Heinrich Takes the Plunge -- For New Mexico

Where We Are Right Now

In 2010, many New Mexicans dabbled with a "Gateway Republican," electing Martinez to replace Richardson -- the political equivalent of a "Gateway Drug" your kids might experiment with at an unsupervised party. Lots of US state elections went that way.  Too many. Already, however, all across the middle of the country we see screaming cases of "buyer's remorse," large protests, state treasuries handed over to cozy, non-tax paying corporations and public commitments being slashed.

In fact, we see recall petitions and large majorities of voters -- some of whom voted these crooks into office in the election a few months ago -- signing them.  Unlike past GOPCons, these new governors went to work immediately -- in broad daylight -- emptying the  already slim state treasuries with tax cuts for their bosses while cutting state services to the unemployed, the children, the elderly and the handicapped to pay for it, conveniently bankrupting a few cities along the way.

It has been a state by state version of a sickening collection of "looting festivals" cast in the grisly memory of what went on during the autocracy.

That travesty was just their "day job."  Their "main marching orders" from the oligarchs who paid for their campaigns was union busting.  Generally speaking, these tea bag candidates were ordered to plunge the US social economy back into the 1950's just as fast as they could sign these stinking bills into law in their respective state houses.

An Email With Some Good News

Martin

Heinrich... for Senate

There was nothing wrong with Bingaman.  That was then.  This is now.

The email with the good news:

Dear MeanMesa,

Six weeks ago, my friend and mentor Senator Jeff Bingaman announced that he would be ending his distinguished career in public service at the end of his term.  Over those weeks, I have discussed at length with my family how I might best continue to serve New Mexico.  After much serious thought, I am excited to announce today that I will be a candidate for the United States Senate.

I was raised in a working-class family.  My father was an electrician and my mom worked in a factory.  My parents taught me the values that I still hold dear today, and that I believe can help anyone get ahead—hard work, honesty, responsibility, and self-reliance. 

My wife Julie and I are raising our two sons in New Mexico with those same values.  Like many families across our state, Julie and I sit at the kitchen table and talk about our children’s future and how tough the path is for too many of our neighbors and friends.  The fact is, a lot of middle class families in New Mexico are struggling to get by as costs continue to rise and the deck seems stacked against them.  It doesn’t take long in Washington to see that things there just aren’t working. Big corporations and special interests seem to get all of the breaks while regular New Mexico families are left holding the bill.  New Mexico families deserve better.

When I travel across our great state—from Las Vegas to Las Cruces, from Silver City to Clovis—I see land abundant in resources, and people filled with potential. We have the chance to harness our natural resources—our sun and wind—into a vibrant clean energy economy that can power our country and employ thousands of New Mexicans. We have the ingenuity and innovation that resides not only in our universities, labs, and small businesses but also in the minds of our students, scientists, entrepreneurs, and workers to make this a reality.

I would be proud to represent you in the U.S. Senate.  I hope you’ll join me on this journey to provide everyone in this state with a prosperous future worthy of our efforts and our values.

                                                                 Thank you for all you do,
Martin Heinrich

 What to Expect Next

The corporate money bins which installed these loser tea bags  in state governments in the first place are now bulging  with cash to seat some "wholly owned" Republican schill in Bingaman's Senate chair.  

Every vote in the US Senate, the way these billionaires see it, is worth a lot to their schemes.  A "lot?"  So much that a cash figure can be placed on winning an election. And, and election in New Mexico, although perhaps not in the coastal "economic treasure states," can go a long ways toward delivering the Senate to control by the "looters."

Worse, with Citizens United conveniently delivered by the national socialist majority of the Supreme Court just in a nick of time, we could easily see a Heinrich opponent so flush with cash to spend that our state economy would feel the jolt.  Also, by "opponent" we might have to include another  alleged Democrat emerge from the money bin crowd, such as the carefully disguised "Joe Romero,"  the "red herring" who delivered a Republican mayor to Albuquerque when a majority of voters cast Democratic ballots.

The point?

Electing Heinrich in this "cash climate" is going to be a tough run.  MeanMesa is in for the fight.

