Democracy for New Mexico

Tonight on We The People: Grassroots Delegates

WE THE PEOPLE

Dory Shonogan & Bradford Lyau

Choosing Delegates for

National Conventions

April 16, 2008

Comcast Cable - Channel 27

1st and 3rd Wednesday - 6 PM
or
ON THE WEB:  www.quote-unquote.org
On the right - Click for Channel 27's Media Stream
Mickey Bock, Host; Judith Binder, Producer

Tonight on KNME's New Mexico In Focus

Regular panelists Margaret Montoya and Jim Scarantino
wait to head into the studio.

I have my second go-around as a guest panelist on tonight's New Mexico In Focus. Once again it was a stimulating, fun and rather nerve-wracking experience. Tune in if you get a chance and let me know how I did. I'm really still a newbie at this kind of thing, so go easy on me. Please. Thankfully the show's regulars and crew are good at making the new face at the table feel right at home.

On KNME's ‘In Focus tonight, the main topic is the 66th anniversary of the Bataan Death March. Host David Alire Garcia sits down with several Death March survivors. Hear their stories, and get perspective on their efforts from some of the state's top military leaders. The program airs Friday, April 11 at 7 PM and repeats Sunday, April 13 at 6:30 AM.

This week’s guests on the weekly news magazine are Ed Baca, former adjutant general of the New Mexico National Guard; John M. Garcia, secretary of Veterans Affairs; and Bataan veterans Ernesto Montoya, Charles Naslund, William Overmier, Tony Reyna and Don Schloat.

In The Line segment of the show, topics include General Patraeus and the American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, a look at the New Mexico Congressional races and the spaceport. Barbara Wold, blogger for Democracy for New Mexico, will be a featured panelist, joining host Gene Grant, Albuquerque Journal columnist, and regular panelists Margaret Montoya, UNM School of Law / UNM School of Medicine; Scott Darnell, communication director, Republican Party of New Mexico, and Jim Scarantino, Weekly Alibi columnist.

‘New Mexico In Focus’ discussions are unedited. However, in some programs, certain segments may run long. These segments, and additional footage, can be seen at: https://www.knme.org/newmexicoinfocus.

‘New Mexico In Focus’ is Channel 5’s prime-time news magazine show covering events, issues and people shaping life in New Mexico and the Southwest. The one-hour show brings viewers important topics of our time in an integrated and cohesive package.

See my previous post about guesting on the show this past December.

Technorati Tags:Albuquerque, New Mexico, KNME, public tv, talk shows, New Mexico In Focus

Tonight on We The People: Steve Allen of Common Cause

WE THE PEOPLE
Steve Allen, Common Cause NM Executive Director
Let's Take the Profit out of Politics
April 2, 2008 on ABQ CABLE - Channel 27
1st and 3rd Wednesdays at 6 PM on TV
Or on the web at  www.quote-unquote.org:
On the right side - click for Channel 27's Media Stream
Thanks for watching!
Mickey Bock, Host; Judith Binder, Producer

Amy Goodman to Celebrate Community Activism at UNM Appearance 4/18

Note: Amy and David Goodman will be appearing at similar events in Santa Fe and Taos on April 19, 2008.

Amy Goodman and David Goodman are celebrating 12 years of broadcasting of “Democracy Now!” (on KUNM weekdays at 4 PM) and the release of their third book, Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times. Amy Goodman is the co-host and executive producer of “Democracy Now!,” an independent, award-winning news program airing on over 650 radio and TV stations.

The Goodmans will give a talk and sign their new book at UNM’s Woodward Hall on April 18 at 6:30 PM. This inspirational event, cosponsored by Bookworks, is a benefit for KUNM 89.9 Community Radio and honors the170+ community volunteers and students working at KUNM.

Amy Goodman, known worldwide for her courageous coverage of news missed or ignored by the USA’s mainstream media, is now on tour to tell the inspiring stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary work in countering the “madness” of current White House policies. These stories are recounted in her latest book, Standing Up To The Madness, which is co-authored with her journalist brother David Goodman. The book release date is April 8, 2008 and is published by Hyperion.

