Denish struggling still with candor, forthrightness and honesty.

Lt Governor Diane Denish, according to Monahan, link,
said of Gubernatorial Candidate Pete Domenici,

We can't afford a Governor who has a name but no ideas
or priorities!

Unless you actually believe that Domenici hasn't one single
idea, nor one single priority, Denish's statement is false
on its face.

And why is it acceptable to utter patent untruths?

Are campaigns a license to lie? Why do we accept dishonesty
in campaigns and then rail against it once they are elected?

Candidates are showing their stripes during their campaigns.
We ought not to ignore the stripes that portend a willingness to
deliberately deceive and mislead voters.

The day Janice Arnold-Jones "... dragged her camera in there"

I find myself on occasion, in back and forth exchanges in the
comments sections of other blogs.

Some of the most frustrating exchanges occur on the backside
of Democracy for New Mexico, host site for some of the most
intransigent bigotry found anywhere in the blogosphere.

Rarely is there a philosophical discussion or disagreement;
mostly they just really hate "Republicans", no matter what else.

One backsider, who will identify himself only as "Luther", was
recently exercising his need to berate Republicans by attacking
the record of Rep Janice Arnold-Jones. He asked;

What the heck has Arnold Jones ever achieved except
dragging that camera in there?

It got me thinking about the (2nd) day she "dragged her
camera in there". She had already defied the good ol' boys
by webcasting a committee meeting. This was the next day.
We were in a meeting of the House Rules Committee.

They were there to deal with their response to the assault on
their traditions and the "threat" of webcasting.

Arnold-Jones was there.
As she was leaving the room
to go to a committee meeting
where she was again going to
set up her webcasting,
a TV reporter asked her,
"what are you going to do
if they tell you again,
to put your camera away?"

Rep Janice Arnold-Jones said
something to the effect that,
she wasn't sure what she was going to do.

The uncertainty was not over her plan to continue to web cast
for her constituents. I felt the uncertainty centered around her
concern that her courage might fail her in the confrontation she
was headed toward.

Her courage did not fail her, and the rest as they say, is history.

I have always believed that courage is not reflected in a lack of
fear, it is manifest in doing what needs to be done, in spite of
the fear.

You would be hard pressed to point to an instance of political
courage that surpasses this.

"Luther" will never understand the remarkable courage it took
to be the first through the breach in the wall of shady backroom
dealing in Santa Fe.

Worse, even if he did finally grasp it, he would never admit it.

After all, she is a "Republican".

If Medal of Honor winner, Audie Murphy, link, were a
"Republican", I am certain that Luther would be asking,

What did Murphy ever do except "dragging" his rifle
across Europe?

photo Mark Bralley

APS' Student, Parent, and Employee Website.

APS has rolled out its new website, link. Students, parents,
and employees will be able to find "everything they need to
know" about the district.

There is no tab for "community members" or "taxpayers".
Apparently, the disregard for taxpayers and the community
in general, will continue unabated.

Nowhere on the new site, can you find out how much money
they have spent, or will be spending, on refurbing the castle keep at 6400 Uptown Blvd.

If you search around for a while, you will find some two year
old information on spending in pdf files which are neither
searchable. amenable to cutting and pasting, nor linkable.

In other words, new face on an old cover-up.

As always, I will bow to controverting fact; perhaps the
information is there and I just can't find it. In which case
I will gladly amend this report.

The Denish Albatross

There has been one party in power for ever.

It happens to have the Democrat Party.

If it had been Republicans in charge for generations, it would be
the same.

It isn't power that corrupts, it is the opportunity to abuse power
without consequence that corrupts absolutely.

If you sit within an entrenched system you will be corrupted
by your invulnerability, absolutely.

Those who stand up against an entrenched system find
themselves out of the system in short order.
Entrenched corruption does not tolerate
those who do not tolerate corruption.

Even if Lt Governor Diane Denish has not be complicit in
the incompetence and corruption, she is certainly compliant
to the culture of corruption and incompetence in state government.

She is part of an entrenched system.

One cannot graduate from party to corruption to
being the person that ends the corruption single handed.

How would that meeting look?

"Hey guys I changed my mind, and
you're all under arrest."

The impossibility of her taking charge of state government
and throwing out all of the corrupt and the incompetent
politicians and public servants entrenched in her own shared
government, hangs like an albatross* on her candidacy.

