Democracy for New Mexico

Alito Not a Done Deal: Call Sen. Bingaman

Editor's Note: Read this New York Times story on what many consider to be the weak and dispirited response of Democrats to the Samuel Alito nomination. Makes you angry, doesn't it? Have these politicos ever heard of educating the public or launching a many-pronged persuasive effort to communicate the incredible dangers posed by Alito and his dedication to expanding an already imperial presidency? Time to make a last ditch effort to convince our Senators that refusing to filibuster Alito paves the way for BushCo to continue their assault on the Constitution. Read Al Gore's speech if you need a refresher on what's at stake here.

From People for the American Way:
If you've been reading the papers, you know that some people are trying to make it look like no one's fighting Samuel Alito's nomination. Yesterday's New York Times quoted Steve Schmidt, who managed Alito's nomination for the White House: "The American people see Judge Alito and say, that's exactly the sort of person we want to see on the Supreme Court."

Does this Bush deputy speak for you? If not, you need to call Sen. Jeff Bingaman right now at (877) 851-6437.

Your activism may never matter more than it does TODAY. Tomorrow at lunch, Democratic senators will meet to decide their Alito strategy. Some senators seem to think you won’t mind if they fail to do everything possible to defeat Alito.

Tell Sen. Jeff Bingaman that you're counting on senators to do everything possible to defeat this nomination.

If there was ever any doubt that Alito's nomination is one of the most important showdowns for the progressive movement in a generation, Alito's testimony last week made it abundantly clear: If confirmed, Alito will likely condone the abuse of power by the president, vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, and help curtail Congress' ability to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the American people. (Visit https://www.SaveTheCourt.org/AlitoHearings to read our complete coverage.)

Tomorrow's meeting is about more than Alito's confirmation — it's about the future of the country. Don't let Sen. Jeff Bingaman  go into that meeting without hearing from you.

(877) 851-6437

Let us know how your call goes by visiting SaveTheCourt.org/CallReport

A First for NM: Governor Richardson's State of the State Address to be Simulcast on Web

2:00 PM UPDATE: I don't see the video download on the site yet, but here's a link to a pdf of the text version of the State of the State.

Webcast of the State of the State Address
Approximately 12:30 PM to 1:00 PM Start Time
Tuesday, Jan 17th

If you can't make it to Santa Fe to see the Governor's State of the State speech, hit the link below to see the live webcast. This is the first time a State of the State Address will be streamed live. After the speech, you'll be able to download video or audio of the address at the same site.

To access today's address, log onto https://www.governor.state.nm.us and follow the link for the live broadcast.

To track bills or contact your legislator, visit the website of the New Mexico Legislature.

Gore Roars on Constitutional Crisis Created by Bush

Al Gore delivered a barnburner of a Martin Luther King Day speech this morning at Constitution Hall in DC that accuses the Bush administration of egregious attempts to circumvent the U.S. Constitution and institute what amounts to an imperial presidency. Gore was introduced at the speech before the America Constitution Society by ex-Georgia Congressman Bob Barr, a Republican. You can watch a video of the speech at the CSPAN website. Chances are good it will be rebroadcast later today one of the CSPAN television channels.

UPDATE: Crooks and Liars now has video up of speech highlights. Irregular Times has a podcast of the entire speech. Entire video also on Live Journal along with highlights

Bottom Line Quote: "What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the President of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and insistently."

Daily Kos has a transcript. This speech is a MUST READ. Here's how the speech begins:

Congressman Barr and I have disagreed many times over the years, but we have joined together today with thousands of our fellow citizens-Democrats and Republicans alike-to express our shared concern that America's Constitution is in grave danger.

In spite of our differences over ideology and politics, we are in strong agreement that the American values we hold most dear have been placed at serious risk by the unprecedented claims of the Administration to a truly breathtaking expansion of executive power.

As we begin this new year, the Executive Branch of our government has been caught eavesdropping on huge numbers of American citizens and has brazenly declared that it has the unilateral right to continue without regard to the established law enacted by Congress to prevent such abuses.

It is imperative that respect for the rule of law be restored.

Contemplating the Message of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have been 77 years old yesterday, had he lived. In honor of his birthday and the MLK holiday, here's one of his seldom-seen and most controversial, visonary speeches: Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence (text version). It was delivered on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before he was assassinated, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City. You can also download or stream an mp3 of the speech. It is, perhaps, even more timely today than it was in 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War. Nothing I can write about the message would better convey his expanding vision for American and planet-wide peace and sanity than the words of Dr. King himself. Excerpts:

... A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

... They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one "Vietcong"-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them -- mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

... I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words:

"Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."

... I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

... The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

... Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every moutain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain."

... If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Many of the landmark speeches of Dr. King can be found on the website of Stanford's King Research and Education Institute.

ACTION ALERT: Call the Governor for $7.50

From New Mexicans for a Fair Wage:
Governor Richardson has heard plenty from minimum wage opponents.  He needs to hear from you now, before he gives his State of the State address on Tuesday.

