Diane Denish's Op-ed Rebuttal

Lt. Governor Diane Denish is entitled to fair play.

The Albuquerque Journal gave NMRP Chair, Harvey Yates sixteen column inches to make his point; Diane Denish has not spoken up against the culture of corruption.

Yates' op-ed was presented under a photo that was identified as coming from a "Journal File". Yates himself could not have selected a better photograph to make his point.


And now, Denish, shown here
hugging the face of the culture
of corruption, good ol' boy and
Governor, Bill Richardson,
is going to want the same
sixteen inches, and a five by
eight of her own.

For her piece, she has a right
to insist that the Journal pick
a photograph from their file
that doesn't make her look like she is joined at the hip with the good ol' boys, and their culture of corruption.

She should insist that they choose a photograph that portrays her leading the fight against the culture of corruption.
If they have one.

She may want to furnish such a photograph, of her own.
If she has one.

It's existence flies in the face of the reality.

Her own spin, link, makes an issue of a lot of urging, pushing, and championing on her part, but doesn't point to the time, the day and the place where she made it clear that it was going to be either her or, the good ol' boys and their culture of corruption. They are in fact, both still around.

As important as they are, the end of the culture of corruption will be not be precipitated by campaign finance reform and searchable data bases. Rather, the end of the culture of corruption will come at the advent of transparent accountability enough to make it impossibly difficult to hide corruption, and impossibly difficult to avoid the consequences of that corruption.

It would appear that Diane Denish cannot dispute Yates'
allegations based on her record.

She has two other choices. She can ignore the allegations.
Perhaps she has amassed enough money under the loopholes
in the campaign finance reform that she "pushed" and "urged"
and "championed", that she can just ignore Yates accusations
and buy the election in spite of them.

Or, she can come back in her op-ed,
with a plan to end the culture of corruption, at once and for all.

In which case she will come out of this little tiff, a step ahead of
Yates and the Republicans, who while pointing to her failure
to speak out against the culture of corruption, have conveniently
ignored their own record of failure to speak out, and their own
failure to come up with any plan to end the culture of corruption and incompetence in Santa Fe.



photo Mark Bralley