Democracy for New Mexico

Progressive Voter Alliance of Las Cruces Hosts Successful Campaign Fair

This is a guest post by Ed Fulmer a renewable energy advocate who blogs at Alternative Comment:

MAKING A DIFFERENCE 2006, A CAMPAIGN FAIR: The Progressive Voter Alliance was organized in Las Cruces to continue the volunteer momentum of the 2004 election. PVA is the focal point for candidates, activists and voters who support a variety of progressive issues.

Organizations such as MoveOn and Protect the Vote were arrayed along with local candidates around the room at tables accessible to interested individuals. Candidate presentations included Jeff Steinborn, Nate Cote, Antonio Lujan’s spokes person, Cathilia Flores and Karen Perez.

Jeff Steinborn is running for the open seat in State House District 37. He gave a status report on the curb side recycling effort, vowing not to let the issue die. Jeff expects to be targeted by the oil and gas industry because his work with New Mexico Wilderness Alliance. He pledged his support for increased access to health care, a living wage and conservation.

Nate Cote is running for State House District 53. This district has been represented for 12 years by an Almagordo Republican, but 3/4 of the population and 8 of 10 precincts are in Dona Ana County.  Cote supports developing solar and geothermal energy in the East Mesa. District 35 Representative Antonio Lujan's spokes person, Cathilia Flores pointed out Lujan’s support for a living wage, union rights and environmental issues. She was enthusiastic about renewable energy legislation for the coming session. 

The Dona Ana County County Commission races will determine which party has marjority vote. If candidates Karen Perez, District 3 and Oscar Butler, District 1 win, they will join Democrat Bill McCamley, District 5 to move the county forward on key issues. Karen Perez, a civil engineer, supports comprehensive planning, work force development, water management and infrastucture improvements.

Implementing Renewable Energy policy is dependent upon electing supportive local and state officials. There are 35 days left until the elections. VOTE SOLAR.

This is a guest blog by Ed Fulmer. If you'd like to submit a piece for possible publication as a guest blog, please contact me by clicking on the Email Me link at the upper left-hand corner of DFNM's main page.

Bill Jordan Guest Blog: WalMart, Out of State Corporations and NM Taxes

This is a guest blog by Bill Jordan, Deputy Director for Policy, New Mexico Voices for Children:

There’s been a lot of press coverage lately on WalMart and its low salaries and poor benefits. There’s another reason that New Mexicans should be unhappy with WalMart--they don’t want to pay their NM corporate income taxes. The state Tax and Revenue Department recently won a hearing to collect $11.6 million in back taxes, but a loophole in New Mexico’s corporate tax law allows many big multi-state corporations to avoid paying corporate income tax (CIT) on the money they make here.

This corporate tax loophole allows multi-state corporations to move their profits to a state like Delaware that has no corporate taxes in order to avoid showing a profit in New Mexico and paying tax on that profit. New Mexico businesses pay their corporate taxes, thus giving out-of-state businesses a competitive advantage. New Mexico owned businesses end up paying a heavier proportion of the business taxes our state collects. As one small business owner in Deming said to me recently, “WalMart doesn’t pay tax to pave the road in front of their store, but I pay my taxes to pave the road in front of my store AND their store.”  Exactly!

I urge you to support the Business Opportunity Act (technically called the Mandatory Combined Reporting Act, Rep. Peter Wirth, HB 123 in the 2006 legislative session), which would require out-of-state corporations to pay their fair share for the money they make here in New Mexico. This would level the playing field for our New Mexico businesses. It would not hurt our efforts to attract new out-of-state businesses since most of our neighbor states require combined reporting too.

Closing this tax loophole would bring more than $50 million in revenue to the state of New Mexico each year. Only a few dozen multi-state businesses would be required to pay their fair share of state taxes, while 17,000 New Mexico businesses would benefit from a level playing field.

So why haven’t we passed legislation that would give our locally owned businesses a fair shake? Giant multi-state corporations – with their skyscrapers full of tax lawyers and lobbyists – have so far defeated attempts to reform this tax law. Our state legislators are lobbied hard by the Association of Commerce and Industry (ACI) as well as by local chambers of commerce, which appear to be representing the interests of the large national corporations instead of the New Mexico owned businesses they claim to represent. We feel certain that if we can shed light on this issue, we can get New Mexico legislators to support New Mexico businesses, not WalMart and the big out-of-state guys.