We will have to work, but we can do this -- even without bundles of corporate cash.

For MeanMesa's international visitors:

MeanMesa's compliments to Martin Heinrich.

An Introduction - Albuquerque's "Not So Bright" Future

An Introduction to the MeanMesa Series: Albuquerque Youth Corps

 (There are three more posts on this topic)

Now, the remnants of history which survive to this current day are rife with the  repeating lament:

"Today's spoiled, petulant children will be the ruin of us!  Why can't they be like we were -- you know, in the good old days when we were young?"

The young followers of Alcibiades, one of MeanMesa's favorite historic role models, set ancient Athens on its incredibly traditional "nose."  Those old Senators had no taste for vibrant, independent and fluid new Athenians.  Likewise, when the young, up and coming Scipio was dispatched to defeat Carthage in the Punic Wars, leading the scant legions left in the city's arsenal after Hannibaal had wreaked havoc for a decade, he was no favorite of the already moribund Roman military leadership.

Interestingly, both harangues seemed to center, at least a little, on shoes.  The focus of the old Athenian critics was a derisive conclusion that Alcibiade's bad influence on the youth of the day arose from what they called "Alcibiades sandals."  Young Scipio endured a similar complaint from the old Roman Senate because, in their words, he wore "silver slippers."

Both stories ended well for the newly cast youth.  Alcibiades returned after "defecting" twice (once to the Spartans and later to the Persians) to save the day at the great naval battle in the Bay of Salamis, dispatching the Persian hordes once and for all and probably ushering in centuries of Hellenic Greatness.  Scipio, contradicting the nay sayers in the Roman leadership, "tore asunder every block held with mortar" in the Baal worshipping, Phoenician stronghold in North Africa.

What could these pungent tales have to do with the future of Albuquerque?  Their relevance to this posting is derived from the similarity of the complaints.

It simply would not serve to substantiate MeanMesa's claim of "impending doom" if a door were left ajar for those among us to simply say "Oh well, there have always been complaints about the young people, and this is no more or less than yet another case of the same old thing."

Unhappily, it is not simply a contemporary version of the dire predictions of those old Athenians or those old Romans.  In both of those historic cases, the diatribe had been unfounded. History unfolded in a fairly propitious vein for both those old Greeks and the old Romans in spite of the dramatic insistence that it wouldn't.

Albuquerque may not be so blessed.  For starters, we find ourselves and our critique rudely dispatched from the matter of "shoes," and coarsely foisted instead into other, more gravely serious issues of these discouraging developments which are only now beginning to descend upon us.

MeanMesa intends to present our own vision of these dismal and disturbing  civic abnormalities in three nutritious, easily digested segments following this high class, historically based introduction.  Of course, as is our habit here at MeanMesa's Galactic Headquarters, we will also propose a solution.

The general organization will be as follows:

Part One: The Problem

Part Two:  A "Concept" of the Solution

Part Three: Some Specifics

Please pay Short Current Essays with a commitment for continuing visits as we ramble through a cold and chilling assessment of the problem and propose a rather radical idea of a social response.  Dismal eschatologies have never been "daily specials" on our menu of new ideas, but, in this case, some serious "fact finding" and "fact facing" may be just what the doctor ordered.

In any event, our series will offer a soothing, narcotic relief from the pundits' endless drivel about the Gulf oil disaster.

Join MeanMesa for the "whole hog plus the postage!"

No Bone to Pick with Mayor Elect Berry

Well, maybe just one.

The election for Albuquerque's new mayor is complete. The three way race required a 40% margin if the winner was to avoid a run-off. The new mayor, Mr. Berry, managed to win over a roughly 43% majority, making him the new mayor.

It was a three way race. The candidates were comprised of the three term incumbent, Mr. Chavez, a Democrat, Mr. Romero, a pseudo-Democrat emerging from the state Senate and the Albuquerque Public School system, and, Mr. Berry, a hard hat wearing conservative Republican. MeanMesa has no particular problem with Mr. Berry being mayor – yet.