Amy Goodman has a strong, and growing, audience; previous events in Albuquerque have sold out. FOR TICKETS:

$20 general admission; $10 UNM students (with valid ID) UNM Ticket Offices (The Pit and Bookstore), UNMTickets.com. Call (505) 925-5858 for phone orders.

Select Albertsons stores in Albuquerque and Santa Fe (listing is available at UNMTickets.com).

Bookworks, 4022 Rio Grande Blvd., next to Flying Star Café. Call (505) 344-8139 to order by phone. ($5 discount on general admission ticket with purchase of the book & ticket from Bookworks.)

Woodward Hall is located just west of the Student Union Building (turn west between Popejoy Hall and the SUB). Parking is free on campus after 6 PM on Friday except at reserved and handicap spaces and paid parking is available at the nearby Cornell parking structure. Additional info: https://www.kunm.org or from KUNM membership coordinator Cris Nichols at (505) 277-3968.

Tuesday: Next Meeting of Friends of Albuquerque Tribune

From Friends of the Albuquerque Tribune: FOAT, Inc. preparing to bring out The Albuquerque Trial Balloon with a readership survey and articles by Tribune columnists. Volunteer journalists invited to meeting Tuesday, March 18, 2008, 7:00 PM at UNM Law School.

At its regular meeting yesterday, the Board of Directors of Friends of the Albuquerque Tribune, Inc. decided to publish a print newspaper, in broadsheet form, as the forerunner for a projected on-line daily. The paper, to be called “The Albuquerque TRIalBallooN”, will be mirrored on FOAT’s website. Several locally-based columnists from the Albuquerque Tribune have agreed to provide articles for the first issue, which will also contain an opinion survey of potential readers/subscribers to the forthcoming on-line paper.

The board has received sufficient funds to cover the production cost of the first issue, and eagerly looks forward to further financial support from the public in central New Mexico. Future issues will contain more local, state, national, and international news and will provide an extensive forum for community input.

There is much work to be done, and the FOAT, Inc. Board urges everyone who can help, especially experienced journalists, and all citizens concerned with keeping the Tribune tradition going, to come to the next public meeting this coming Tuesday, March 18th, at 7:00 PM in Room 2405 of the University of New Mexico School of Law.The School is located on Stanford Drive NE at Mountain Road. To get and keep informed, send an email message to SaveAbqTrib-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

86 years ago when the Albuquerque Tribune began publishing as a daily newspaper, this mission statement was put in place: “The mission of the Albuquerque Tribune is to inform the community. Our allegiance is to the reader. Our commitment is to the truth. Our job is to question. Our ambition is to provide a forum through which this city becomes a better place to live.”

Current board members: Rosamund Evans President, Marvin Gladstone Vice President/Treasurer, David Barbour Secretary, Ted Cloak, J.W. Madison, Jack Pickering, Dennis Herrick, Joe Sackett

(Updated) Cargo, MacCallum, Alleged NM GOP Vote-Buying Story on Collins Radio Show Tonight

UPDATE: Click to listen to an podcast (mp3) of about an hour of the show that focuses on the NM story. Both former Gov. Dave Cargo and KKOB's former news anchor, Laura MacCallum, are interviewed.
********
As posted on BradBlog by Brad Friedman:
New Mexico Republican Vote-Buying Scandal to be Covered Tonight on Peter B. Collins Show Guests to Include Myself, Along with Former US Attorney from NM, Former NM Republican Governor, Former KKOB Anchor Who Broke Story...

During my regular weekly Friday guest appearance on the syndicated Peter B. Collins Show at 5pm PT tonight (that's 6pm in Albuquerque), we'll be joined by guests:

• Laura MacCallum (now-resigned KKOB reporter who broke the Heather Wilson Vote-Buying stories before they were spiked by her own station after complaints from Wilson.)
• Gov. David Cargo (former Republican NM Governor. One of several officials who made the initial allegations)
• David Iglesias Did not make it (former US Attorney from NM who was fired in the U.S. Attorney Purge after receiving inappropriate phone-calls from Heather Wilson and Pete Domenici.)

You can listen live right here. If there's time for calls, you can get in via 888-5-PeterB (888-573-8372).