If you own a New Mexico business and are outraged by this, please let your local chamber of commerce know!  If you would like to raise your voice in support of New Mexico businesses, or you would like more information about combined reporting, please contact Bill Jordan, Deputy Director for Policy, New Mexico Voices for Children at bjordan@nmvoices.org.

ACTION ALERT: Help Needed NOW on Returned Voter Registration Cards

From Terry Riley:
A couple of weeks ago I saw a news report on Channel 13 where Bernalillo County Clerk Mary Hererra claimed that 200,000+ voter ID cards had been returned as undeliverable.  In that same report Secretary of State Vigil-Giron stated that those voters would be purged from the voter list.  The New Mexico voter list is something over 1,100,000 if I am correct. That is close to one-fourth of all of the registered voters in New Mexico whose cards were returned. I know that the news always reports that a very low percentage of the eligible voters actually vote but some of these 200,000 voter IDs must belong to otherwise eligible voters. 

Paul Stokes and I contacted Mary Hererra and Ernie Marquez, Director of Elections in the Secretary of State's office and asked for confirmation of the story. Everything was accurate EXCEPT that the voters would not be purged. They would be marked inactive and if they fail to vote in the next two elections then they will be purged. That was good until he said, most likely! I asked for clarification and it ended with probably.

To shorten this story I will say that the best possible things are being done to solve this potential problem. The Secretary of State is running public service announcements on TV explaining that if you did not receive your plastic voter ID card that there may be some problem with your voter registration and that you should contact your county clerk as soon as possible and correct any errors.  The Republican Party and the Democratic Party have both asked for and received copies of this list. Governor Richardson's campaign is calling all Democrats on that list and notifying them that they need to check with their county clerk as well as adding this list to their state wide walk list.

HELP!
Now that we have support on contacting the people whose voter ID cards were returned we have been asked to help. I guess that is reasonable. I know that many people are volunteering at different campaigns to help candidates get their message out.

We need people to volunteer to Ana Canales at Governor Richardson's campaign to call people who were affected by the returned voter ID cards. This is really important and it is important that it is done ASAP, because the deadline for new registration is 10 October. The Governor's campaign phone number is 828-2455. Please call and PLEASE VOLUNTEER!

Terry Riley

Editor's note: If you'd like to submit a guest post for possible publication on DFNM, please contact me by clicking on the Email Me link at the upper left-hand corner of the blog's main page.

Guest Blog: Divine Strake and the Rebirth of Democracy

This guest post was submitted by Andrew Kishner of Kanab, UT. Mr. Kishner is a member of the Stop Divine Strake Coalition and founder of www.StopDivineStrake.com.  In June, he co-organized a rally in Kanab, Utah, against the Divine Strake test.

In a 2,000-mile stretch of uninterrupted red-statehood from Indiana to Nevada, ordinary folks who had never attended a rally, or spoke out against an elected leader, or submitted an opinion to their newspaper editor got fed up. It was the unexpected protest of average people demanding that a defense agency and its unelected public servants adhere to the same natural laws that protect citizens from those who negligently or wilfully threaten health or life. The citizens' protests alone forced the intelligence and planning arm of the military to scrap plans to test out a dirty bomb in a radioactive field of death in Nevada, and later the fragile ecosystem, and a more densely populated area, in Southern Indiana.

Although the citizens' chorus of protests was aroused by the fear of a huge dust cloud of toxic substances from Divine Strake, the words they spoke were not new. They were the words from a verse that we all learned in our youth.

It was in elementary school, when we pledged - en masse - our commitment to two radical concepts in front of Old Glory, that the seed of the democratic model that each of us carries through life was planted. In that pledge, we vowed to uphold liberty and justice, two glorious resources of our nation. Those hallmarks of our democracy, however, are not the patented concepts of our founding fathers, nor the registered trademarks of our Congressmen. They are the people-given - some would say God-given - gifts to all Americans, past, present and future.

It may be decades or generations before a community will rise up to fulfill the pledge to democracy. When that time comes, when what is best for the people takes a back seat to misconduct, greed or power mongering, ordinary men and women must educate their fellow citizens, exercise their common freedoms, and, if necessary, indict or impeach those persons and agencies that contravene the institutions that safeguard our democracy and our collective health and well-being.

