Democracy for New Mexico

(Updated) FISA Fight Moves to U.S. House

UPDATE: Also see this guest post on the national blog Down With Tyranny about FISA by NM-01 Congressional candidate Martin Heinrich.
**********
I'm not going to regurgitate all the horrors we've witnessed with Sen. Jay Rockefeller and a bunch of other Senate Dems totally capitulating to Bush's demands on warrantless surveillence and telecom immunity. Most of you know this issue as well or much better than I do. Instead, I'll recommend that you read this post by mcjoan at Daily Kos and take action NOW to urge Dem House leaders Pelosi and Hoyer and other Reps to reject the provisions contained in the Senate version of the FISA bill and stick with the tougher protections of the House version -- the so-called RESTORE Act, which does NOT include retroactive immunity for lawbreaking telecoms. Just clicks away.

Here are the Senators who voted for Sen. Chris Dodd's amendment to strip telecom immunity from the Senate's FISA bill:

Akaka (D-HI)
Baucus (D-MT)
Biden (D-DE)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cardin (D-MD)
Casey (D-PA)
Dodd (D-CT)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Murray (D-WA)
Obama (D-IL)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Sanders (I-VT)
Schumer (D-NY)
Tester (D-MT)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)

Here are the fear-impaired Dem Senators who voted AGAINST Dodd's amendment:

Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Evan Bayh (D-IN), Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Tim Johnson (D-SD), Herb Kohl (D-WI), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Ken Salazar (D-CO), Tom Carper (D-DE), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Jim Webb (D-VA), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Bill Nelson (D-FL), Kent Conrad (D-ND), and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)

Hillary Clinton wasn't present for the vote on the Dodd amendment.

On the final Senate vote on the entire FISA bill, which passed by a margin of 68-29 these Senators voted Nay:

NAYs ---29
Akaka (D-HI) Biden (D-DE) Bingaman (D-NM) Boxer (D-CA) Brown (D-OH) Byrd (D-WV) Cantwell (D-WA) Cardin (D-MD) Dodd (D-CT) Dorgan (D-ND)	Durbin (D-IL) Feingold (D-WI) Feinstein (D-CA) Harkin (D-IA) Kennedy (D-MA) Kerry (D-MA) Klobuchar (D-MN) Lautenberg (D-NJ) Leahy (D-VT) Levin (D-MI)	Menendez (D-NJ) Murray (D-WA) Reed (D-RI) Reid (D-NV) Sanders (I-VT) Schumer (D-NY) Stabenow (D-MI) Tester (D-MT) Wyden (D-OR)

Not Voting - 3
Clinton (D-NY)	Graham (R-SC)	Obama (D-IL)

NM Legislators: Do You Support Clean Elections?

Gotta love it. Clearly New Mexico's Alicia Lueras Maldonado asked a number of New Mexico Legislators about their views on the Clean Elections bill currently being considered at the Roundhouse and posted a video (above) of their responses.

HB564, sponsored by Rep. Gail Chasey, would provide a public financing option for all statewide races in New Mexico similar to a measure enacted previously for Public Regulation Commission candidates and appeals court judges. In fact, Democrat Jason Marks is running for reelection to the PRC this cycle using the public financing option. Unfortunately, HB564 is currently mired in the House Appropriations and Finance Committee. You know why.

Do you know any ordinary citizens who believe it's good policy to preserve the power of large campaign donations from corporate and other vested special interests, along with their corrupting influence on politicos? Unfortunately, those who contribute the big buck cash and those who use it to represent the interests of the donors seem mighty enamored of the present system, which looks more and more like pay-to-play every election cycle.

Common Cause New Mexico has been encouraging constituents to ask their Legislators to sign a Voters First Pledge and promise to work to pass and enforce legislation for full voluntary public campaign financing for statewide offices. After the Session, Common Cause will be issuing their 2008 Ethics Reform Report Card to let voters know the degree to which their legislators support much-needed ethics reform in New Mexico. Should make compelling reading.

You can read our previous coverage on ethics and campaign finance reform at our archive.

(3 Updates) Ethics: Aren't You Sick of the Unnamed Alligators?

"Birdies" told me so.

UPDATE 3: See my later post that follows up on this one and reports on the "campaign limits contest" proposed by some alligator.

