Hope springs eternal (in the human breast) and in the leadership of the NM FOG

In an op-ed he penned for the Journal and for NMPolitics.net, link, The president of the Board of Directors of the NM Foundation for Open Government, Gregory P. Williams wrote about problems with NM's "sunshine" laws and FOG's plan to remedy them.

That there are problems with sunshine laws in NM, is in some part, a manifestation of the FOG's failure to complete its primary mission;

"to educate, advocate and enforce our state’s sunshine laws". emphasis added

At least according to Williams, the FOG's plan to enforce our state's sunshine laws in future is to hope;

"... for the good of our state, (that) every official (will) hold sunshine high among their priorities."

They never have before; why would they now?

While hope springs eternal in the human breast;
while human nature is to find cause for optimism,

as a strategy to defeat the forces of evil, it sucks.

When Edmund Burke offered; all that is necessary for evil to prevail in the world is for good men to do nothing, he might just has well have written;

All that is necessary for evil to prevail in the world is for good men to rely on their hope that evil will change its mind about being evil;

that the leopard will change his spots, spontaneously, for no apparent reason.

There is a fight going on, over the truth about the wielding of power and the spending of resources that belong fundamentally to the people. 

Imagine a boxer whose defense is to hope his opponent will stop hitting him in the face; and how well that strategy will work.

Those who want to continue to hide the truth have only to prevent change.  They have inertia and nine points under the law, wiktionary, to their advantage.

FOG could if they wanted to; fight back; take the offensive.

They could quite easily, enable the creation of a reform proposal remedying the constitutional and statutory inadequacies that have enabled the generations long culture of corruption and incompetence in state government.

It could be done in time for the election of the entire legislature.  It could be an election issue.  It could be "the" election issue. 

The culture of corruption and incompetence could be ended at once and for all.

Or, we can hope (beyond any reason) that all of them will, spontaneously and for no other reason, "make sunshine their priority".




photo Mark Bralley