In Owen Wister's "The Virginian," Judge Henry eloquently and brilliantly asserts this morality: "The courts, or rather the juries, into whose hands we have put the law, are not dealing the law. They are withered hands, or rather they are imitation hands made for show, with no life in them, no grip. And so when your ordinary citizen sees this, and sees that he has placed justice in a dead hand, he must take justice back into his own hands where it was once at the beginning of all things."

We must never forget that the delegated powers in our democracy are, have and always will be ours to give, and to take back. When our elected or unelected leaders fail to fulfil their pledge to serve us and protect our health, our safety, our rights, our laws and our nation, then it is the people who, in the end, will exercise their absolute power to restore the institutions of democracy.   

As New Mexicans prepare to protest the Divine Strake test that is now threatening their state, we must all continue opposition to this test with the firm confidence that our protests - in the name of protecting health, peace, and justice - are not a defiance of democracy but rather an assertion of it.  Judge Henry called it the "fundamental assertion of self-governing men, upon whom our whole social fabric is based."

Guest blog by by Andrew Kishner of Kanab, UT. If you'd like to submit an article for possible publication on DFNM as a guest blog, please contact me by clicking on the Email Me link at the upper left-hand corner of the main blog page.

Guest Blog: I Remember Patsy Madrid

This post was submitted by guest blogger James Nathan Post of Albuquerque:

When I was a boy in the early 50's, my family lived in married student housing at New Mexico A&M (now NMSU) in Las Cruces. Those crumbling recycled sheetrock army barracks would not pass today as migrant labor housing, but we appreciated the opportunity the school offered to my father, a young rocket engineer.  My best buddy and next door neighbor was Charles Madrid, whose little sister Patsy today is running for our Congress. Between living on the edge of the desert on the campus of an ag school and watching the V-2's go out at White Sands, it was a great place to be a kid, and I had no idea at all how little our parents had with which to start a post-war life and build a family.   

Patricia's father comes from one of the oldest Tiwa families in the valley, and her mother from one of the old Hispanic families, including a northern European line. A combat veteran WWII SeaBee, Mr. Madrid was studying agriculture, following in the footsteps of Fabian Garcia, of the little state college's first graduating class, who more than any other individual is responsible for creating our state's chile industry with the hybrids he created there. Patricia represents in person an authentic tri-cultural heritage here in this most tri-cultural of states. 

Over the years, I have watched the Madrid family build themselves a good and successful working-class American life, through their own hard work, intelligence, education, courage, honesty, and family solidarity.  Among her brothers and sisters are Vietnam veterans, teachers, farmers, businessmen, a research engineer, and a doctor. None of these accomplishments has been the result of privilege or special assistance. Every step has been earned. Their religious backgrounds run the spectrum from Catholic to the Born Again to the Native Church, and even with such differences, they are a spiritually strong and loving family, with the faith to accept each others' ways of worship.  From her family she has inherited strength, integrity, and open-mindedness that are very rare and precious today.

I remember well when in High School, Patsy attended Girls' State, and came home with a burning passion for law and statesmanship which has been the inspiration and drive of her life since.  I remember when she married a man with all the fine qualities her family had taught her to respect, and have watched as they have proved their worth and family values as parents and kin, while pursuing the most demanding of careers. She is certainly my favorite "kid from back home makes good" story, and I am thrilled to see her run for this office. 

I do not wish upon her the life of Washington DC.  I know how much more pleasant it would be for her to stay here with her family and friends in New Mexico, and to enjoy all the daily blessings that we have here, and to enjoy the rewards of a successful private practice, which would certainly be greater than the office affords.  I am sure she would be the first to agree, and so certainly the least likely to be motivated to run for office by desires for comfort or social and financial gain, even less to cheapen the integrity of her office for such gains. She is willing to undertake all the hardships of living there instead of here, and of daily dealing with our nation's most demanding problems, because she still burns passionately about serving the law with honest statesmanship.

I personally know of no one in our state's political arena whom I would rather see go there to represent us in today's multi-cultural, class-spanning, religiously diverse, history-honoring, forward-looking America than Patricia Madrid.