MeanMesa also provided a lukewarm support for the incumbent, Mr. Chavez, a fairly progressive local type who consistently gored the bulls of citizens with all ideologies equally. Of course, there were always the hillbillies and bigots who criticized the old mayor as a serial killer, cannibal and psycho-obsessive abortionist searching for ways to destroy Western Civilization, but in Democratic New Mexico such types rarely got very far beyond the pages of the local Red State Rag, the Albuquerque Journal.

The game breaker in this matter turned out to be, however, quite a different matter. That strange political role, a reckless gambit in perfidy, fell to the grotesque Mr. Romero, an alleged Democrat who had just yesterday finished “re-allocating” his $23,000 Congressional war chest to Republican candidates all across the state after losing that 2008 election. A closer look at Mr. Romero's part in the election of a Republican Conservative to be mayor of a progressive Democratic city brings us to the central issue of this MeanMesa post.

A sober analysis of the votes cast reveals the problem. When we, perhaps over generously consider Mr. Romero a Democrat, around 70% of Albuquerque electors voted for Democratic candidates in the election, yet – the result was a conservative Republican mayor. Was this travesty an outrageous case of Rove-style election fraud? Sadly, no. It can be much more accurately described as a case of a subversive, neo-con, CANDIDATE FRAUD!

Mr. Romero, a screaming, ill groomed shill in the election, successfully portrayed himself – just barely – as a Democrat in the race. Under informed voters who were, very reasonably, reluctant to elevate Mr. Chavez to yet another term as mayor, but who were still firmly Democrats in all their other voting habits, fell for the scheme “hook, line and sinker.”

New Mexicans, like most other Americans, learned a dismal lesson from the consequences of creating the Bush Dynasty. Being “gun shy” of a mayoral dynasty – after all, Mr. Chavez kept getting himself elected, term after term – they embraced a change. However, the precise change they were embracing was different from the Titanic's ice berg only by being slightly smaller and quite a bit more soiled.

Ice bergs are rarely as oily as Mr. Romero.

Republicans, although horrible at foreign policy, limiting government, promoting the economy, winning wars and most other forms of traditional leadership once elected, are, still, incredibly adept at winning elections. They have mastered a juggernaut technique at exploiting every basic fear walking the streets of America from Boston to San Bernardino with their cheap little lies and deceptions. The wretched balloon they inflate with this gaseous reaction-ism stays aloft just long enough to insert them into office, then collapses under the burden of their inevitable greed and failed, simplistic ideology. The results are far too close and bloody to be conveniently dispatched as simply “bad luck,” “bad intelligence,” or any kind of some other “bad something.” You know, as someone else's fault.

Yet, here we are, staring down the barrel of the next four years with a Republican mayor and all the mischief we can credibly expect to accompany that unfortunate fluke. We'll give Mr. Berry the benefit of the doubt, but we won't be too surprised when we see Albuquerque's descent into a new carnival of even more distance between the “haves and the have nots.”

Mr. Berry's four year term may well prove to be long enough to re-establish the foothold of a new well connected, privileged elite. The wealthy subdivisions in the North of Albuquerque are full of repossessed mansions selling at 60% of the price they commanded two years ago. The state is rapidly filling with Stimulus Money, much of which will arrive for civic projects for Albuquerque. Under a Republican mayor -- especially one with an appetite for "hard hats" -- and a “purified” neo-con city government, MeanMesa has a sickening suspicion about exactly which Albuquerque citizens will get “stimulated.”

Yuck. They've done it again.

Albuquerque Mayor: Strange Bedfellows

WOW! The neo-cons at the Albuquerque Journal like Chavez while the progressives at the local ALIBI like Romero! MeanMesa, a stalwart ALIBI reader who uses the Journal to line his bird cage -- unread, of course -- is amazed! New Mexico is the land of mystery and enchantment, and this is a story of the mystery part! A true, high desert tale of strange bedfellows, indeed!


For our MeanMesa visitors who live far away from Albuquerque, please stand by. An infrequent but necessary aspect of being a blog from the "Other Mile High City" calls for MeanMesa to pay just a little bit more attention to the local mayoral campaign. Because "all politics is local," and because MeanMesa is both about as political and as local as you can get while you remain standing, we have to jump into the fray with respect to the main "?Democratic?" contender challenging the incumbent mayor, Marty Chavez.

