Voting in the ABQ City Election Requires Your Provide an ID
When you go to vote in the upcoming municipal election, be sure to bring an ID with you. There is a lot of confusion out there about the procedure, but city elections require you bring a form of ID to the poll with you (driver’s license, student ID, credit card.)
Here’s how this came about...
The Mexican Uprising Deepens
Less than one year after taking office, the administration of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto faces serious challenges to its core policies. Leading the opposition are tens of thousands of public school teachers protesting the new No Child Left Behind-like law they contend will cost jobs, aggravate educational inequities and lead to privatization.
The protest, which counts months now, is expanding in both scope and participation and more and more assuming the character of a multi-issue popular movement...
Monetize the Rio Grande Now—Gotta Do It!
Our low profile, no controversy mayor has just released new plans for the Richard Berry Bosque Access Center (RBBAC) with the fifty story riverfront Disney Hotel complex and the Aldo Leopold Memorial ten-story parking structure, sculpture park, and miniature golf metroplex.
The project is slated to be built in the next two weeks before anyone has a chance to ask any unpleasant questions. Contractors from Arizona have all been chosen, so don’t worry your pretty little head about all the noisome details...
Keep Big Money out of Publicly Financed Races
Voters in Albuquerque and Santa Fe overwhelmingly voted to establish public financing systems in both cities to eliminate the influence of special-interest money on our elected officials and to permit them to take office beholden to no one but the voters who elected them.
The systems are now facing two challenges, one old and one brand new...
Desalinization for Sprawl
I wonder what it would be like to have huge mounds of salt laced with arsenic sitting on the ground west of Albuquerque. Suppose a developer wanted to build a massive subdivision miles from the center of the city and worked a deal with Sandoval County to drill deep into the aquifer around the Rio Puerco and tap into the brackish water known to be there.
Suppose this developer started the project, used a process of desalinization, to clean the water, making promises to clean up the salt and arsenic waste, but then hit a snag in the housing market, abandoned the project, and left Albuquerque and Rio Rancho with its salt waste and poison blowing around in the wind and making its way into populated areas...
Meet the secret Republican infrastructure buying Albuquerque’s elections
What happens when you get caught hiding a Republican political-hack firm inside your non-partisan global public relations firm? Albuquerque's DW Turner/Agenda Communications is about to find out.
Weeks ago we started asking questions about big money donor Jerry Ginsburg who gave $40,000 to start a special interest PAC attacking progressive City Councilor Isaac Benton.
That PAC reported using Ginsburg’s money to hire a shadowy California business to run the campaign. Yesterday, Benton’s campaign shed some light on the shadowy group supporting his Republican opponent...
Countdown to Health Reform II
With less than two weeks to go, a critical component of the ACA, the New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange, unveiled its new look and commitment to becoming part of the landscape of New Mexico starting October 1, 2013. The new website was unveiled Tuesday morning and you can check it out at: BeWellNM.com. In addition, the Exchange is getting ready to initiate a campaign of radio and television advertisements touting its services shortly...
A Sordid Tail of Campaign Abuse
Anyone who wants to witness the wonderful result of the Citizen’s United decision can just take a gander at what is going on in the District 2 City Council race where Isaac Benton faces Roxanna Meyers.
The city has never witnessed such a downright dirty, nasty attack campaign in a little old local race that usually features the kind of bland optimistic campaign statements about some general ways to promote the city and keep constituents happy...
What some see as border security, others see as border hysteria in Mexico
As Congress gets back in session the question of immigration reform will be front and center. The danger is that fanatics will dominate the debate and that the key question once again will be border security and an excessive hysteria about Mexico.
About every three weeks I cross the border into Mexico at Juárez, Santa Teresa just to the west, Palomas south of Columbus, N.M., or on foot at Nogales and Tijuana. What actually happens just across the border? Here are the kinds of people you would actually meet...
The benefits of owning a polling company (updated)
Last week, the Albuquerque Journal ran a story that stated "Most Albuquerque voters favor a city proposal to build more trails and other recreational access through the city's riverside bosque….The support is widespread across political and demographic groups, the survey found."
Apparently the hundreds of naysayers that showed up in vehement opposition to the mayor's Rio Grande Vision on September 4th were just the vocal riffraff who only represent a small minority of people who "oppose the city's proposal to increase access to the Rio Grande and the Bosque."
Or so the Journal would have you believe...