New Mexico in Focus; 232; Lt. Gov. Diane Denish; Part 2

This is not the legislative session, the Lieutenant Governor Diane Denish expected just a few weeks ago. What she has to say about her changing role in light of Governor Richardson's political troubles up ahead next, an exclusive one-on-one interview. Also, ahead this week, the latest on the DTV delay plans to remake an Albuquerque neighborhood and the local impact of President Obama's new economic stimulus package. All this and more on a show that's informed, involved, in-depth. Your Mexican focus starts right now. Five weeks ago, Diane Denish was poised to become the state's first female governor. Ah, but then a political shocker. As you know, Governor Bill Richardson announced his withdrawal to be the nominee for Comer Secretary and Mitz and alleged pay-to-play scandal. Ahead this week, on your Mexican focus, we have a candid conversation with Diane Denish about her topsy-turvy start to 2009. Also coming up, is UNM on the verge of a crisis of confidence? And is President Obama's economic stimulus package just with the doctor ordered for

New Mexico? The line panelist weigh in on those topics and much more. But first, Lieutenant Governor Diane Denish in her own words. Last week, here on New Mexico in focus, we talked a lot about the push to delay the DTV transition from February 17th to June 12th. The Senate had already approved the plan, but the bill came up a little short in the house. While that changed, as you know, this week. And the House has now approved the delay. And that means stations have until June 12th to turn off their analog signal. To people who watch TV with rabbit ears, of course. Now, here at Canomy, we've been broadcasting in analog and digital for quite some time. We want you to know we will continue to do so until the new deadline. On a related note, we got several e-mail about our discussion of this topic last week. A few people took issue with some of our line panelist opinions about the delay. Steve summed up most of the concerns when he writes. TJ Trout made references to people who are not ready for DTV as criminals who just got out or people who are too busy cooking meth. Those comments were made shortly after being asked about the lack of preparedness on the part of Spanish-speaking households. First and foremost, that type of discussion doesn't belong in public television, and

I'm outraged that your program would allow that to happen. Secondly, on the issue of the DTV delay, it's not okay that right now the groups that are still not ready are communities of color, elderly folks, and people with disabilities. It's not okay to say enough is enough, let them catch up later. Now we understand and appreciate Steve's opinion. I know I certainly do. Our weekly segment of the line is designed solely to be a passionate conversation on the issues between community members with varying perspectives and opinions. We know those opinions might be a little controversial at times, and now not everyone will agree with them. We always love hearing from you about the show, however, if you want to share your opinion on a particular topic, or maybe you want to suggest a topic for an upcoming episode, head to New Mexico and focus.org, or drops an email at infocusatcandemy.org. Hey folks, good to see you on a Friday night. Hope you had a good work week, good to be with you again, and an entirely interesting new panel makeup this week to discuss a range of topics. So let's get started by introducing the regulars, starting with political consultant Whitney Weight Chashire, our good friend, Jim Skerantino.

He's a radio host and a columnist with the Albuquerque Tribune. You didn't even move. She's the Albuquerque Tribune. That was on purpose. I'm sorry. What is this week? Professor Teresa Cordova, Director of the Architecture and Community Planning Department at UNM. And last but not least, Joan Schluter, another good friend, founding member of the group, women impacting public policy and member of the Small Business Administration's National Advisory Council. She's busy, and thank you all for being here this week. All right. Let's get to UNM. We've got at least 233 faculty members signing a petition, calling for a special meeting to address a crisis of confidence, quote-unquote, amongst others, President Schmidley and Regent Jimmy Cook. Now, back and forth from both sides, some interesting and directed debate, and quote certainly, Teresa, I'm good to see you. Thank you for being here. What are we to make of this? You know, usually in... Are you going to me first? I'm going to go to you first on this, you know, in university culture. It's common that there's always issues between faculty, tenured or otherwise, and the head of an administration.

