Thursday, August 18, 2016

APS School Board's silence gives consent.

Qui tacet consentire videtur, ubi loqui debuit ac potuit

He who is silent,
when he ought to have spoken
and was able to, is taken to agree
— Latin proverb wikilink

Have APS students a right to good role models?

If the behavior of the seven senior most role models in the entire APS are any indication, the answer is no.

APS School Board member Maestas
One of them has betrayed the public trust.

The other six of them sit with her at school board meetings and pretend there's nothing wrong; no censure, no nothing.  If asked; they're still "waiting for all the facts".  The case has dropped into the legal process where it will languish until long after anyone who cared stops caring.

The APS School Board expects students to "... model and promote the Pillars of Character Counts!; a nationally recognized, accepted and respected code of ethical conduct.

Of themselves, the board expects compliance only to "the law".  Already the lowest standards of conduct acceptable to civilized human beings, litigation and legal weaselry will lower them to near non-existence.

Analee Maestas is role modeling a corrupt politician New Mexico style.  The rest of the board are role modeling the enabling culture that allows public corruption and incompetence to continue unabated; even in plain sight.

If we really want students in APS to grow into adults who embrace character and courage and honor, someone is going to have to show them what they look like.  If not the so called leadership of the APS, then who?

The leadership of the APS is doing everything they can to eliminate Character Counts!.  It isn't about Character Counts! per se; it is about any standards of conduct that require truth telling and honest to God accountability to meaningful standards of conduct and competence.

The senior most role models in the entire APS are abdicating right before our eyes; abandoning their duties and obligations as the senior most role models of nearly 90,000 of this community's sons and daughters.

Journal Editor in Chief
Kent Walz - leader in the
cover up of the scandal.
They get away with it, because the Journal is complicit in the cover up of the ethics, standards and accountability crisis in the leadership of the APS.




photos Mark Bralley


Monday, August 15, 2016

CABQ Chief Administrative Officer Rob Perry is a bald-faced liar.

In the Journal this morning, link, CABQ Chief Administrative Officer Rob Perry is quoted regarding his and the city's efforts to keep the truth hidden from stake and interest holders by making special team reviews "secret" records.

Perry said;

“We don’t mean to conceal anything."
Raise your hand if you believe him.

Seeing not one hand; bullshit is called.

CABQ Chief Administrative
Officer Rob Perry
is a bald-faced liar;
shameless and undisguised;
barefaced



photo Mark Bralley

Saturday, August 13, 2016

Analee Maestas and the cherry tree

Many Americans have for centuries, been sharing a fable, link, with their children.  The point in sharing the story with children is to encourage them to embrace character and courage and honor

"The cherry tree myth is the most well-known and longest enduring legend about George Washington. 

In the original story, when Washington was six years old he received a hatchet as a gift and damaged his father’s cherry tree. When his father discovered what he had done, he became angry and confronted him. Young George bravely said, “I cannot tell a lie…I did cut it with my hatchet.” Washington’s father embraced him and rejoiced that his son’s honesty was worth more than a thousand trees. 
The fable is useful as an illustrative example, because
there are so few real life examples to point to instead.

One of the senior most role models in the entire APS, School Board Member Analee Maestas, has an opportunity to provide for those who look to her for an example to emulate, honesty worth more than a thousand trees.

She will provide for students apparently,
a diametrically opposite example.

She, and the rest of the APS school board.




photo Mark Bralley

Tuesday, August 02, 2016

In the absence of trust there must be transparency


The most onerous and inescapable aspect of representative government is that the governed must surrender their control over their combined power and resources, to politicians and public servants.

Except for manifestly feckless governmental conduct laws, and nearly as inconsequential open meeting and public records laws, the only thing the people have ever had to protect their interests has been trust; trust that those they elect, appoint and hire will act in their interests; with the entirely predictable result; “power corrupted; absolute power corrupted absolutely”.

At this point, in the face of human history and any understanding at all of basic human nature, how is it anything but mind-numbingly naïve to expect human beings to not yield to temptation; to not take advantage of the lack of transparency?

If trust has been lost, then there is only transparency left to protect our interests.

There needs to be no argument made, that meetings where the people’s power is being wielded, where the people’s resources are being spent, should be open to the public. The question is; will the meetings be open; what happens if they aren’t?

A more important question is; what are you going to do when by their words or their deeds, they make it clear to you, that they have no intention of letting you watch their little meetings in secret?

Who are you willing to follow, where are you willing to go,
what are you willing to do, to defend your interests?