UPDATE 2: Be sure to read this post at Clearly New Mexico for more detail on the handling of ethics and campaign finance reform bills at the NM Legislature this year. It tells it like it is. Quote:

The fact of the matter is that Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, AARP and numerous other organizations have been actively pushing Clean Elections, Contribution Limits and an independent Ethics Commission for three years.

... the real question we all should ask and keep asking: Why are some legislative leaders putting the deep freeze on ethics reform - and right before a big election no less?

UPDATE 1: If you want more commentary on the corrupting influence of money, insider cronies and powerful lobbyists at the Roundhouse, be sure to read this piece over at Duke City Fix, this post over at m-pyre and at NM FBIHOP. They're all cookin' with gas.
**********
Too cowardly to speak their piece in public, too many of the most status quo/reactionary legislators, hangers on and lobbyists for elite special interests are content to leak unsourced material by taking on the personnae of the much cited Alligators over at Joe Monahan's place. It's a convenient ploy that can be used to try and gain political advanatage -- whether or not such Alligators really exist in terms of a specific issue. Who's to say where the gossip and spin are really coming from and why? After all, I could put all kinds of statements onto DFNM and claim "birdies" told me so. Who's to argue? There's no proof one way or the other.

The lastest of these stealth attacks clearly aims to convince folks that ethics and campaign finance reforms don''t have a chance in the Legislature AGAIN this year. Even more egregious is the lame excuse being pushed that the ethics package won't pass -- and maybe even shouldn't pass -- because the reformers want too much reform. Ain't that a hoot? Yes, after all the horrendous corruption scandals here and just about everywhere else in the nation due to unrestrained corporate money flowing into the system and everyone looking the other way, we have some nerve demanding that a handful of reforms -- that are supported by the public by a 70-85% margin -- be enacted. If only we'd be more patient. Quote:

Back at the Roundhouse, as our Alligators predicted, major ethics legislation appears dead. Are the ethics lobbyists asking for too much at once? That's a complaint we're hearing. Critics say after years of failure, ethics advocates should push for one big ethics bill a year, not big ethics packages. They argue if you get one piece of the pie each year, after a couple of years you would have a whole pie. Perhaps the donors to Common Cause will think about that in light of yet another unsuccessful session.

No, actually I know that donors to Common Cause and others who have long been fighting to get recalcitrant politicos to face the music and play by some rules will hold LEGISLATORS responsible if this year's ethics package doesn't pass. I know, those who reap the benefits of unfettered campaign "contributions" and don't want anyone looking into ethics allegations with a law with teeth don't want anything passed at all. And if the citizenry gets too loud, they may surrender some tiny piece of turf but never all the pieces that would create a real wall against corruption. "Alligators" are like that.

Another Example of Insider Crapola
If you want more evidence that much of what Monahan and his "Alligators" say is mostly a bunch of hooie, coming directly from the perches of the elite, dig these paragraphs offering a cure for the kinds of caucus/primary problems that are being experienced all over the nation this year:

What the party really needs--to be crass about it--is rich people to serve as chair. Why? Because current Chair Brian Colon says the lack of money was the big reason why the party did not have more voting sites and materials for the election. The party held back spending on those items as well as consultants because he did not have the cash to pay for them.

The chief job of a party chairman is to raise money. Rich people are good at raising money from their rich friends. It's a formula that has been followed for years in both parties.

Yeah, Joe, that's why the nation and the planet are facing the kinds of emergencies on every level that are caused by arrogant hubris and unrestrained power in the hands of "rich people." Of course what Joe leaves out is the fact that much of the money in the state this year went to fund a Quixotic presidential campaign through New Hampshire. You know which one. And, in fact, I don't recall Colon saying anything to that effect anyway. Mostly, he's been taking all the blame for whatever problems happened because he evidently believes that when problems arise, the most important thing is to fix them, not look for scapegoats or seek ways to cover your own behind.

What credibility Monahan has in anything he might say about "what the Party needs" is beyond me, anyway. If you aren't active in the Party, Joe, we really don't care what you have to say about what we need. Frankly -- to be crass about it -- there's no chance in hell that your motives are pure and that you're just dying to give the Party the advice it needs to make it even stronger than it is now. Nobody is naive enough to believe that. And as to this gem:

Paying for a full-time chairman is unlikely to improve fund-raising performance. It is a fact that having a well-established politico with personal money will.

