In defense of a headline

APS School Board President Marty Esquivel, by and through his team of lawyers, have offered up his Response in Opposition to my Motion for a Preliminary Injunction.

In it, he argues that I wrote a headline;

First, we need to kill all the PIOs, link

in "... wilful blindness and contempt for decorum ... (in)... "that after sitting through seven hours of powerful testimony in which Ms Armenta recounted the terror Mr. MacQuigg inspires in her through his intimidating actions... " he defiantly posted a blog entry titled; First, we need to kill all the PIOs.

On my honor, when I read Trip Jennings post, link, commented on it, and wrote a post of my own on the problem with the loyalties of Public Information Officers, it never occurred to me that APS Executive Director of Communications Monica Armenta would consider it a personal threat.

Any more than when I wrote; game on!, School Board Member Kathy Korte would consider that a threat, link.

I thought and I still think, no reasonable person would believe, honestly believe, either the headline or the statement was a threat.  No reasonable, normal person.

Ms. Armenta testified that she never reads my blog and therefore would know nothing about the headline.  The only reason she would have found out is if one of her "friends" told her about it.  What for, to whip up her already unreasonable hysteria?

Ms. Armenta, during her sworn testimony, expressed her concern that she could not "control my thoughts".  Wouldn't the first step in her plan to control my thoughts be, to insist upon editorial rights over my headlines?

I consider myself a political pamphleteer albeit in a digital age.  I have a right to write the words I want to write.  I cannot be reasonably expected to filter the most important sentence in every post, past the feelings of every politician and public servant I annoy.

Any connection to Monica Armenta was tangential and inadvertent. Ms Armenta was not personally identified in the post, and easily could have been, as an example of a highly paid Public Information Officer whose job it is to make the leadership of APS look good, and not to keep the people candidly, forthrightly and honestly informed about the wielding of their power and the spending of their considerable resources.

This is all a diversion; None of them want to explain to students, in words students can understand, why they are expected to model and promote personal accountability to higher standards of conduct than the law, and adult role models, even the senior-most role models of the Pillars of Character Counts! in the entire APS, are not.

That's why they don't want me at school board meetings.

It has nothing to do with the fear that Esquivel, APS Police Chief Steve Tellez, Winston Brooks and the guys, have stirred up in Ms. Armenta's head.

Where is their evidence? After years of hardening their castle keep at enormous public expense, after installing more video cameras than you can shake a stick at, after assigning as many as two APS Police officers to "stalk" me whenever I set foot on APS property, after specifically assigning APS personnel to take photographs of me misbehavin' even out of town, and after six years of surveillance and investigation they don't have a single photograph, audiotape, or videotape of me actually doing the things they swear I have done.

Either I was very good at stalking people when nobody was looking, striking fighting stances invisibly, and plastering myself against walls when the video cameras swept by, or

I really didn't do the things they swear I did.

Not one of the people who insist that my banning is not based on the question I keep asking, have ever actually answered the question.

I doubt they even know what it is.
To them, and by Esquivel's own admission,
I'm just "... like so much background noise".

What is the point in protecting the right to petition one's government if the petition can be "legally" dismissed as "background noise" by someone like Marty Esquivel?

Marty Esquivel doesn't want to come clean on his abdication from the obligations of the senior-most role model of APS' student standards of conduct.

Nowhere in his response, did Esquivel mention the Pillars of Character Counts! are actually the APS student standards of conduct.

Nowhere did he mention, that except for his willful abdication, he would be, the senior-most role model in the entire APS of the Pillars of Character Counts!

Nor did he indicate any intention to hold himself accountable to them and as a role model, any time soon.

And he complains over and over and over again; Mr. MacQuigg ... will engage in conduct regardless of a rule prohibiting it, as long as, in his mind, it is honorable and legal.

Esquivel has lower standards than mine.  Forget about honorable; he will freely ignore the rules and his obligations as the senior-most role model of the Pillars of Character Counts! as long as it's "legal".

"Legal" is the lowest standard of conduct acceptable to civilized human beings.

"Legal" is the standard of conduct that every  
higher standard of conduct,
is higher than.




photos Mark Bralley