Heather Wilson's Campaign
Until recently, I have been pleased to say about this upcoming election that I considered it a win/win situation for New Mexico, as both she and Heather Wilson would be good for the office, whatever their particular positions might be on the issues. As a former military officer and veteran combat pilot, I have respected Wilson's military record as an Academy graduate administrative officer. As a Libertarian with some right-wing leanings, I've had no great problem with her strongly partisan role as a voice for the right, and supporter of the current administration's agenda.

I have become terribly disappointed in Wilson with this campaign, however.  It is no surprise she has the great advantage of national fundraising support through the help of President Bush, and so should be expected to have a well-funded media campaign.  It is a shock to me, however, to see she has apparently also been taking her campaign strategy from the president's advisors as well.  Perhaps I have missed something, but so far I believe one hundred percent (that's 100%) of Wilson's campaign on the tube has been not just negative, but simply crude and utterly untruthful muck-slinging.

There is not a word in any of Wilson's ads about what she herself offers to the voter as opposed to Madrid's position.  Each of those shameful ads has consisted entirely of deliberately unflattering pictures of Patricia, and the almost-libelous (wink wink) insinuation that she abused her office as Attorney General as party to cheap financial corruption which in fact she was largely responsible for exposing in the state recently.  For the fund-raiser's dollar, the voter gets shown a smarmy little fingerwagging at the crudely crafted image of a stupid and corrupt local Mexican girl in over her head -- and nothing else.   

I find it tragic (as I did when my jet-jock hero Cunningham shot himself down in flames for mini-bling chump-change recently) to see Wilson lower herself to being used by partisan manipulators to conduct a cheap, shallow, and dirty-dealt campaign, especially knowing that having worked with Patricia for several years, she is well aware the sneaky allegations are wholly unfounded, as well as the image, and her own participation in such low-grade character assassination is dishonest, unjust, and reprehensible.  I find it tragic for Heather Wilson, whatever partisan tactic or personal trophy might be motivating her, because even if she wins the election, she knows she has sacrificed something very precious in herself, exactly that which she has almost-accused (wink wink) Patsy Madrid of lacking.  Personally, I thought Wilson had more class.

Who Should Get Your Vote?
If the issues matter to the voter, I would say vote for the one who represents your position on the issues, whatever you think about their character.  If your views on the issues sometimes span both sides of the political aisle, and you are more concerned about the personal integrity and character of the person holding the office, then as one who has known Patricia and her family for half a century, I could not more highly recommend you vote for her.

Editor's Notes:

This is a guest blog by James Nathan Post, who describes himself this way:

"I graduated from Las Cruces High School in 1961, spent two years at NMIMT in Socorro, then entered the service first as a Marine jet pilot, and then an Army helicopter gunship pilot in Vietnam in 1968. As a pilot, actor, and writer, I lived in California, Arizona, and Costa Rica, and spent five years as member of a Las Vegas sportsbook gambling team. I now live and write full time in Albuquerque, and have more than a dozen books in print, available on my website and other online booksellers: www.zianet.com/postpubco."

Democrat Patricia Madrid is running against Republican incumbent Rep. Heather Wilson for the Congressional seat in NM-01

If you'd like to submit a post for possible publication as a guest blog, please contact me by clicking on the Email Me link on the upper left-hand corner of the main page.

Frightening: Heather Wilson's Labor Record

Blog post contributed by Suzanne Prescott:
In September, as we celebrate and honor the achievement of workers, it's only fitting to look at where Heather Wilson (R NM-01) stands on labor  issues. A look at her record should frighten a large proportion of New Mexicans. Go HERE for the Table which compares Wilson's voting record on labor issues with Tom Udall's (New Mexico's 3rd congressional district.)

A comparison of Wilson to all the members of Congress isn't good either and that's in a Congress which overall has been unkind to American workers. Udall ranks a respectable 69 out of 431 and Wilson ranks 246. These numbers are taken from Progressive Punch

How much less could Wilson represent the interests of the people of New Mexico? The Table shows that Udall is better on all eight measures --- close-to-home measures which matter to voters. Wilson was on the side of workers only 6% of the time. Take a look at Wilson's voting record on 'Pension Protections' or 'Occupational Safety & Health' - It looks like Bush and Wilson are trying to destroy retirement if we live that long. Workers here hope to see their hard work payoff for themselves and their families in a healthy and rewarding lifestyle.