Call the Governor on Martin Luther King Day, this Monday.  His office will be open from 9 to 5.  Call 505-476-2200.  Tell them your name, where you live, and that you want him to support a minimum wage increase to $7.50.

The Governor has to know you care.  He wants to do the right thing, but YOU have to tell him what that is.

Celebrate Dr. King's legacy by calling him Monday and asking 5 friends to do the same.  Forward this information to everyone you know who values a hard day's work.

And be sure to check out our new website at www.nmfairwage.org.

Sunday (Newspaper) Bird Blogging

I'm one of those fossils who still enjoys reading the newspaper in the morning, especially Sunday mornings, even if all I have to read is the Albuquerque Journal. It's an ingrained habit -- a compulsion really. I grew up in a family that read four Chicago newspapers a day: the Sun-Times, the Tribune, the (Herald) American and the Daily News. As you can see above, Bosco the peach-faced lovebird likes to join me in the dim light of early morning.

Bosco told me how much he enjoyed the Journal story on conservation pioneer, Stewart Udall, and the photo of Mr. Udall walking with poet Robert Frost back in the heady days of the Kennedy administration, when he was Interior Secretary. Can you imagine anyone in the Bush administration hanging out with a poet? For that matter, can you imagine anyone in the Bush administration being a courageous, even visionary, environmentalist? 

Because the news is often depressing these days, we like to bring out the big smile mask seen above and at least pretend to be in a cheerful, optimistic mood.

Above, Bosco is happy, even without the smile mask, while reading a report about more funding that'll be available at New Mexico's upcoming legislative session for important things like pre-kindergarten education, new schools, health care for more children and even $11 million for buying paper ballot voting machines all over the state. That was before we read the article about the likelihood of cold-blooded Samuel Alito becoming a Supreme Court Justice. Out came the smile mask, once again. (Click photos for larger versions.)

P.S. Bear Down Chicago Bears in today's NFL playoff game against the Carolina Panthers!

A Message from Paul Stokes

A message from Paul Stokes who is active with Voter Action, Verified Voting NM and United Voters NM:

Dear concerned citizens,

The voters of New Mexico had their most urgent wish granted yesterday when Governor Richardson announced his initiative to to establish a uniform system of paper ballots and optical scan vote counters in the state. The message is resonating across the state, and is spreading across the country.

The Governor made it clear: it was the concerned citizens of New Mexico that catalyzed this initiative. When our elected officials saw the public interest being expressed in the galleries of the legislature and the editorial pages of the newspapers, they knew that the citizenry was concerned and engaged. And they have responded, beginning last spring in the legislature, and now with this initiative.

New Mexico voters want a voting system that is transparent and that can be trusted to count their votes accurately. Paper ballots provide that capability. With paper ballots, voters have a simple and intuitive way to verify that their votes are properly recorded. And the paper ballots will be preserved and used to check on the machine counts of the votes -- or, as necessary, to conduct recounts of close races.

So, a big thank you to everyone who helped make this happen.

Paul

Editor's Note: Paul Stokes has been an incredibly informed and eloquent spokesperson for election reform in NM. He was an enduring presence at almost every single election reform hearing and meeting. A big thank you to him, too!

NM Voters' Lawsuit Plaintiffs Applaud Governor's Decision; Lawsuit Remains Until Plan Fully Implemented

From Voter Action:
January 13, 2006, Albuquerque - On Thursday, January 12, 2005, New Mexico’s Governor Bill Richardson and Attorney General Patricia Madrid demonstrated bold leadership by announcing a plan to make New Mexico an all-paper-ballot voting state. This is a great day for New Mexicans because it means that we will be able to cast our votes with confidence that a mechanism is in place that will allow all votes to be counted and tallied and the results verified.

The Governor said that he will introduce legislation next week, at the beginning of the 30-day 2006 state legislative session that, if adopted, will accomplish two things:  1) it will mandate the use of optical scan paper ballots in all New Mexico elections, and (2) it will provide $11 million in state funding to purchase the necessary voting systems. If the legislation is adopted by the legislature and implemented before the next election, inaccurate, unreliable and insecure electronic voting machines that produce no voter-verifiable and auditable paper record will be a thing of the past. 

This Governor’s proposal is a great victory for the many concerned citizens and organizations who have tirelessly advocated the change to paper ballots. And it is a great victory for the plaintiffs in Lopategui v. Vigil-Giron, a lawsuit in which the plaintiffs sought this very result. The lawsuit, filed in January 2005, seeks an injunction barring future use of the same unreliable, paperless electronic voting machines that will be replaced under the Governor’s plan if the legislature adopts it.  A catalyst for the Governor’s decision was the Lopategui plaintiffs’ recent and successful effort to temporarily restrain the Secretary of State and county clerks from beginning the purchase of additional unreliable touch screen machines.

New Mexico’s next statewide election is in June, 2006. Thus it is critical that the Governor’s proposal be implemented immediately so that all New Mexico voters will have confidence that their votes and will count and can be verified. For this reason, the Lopategui plaintiffs intend to press forward with their lawsuit, particularly with their efforts to gather evidence needed to obtain judicial relief if the legislature does not adopt the Governor’s plan , or if the statutory changes and funding adopted are too little or too late.