*"... a seemingly inescapable moral burden,
as of guilt or responsibility.

something burdensome that impedes action or progress."

photo Mark Bralley

She...'s back.

Representative Janice Arnold Jones
announced that she will be webcasting her
committee meetings;
House Taxation and Revenue and
House Voters and Elections.



She will web-cast the 2010 NM House Committees she serves on at http://www.NMGov.tv/.

She will use her Twitter account, LadySunshineNM, for posting updates for times and dates during the session.

Her constituents can not only watch the meeting, but can participate real time through email to their representative.

Arnold-Jones' email contact address during webcasting will be
jearnoldjones(AT)aol.com

Janice is seen here in the first days of webcasting, chatting on
talk radio about her effort. In the back ground is
Howard DeLaCruz-Bancroft, an integral part of the legislative
webcasting past and present.




photos Mark Bralley

Pete Domenici for governor?

Everyone has a right to run for governor.

It is a perversion of the exercise of that right, if the powerful
and the privileged use the system to install a chosen one.

It would be a shame if this was all about a political machine
installing their candidate.

It is a sad truth that elections can be bought.
They are not of the people, by the people and for the people;
at best, they are held in front of the people.

The winner is the one who gathers the most good ol' boys,
their power and their privilege, to usurp the seat.



It is ironic that
the candidate who is
the single greatest threat
to the good ol' boys and
their way of government,
is being discounted for no
greater reason than that
she doesn't enjoy the favour
of the good ol' boys and
their political machine.





photo Mark Bralley

Denish, complicit, complacent, or what exactly?

When State Senator Tim Eichenberg revealed his unwillingness to invest a half million dollars in a run for Lt Governor because he believed sitting Lt Governor Diane Denish could not win, because she was either complicit or complacent in the Pay to Play corruption in Santa Fe, the focus went immediately to "complicit" and a chorus arose which continues unabated;

"... nobody can prove anything!"

The simple truth is that it is unlikely that anything will be "proved" even against Gov Bill Richardson, despite overwhelming circumstantial evidence that substantial contributions to his various causes, yielded the contributors the opportunity to "invest" hundreds and hundreds of millions of tax dollars, reaping huge financial rewards in the process.

A key player in the investments scandal, as part of a plea bargain, admitted;

“... on numerous occasions, ... he ... recommended proposed investments that were pushed on him by politically-connected individuals in New Mexico, knowing that these politically-connected individuals or their associates stood to benefit financially or politically from the investments and that the investments were not necessarily in the best economic interest of New Mexico.”

If the "politically-connected"
were minor players,
not Richardson or Denish,
it is fair to wonder why the
major players, Richardson and
Denish, either knowingly
permitted, or negligently allowed
the plunder.

Denish is skirting her
responsibility for failing to stop
the plunder by arguing that nobody can "prove" that she shared in it. That is not enough

She needs to explain how all of this went down, within her eye and earshot, without her knowing anything about it.

She was either complicit, complacent, or completely clueless.

Or am I missing something here?




photos Mark Bralley

Red herrings muddy the waters.

We need to elect a new governor.

In theory, we will elect the person who, based on competence,
character and courage, would be the best person to lead us out
of the quagmire.

In practice, the political discourse never seems to settle on the
issues or even on the candidates. Instead it surrounds the "all"
Republicans are this, or, "all" Democrats are that.

Regardless of their party affiliation, there is a best candidate
for the job. We need to focus more on that, and less on holding
them responsible for the sins of the wackiest in their respective
parties.

It is no more fair to hold a Democrat responsible for the musings
of Javier Gonzales, than it would be to hold a Republican
responsible for the the comments of Harvey Yates.

... just sayin'.

Brian Sanderoff, APS advocate or independent researcher?

Brian Sanderoff is the President
of Research and Polling, Inc.

They recently completed a poll
of "likely voters" to see if the
upcoming mill levy and bond
issue elections were going to be
successful.

Apparently they are.


Sanderoff concluded that 53% of likely voters will support the new taxes.

I found it off putting that during his presentation, Sanderoff
repeatedly congratulated the leadership of the APS for their
successes, and often pointed to ways they could influence
future polling results. His pro-APS bias seems incongruous
with being an "independent researcher".