And something just feels a little different this time around. What's your sense of what the issue is from faculty signing the petition? Well, I think that the major faculty concern is one of faculty governance. I think anytime you have someone take strong positions saying that they want to do something because they did it someplace else or they come in making bold statements on one hand. You want that. You want that from a new leader. You want that kind of strong leadership. But at the same time, you don't want that without the consultation and consideration of the faculty perspective on that. So I think the first red flag went up, I think, when President Schmidt Lee came in talking about it, he wanted to get rid of the university college and that was something that I think faculty immediately thought this was something that they needed to pay attention to. And as time has gone on, I think what the, as I can sense what people are primarily concerned about, what faculty are concerned about, is faculty governance. And I think it is faculty duty and responsibility to then make sure also that we are protecting the academic mission of the university and that the quality of instruction for students. So I think that as faculty, faculty have the strongest perspective and the best vantage

point to really speak about those kinds of issues. And so I think the idea there is don't make sort of decisions without taking into account the academic and the regular kind of consideration. Joe, you've been in education circles for a lot of years in your career also. Yes, I know. And again, the same thing, you know, these tensions are not uncommon on campuses, but again, is this a communication problem? It's a communication problem, but it's more than that. And I'm looking at it now because while I was in education, now I own a small business. And I look at funding and I want the funding to go to the students. And I know that some of the funding went to salaries. And I thought that was, this is not the time during the economic time to give money to salaries. And a lot of money went to raise some of the salaries. Jim, let me read a couple things. Jim Schmidley wrote an open letter to the university and the community, basically. I want to just know a couple things that he mentioned as part of his mission and part of the reason he's there. He says, and I'm quoting, as if this writing, new graduate student enrollments are up

25%. The highest number of new graduate enrollments in four years, new graduate student applications are up 53% freshman applications for Spring 09, up 60%. We've got the number of national merit scholars increased threefold national Hispanic scholars more than doubled the number of national scholars applying to UNM and it's gone from 40 to 100 as of today. These are pretty good numbers. What's the problem here? Because let me take a side for a second. This is what the man is supposed to do. These are his marching orders from the regions and he's meeting goals. What's the problem here? Well, morale, obviously, this is not a happy academic community. I mean, the long knives are out. They are at each other's throats. There is terrible resentment among faculty who haven't gotten raises looking at mid-level administrators making twice, three times, four times what a tenured professor is making. There's something wrong with that. The salaries are definitely out of line. There's also this resentment that if it's only a perception that the university has become a place for dumping political patronage employees.

We have, in fact, seen some of that. We've seen some of the governor's people who don't have college degrees, land a nice position at the university pulling down $136,000 a year. These things are wrong. He's got nice numbers in terms of production. He can't claim all the credit for that, of course. I mean, a lot of that is the faculty. It's the faculty that builds the reputation that draws the graduate students because they want to study under somebody. So, President Schmidley can't necessarily claim credit for that. There are real problems here. And then the region chairs, there's a chair or president, whatever Jamie Cook's position is on the Board of Regents, his blast to the faculty. I have retired faculty members on my street and they just all wrote letters to the editor this week. That is not good. And I don't know where it's going to go from here, but they better stop talking down to the faculty because it's the faculty that makes the university. It's not the administrators. They are far more important than the Regents or Mr. Schmidley.

Sure. And Whitney, speaking of Jamie Cook, he at first, earlier this week said he didn't have to meet with anybody. He's going to meet with somebody. I have to imagine President Schmidley and Mr. Cook had a conversation about that, so there was some mind-s' change. But he also wrote a letter to the University of New Mexico community. And what was interesting in this letter was he chose to acknowledge the fact that the average salary for a tenured folks are 94,000 a year, they get 39 days, personal days a year. There was something to be read into that. Maybe I'm seeing too much of these things, maybe it's just the dramatist in me. But why even point out the fact to the faculty about how good they have it, isn't it? Well, the discourse is getting so high. I mean, and now it's flowed beyond just the environment around the university. I mean, now the entire state is watching this. What I think is happening is that this is just one more tentacle of this mess that's going on with Governor Richardson right now and all of the pay to play scandal and investigations that are going on in the sense that it's his people that are sitting at the university

right now that appear to me to really be the target of this meeting by the faculty, because they're trying to say that they think that their funding is going to get cut because the legislature is losing faith in them. Well, first of all, none of the legislators are ever going to lose faith in the University of New Mexico. The points that they used to call this entire meeting to me was pretty political and I think kind of ridiculous, not that their original claims and original problems are not without merit. But I think it's very clear, because all the discussion back and forth has been that the faculty wanted to have Jamie Cook and David Harris at the table, and they don't, you know, they do not want to be there. So to a certain extent, I think that, you know, President Schmidley may be caught between a very big rock and a very hard place on this, and it's not necessarily his fault, but he's having to shoulder the problems that the governor's administration's having right now. At the same time, to rest of his and the legislature probably how many hours this week fighting off a huge cut back in his funding, but something in his letter, open letter to the UNM community caught my eye too, that he called this crisis of confidence a small minority of the faculty.

