Hope in the rubble; real reform is still possible

Yet again, an effort to provide transparent accountability to meaningful standards of conduct and competence, has crashed and burned.  The people who don't want transparent accountability in politics and public service, have been enabled yet another triumph over the people who do (including I am led to believe; 90% of New Mexicans).


A number of the state senators who supported gutting Dines' proposal in search of a better one, indicated they could come up with a better plan in the interim.  They, they claim, are finally ready, willing and able to craft ethics reform.

They made what I am comfortable calling a commitment to come up with something that could and would sail through the legislative process in the next session.

They could, if they wanted to, write a bill that is acceptable to their fellow legislators and to other politicians and public servants whose corruption and incompetence would be placed in check depending on the new rules and whether they would be actually, honestly accountable to them.

Left out, or at best secondary in their consideration will be, what would best serve the people's interests.

It's fair to say, the people would want higher standards and more swift and certain accountability for politicians and public servants, than they want for themselves.

There is something fundamentally wrong with the servants writing the terms of their in-servitude.  It is bass-ackwards on its face.

The prerogative to write the terms of public service belongs to the people.

Somebody needs to do something.

Somebody needs to organize an effort to rewrite the rules for public servants and public service.

Somebody besides politicians and public servants needs to decide

• how high will be their standards of conduct and competence, and 

• how swift and certain the enforcement of those standards will be.  

Somebody besides pols and public servants needs to decide what truth will be told, and when and how.

Let us, we the people, identify the ethics, standards and accountability that will characterize politics and public service in the state of New Mexico.  Let we the people make sweeping reform the issue in both the primaries and in November.

Let us take back control over usurped power and resources by holding politicians and public servants honestly accountable for their conduct and competence within their public service.