Journal still covering for Esquivel

Editor in Chief Kent Walz

Except that former APS School Board member and Defendant Marty Esquivel admitted under oath that he and Journal Editor in Chief Kent Walz are really good friends; the connections between Esquivel and the Journal and the Kabal (KRQE, KOAT and KOB TV) remain largely secret.





We do know that a few years ago, Esquivel and Walz bamboozled the NM Foundation for Open Government board of directors into giving APS Supt. Winston Brooks their hero of transparency award.  This at a time when Walz, Esquivel and Brooks were hiding (and still are) public records that individually identify APS senior administrators who were involved in felony criminal misconduct.

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KRQE news director Iain Munro, when asked if he, as a member of the board of directors of the FOG, voted in favor of the perversion of the Dixon Award, did not respond.

Nor did he respond when asked to fully disclose his and KRQE's relationship with Esquivel and the conflict of interests the relationship introduces into their coverage of Esquivel.  Esquivel is and has been for some time, KRQE's lawyer.

Munro wants not to explain why KRQE made a public records request for the same findings that I sued over*, then abandoned their request.  Was it on the advice of KRQE lawyer Marty Esquivel?

*APS is spending money still, on litigation in their effort to keep public records of the findings of investigations into felony criminal misconduct involving APS senior administrators, secret from public knowledge.

Which begs a question; with respect to the ongoing spending of operational dollars on lawyers and legal weaselry in litigation over the production of the Caswell Report and others;

Is the APS Board of Education

• knowingly permitting operational dollars to be spent hiding the truth, or

• negligently allowing it?

Esquivel is lawyer and friend to a number of heavy hitters in the
local media. They are doing
their level best to keep Esquivel's fat out of the fire, but they've bitten off more than they can chew; Esquivel has screwed up too badly to cover up; he spent $865,000 to buy an "admission of no guilt" in a legal settlement; despite videotape of his guilt.

Esquivel is by the way, still spending operational funds in other unsettled complaints that have been filed against him in federal court.

Aside from the lawyers he pays to agree with him, Esquivel has found no learned support for his risible defenses.  No number of cost-is-no-object defenses will change incontrovertible evidence of his guilt.

The Albuquerque Public Schools Board of Education;

• knowingly permitted or

• negligently allowed Marty Esquivel to spend a million dollars (all told) on lawyers, litigation and legal weaselry, in order to buy for himself and the board; their individual admissions of no guilt.

Esquivel can produce no record either that;

• the board legally approved of the amount of money he was squandering, or that

• the board even knew how much he was spending in cost-is-no-object defense of;

1. his ego, 
2. his lawyer Art Melendres, and 
3. the Modrall law firm (on the hook to taxpayers, for Melendres' bad legal advice).

Are Art Melendres and the Modrall going to reimburse taxpayers the money they lost when their Melendres' and Modrall's incompetence and or corruption led them to advise Marty Esquivel that he could ban me for life from public forums, or until I promised not to criticize him individually in that forum?

In Journal coverage yesterday, link, Journal investigative reporter Thom Cole led readers to believe that the $288,000 APS spent on legal defenses, was spent in defense of "APS and the board".

In truth, had Cole "investigated" them, billing records would show that the lion's share of the bills can be linked directly to Esquivel's defense, not APS and the manifestly clueless school board.

However bad it is, that the Journal and the Kabal of local NMBA affiliate stations won't dig for the truth, it is so much worse, that they won't pass the truth along even when it's dumped in their laps.




photos Mark Bralley