As if perhaps there's a threshold here, if 233 isn't enough to get somebody's attention, what is the right number? Well, and I think what was dangerous for him in the message of this letter was a kind of trivialization, I think, of the faculty point of view. And when you do that, you're already on the back end, because what you're really saying is what you've said to me is an important, I don't have to listen to you. You're just a minority, you're just, you know, you're marginal and you're not valuable. And I think that is precisely what has brought on the reaction in the first place. I think you're right about the context being significant here and people's response to what they perceive as political favoritism, cronyism, I think it's one of the words that they used. But I think it's also, again, the governance and how they feel they're being reacted to as important people, important members of this university community. And again, without the faculty, you know, you don't have the university.

Let me ask Jim McCluskey, because we're going to put a little shirt on time in this. I want to go back to your morale point. Had no boss. He's still the time. Your morale is your problem. I mean, isn't it really the case? How much can any one man be responsible for morale? Well, I actually think President Schmidley is responsible for the sour morale at the university. From one step after another, the sense of inequity, the disproportionate salaries, the cutting the budgets we've talked about, professors here, you know, who are leaders in their field seeing their budgets cut, you know, trying, you know, his son, you know, getting a job, you know, the nepotism, and then the salaries keep going up and up. Boy, I mean, he is responsible for the morale, because when he came in, he had a lot of good will. There wasn't upticking morale. I don't know that he had a lot of good will. I think you had a lot of people sitting on the bench saying, okay, let's see what this guy is going to do. And it's very difficult, and anybody who had been hired to come in would have had to have dealt with that environment. A whole lot of people, you know, very, very, you know, very concerned about who he was

and where he came from in Oklahoma, and, you know, from the get-go, he was going to have an uphill battle to climb in terms of public perception and the perception of the faculty. And again, I think that a lot of the things that he's done has been, you know, in conjunction with, you know, with the regents and the different things that they've tried to implement. So again, I kind of think that he's, I kind of think he's stuck. Need to move on, Joan, hold on. Just a quick, it's my fault. Now let me ask you a question. What's in a name? An Albuquerque neighborhood is looking to give itself an extreme makeover. By ditching its derogatory nickname, the concerned citizens, you know the name I'm talking about, the war zone in Southeast Part of Bar, ethically, ethnically diverse area of the city. Now, the plan Whitney is to change the name to the international district. It's interesting. Jim has made the point on this show many times that there's an interesting thing that's happened quite organically in that part of town. You've got a lot of ethnicities who have just come in and started the show up. You've got some business in all kinds of other areas. So the question begs, the war zone as a name is a problem.

If you're a real estate agent, big problem, if you're a business owner, big problem. But is just renaming and restamping something going to really markedly change anything? No. I like the attempt at it. I'm not crazy about calling it the international district. I mean to me, I'm insulted. I think my neighborhood in the city is international and it's almost like, okay, the rest of the city is boring and then this is the international sector. So I don't like the choice of the name myself. I also think it's exactly what you're saying. Look, we've got problems in this particular area of the city that are not being addressed effectively. I mean, I used to spend a lot of time in the Nob Hill area. I'd lived there for quite a while. It's been quite a few years now. I was back walking the neighborhoods a couple of weeks ago and the curves are broken. The neighborhood itself just does not look like it did even 10 years ago. And when the city starts focusing its dollars on the outline areas, we've talked about this a lot on the show. Really, the inner neighborhoods in the older parts of town have really suffered and that's what's happening in that particular area. So I say, you know, clean it up, spend the money, wear it, belong.

Sure. Jim, this reminds me. I live in Edo. Edo. Edo. In the uproar we had over Edo when people... They tell lots of viewers what it is. Yeah, East downtown. East downtown. No. And that begs the question, another question. What's in the name here? Because if you say Edo, what does that really mean? If you say, I don't know, the queue for the entire city. What does that mean? The international district. What are folks supposed to expect when they drive into this part of town, now that they've crossed the threshold and they see the sign, you're welcome to the international district of Albuquerque. I feel disclaimer, it's my favorite area of the city. It really is. That's where I had lunch today. I love to drive around and stop in all the different stores. I have lots of friends that are business people in that area of the city. It's a neighborhood of heroes, of people who stuck it out, the people around the community centers who marched and demanded that the city stop neglecting them, because there was such a downturn in that area because it was completely forgotten. But I don't think it's forgotten anymore.