And if I read Barbara Ehrenreich correctly, Wilson's direction takes American workers back toward indentured servitude not toward the American dream. Wilson's direction seems clear; there will be no raise in the minimum wage, no pension protections, increasing infringements on occupational health and safety and further erosion of worker's rights.

If I didn't have the pension I earned now, I'd be in the same position faced by millions of Americans - not enough money to survive on, a potential burden on relatives and friends, & facing a myriad of health issues with no solution in sight. There may not be a solution later on but there is a solution now.  Don't forget where Wilson stands on labor issues when you vote. Show this page to others in your family and let them see the direction Wilson is taking us.

Resources:

Check out Wilson's record here. Check out Udall's record here.

Visit those sites to see how each score was derived and to learn more about the scoring methods used. Verify the information for yourself.

For more on the shift from real social security to 'risk-based retirement visit AARP and Privatization of Risk.

Eric Griego: Democrats Search for Their Soul: Lessons from Lieberman

We're pleased to feature a guest post by Eric Griego, former Albuquerque city councilman and progressive candidate for mayor:

Que lastima .  What a shame.  Three-term United States Senator and one-time Vice Presidential candidate Joe Lieberman made history again this month.  In 2000, he became the first Jewish-American at the top of the American political ticket.  Last week, he became one the few senators in modern U.S. politics to lose his seat in a primary.  In Connecticut, like much of Democratic America, the natives were restless. 

Lieberman's opponent, antiwar millionaire Ned Lamont, ran as an outsider and tapped into growing discontent not just with the war in Iraq but the myriad other failed Bush policies.  Lieberman, his opponent asserted effectively, was as cozy with W as corporate lobbyists with keys to the White House.

The upstart Lamont, once snubbed by the Democratic establishment for taking on an incumbent in a primary, is now cuddling with the who’s who of the Democratic Party, including Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and our own governor. This, after former President Bill Clinton and a list other “centrist” Democrats campaigned tirelessly for Lieberman.

Progressives in the Democratic Party see the Lamont win as a major victory not just for their wing of the party, but for the “heart and soul” of Democratic voters. They believe Lamont is much more in line with rank-and-file Democratic voters. The center of the Democratic Party, it seems, just shifted.

The struggle within the national Democratic Party is echoed here at home. Democratic State Party Chairman John Wertheim was challenged at this year’s state Democratic convention by a group of agitated progressive delegates. Wertheim easily survived the challenge, but the discontent within the base of the Democratic Party has not gone away.

The Democratic Party has historically championed working men and women, fought for the environment and supported a foreign policy that engages rather than alienates the international community. From the New Deal to the Civil Rights Act to the Clean Air Act, Democrats have been the party of the people. However, recently Democrats from Congress to City Council have sided with corporate America, become environmental relativists and supported the preemptive wars of the Bush Administration.

Many Democrats are fatigued with the morphing of the two parties into one mega-centrist party whose members fight to keep their political office rather than make needed political change. They want their party back.

With several up-and-coming Democrats being wooed to the center, it is getting more difficult to see any real difference between the parties, especially on state and local issues. Several DINOs (that’s Democrats In Name Only) have held seats in the state legislatures and Congress for years. Some, like Lieberman, even hold leadership positions.

New Mexico House Majority Leader Kenny Martinez, a strong bet for both speaker and governor in the future, clarified it for me at a recent awards dinner. “It’s not so much moving to the center; it is speaking in terms of values that resonate with voters.”

The lesson of Lieberman’s loss should not be lost for the many up-and-coming aspiring politicos looking to lead the state in the future. Among the group—thirty- and forty-something up-and-comers at all levels of government in our fair state—conversations often center around how the next generation will take the reins of New Mexico. Will it be through go-along-to-get-along politics? Will it be by having a noncontroversial voting record to build broad financial and political base? Will it be by fighting for real reform even if it means taking on some of the powerful members of the Democratic Party? Or will it be by tapping into the alienation and discontent felt by the kind of voters who supported Lamont?

Democratic leaders from the growing list of presidential contenders to candidates for City Council have to do a gut check. What is it that we stand for as Democrats? Are we still the party of the working class? If so, why couldn’t we get an increase in the minimum wage in our Democratically controlled State Legislature? Are we still the party of conservation? Then why is it that developers run most New Mexican cities? Are we the party of diplomacy and internationalism? If so, why did so many Democrats line up like lemmings behind the failed Bush war policies?