Maybe Joe should do some research before making sweeping generalizations like this. As a matter of fact, modernized, efficient and ethically-run political parties around the country do indeed have paid chairs and even paid fundraisers and other staff. Why? Because the corrosive influence of "rich families" has a tendency to be blunted when professionals take over from good 'ol boys (and sometimes even girls).

A parting thought. According to almost every single rank and file Dem in the Party I've ever talked to -- and contrary to your assertions -- John Wertheim was the one of the worst Party Chairs we've ever had, "wealthy family" or not. (If you're wondering why I'm bringing up Wertheim's name here, go read Monahan's post all the way to the end.)

Wertheim was a chair who wouldn't produce an adequate and transparent financial statement for the Party, refused to consider having the Party's books audited regularly and handed significant money over to at least one "consultant" without even bothering to produce a contract or scope of work to cover the transaction. He antagonized almost every segment of the Party except, of course, the one that appears to be represented in most of the holding forth in Monahan's post today -- monied interests with monied priorities who want to conduct business in secret and the public be damned.

Ask Your Legislators to Sign the Voters First Pledge

As you probably know by now, many of our New Mexico legislators haven't exactly rushed to jump on the clean elections bandwagon. Like last year, there's an abundance of foot dragging and a pile of excuses on the part of lawmakers in Santa Fe regarding expanding voluntary public campaign financing beyond appellate judge and PRC contests.

I guess too many of our state reps and senators like the thrill of collecting big sums of money from the vested special interests that bring their business onto the House and Senate floors for passage. What fun would it be to serve the people's interests and have to forego all those cash advances for legislation to please the donors? I know that a great many of our lawmakers are honest, but it's time to make it easier for good candidates to run against the bad eggs who are beholden to all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons.

Common Cause New Mexico has come up with way to try and prod the lawmakers who are supposed to represent us into taking a public stand on public financing. By clicking here you can ask your state legislators to take the (pdf). It asks them to pledge to put voters first and work to pass and enforce legislation for full voluntary public campaign financing for statewide offices, extending the legislation already in place for New Mexico appellate court judge races and the Public Regulation Commission.

Shortly after the legislative session, Common Cause New Mexico will release a 2008 Ethics Reform Report Card to let voters know the degree to which their legislators support much-needed ethics reform in New Mexico. The Report Card will be partially based on their Voters First Pledge. Now's the time to hold them accountable. Ask your legislators to take the Voters First Pledge.

Harry Reid: Telecom Amnesty Activist

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid gets tough on fellow Democrats while apparently trying to "earn" more large donations from telecom companies. How else can it be explained? He's like a walking, talking advertisement for public financing of elections. He clearly wants to pass the awful FISA bill that grants retroactive amnesty to corporate lawbreakers and give Bush everything he wants in terms of warrantless surveillence -- and he wants to do it fast. To call Reid's office and let him know how you feel about his behavior: 202-224-3542.

What You May Not Know About Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Note: Rep. Tom Udall (NM-03) will offer remarks and State Treasurer James Lewis will deliver the keynote address during King holiday celebrations at the state Capitol today at 1:00 PM. The event, organized by Santa Fe's chapter of the NAACP, will also feature music and other speakers who will highlight King's support for higher wages and better conditions for working men and women.

From the War on Greed campaign and Brave New Films: Today we honor Dr. King's birthday. We all know him because of his historic impact on civil rights, but many don't realize that later in life he fought just as passionately for the rights of workers and against the entrenched institutions of injustice.

"Equality means dignity. And dignity demands a job and a paycheck that lasts through the week."

The War On Greed is exactly this kind of fight. The livelihoods of families have been directly attacked by the actions of buyout billionaires like Henry Kravis putting Wall Street's special interests ahead of his 800,000 employees... and pocketing $51,000 an hour in the process.

The first step must be taxing these buyout billionaires at a fair tax rate. It will not solve all the problems, but it is a strong and forceful beginning. With the presidential campaigns underway, it is the perfect time to force this issue into the campaigns the way we did with Wal-Mart and Iraq for Sale.

As our friend Rev. Yearwood, leader of the Hip Hop Caucus, has said: "We are facing a lunch counter moment for the 21st century."

Please join us at our virtual lunch counter by signing the petition to presidential candidates demanding they pledge to close the loopholes and tax the tax dodgers. Buyout billionaires are a menace to our economy. People are hurting, badly, and we must take beginning steps to bring the issue of corporate greed and economic equality to the nation's attention.