The poll itself, which reflected a largely favorable response,
is deceptive. In the first place, it was not a random sample
of stakeholders; it was a random sample of "likely voters";
those who had voted in the previous two school bond and mill
levy elections. So, while it is an accurate predictor of the
election results, it is not an accurate reflection of the feelings
of all stakeholders.

The poll results, which should be posted on the district's
website where stakeholders can review them; are not.

The leadership of the APS never has, and likely never will,
commission a poll of employees and students, the two most
immediate stakeholders in APS.

The head of APS' Research Development and Accountability
Division, Thomas Genne, admitted to me that the leadership
of the APS has never done a survey of teachers that allowed
them to express their opinions on what they thought was wrong
in the APS or on what they needed from the leadership of the
APS, in order to succeed in educating students in the APS.

The leadership of the APS steadfastly refuses to quantify any
data that reflects poorly upon them.

School Board member Paula Maes
has gone so far as to admit that
she will "never agree to any audit"
that individually identifies any
corrupt or incompetent administrator
or board member.

The Journal is aware of all of this,
and steadfastly refuses to investigate
and report upon any of it, even in an
effort to meet their obligation to
fully inform voters in anticipation of
a bond issue and mill levy election
over the better part of a billion dollars.




photos Mark Bralley

"Secret" school board meeting today.

Some will argue, the meeting isn't "secret" because it is posted
on line, and therefore it isn't secret at all.

I continue to argue it is a secret meeting because their need
is to keep secret what it is they are doing.

They are getting together to complete their evaluation of
APS Superintendent Winston Brooks.

They will conclude that he is doing a great job.

To conclude otherwise would be to point to their own failure
when they hired him, and when they extended his contract
before he had even one year in the job, link.

That they are in a very real sense, evaluating themselves,
creates an "apparent conflict of interest", an activity that is
expressly and specifically prohibited by their own Code of
Ethics; a code that by their own admission is completely and
utterly unenforceable.

A recent audit by the Council of the Great City Schools
revealed that APS' administrative evaluations were
"subjective and unrelated to promotion and step placement."

Apparently they still are; no objective data was gathered
in preparation for this evaluation; there was no impartial
subordinate evaluation for example, that will be used in the
process.

The same audit revealed that the leadership of the APS
rarely changed policy in response to audit findings.

Were the audit done again, it won't be, it would show that
nothing has changed.

And likely, nothing ever will. A recent poll revealed that
voters are likely to approve another $617M in bonds and
mill levies, with no strings attached.

Dem chair Gonzales struggles with honesty.

The Chairman of the Democratic Party of New Mexico Javier Gonzales is doing what he is expected to do; writing posts and opinion pieces that will encourage voters to vote for Democrat candidates.

One doesn't have to read far in his pieces to find hypocrisy.

He writes piece after (negative) piece accusing "all" Republicans
of this or that, when that argument falls flat on its face.

Consider for example this statement in a Journal op-ed this
morning, link;

"... we still have not heard one Republican solution
intended for solving the looming economic crisis,
extending affordable and accessible health care or
improving education.

Does he really believe that there is not one "Republican"
solution for these problems on the table?

He is either deliberately hiding from the truth, or he is
deliberately distorting it.

In either case, can we now believe him about anything?

People will argue, I am certain, that this is the way campaigns
work; they are a license to lie.

I would argue, if someone has demonstrated a willingness to
manipulate your beliefs in "small" ways, why in the world
would they not manipulate your beliefs when the stakes are
higher?

The simple answer is that there is no reason to believe they
won't. And there is no reason to continue to believe anything
Javier Gonzales has to say, no matter what he has to say.

Denish's juice is apparently limited.

Lt Governor Diane Denish would have us believe that it was
her juice, link, that got the General Services Department to
put up the state government contracts database.

Yet she apparently doesn't have juice enough to get the
State Personnel Office to surrender a list of "temporary"
employees, link.


I don't get it.

State not required to "create" public records.

Journal reporter Coleen Heild would like to know how many
"temporary" employees work for the state, link.

The question is cogent because it looks like the "temporary"
classification may be being used to cover up efforts to skirt
hiring freezes.

She asked;

How many other temporary employees are on the state
government payroll?