One big sign that the waters may be changing is the national movement to hold Wal-Mart accountable for its dismal labor practices. A parade of presidential hopefuls, including our own governor, have or will join the national tour to put pressure on Wal-Mart to change its policies of not providing adequate health care and paying its workers substandard wages.

As the political “center” keeps drifting right, Democrats here at home and in Washington will have to decide if they will keep chasing that elusive “middle” or stand up for the core values of the Democratic Party. As they make that decision, they should remember Joe Lieberman. More importantly, they should remember Ned Lamont.

This commentary is cross-posted at the Alibi.

If you'd like to submit a guest post for consideration, contact me by clicking on the Email Me link on the upper left-hand corner of our main page.

As Madrid Slams Wilson on Iraq Intelligence ...

This is a guest post from Avelino Maestas of Live From Silver City, a blog that's providing excellent coverage of the political scene and more in the Gila region. It's cross-posted at his blog, and adds some compelling points to our recent discussions about the NM-01 Madrid-Wilson race.

This is a little outside the region, but there are two issues regarding the Madrid-Wilson race that I wanted to mention.

The first has been talked about in several places, including up north at Democracy for New Mexico and FBIHOP. The nuts and bolts of it: Wilson is below 50% in a poll released by Madrid earlier this week. Furthermore, she only leads Madrid by two points, 46-44, and we’ve seen nothing from the GOP to refute those numbers. We can go to Josh Marshall on why this is significant:

Of late, we’ve been seeing lots of (D) partisan polls. And that’s, as I said, because the Dems are the ones who have an interest in showing how close a lot of these races are.

The point I didn’t mention is this: the normal response when one candidate puts out a poll favorable to him or herself is for the other side to go into the field and (if they can) and get a better number to release. And back in July they did just that. According to Roll Call, the NRCC dropped $450,000 to conduct polls in 28 competitive districts. The article was dated July 31st. And the polls were conducted “over a two-week period this month.” In other words, the polling was almost certainly done at least a month ago.

So far as I can tell, I’ve seen few if any of those polls. And it’s not hard to figure out why.

Madrid’s latest ad is so powerful because it not only ties Wilson to Bush and his unpopular venture in Iraq, it faults her for rubber-stamping the administration’s intelligence that led to the 2003 invasion.

That leads to my second point: this tidbit from Laura Rozen (guest-blogging over at the Washington Monthly) about a new House Intelligence Committee report (PDF) on Iran:

It’s a sloppy report, as the NYT, Sick, Yglesias and others point out. But its purpose wasn’t just to take a quick swipe at marshalling the facts in its favor. It’s a campaign document, a “brochure”, as the NYT put it. What kind of joke of a committee is the House Intel committee that it has lent itself to that? Is anyone in Congress doing any serious work on the Iran issue? Or by the way, on the Iraq issue?

And which of New Mexico’s representatives to the House sits on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence? You get one guess.

CUSA Initiates Drive Aimed at Keeping Higher Education Within Reach of New Mexico Students

Preparing for petition drive canvassing at
CUSA's Albuquerque office

Report and photo by guest blogger Suzanne Prescott:
A massive petition drive to stop an increase in student loan rates and stop major cuts in higher education funding has been launched by the Albuquerque office of Communities United to Strengthen America (CUSA).  The petition is aimed at getting Heather Wilson to pledge her support to cutting NOT raising student loan interest rates and NOT supporting the Bush administration proposed cuts to Pell Grants and Work Study funds.

Initial figures, not widely released, reveal higher education enrolments this Fall in New Mexico may show significant declines. The declines can be linked to ever increasing student debt, and increasing pressure on New Mexico family income.

A hard look at the facts:

• Heather Wilson in March of 2006 voted against a measure which would have cut student loan rates in half.
• College graduates earn 73% more than high school graduates
• If the proposed Bush budget passes 5,756 students in Albuquerque alone would not receive enough Pell grant money to meet their tuition needs.
• If the proposed Bush budget passes, 1700 Albuquerque students would be denied the full benefits of Work-Study.
• Only 14% of New Mexico students are awarded Lottery Success Scholarships
• Lottery Success scholarships only cover 20% of students college costs
• Tuition and fees at public four-year public colleges and universities swelled 8 percent, faster than the 7 percent national average.
• At the University of New Mexico the number of students receiving federal loans grew 29% between 2001-02 and 2004-05.

