriate to talk about matters pending before the disciplinary board that handles professional complaints against lawyers.

ABQJOURNAL NEWS/STATE: Lawyer Draws Rebukes From Federal Judges

It’s my personal opinion that Montoya is running against Vanzi to punish her. It’s strictly personal. That might be fine if they were equally qualified for this office. They are not.

media

The Albuquerque Journal Website

1 Comment

Over at NewMexiKen, there has been a discussion about the Albuquerque Journal’s awful, awful website. Someone called it an embarrassment to the community, and I agree. I’m not going to waste time collecting screenshots to make my point. I’ll just add here that my latest effort to read a couple of articles online reminds me – if I could only forget, but cannot – just how freakishly awful the Albuquerque Journal website is.

Check it out for yourself. Scan the first page. Notice how it loads in fits and starts. Try to grasp the layout – what’s important on this page? Can you figure that out? Can you relate this page to the front page of the paper itself? Follow a link – any link. Have you ever seen another site like this one?

As a blogger, I like to quote directly from sources on the Web. The Journal website makes this very painful, in part, because it uses linefeeds instead of paragraph codes – quoted text runs together badly. Yeah, it’s a nerdy gripe and the Journal could not care less about pleasing bloggers, but it contributes to my belief that whoever works on this site has never seen another website anywhere. I’m reluctant to beat up a 14-year-old who gets minimum wage, but the Journal could and should do much better than this, especially after so many years of the same awful stuff. Send that kid to classes. Buy him a Dummies book. (Sorry, kid, I know your bosses don’t give a shit.)

media

It’s Time: US Out of Afghanistan

I’ve quoted Quigley before. He’s an insightful writer.

ABQJOURNAL UPFRONT: In Afghanistan, the Question Is Everything 

By Winthrop Quigley
Journal Staff Writer
      As President Obama weighs his options in Afghanistan, the disquiet that Afghanistan will become another Vietnam grows.
    If the United States is to avoid another Vietnam in Afghanistan, the Obama administration needs to understand the short-term failure in Southeast Asia (short-term because Vietnam became a trading partner and regional ally of the United States) was a result of our complete lack of understanding about Vietnamese culture and society. American policymakers, products of a Western, rationalist, future-oriented culture, kept pushing buttons and pulling levers that connected to nothing in Vietnam’s Confucian, animist, ancestor-focused culture. The Americans could never find the buttons and levers that did connect to something.
    Afghanistan’s culture and society could not be less like our own. Until Barack Obama is certain he knows what buttons and levers connect to something in Afghanistan’s tribal, multilingual, Islamic culture (and there is not a lot of evidence that he does), additional troops won’t accomplish anything useful there.

ABQJOURNAL UPFRONT: In Afghanistan, the Question Is Everything

loco

Water Grab in Central New Mexico – Greedy & Destructive Madness

El Defensor Chieftain: Protesters to fight ‘water grab’ 

The New York City based corporation [Augustin Plains Ranch LLC] filed an application with the state Office of the Engineer two years ago, to drill 37 wells with 20-inch casings in order to pump 54,000 acre-feet of groundwater (about 17.6 billion gallons) from the San Agustin Basin each year. The wells would be located north and south of U.S. 60 just inside Catron County’s eastern boundary, between the Very Large Array and the town of Datil.

An amended application, filed in May 2008 and approved by the State Engineer in August of that year, called for an increase in the depth of the drilling from 2,000 to 3,500 feet. It also expanded the area of proposed places of use to any areas within Socorro, Catron, Sierra, Valencia, Bernalillo, Sandoval and Santa Fe counties that are in the Rio Grande Basin.

El Defensor Chieftain: Protesters to fight ‘water grab’

loco

This Week’s WTF?!

By the following logic, no one has ever had a mandate.

ABQJOURNAL OPINION/LETTERS: U.S. Needs To Return to Its Roots

Only 30 percent of eligible voters participated in that election. Of that number, barely 52 percent voted for Obama. That means only 15.6 percent of eligible voters in America chose Obama as their president. The other 84.4 percent either actively voted against him or chose not to participate…. That is hardly a mandate from the people! [mjh: But better than Raygun did.]
       Who is this man elected by a scant 15.6 percent of the voting public? Does he care about you and me? Clearly he does! He feels we are too stupid to intelligently manage our money, so he is going to have the government do it for us. We are too ignorant to manage our health care, so he is going to manage it for us. Do we sense a theme?… [mjh: er, yes, the theme is utter cluelessness over what’s really going on in DC.]
       What we need is to mobilize the 70 percent of the voting population that did not speak up in 2008, and in 2010 we need to radically change the population of Washington, D.C. We need people who are truly our representatives. The majority of Americans identify themselves as conservative. We need to get them out to vote and move America back to its roots. Hard work, quality of life, the nuclear family and a government that lets us run our own lives — that’s what we need.
       GENE and GRETCHEN LINCOLN
       Albuquerque

ABQJOURNAL OPINION/LETTERS: U.S. Needs To Return to Its Roots