We're not going to trot out another toad strangling concoction of Chavez's accomplishments because MeanMesa just mailed our mail in ballot -- we voted for him. So, what does that leave "on the table" for a quick blog posting?

Actually, quite a bit.

Mayor Chavez's "?Democratic?" rival has already shown his colors. His early campaign literature railed about the "crime wave" inundating our city while proclaiming that his policies would re-invigorate small business. As Richard Romero's campaign matured from this first onslaught of ill-defined positions, it simply "grew like Topsey," engulfing Albuquerque's Public School System and blaming the incumbent for predictable set backs in local industry occurring due to the flaming case of "recession" left over from the Bush Autocracy.

For background on Romero's gaseous "crime and small business" claims, jump back to

"A Mayor for Albuquerque. Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid."

http://meanmesa.blogspot.com/2009/09/mayor-for-albuquerque-be-afraid-be-very.html

Now, however, it turns out that Mr. Romero is quite the neo-con turn coat in his own right. For those MeanMesa visitors old enough to remember, this campaign reminds us of the ancient neo-con crookery called The Silent Majority of the last century. In that case, sterile, aging, corporate reactionaries actually descended to ground level to propose a strategic, proletariat scheme to undo what had become, for them, a troubling shift toward progressive ideas and a burgeoning Democratic demographic in the voting electorate.

Their strategy? As usual, an unruly crowd of the standard unwashed hill billies and bigots of the time, marching under the Crusade-like, inflammatory toxin of dirty shirt preachers such as Falwell and Dobson, and allegedly validated by equally suspicious sorts such as Ronnie Rayguns (who, BTW, raised taxes more than any other President in history) launched a 20th Century version of the 21st Century campaign to Take Back America. The tactics they cooked up for this ambition of theirs were to start at the bottom. That meant that their supporters were to take local elections for dog catcher, school board, museum committees and the like, insinuating themselves into positions of local government from which they could spring forth into more important roles and, uh, Take Back America.

Well, all this would amount to little more than a tedious recounting of local politics, gleefully left in the dust bin of history, except for the matter of Mr. Romero. Now that this strange beast has emerged to run for Mayor, we see a bit of that old deception returning, cleaned and painted, of course, but even more virulent (In the words of President Bill Clinton describing the "right wing conspiracy" in an interview with Kristina Wong, ABC News -- http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/09/bill-clinton-says-right-wing-conspiracy-now-after-president-obama.html ).

What exactly about Mr. Romero is so troubling?

Well, he recently ran in a New Mexico Democratic primary election to defeat "$ Halliburton Heather $" (Republican Representative Heather Wilson), and, thankfully, lost to a real Democrat, Martin Heinrich. Now, old Heather had horribly soiled herself performing years of political fellatio on the autocrat's (the "W") every crooked, uh, scheme, so it was actually no big shocker that a Democrat replaced her -- except, as it turned out, NOT Mr. Romero! Immediately after losing that primary election, Mr. Romero started divvying up what was left of his campaign funds in gifts to State REPUBLICAN campaigns!

What's the problem? Well, Mr. Romero dutifully followed the Silent Majority style of the old Take Back America scheme by serving in the State Senate and being Principle in a local school. Those were his versions of the dog catcher, museum committee jobs. However, good old Mr. Romero actually went a even a bit deeper into the muck of the neo-con "swamp of deception."

He successfully masqueraded as a Democrat in his "dog catcher" days!!

After prancing around New Mexico for a long enough period -- long enough, he hoped, for everyone to comfortably forget his true stripes -- he emerged in the Congressional race. After failing to win there, he gave $20,000, or more, of his left over war chest to state Republican candidates, then jumped back into Superman's phone booth, changed his costume back into a Democrat, and ran for Mayor. Yuck.

That's why MeanMesa voted for Marty Chavez. As a mayor, he ain't perfect. But as a candidate, he remains refreshing in line with what he has always been!

