Talk about kicking the can down the road.

Governor Susana Martinez has proposed anti-corruption legislation.

Examine it, carefully. Point to the part that strikes fear into the heart of someone stealing gas with a state government credit card. Or driving around in the company truck.

Ending corruption is always about some future constraint that will make it marginally less tempting to steal public resources and abuse public power.

It never seems to be about switching on the lights and busting everybody with their hands in the till.

People who steal in politics and public service understand how the system works and have calculated that they are not in danger of getting caught; at least not for another couple of years. The temptation doesn't lie in the power and resources they control, but rather in the possibility of stealing the resources or abusing the power without likely consequences.

Everybody wants to end public corruption and incompetence without exposing the corrupt and the incompetent; without actually holding anyone influential, individually accountable for their corruption and incompetence.

There isn't an agency of government in which qualified and motivated investigators could not find some corruption, some incompetence and some practices that enable them.

Nobody has the character and the courage to just flip the switch
and illuminate the truth; do the right thing and let the chips fall
where they may.

Nobody wants to name names, and with that kind of cover,
why wouldn't people think they can get away with
their public corruption and incompetence?

What kind of cover did School Board President Paula Maes give the corrupt and incompetent in the castle keep at 6400 Uptown Blvd, when she announced, she would never agree to any audit that individually identified corrupt or incompetent APS administrators or board members.

What might they think they can get away with now, that they wouldn't have even considered before?




photo Mark Bralley