NewMexicoMatters.com

MASS Bill Would Give Consumers an Out After 5 Dropped Calls

Bill would rein in cellphone firms - The Boston Globe:

Under his bill, consumers could establish that they are receiving poor service by complaining to their cellphone company about five or more dropped calls in a month. They would then be allowed to cancel their contract.
Consumer advocates praised the bill, saying there is overwhelming public support.

"He's getting at absolutely one of the biggest problems consumers have," said Deirdre Cummings, consumer program director of MASSPIRG. "Cellphone companies sell primarily two-year contracts, and if you want to get out, it costs between $170 and $300. The frustrating thing is consumers can't get out of a contract when they're stuck with a phone that is bad."

Could you imagine if they did this in New Mexico? 

Who Loves Bill Richardson?

Jonathan Martin on Bill Richardson & 2008 on National Review Online:

If there were a presidential candidate available who had deep experience in both state and federal government, the executive and legislative branch, and foreign and domestic affairs, would he be rated among the top of the field? How about if the same candidate had the retail political skills to match his policy experience and came from a bellwether state in a battleground part of the country? And what if this person had the sort of national contacts that are a must to raise the significant sums necessary for a run for the White House.

And did we mention he’s part of the nation’s fastest-growing ethnic group, is bilingual, and has a record of getting crossover votes?

We speak, of course, of Democratic New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Skeptics and insiders may deride him as a mere “resume candidate” who only looks great “on paper.” But that CV is worth a look: Tufts undergrad followed by a masters from his alma mater’s Fletcher School of Diplomacy; staff stints at the State Department and on Capitol Hill; elected at 35 to the House where he’d spend 15 years; successive appointments as ambassador to the U.N. and secretary of Energy; easy election and reelection as governor and a term as chair of the Democratic Governor’s Association (DGA).

MoJo News Takes the Mask Off Highway Robbers

MotherJones: The Highwaymen
News: Why you could soon be paying Wall Street investors, Australian bankers, and Spanish builders for the privilege of driving on American roads.

By Daniel Schulman with James Ridgeway
January/February 2007 Issue
"the road is one succession of dust, ruts, pits, and holes." So wrote Dwight D. Eisenhower, then a young lieutenant colonel, in November 1919, after heading out on a cross-country trip with a convoy of Army vehicles in order to test the viability of the nation's highways in case of a military emergency. To this description of one major road across the west, Eisenhower added reports of impassable mud, unstable sand, and wooden bridges that cracked beneath the weight of the trucks. In Illinois, the convoy "started on dirt roads, and practically no more pavement was encountered until reaching California."

It took 62 days for the trucks to make the trip from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco, and another 37 years for Ike to complete a quest, inspired by this youthful journey and by his World War II observations of Germany's autobahns, to build a national road system for the United States. In 1956, President Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act, which called for the federal and state governments to build 41,000 miles of high-quality roads across the nation, over rivers and gorges, swamps and deserts, over and through vast mountain ranges, in what would later be called the "greatest public works project in human history." So vital to the public interest did Eisenhower, an old-style fiscal conservative, consider the interstate highway system, he even authorized the federal government to assume 90 percent of the massive cost.

Fifty years to the day after Ike put his pen to the Highway Act, another Republican signed off on another historic highway project. On June 29, 2006, Mitch Daniels, the former Bush administration official turned governor of Indiana, was greeted with a round of applause as he stepped into a conference room packed with reporters and state lawmakers. The last of eight wire transfers had landed in the state's account, making it official: Indiana had received $3.8 billion from a foreign consortium made up of the Spanish construction firm Cintra and the Macquarie Infrastructure Group (mig) of Australia, and in exchange the state would hand over operation of the 157-mile Indiana Toll Road for the next 75 years. The arrangement would yield hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks for the consortium, which also received immunity from most local and state taxes in its contract with Indiana. And, of course, the consortium would collect all the tolls, which it was allowed to raise to levels far beyond what Hoosiers had been used to. By one calculation, the Toll Road would generate more than $11 billion over the 75-year life of the contract, a nice return on mig-Cintra's $3.8 billion investment.

...Continue Reading The Highwaymen

One Nation Taken To War By One Party: Imperial Life in The Emerald City

Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone By Rajiv Chandrasekaran - Books - Review - New York Times:

To begin with, the C.P.A.’s recruitment policy would have shamed Tammany Hall. Loyalty to George W. Bush and the Republican Party was apparently the prime criterion for getting work at the C.P.A. To determine their suitability for positions in Iraq, some prospective employees were asked their views on Roe v. Wade. Others were asked whom they voted for in 2000. Republican congressmen, conservative think tanks and party activists were all solicited by the White House’s liaison at the Pentagon, James O’Beirne, to suggest possible staffers.

Before the war began, Frederick M. Burkle Jr. was assigned to oversee Iraq’s health care system. He had a résumé to die for: a physician with a master’s degree in public health, and postgraduate degrees from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and Berkeley. He also had two bronze stars for military service in the Navy, as well as field experience with the Kurds in northern Iraq after the 1991 gulf war. A week after the liberation, he was told he was being replaced because, Chandrasekaran writes, “a senior official at USAID told him that the White House wanted a ‘loyalist’ in the job.” 