An educated citizenry is not only a necessity in a democracy, it's an necessary building block in the foundation of a modern New Mexico economy  - an economy where the skills and knowledge of the labor pool attract businesses to New Mexico and grow businesses which are already here.  These concerns are expressed in a CUSA news release dated Friday, August 25, 2006.

"This is a major concern to me not only as a parent with college age kids, but because it adversely affects the population that I serve,” El Centro Director Veronica Mendez-Cruz said Friday. “If these cuts hit they are going to make things harder for middle-class and lower-income students throughout the state.  We need our delegation to understand that these cuts will not help our community become educated. This is an insult to hard working families who are working two or more jobs to try to make ends meet and to ensure that their children have a better life.”

What you can do:
Go to the CUSA site and ask Heather Wilson to look out for the interests of students and restore funding to higher education.

Editor's Note: This post is from guest blogger Suzanne Prescott. If you'd like to submit a guest post, please contact me by clicking on the Email Me link on the upper left-hand side of the main page.

Denish, Madrid, King, Herrera Tell WalMart to WAKEUP

This is a guest blog by Suzanne Prescott:
If Democrats Diane Denish, Patricia Madrid, Gary King and Mary Herrera have anything to say about it, WalMart has gotten a loud wakeup call. Before a packed crowd last night at CNM's Smith Brasher Hall, all four speakers spoke about the moral failure of WalMart, their poor business practices and economic impact on the state of New Mexico.

Patricia Madrid. Photos by Suzanne Prescott

Here's the short list of WalMart sins. Keep in mind that Wal-Mart is the World’s largest employer with over $11 billion in annual profits?

Wal-Mart’s profits don’t make it to its workers.  Most workers make wages below the poverty line.  Wal-Mart’s health benefits are so poor, employees are forced to seek public assistance.  In addition, Wal-Mart does not offer domestic partner benefits.  Finally, Wal-Mart faces the largest gender discrimination case in U.S. history, involving 1.6 million women.  Lt Governor Denish  pointed out that WalMart's greedy practices have cost the state of New Mexico approximately 13 million dollars. She invited the audience to think what the state could have done with that 13 million dollars in terms of improving health and education. 

If you're still thinking that candidates are talking like candidates of 2000 and 2004, think again. All the speakers last night spoke forcefully and expertly about real change and the need to replace corporate greed with a national people oriented policy that values and protects workers. Apparently their words were the ones the audience have been waiting to hear.

Here are some quotes from last night:

Diane Denish, Lt. Governor:

"It's not about whether WalMart is right or whether Wakeup WalMart is right. It's about what's right for the country."

(Note: It it walks like A Governor and talks like a Governor, it could eventually be a Governor - after Bill of course. Denish spoke with confidence, authority, and was very well informed.)

Patricia Madrid, Attorney General, NM-01 Congressional Candidate:

"If you elect me I promise I will not vote for a raise in congressional wages unless there is a raise in the minimum wage."

(Note: Did you know that Patricia Madrid was a labor lawyer who has fought and negotiated for the rights of workers? Washington needs Patricia Madrid and more like her to correct the abuse of workers' rights that has gone on for several decades.)

Gary King, Candidate for Attorney General:

"If you take care of people, the country will take care of itself."

(Note: When King started his own business in the 70s, he started out paying them $7.50 an hour with health benefits. Hey Gary, would you by any chance be hiring now?)

Mary Herrera, Bernalillo County Clerk, Candidate for Secretary of State:

"It's time that WalMart takes care of its employees." "We needed to unionize and we did!"

(Note: Mary related the story of county workers efforts to unionize and the subsequent increase in pay, benefits and protections.  Did you know that when Mary started working she was paid $1.90 an hour. No wonder Mary is pro union. She also spoke at length about her current effort to force WalMart to change.)

For more information on Wakeup WalMArt go to https://www.wakeupwalmart.com/

Editor's Note: This post is from guest blogger Suzanne Prescott. If you'd like to submit a guest post, please contact me by clicking on the Email Me link on the upper left-hand side of the main page.