Guest Blog: What Kind of US Secretary of State would NM Governor Richardson Make?

This is a guest blog by Stephen Fox, founder of New Millennium Fine Art in Santa Fe and Managing Editor of the weekly Santa Fe Sun News. He is working towards the establishment of a New Mexico Nutrition Council.

Just about everyone is perhaps beginning to recognize the increasingly endangered perception of the USA in every international context and by every standard, and that we are enduring ongoing serious trouble by allowing the most powerful USA corporations to entirely manipulate many branches of government, even if you don’t ascribe to a Hegelian or a Marxian view of history, particularly economic and political history.

I often, perhaps too often, write about the massively malfunctioning and manipulated FDA, and pray that the next President will appoint a real consumer protection advocate as FDA Commissioner, instead of the tools of Big Pharma who have occupied that position for most of the past twenty years, during both Republican and Democratic presidencies.

What could be of graver concern for health than the fact that powerful corporations, both food manufacturers and drug manufacturers, are adding to the destruction of health in hundreds of nations? Perhaps it is that also these corporations and several others like Kellogg, Brown and Root, Halliburton, and Blackwater have manipulated to their satisfaction the day to day functioning of the United States Department of State, to do their bidding in contracts, programs, and throughout the modus operandi of the State Department and the Pentagon. (Some might say it is the other way around with the Pentagon, which seems to always get what it wants from the corporations and from the US Congress).

This has had the cumulative effect of alienating almost all of the Islamic nations with almost 1.2 billion inhabitants, and further besmirches the USA entrepreneurially in South America and in Africa. I am so often reminded of the policies of Manifest Destiny as the USA expanded in the second half of the 19th Century by destroying millions of Native Americans, with a genocidal intent inherent in that policy of “Manifest Destiny.”

I see massive similarities between that and the way LBJ floundered in Vietnam and of course most of the dealings of the Bush administration in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. As a nation, we err terribly by tolerating and continuing such destructive nonsense and folderol.

Healing the Damage
The next President must immediately and surely move to repair this obviously dangerous malaise by appointing an international healer and diplomatist as US Secretary of State. I see no better person by temperament and intellect than New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson for this job from 2008 to 2012.

After the bravado and maneuvering by the so-called “top tier” of  candidates has dispensed with the series of votes between now and January 2009, none could imagine any one more qualified, and I don’t mean in the usual resume sense of the word, than our own William Blaine Richardson III.

More important as qualifications were Richardson’s elevation of the international political dialogue amongst the candidates, his early strident support for unequivocally ending the Iraq War, on top of his history as a Cabinet Member (Secretary of Energy) and as United Nations Ambassador (to me, the last is the most important qualification).

Personally, I am sure that he would be a better Secretary of State than Condi, Colin, Madeleine, and Warren Christopher all rolled together. Even the corporations may recognize in time by the decline of their profits, in a strictly Hegelian sense, that they need a Secretary of State who might sow the seeds of international dialogue and conflict resolution, close Guantanamo, reduce the US military presence and its ancillary costs by 40%, reshape a 21st Century Peace Corps, and rapidly return America to a new level of international sanity.

After 8 years of Halliburton running the State Department, military contractors running the Pentagon, Energy Corporations running the Department of industry and writing the Legislation, and Big Pharma running the Food and Drug Administration, maybe intelligent, internationally-minded people in the world have something great to look forward to, after all, eh?

If Richardson still has Presidential aspirations, which I am sure he does, he might take some small comfort in this fact: the first one, Thomas Jefferson, later was elected President. Jefferson was appointed September 26, 1789 by Washington when he was still serving as Ambassador to France.

In fact, James Buchanan, Martin Van Buren, John Quincy Adams, James Madison, and James Monroe all served terms as Secretary of State and as President!

This is a guest blog by Stephen Fox of Santa Fe. Guest blogs provide readers an opportunity to express their views on issues relevant to DFNM, and may or many not reflect our views. If you'd like to submit a piece for consideration as a guest blog, contact me by clicking on the Email Me link on the upper left-hand corner of the page.

A Letter From The People: Touring the Realm of the Dispossessed

Since we have a certain blogger with long-time ties to the Roundhouse wall leaners and power brokers waxing poetic today about well connected insiders, hordes of lobbyists with deep pockets and martini-fueled dealings in dark bars in Santa Fe, I thought I'd take a similar tack from The People's point of view.