The following link will take you to another interesting local blog, Democracy for New Mexico.

http://www.democracyfornewmexico.com/democracy_for_new_mexico/2009_albuquerque_mayoral_race/

A Mayor for Albuquerque. Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

Beyond health care, what Else Is America Doing?114

The knuckle draggers of the national "Bite Game," now infamously famous for its grotesque, self-embarrassing performance at town hall meetings, its rude and tasteless grunts in Joint Sessions of Congress and its stale, perspiration soiled tea bagger buses, is trying to penetrate local Albuquerque politics.

In New Mexico, the home base of MeanMesa, our city of Albuquerque is entering a mayor's race within the next few weeks. Our current mayor seems to have done a fairly good job of watching over his responsibilities, but a new candidate has emerged. Now, this discussion could fairly easily slip into endless details of matters the current mayor has not handled in a way entirely to someone's liking, but we have to expect that.

We, as citizens of Albuquerque, owe the incumbent the advantage of a reasonable over-view. By and large, he has done an admirable job for several terms. The city is clean and fairly well managed. City water supplies, a big issue in New Mexico, have been seriously augmented by a major captial expenditure -- a project which was handled fairly well, taking several years and now, joyfully, complete and in operation. Compared to the rest of the country, Albuquerque has an impressive -- not perfect, mind you -- unemployment rate. The streets are clean -- not perfectly clean -- and fairly well maintained and modernized by both locally funded and stimulus projects.

It's a good place to live whether one is wealthy or otherwise.

So, what local issue is the new candidate basing his campaign on for the upcoming election? Well, MeanMesa has been getting a bit of the new candidate's campaign literature here in the aging apartment complex which is host to our galactic headquarters. One of the first questions which seems to launch itself, ready or not, into the mind of this dedicated voter has to do with party. What party loyalty does this new man claim?

Not a clue. Not a word spoken to the matter in any of the slick literature.

It is fairly clear that New Mexico political ettiquete considers a highly partisan mayoral candidate a bit passe. Most folks here apparently think a good mayor will probably be too busy taking care of our needs to do a lot of inflammatory campaigning. The incumbent has steered a sometimes frustrating course through the middle ground on such issues, but he seems to have pleased and displeased all the Albuquerque electorate in a coherent, even handed manner, that is, he seems to have consistently found some sort of "a little something" which has generally satisfied each part of our widely disparate citizenry.

But what about the new guy?

Is there anything in his campaign which reveals where his basic politics reside? Maybe. The new man's campaign has now cast out its own gauntlet, and that gauntlet is law and order. In fact, the new man has criticized the old mayor for being too keen on community improvement projects while neglecting law and order. Yes, the old mayor has championed a number of projects which, if completed, would serve to make Albuquerque into more and more of a modern city. Some of these, in fact, represent a pretty ambitious and brave embrace by the incumbent mayor of Albuquerque's future face.

However, that leaves the matter of the new man's law and order. Now, be assured, the residents of Albuquerque like the idea of law and order. Like any American city this size, we have a few problems with law and order. Over in the Southwest part of town there are a few gangs. Up in the prosperous Northern part of town, there are a few teenagers who like drugs and drinking, you know, raising hell, and sometimes, raising hell rather destructively. The State has some fairly egregious corruption problems, but, on a smaller scale, the city has a few, also.

However, the point is that Albuquerque doesn't have any law and order problems particularly more serious than most other cities this size. Yet, here is the new man promoting the idea that law and order problems are far more critically serious -- and requiring far larger resources -- than any of the old mayor's civic improvement projects. In no time, again without any new or particularly troubling law and order statistics, the new candidate intends to convince voters that law and order is the most serious problem we face, placing every honest, hard working citizen in mortal jeopardy! (Ohmigod! It's only a matter of time until you, too, are a victim of these lawless thugs roaming unchecked through our streets like packs of wild dogs...)

In fact, MeanMesa suspects that a suspiciously well funded campaign which is going to promote law and order as its central mast head will probably manage to inspire a good number of our local voters to start thinking endlessly about law and order. The new candidate intends to spend his campaign money creating enough frightened voters to carry him to an election victory.

Egads. Shades of Karl Rove himself. Right here in River City.

Gosh. What political party does stuff like that?