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Keep your eyes on ALEC in New Mexico

ALEC Is in New Mexico, But Only Marginally in the Albuquerque Journal

By Denise Tessier

Because the Albuquerque Journal has the resources – a team of investigative reporters and excellent politics and government reporters – I have been waiting for the state’s leading daily to produce a story explaining how many, if any, of New Mexico’s legislators are under the influence of the American Legislative Exchange Committee.

ALEC trains state legislators and gives them boilerplate legislation to introduce in their states, furthering the national agenda of ALEC’s corporate backers. Read this story in The Nation to learn about its connection to the Koch brothers. Last week, four legislators were “outed” as supporters of this “bill mill”, but not by the Albuquerque Journal.

The four published names came courtesy of local media newcomer New Mexico Mercury, in a piece written by Pat Davis, director of ProgressNow New Mexico.

But according to the Center for Media and Democracy, the list of New Mexico supporters in the Legislature goes beyond four names. According to CMD, ALEC counts as members 13 from the New Mexico House and four from the New Mexico Senate.

ALEC Is in New Mexico, But Only Marginally in the Albuquerque Journal

Election, NADA - New American Dark Ages, WTF?!

Don’t accept Republican nonsense #wtf #stfu

» Speak Up! | ABQ Journal

TO BE A DEMOCRAT, you are poor by choice, jealous of the rich, always blame Bush, a cry baby, and most of all a lover of more taxes. – A.E.

» Speak Up! | ABQ Journal

To be a Republican is to reduce all complexity to a few easily repeated phrases, to turn color into black and white, to blame Obama for everything Bush started and the Republican house thwarted, to believe the rich became so without any help or obligations (and to oppose inheritance taxes so as to assure a perpetual aristocracy), to oppose science and education, and to bray that lower taxes, fewer laws, and more guns will solve all problem. peace, mjh

Election, NADA - New American Dark Ages

The better angels of our nature

This was the message of Martin Luther King: “The arc of the moral universe [or history] is long but it bends toward justice.” Amen.

READ AND WATCH: President Obama addresses the Trayvon Martin case

And let me just leave you with — with a final thought, that as difficult and challenging as this whole episode has been for a lot of people, I don’t want us to lose sight that things are getting better. Each successive generation seems to be making progress in changing attitudes when it comes to race. I doesn’t mean that we’re in a postracial society. It doesn’t mean that racism is eliminated. But you know, when I talk to Malia and Sasha and I listen to their friends and I see them interact, they’re better than we are. They’re better than we were on these issues. And that’s true in every community that I’ve visited all across the country.

And so, you know, we have to be vigilant and we have to work on these issues, and those of us in authority should be doing everything we can to encourage the better angels of our nature as opposed to using these episodes to heighten divisions. But we should also have confidence that kids these days I think have more sense than we did back then, and certainly more than our parents did or our grandparents did, and that along this long, difficult journey, you know, we’re becoming a more perfect union — not a perfect union, but a more perfect union.

READ AND WATCH: President Obama addresses the Trayvon Martin case

Viddy

Kick-Ass (3-4 stars with one huge asterisk)

I have a feeling Quentin Tarantino wishes he’d made this movie. The violence was too much for me to recommend without that warning. Only briefly did the violence approach comic book violence, which was more tolerable than the realistic savage beatings and executions. It says nothing good about Hollywood or modern literature that every movie is based on a comic book or an old TV show.

When I saw that Nicholas Cage is in this movie, that did nothing to encourage me to watch it. The Vampire’s Kiss proved that Cage’s career is itself undead. However, he is great in this movie.

But, no one can touch Chloe Moretz as Hit Girl. She is astonishingly self-assured. Quite a performance, though at times difficult to watch. (Moretz played Alec Baldwin’s arch-nemesis in 30Rock and was his equal, which says a lot, as far as I’m concerned.)

I don’t look forward to Kick-Ass 2, but knowing it exists makes me hope Joss Whedon steals Kick-Ass 3 from Tarantino.

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." — Sam Adams