You know, us -- the little people out here in the wilderness who are supposed to wait silently and submissively for the word to come down from on high on what will and will not be done in our name by the powerhouses of La Politica. We're the ones who won't get real reform related to health care, ethics or campaign finance because our "leaders" in the Legislature -- and especially in the "independent" Senate -- have come to depend on the ready money and perks from people who want to preserve the status quo and the profits for themselves. The public and the common good be damned.

Citizen Lobbyists
Our citizen lobbyists travel to the Roundhouse or interim committee meetings on their own dimes. Many take vacation days to do so. They car pool to save money. Their meals come from brown bags, not the Santa Fe hot spots designed for seeing and being seen. Those who can't afford the trip or can't get time off from work have to be content with phone calls to legislative secretaries and emails to legislators that usually get little or no response. Even if they succeed in getting their needs met in committee after committee with the help of the honest members of the legislature, their bills are often killed when or even just before they get to the Senate or House floor by the "leaders" dedicated to keeping power to themselves.

With no big chunks of cash or complimentary happy hours to offer, these citizen lobbyists too often get only a blind eye and a deaf ear when they voice their concerns. After all, they have no clout. They don't buy legislators drinks or invite them to buffets and cocktail parties or throw unlimited amounts of money into their "campaign funds" or hand them tickets to boxing matches or football games, or oooh and ahhh over them when they enter casinos or racetracks.

Citizen lobbyists have to scratch for information about what's going on with bills that will personally affect their daily lives, their health, their work, their children, their futures. And when they show up at committee hearings, they're often treated like unwelcome outsiders who take up precious time demanding to be heard when everyone who's anyone knows the deals have already gone down behind closed doors.

The Result
Because this is how the system presently works, we get things like bills proposing massive tax breaks for the coal-burning Desert Rock power plant, health reform bills that ignore the overwhelming support of the people for the Health Security Act and a summer's worth of testimony at hearings, pronouncements that public funding for elections is off the table, plots to kill the Domestic Partnership Act with last-minute, shady maneuvers and inflated, "privatized" contracts to conduct or "oversee" government functions. I could go on.

This bunch won't even allow floor proceedings to be shown online, despite $75,000 having been appropriated to do so. What don't they want us to see? Wouldn't it be fun to send a phalanx of citizens with video cameras to the Roundhouse corridors and swanky lounges of Santa Fe to track the comings and goings, the whispers and handshakes, that constitute way too much of what goes on in the Capitol? A regular YouTube bonanza.

I know our reps and senators are supposed to be doing the people's business, but as is often the case these days in state capitols and the halls of Congress alike, they mostly go about doing the business of the highest bidders, of those who wield power to get earmarks and loopholes, of those with profitable rackets to protect. These days, too many consider their real constituencies to be not the people who elect them, but the brokers, the insurance moguls, the financial market manipulators, the insider stock traders, the shady real estate developers, the for-profit prison operators, the pay-day loan sharks, the "defense" contract proliferators, the fake "homeland security" money suckers, the outrageously compensated CEOs and the high and mightily titled corporate investor class.

Somehow, not one bit of poetry, not one shred of romance or nostalgia comes to mind when I think about what's going on in Santa Fe right now. Can you blame me?

The Good Ones
Of course there are any number of genuinely honest, committed, hardworking legislators who work their bodies to the bone all year long to try and get a little something for the people, for the community, for the common good, for justice, for equality. Unfortunately, in a greed-filled and close-minded climate like the one that prevails these days, they're about as well respected by the "leaders" in our government as ordinary people are. They get the shaft and the run-around just like we do. And I'm pretty darn sure they're not feeling poetic and nostalgic about it either, as our critical needs go unmet while the elite among us count their chits.

Mayor Chavez Caught in the Act of "Greenwashing"

I received the video above in an email awhile back when Albuquerque Mayor Marty Chavez was still running for the U.S. Senate. This seems like a perfect time to post it.

Everyone's jumping on the bandwagon, pointing readers to John Fleck's excellent exposé of Albuquerque Mayor Marty Chavez's greenwashing that appeared in Sunday's Albuquerque Journal, so I thought I'd join the queue (so to speak). Fleck documents the inflated statistics and exaggerations that were once displayed on the City of Albuquerque website's Albuquerque Green "Q" page. Turns out that Marty's nonstop bragging about Albuquerque being the greenest metropolis in the universe (or variations thereof) was mostly hot air, like much of what he boasts about as his accomplishments. He's good at paying lip service. Unfortunately, his assertions too often often fall a little short of the truth.