In the Lopategui litigation, Plaintiffs have already obtained critical evidence in discovery about the untrustworthiness of touchscreen voting systems and the serious inadequacy of the Secretary of State’s process for auditing election results.  By gathering more evidence through depositions and inspection of voting systems, plaintiffs will be in a position to seek timely judicial relief should the Governor’s plan not be implemented.  As soon as New Mexico can assure that all voters, regardless of the color of their skin, where they live, or their physical ability are able to cast their votes on verifiable, auditable paper ballots, plaintiffs will give final, hearty congratulations to Governor Richardson, Attorney General Madrid, and the state legislature for protecting our democracy.

Voter Action is a project of the International Humanities Center. www.voteraction.org

You're Invited: An ABQ Evening With Rep. Tom Udall

From Dory Shonagon:

AN EVENING WITH
CONGRESSMAN TOM UDALL
THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 2006
5:30 PM SHARP
At Dory Shonagon's Apt. Complex
Clubhouse at Valle Grande Apts.
8401 Spain Road, Albuquerque. Directions below.

This is a chance for all Bernalillo County progressive Democrats to come and meet a strong, hard working progressive Democrat and elected official. Tom Udall has carried the ball for us for years in Congress as the Representative for Congressional District 3 in Northern New Mexico. You can check his excellent voting record here. Come and hear him speak to us about issues in Congress and get a chance to ask questions of him as well.  All Democrats and independents of good will are welcome.

Martin Heinrich, City Councilor and City Council President, will introduce Congressman Udall.

This event starts promptly at 5:30 PM. Please come on time. Light refreshments will be served.

Directions:

Dory's Shonagon's apartment complex is Valle Grande Apts., 8401 Spain Road at Wyoming in Albuquerque. Event is at the CLUBHOUSE. From Wyoming and Montgomery, go north on Wyoming, past Osuna and the next light is Spain. Right on Spain Rd. Valle Grande is at that intersection. Turn left into the complex. DRIVE STRAIGHT BACK as far as you can go into the complex. At that point you will see the Clubhouse on your right (swimming pool outside, etc). Come on in.

HOST is Dory Shonagon, email:  dshonagon@earthlink.net, 480-1848, if you have questions before the event.

Dory is also hosting this event:

OPENING DAY AT THE NM LEGISLATURE
TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2006
MEET DORY IN SANTA FE AT 9 AM
ROUNDHOUSE INFO BOOTH
We will be taking a tour of the Roundhouse and talking about the process of the legislature, how it works, where to go, how to be a citizen lobbyist, etc. The Governor gives the State of the State address around Noon. Please call if you want a ride up to Santa Fe or can provide a ride to visit the first day of the Legislature.

Great News: Gov. Richardson Pledges $11 Million for Paper Ballot Voting Machines Statewide

Editor's Note: Governor Richardson invited a number of grassroots activists from Voter Action, United Voters of NM, Verified Voting NM, NM Democratic Friends and Democracy for New Mexico to meet with him and participate in today's press conference in Santa Fe. Those in attendance included Terry Riley, Paul Stokes, Charlie Strauss and Steve Fettig, in addition to legislators, clerks, Attorney General Patricia Madrid, Ernie Marquez of the Secretary of State's office and members of the Election Reform Task Force, who all spoke on behalf of effort. Also invited were Ana Canales and myself. Unfortunately, Ana couldn't make it due to a terrible sinus infectiona and I got stuck in a massive traffic jam on I-25 that made me miss the event. Such is life, and all I can offer now is this press release. Great news though!

From the Office of the Governor of NM:

SANTA FE - Governor Bill Richardson today announced that he will work with the Legislature to provide $11 million over two years to purchase new voting machines for all New Mexico counties. The Governor will propose a uniform system of machines with a paper trail that allow voters to verify how they voted.

“I am proposing a bold step forward by standardizing the election systems in all of New Mexico’s 33 counties – a standardized system relying on paper ballots that many vendors already provide, and that 11 of our counties are already exclusively relying on,” Governor Bill Richardson said.

Currently, there is no statewide voting system standard. There are at least six different voting systems used throughout the state. Under Governor Richardson’s plan, all counties would use a paper ballot “marksense” system.

Attorney General Madrid added, “I applaud the Governor’s initiative in seeking to standardize voting in New Mexico with one uniform paper ballot verifiable system. I am hopeful this will provide needed voter confidence in our elections.”

The Governor’s plan could save taxpayers as much as $27 million because the Secretary of State estimates it would cost as much as $38 million to bring our current mix of voting machine systems into compliance with the law.

“It makes no sense to spend four-times the money, and end up with the same complicated mix of voting systems that only frustrate the voting public, complicate the efforts of our dedicated precinct boards, and worse, discourage New Mexicans from going to the polls,” Governor Richardson said.

UPDATE: Here's an article just posted on the Vote Trust USA site that talks about this initiative.