State Personnel Office Custodian of Public Records Shelia Zamora answered;

"I'm sorry to inform you that the State Personnel Office
does not maintain document(s) relating to your request"

Which is not to say, the State Personnel Office does not know
and cannot find out how many temporary employees there are,
just that, there is no individual sheet of paper entitled,
Temporary Employees on the State Payroll, lying within
her easy reach.

According to state law, she cannot be compelled to make a few
key strokes on her computer that would generate that record.

Which begs a question, does the fact that agencies cannot be
compelled to create records that don't already exist, allow them
to refuse to answer legitimate questions?

If the request had been sent to another public employee, like
someone pulling down $60K or $70K to be a Public Information Officer, would they have answered the question?

There is a line that separates what we should and should not
be told about the spending of our power and resources.

That line is currently a vast gray area. The line needs a razor
edge. Everything on our side of that line should be immediately
available; period.

If the line cannot be drawn for "every" record, then a process
needs to established, where the fate of disputed records can be
determined with the least amount of effort and delay.

And if we are going to pay good money to PIOs, we should get
good service in return. Between Records Custodians and PIOs,
everything we have a right to know about our government
should be a key stroke or phone call away.

It isn't, and for no reason other than to make it as difficult as it
can be made, to hold politicians and public servants honestly
accountable for their conduct and competence.

Could the leadership of the APS have prevented a rape?

The Journal reports this morning, link, that APS knew months
ago that they had a teacher who spent time in a closet with a
female student. Yet the student reports another "encounter"
as recently as January 2nd.

APS Director of Communications Rigo Chavez, offered
the usual;

"... he could not confirm the incident, because it is a
personnel matter."

"... would not say whether Matthews was disciplined."

"If there was anything that happened, it would have been
investigated, and the district would have taken
appropriate disciplinary action."

The "appropriate action" apparently had so little effect on the
teacher that he felt comfortable continuing the relationship
with the student.

I suspect that the leadership of the APS tried to sweep the
problem under the rug, and in so doing, failed to adequately
investigate and document the problem, which led to their
failure to protect a student from the criminal attention of a
teacher.

The leadership of the APS in unwilling to be candid, forthright,
and honest about anything that makes them look bad. Because
problems cannot be fixed except by first admitting that they
exist, APS has failed stakeholders again.

The above is my surmise, based on a quarter of a century of
dealings with the leadership of the APS and their steadfast
refusal to be held honestly accountable for their conduct and
competence.

The surmise is validated by the fact that despite becoming
aware of felony criminal misconduct involving senior APS
administrators nearly three years ago, link, they are still
hiding the evidence from the District Attorney.

The Journal is complicit in that failure, by virtue of the fact
that the steadfastly refuse to follow up on their own story.

Incompetence as a defense for incompetence; huh?

The Journal reports this morning that Gov. Bill Richardson
feels he shouldn't be held accountable for his failure to lead the
State Investment Council away from bad investments,
because he was never showed up for the meetings, link.

Yeah, that works.

Will this be the year for ethics reform?

There are going to be a lot of ethics bills to watch this session.
In the past, that has been used as an excuse to pass nothing.

If we don't hold their toes to the fire, we will find ourselves
in our perennial position; "hoping" for better next time.

There is no legitimate agenda that does not move forward
on the day that government becomes transparently accountable
to the people.

There is going to be a rally supporting transparently accountable
government. If enough people attend that rally, there will be a
order of business in the Roundhouse.

Instead of being a national laughingstock, we could be a model
of transparent accountability in government.

If enough people stand up on the Roundhouse steps
next Tuesday morning, at 11am we can end the "hoping"
for reform, by demanding it. We can let politicians and
public servants know that we expect them to end the
culture of corruption and incompetence in state government,
at once, and for all.



Rep Janice Arnold-Jones
has given you a time, a day, and
a place, to stand up and regain
control over power and resources
that are fundamentally your own.

There may not come another.





By twelve noon, it could be a whole new ballgame.




photo Mark Bralley

Balderas champions ethic reform.

State Auditor Hector Balderas thinks it should be
against the law to mislead or obstruct auditors, link.

Works for me.

There are limits on transparency in government.

It is the prerogative of the people to set them.

Survey results; job performance, Winston Brooks.

APS Superintendent
Winston Brooks' job performance
was the subject of a survey item
in the APS Community Survey.