That loyalist was James K. Haveman Jr., who had been recommended by the former Michigan governor John Engler. Haveman’s résumé included running a Christian adoption agency that counseled young women against abortions. He spent much of his time in Iraq preparing to privatize the state-owned drug supply firm — perhaps not the most important priority since almost every hospital in the country had been thoroughly looted in the days after Hussein was overthrown.

U.S. Attorney For N.M. Will Resign From Office

8:38 am: U.S. attorney for N.M. to resign
ALBUQEURQUE (AP) - David Iglesias, who has been U.S. attorney for New Mexico for the past five years, will resign within the next couple of months.

His pending resignation is based on discussions he has had with the U.S. attorney's office in Washington, D.C., Assistant U.S. Attorney Norm Cairns said Tuesday.

Cairns declined to elaborate on the reasons for the resignation, saying Iglesias might have more to say on the matter as the resignation comes closer.

Iglesias, a Republican, was sworn in as U.S. attorney on Oct. 16, 2001, succeeding Norman Bay. Iglesias' term normally would have ended in 2008.

Pentagon Cites Success Of Anti-U.S. Forces in Iraq - washingtonpost.com:

Pentagon Cites Success Of Anti-U.S. Forces in Iraq - washingtonpost.com:

The Pentagon said yesterday that violence in Iraq soared this fall to its highest level on record and acknowledged that anti-U.S. fighters have achieved a "strategic success" by unleashing a spiral of sectarian killings by Sunni and Shiite death squads that threatens Iraq's political institutions.

In its most pessimistic report yet on progress in Iraq, the Pentagon described a nation listing toward civil war, with violence at record highs of 959 attacks per week, declining public confidence in government and "little progress" toward political reconciliation.

White House, Joint Chiefs At Odds on Adding Troops-Washington Post

White House, Joint Chiefs At Odds on Adding Troops - washingtonpost.com:

The Bush administration is split over the idea of a surge in troops to Iraq, with White House officials aggressively promoting the concept over the unanimous disagreement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to U.S. officials familiar with the intense debate.

Sending 15,000 to 30,000 more troops for a mission of possibly six to eight months is one of the central proposals on the table of the White House policy review to reverse the steady deterioration in Iraq. The option is being discussed as an element in a range of bigger packages, the officials said.

But the Joint Chiefs think the White House, after a month of talks, still does not have a defined mission and is latching on to the surge idea in part because of limited alternatives, despite warnings about the potential disadvantages for the military, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House review is not public.

FOI Request Filed on Desert Rock

desert-rock-blog.com :

By Kathy Helms  Diné Bureau

WINDOW ROCK — A Farmington resident who has been an active opponent of the Desert Rock energy project for several years has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Steve Cone says he is not representing any particular group, "though I am in complete solidarity and accord with the action of the Navajo resistance groups, and I'll support them in every way possible." "I am a concerned citizen of the San Juan Basin and active opponent of this project since it began to rear its ugly head in the Four Corners some two to three years ago," Cone said. According to the Desert Rock blog page (http://www.desert-rock-blog.com), Navajo citizens are being told they cannot get National Environmental Policy Act documentation for the water drilling activities on the proposed Desert Rock Energy Facility site without a FOIA request. Resisters claim the main issue is that drilling activities to determine water quality, quantity and flow characteristics should be part of the overall Environmental Impact Statement being prepared for the project; however, the BIA has reportedly issued developers a categorical exclusion. Prove itCone, members of Dooda Desert Rock and Din Care want to see the paperwork. Cone submitted a formal FOIA request to BIA Dec. 16 regarding documentation of certain activities related to the Desert Rock Energy Facility by Sithe Global Power LLC and Din Power Authority. In the FOIA, Cone requested the following:

Applications or permits submitted or issued to or from Sithe or DPA to or by the BIA related to drilling for water testing in connection with Desert Rock;

Applications or permits submitted or issued to the two parties by BIA related to surveying of Navajo Nation land in connection with Desert Rock;

Documents related to any categorical exclusion issued by the BIA for on-site drilling or survey work;

Applications submitted by Sithe or EPA for permits under Sections 401, 402, and 404 of the Clean Water Act;

Permits issued by BIA to Sithe or DPA under Sections 401, 402, and 404;

Correspondence between BIA staff and Sithe and/or DPA staff from Oct. 1 to date.

Navajo Resistance Group Blockades Coal Fired Power Plant Construction

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T88qZ5TbGrg

Diogenes'six: There will no longer be a public forum during APS Board Meetings

Diogenes'six: There will no longer be a public forum during APS Board Meetings:

The public forum is no longer on the agenda of meetings of the APS Board of Education. The Board and Superintendent do not want the broadcast version of the truth to include their individual refusal to be held honestly accountable for their character or their competence.

They reason that because the broadcast version of the truth is not the “official record” of the meeting; a deliberate effort to misrepresent the truth is not “dishonest”.

This community expects the Leadership of the Albuquerque Public Schools to provide leadership in the ethical development of their children. APS Leaders have demonstrably forsaken that responsibility.