Chantal over at Duke City Fix, who used to work on city cyberspace projects, provides a screen capture and useful link to the "Q" page as it once appeared before it was taken down when Fleck started poking around for the facts. Cocoposts also weighs in, and SWOPblogger features the Journal article itself. Meanwhile, Eye on Albuquerque discusses this and other examples of the Mayor's tendency to distort statistics to suit his political needs.

Aren't you glad Marty Chavez had the sense to withdraw from the New Mexico Senate race? Let's hope he has the same sense to refrain from running for Mayor again, despite his recent decision to challenge the term limits that apply to the office.

Sprawl Isn't Green
Chavez has worked hard to portray himself as a "green" mayor. Undoubtedly, Chavez has done some positive things for the environment, but there's a lingering problem that won't go away. During his tenure as mayor he's been known as the area's number one cheerleader for out of control, unregulated sprawl growth and the developers who make huge profits from it. You can't be for sprawl development and be "green," now can you?

When planned growth strategies were being debated in Albuquerque and considered by the City Council, Marty did everything he could to fight against it or to water it down. Marty became known as a fighter for developer interests, whether it was a road through the Petroglyph National Monument or a roadway situated so it destroyed a cottonwood hundreds of years old. Marty even posed in a photo op showing him jubilantly helping to cut the tree down.

Then there's his strong support for Tax Increment Financing (TIF) in the form of TIDDs designed to financially reward West Side developers for gobbling up greenfields and replacing them with sprawl, all at the taxpayers' expense. Check out our previous guest blog by Gabriel Nimms of 1000 Friends of New Mexico for more on that.

If Marty Chavez runs for Mayor again in 2009, you can rest assured he'll be facing big-time challenges on the basis of his greenwashing alone. Then there's all the other stuff ....

Santa Fe Reporter Unveils Online Citizen Muckrakers Guide

What a resource -- I love it already. Dave Maass and the folks at the Santa Fe Reporter have put together a comprehensive guide to snooping on the powers that be (and others) in New Mexico. The Citizen Muckraker's Guide to New Mexico, subtitled A reference manual for digging up dirt on politicians, corporations, and other citizens, is described as follows:

It reveals the data-capturing tools employed by investigators, bounty hunters, landmen and journalists. With it, you’ll be able to find out which city councilor had a bench warrant issued against her in Clovis for a two-year-old speeding ticket (Patti Bushee). You’ll be able to download a mugshot of Kent Nelson, the investment advisor who admitted dishing out $3 million in kickbacks in the New Mexico Treasurer’s Office scandal. And you’ll do it from the comfort of your local wireless cafe.

... There aren’t enough eyes in the media to watch everything all the time in the Information Age. SFR hopes this guide will inspire readers to join us as independent watchdogs and personally hold the powers that be, in the government and corporate worlds, accountable.

To learn more about how the new digging tool can be used, you should first check out Dave's article, The Paperless Chase. It explains how the online guide is organized, and offers tips for using it for tasks like running a basic background check, connecting campaign contributions to legislative earmarks, tracking corporate maneuvers, fact checking claims about the War on Terror and finding out who's exploiting natural resources.

There are sections on Campaign Finance, Crime, Courts and the like, where you can chase down People, Politicians or Corporations. There are also links to data related to topics like The War on Terror; Land, Environment and Natural Resources; and Health, Doctors and Drugs. You can also access info by using the Guide's Complete Link Roll, The Citizen Muckraker's Guide on Del.icio.us or a Del.icio.us Tag Cloud.

Maass says they'll keep adding to the Guide as time goes on. I haven't had much time to play around with it yet, but I certainly intend to dig in soon -- and expect to get lost for hours in the links. Who knows what evil lurks in the URLs of the Guide? Try it and see. And if you find anything particularly juicy, let Maass know at davem@sfreporter.com. They'll be keeping track of newfound dirt in New Mexico as it filters in from all corners of the internet. (Does the internet have corners?)

I expect that the bloggers of New Mexico -- and other dirt diggers in the state -- will have a field day being modern-day muckrakers for the cause, uncovering crime, corruption, waste, fraud and abuse (and maybe some data on that weird guy down the street).