The survey was done in
November 2009. It was
undertaken by Research and
Polling, Inc. link.

The purpose of the survey was
to gather data surrounding the
upcoming mill levy and school bond election in February.

The survey was done of 402 "likely voters". Likely voters
are voters who participated in recent elections. About 500
likely voters were approached by pollsters, about 20% declined
the opportunity to participate.

Brian Sanderoff, President of Research and Polling, presented
the survey results to the board this morning. According to
Sanderoff, the margin of error is 5%, with a confidence level of
95%. This means if the survey were done 100 times, the margin
of error would be 5% or less, 95% of the time.

Poll respondents were asked to evaluate Winston Brooks'
job performance, by giving him a letter grade from A to F, with
the following results;

A 8%
B 26%
C 25%
D 12%
F 22%

Again, these results come from likely voters, and may or may
not reflect the opinions of stakeholders in general.

The results are skewed by another factor as well; where voters
get their information about the APS and about Brooks.

A survey item addressed that issue; most get their information
from the Journal, local TV news and, friends, relatives, and
co-workers.

They get information least from; APS newsletters, the internet,
and local radio stations.

So how good is their information? Neither the Journal nor
the local TV stations offers impartial comprehensive coverage.

The Journal, for example, gives Brooks a full column every
month with no opportunity for rebuttal.

And their daily coverage is deliberately biased. For example;
they broke a story, link, about corruption in the APS Police
Department, and have steadfastly refused to tell readers the
truth about the aftermath of the scandal, including the fact that
three years later, evidence of felony criminal misconduct
involving senior APS administrators has still not been turned
over to the District Attorney's Office for prosecution.

Nor has the Journal reported on the ethics and accountability
scandal in the leadership of the APS; the fact that Brooks, the
senior most administrative role model of the APS Student
Standards of Conduct, refuses to be held honestly accountable
as a role model of those standards.

Nor that APS' Silent Whistle whistleblower protection
program is nothing more than a forwarding mailbox where
Brooks can simply close a complaint made against him,
rather than provide the complaint the due process it deserves.

The Journal will not report that hundreds of whistleblower
complaints (every single one of them) is being denied the due
process hearing before the Audit Committee required by
school board policy.

Nor has the Journal reported that Brooks' administration refuses
still, to offer a candid, forthright, and honest accounting of spending
at 6400 Uptown Blvd.

Nor that he refuses to point to a time, a day, and a place where
he or anyone in his stead, will sit still and answer legitimate
questions about the public interests in the APS.

Nor will the Journal report that he refuses to answer questions
about whether the auditors that found the Finance Division
without adequate standards, accountability, or record keeping,
also found any criminal misconduct.

Survey results on Winston Brooks' job performance are based
on carefully spun and unethically edited coverage of the APS
and of its superintendent.

The Albuquerque Journal, a newspaper of record, cannot be
relied upon for the information voters need in order to cast
informed ballots, or even to participate in a Community Survey
in advance of a bond issue and mill levy for over $600M.




photo Mark Bralley

Rules? We don't need no stinking rules!

I went to the Special Board Meeting this morning to hear the
discussion surrounding the Community Survey regarding the
mill levy and bond issue elections.

According to school board policy; all board meetings are
conducted according to Robert's Rules.

During one of the discussions,
Robert "I call the question" Lucero
"called the question".

He likes to do that, often to
the point of rudeness.

When he has had his say,
he often calls the question,
usually without warrant.


"Calling the question", link, is a procedure provided for by
Robert's Rules of Order, link. Robert's Rules are a set of
rules governing meetings.

It is often called Parliamentary Procedure.

Meeting Chair Marty Esquivel
was obliged, according to the rules,
to immediately call for a vote on
"calling the question"; ending debate.

He instead, called upon another
board member, allowing them to
continue the debate.

After that, he announced that the
question had been called, and called
for a vote on the issue on the table.

He never conducted the vote on whether to call the question.

Who cares? What difference does it make?

The very first rule in any list of rules reads;
1. You have to obey the rules.

Rules either apply to everybody, or they apply to nobody.
The last thing you want to be is, the last one obeying the rules.

Why say that you are going to follow rules
if you have no intention of following them?

If you do say you are going to follow rules,
you have some obligation to actually follow them.

Unless of course, you regard yourself as above the rules.