(Updated) More on Allegations About Vote Buying at NM GOP Delegate Elections

UPDATE: At 3:00 PM today, KKOB radio's Pat Frisch will discuss the alleged NM GOP vote buying at the Party's ward conventions last month, along with the resulting controversies. Frisch is filling in for Jim Villanucci, who's on vacation. You can listen to the show online or on AM radio at 770.
**********
Local and national blog posts are proliferating about the story broken by Dennis Domrzalski regarding allegations of vote buying at the recent NM GOP delegate ward elections and KKOB's decision to pull Laura MacCallum's news coverage of the allegations. MacCallum quit her news anchor job at the radio station in response. I previously posted on the story a few days ago.

I don't have time to write more about this right now because I have some business to take care of this morning, but I'll get back to it later today. In the meantime, I thought I'd publish a recent Democratic Party of New Mexico press release on the story:

HEATHER WILSON DOESN’T REFUTE ROLL IN VOTE-BUYING SCHEME

DPNM Calls on Senate Candidate to Answer Charges Directly

Albuquerque – The Democratic Party of New Mexico today called on U.S. Senate candidate Heather Wilson to directly answer charges that she bought votes at a recent Bernalillo County Republican Party delegate nominating convention.

“Once again, Heather Wilson is caught in an ethically compromising situation in which she faces allegations of manipulating the system to come out ahead in an election,” DPNM Chairman Brian Colon said today. “This time, she refuses to directly answer the charge that she bought delegate votes and her silence on such a serious charge is incriminating.”

On Monday, allegations of intra-Republican vote buying continued to surface on 27-year veteran news reporter Dennis Domrzalski’s blog. Domrzalski’s post included accounts from former New Mexico Governor Dave Cargo, State Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones and former KKOB radio reporter Laura McCallum indicating that people who showed up had been paid by Heather Wilson and Darren White’s campaigns.

“Cargo said that over the course of the meeting many of the participants said that they were from Wilson’s senate campaign and from Bernalillo Country Sheriff Darren White’s congressional campaign,” Domrzalski reported. “Several people told him that they were being paid $35-an-hour (for two hours) by their campaigns and that the campaigns had also paid their $30 registration fees.”

Wilson’s senate campaign has not refuted the charges.

“Allegations of vote-buying should not be taken so lightly,” said Colon. They cut to the heart of our nation’s democracy and electoral process. In fact, this is not the first time Heather Wilson has been caught engaging in ethically ambiguous behavior. Heather Wilson has established a clear pattern of ethically compromising actions that simply do not reflect the values of New Mexico voters.”

In 2006 Heather Wilson proved ethically challenged when she personally called former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to pressure him to reveal details and expedite a pending investigation during her 2006 reelection campaign.

Said Iglesias, “I received a call from Heather Wilson. She said ‘what can you tell me about sealed indictments.’ The second she said any questions about sealed indictments, red flags went up in my head, because as you know, we cannot talk about indictments until they’re made public. In general, we specifically cannot talk about a sealed indictment.”

When asked if he felt “pressured during that call” by Sen. Chuck Schumer during a March, 2007 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Iglesias responded, “Yes, sir. I did.”

Although she has claimed a constituent asked her to place the call to Iglesias, Heather Wilson has refused to publicly identify the mysterious individual.

Following Wilson's call, Iglesias was subsequently fired by the Bush Administration in a purge that resulted in the questionable firing of at least nine U.S. Attorneys nationally.

In a piece published by the New York Times on March 21, 2007, entitled “Why I Was Fired,” Iglesias cited the phone call from Congresswoman Heather Wilson.

He also told The Associated Press, “I know it’s not performance-related, I know it’s not misconduct. What does that leave? Politics.”

Tonight: Second Community Meeting of Friends of the Albuquerque Tribune

From FOAT Inc.: The Friends of the Albuquerque Tribune will hold a follow-up community meeting on Thursday, February 28, at 7:00 PM at the UNM School of Law, Room 2402. All interested members of the public are invited. (The Law School is located at Stanford and Constitution NE.) 

An initial meeting, held prior to the publication of the Tribune’s final issue on Saturday, was well-attended by a cross-section of citizens interested in maintaining media diversity in Albuquerque.  Money was raised and volunteers committed. Thursday’s meeting will continue discussions related to efforts to organize a cooperative to operate the Tribune, probably as a web-based 24/7 newspaper.

FOAT seeks support and guidance from the community of Albuquerque newspaper readers, staffers, and subscribers. Friends of the Albuquerque Tribune is a New Mexico not-for-profit organization recently founded for the purpose of maintaining the Albuquerque Tribune as an independent voice in Albuquerque.

Details of a cooperatively owned -- readers, employees,and community groups -- publication will be discussed this Thursday. This mostly on-line publication will be nonprofit, making it possible, and will emphasize a greener solution to a daily, comprehensive newspaper. Join the process! Pass it on. More information: Rosamund Evans, rosamund04@juno.com.

Tonight on 60 Minutes: The Secret Karl Rove

Tonight's 60 Minutes story on Rove and his involvement in smearing and framing Dem Gov. Don Siegelman of Alabama is reportedly a must see. Here's what the AP has to say:

A former Republican campaign worker claims that President Bush's former top political adviser, Karl Rove, asked her to find evidence that the Democratic governor of Alabama at the time was cheating on his wife, according to an upcoming broadcast of '60 Minutes.'

"Jill Simpson, who has long alleged that Rove may have influenced the corruption prosecution of former Gov. Don Siegelman, makes the claim against Rove in a broadcast scheduled to be aired Sunday, according to a statement from CBS.

"Simpson testified to congressional investigators last year that she overheard conversations among Republicans in 2002 indicating that Rove was involved in the Justice Department's prosecution of Siegelman. She has never before said that Rove pressed her for evidence of marital infidelity in spite of testifying to congressional lawyers last year, submitting a sworn affidavit and speaking extensively with reporters.

Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post has more.

Albuquerque Tribune Adios

Decades-Ago Downtown Albuquerque

"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." --Thomas Jefferson, 1787

“Here is the living disproof of the old adage that nothing is as dead as yesterday’s newspaper...This is what really happened, reported by a free press to a free people. It is the raw material of history; it is the story of our own times.” --Henry Steel Commager, historian, 1951

“News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising.” --Lord Northcliffe

Eighty-six years of history. Eighty-six years of news and opinion, scandals and civic pride. Eighty-six years of original stories about the characters, the quirks, the unique economic, social and political landscape of Albuquerque and New Mexico. From the roaring 20s through the Great Depression and World War II, railroads and Route 66, the Manhattan Project and Ernie Pyle, Clyde Tingley and Harry Kinney, mesa and valley, cowboys and atomic labs, artists and rebels, brothels and churches, schools and sports, streets and alleys, board rooms and barrooms.

Rio Pecos Oil Company's Gas & Eat Cafe on site of Lobo Theatre.
Library of Congress 1943.

The Albuquerque Tribune was a newspaper that never succumbed to the lures of becoming a stenographic service for political press releases, that never gave up on journalism as a legitimate profession, that was never satisfied with the easy skim of a shallow story. This was a newspaper that served the people, not the political schemes and spin of the worst of us. This was a newspaper admired for the compelling prose of its columnists and the curiosity and grit of its reporters. It was ours, and now it's gone.

Why is it always the best ones that seem to go down early and hard?

Yes, we all know that newspapers are on the way out, or at least on the road to a very different kine of existence. We can't stop time or change. But we can at least stop and think about the gifts this particular newspaper gave us -- holding up a mirror for 86 years to our flaws and triumphs, our people and our places, our arts and our sport and our vanities, with accuracy and heart. Adios Albuquerque Tribune. Your readers mourn you. There's a gap in the civic center of our civic lives. I expect it will be difficult to fill it.

Modern Albuquerque

Read and remember:

The official announcement that the Tribune will publish its last edition this Saturday.

The masterful Tribune columnist Ollie Reed  Jr. on the characters and culture of the paper's early days paper's early days and how its first editor focused on rooting out corruption: rooting out corruption and life in the newsroom.

A history of the Albuquerque Tribune.

A reminiscence and roundup of blog and otheer coverage of the paper's demise.