It's a vibrant area of the city. Calling it the international district will give it the cachet, it gives them something up on the rest of the community. And if they want to grab it, grab it and go. I mean, I ate a Vietnamese restaurant today next to a restaurant that's founded by Mexican immigrants. I stopped off and got bread at an Afghan bakery and picked up my laundry from a Tanzanian dry cleaner. This is urban life, really. I love this area of the city. And I am so proud of what they've done and I think it's great and I think they deserve the recognition. They want to grab that name and run with it. John, we're talking about, if I remember this correctly, about 60 someone ethnicities are recognized in this part of town. That's wonderful. I love the internet. Call it a war zone. If you call even a person something negative, they feel negative about themselves. And so you want them to feel positive. So call it an internet. Call anything positive name, but certainly don't call it a war zone. And I think it's important in the name, very, very important what you call it. How far back, by the way, I don't know the answer to this to us is, when did the war zone

moniker start? Was that something from the 60s, 70s? I honestly don't know the answer to that. I think, I don't know the exact answer to that. I think it's probably been now about 20 years and it's paralleled with increases in rates of various forms of crime, which paralleled also with changes in economic opportunities. So when the jobs aren't there, there's going to be the associated level of crime. It also paralleled increases in immigration. This neighborhood was an entry point for a lot of, most well out, really, most of the immigrant groups coming into Albuquerque. And it is true that there isn't any other neighborhood that is as diverse as this one. And so to build on their assets and to turn that around and make that something positive to build an identity and counter to a negative identity, build a very positive one, a, it opens up all kinds of possibilities for commercial activity, for small business development and so on. And also it builds that sense of community.

So by establishing an identity around that, they can rally other things. And this effort parallels efforts to do community planning. There are a number of community planning, working with neighborhood residents to actually articulate what their vision is, what their long-term vision is, what they want their neighborhood to be, what their want their community to be, and their developing strategies for how they're going to attain that. And I want to say this, it does not deserve that name, the war zone anymore. The Southeast Heights command has done a tremendous job. The neighborhood has, the crime has dropped, the federal prosecution that took out the LA gangs back 13 years ago, made a huge turnaround district. And that is not, my perception, I think the statistics will show, it is not the war zone of this city anymore. We have higher crime neighborhoods than that area. It still has great concentrations of poverty. That's true, the pockets, but you find new construction, you find new residential housing, new apartment buildings, new businesses opening up.

Again, as you can tell, I'm a huge fan of this area of the city. It's a great neighborhood. There's a couple of really cool markets, too, in that neighborhood. But what you've just said also, for me, re-raises a couple of things, I think we need to think about. One is, if the socioeconomic problems or the crimes that we saw associated with some of those problems are not as strong or as prevalent in that neighborhood, have they gone away altogether or have they just moved to a different neighborhood? As that neighborhood was cleaned up by that area command and by some of the zoning enforcement that was done, did it just move? So we just moved the problem in some place else. And I think that's something we need to think about, something I've thought about, and I think we need to pay attention to that. The second thing is that as you revitalize a community, as there's money put back in that community, you start seeing dollars circulate, and you've now moved from disinvested neighborhood to a reinvested neighborhood. And that's a good thing, especially when that's being directed by and participated in by community residents.

What you don't want to have happen is lead to a process of gentrification. Because then what you've done, if you've created the cache, as you say, in the cool places where we go for lunch, but the residents who are there now can't afford to live there anymore. Because of the new condos and the increase in the increased prices and housing zones. And this is the very thing you're dealing with with your students at the School of Architecture and Community Planning. How do you how to stave off those kind of projects? Well, how do you how do you reinvest without gentrifying? Absolutely. Whitney, it's one thing to call something, so many things I'll tell my head. Every newspaper writer and editor has to stop using war zone. Everybody has to stop saying war zone out of habit, 30 years of 25, 30. Those things don't happen overnight. You know, this is the difficulty of that, but I think, starting the discussion even here, you know, on in focus is extremely important. Because I think once people are aware of the fact that, oh, you know, I'm using a negative statement when I'm talking about somebody's neighborhood. I mean, the more that we talk about it and the more, I think just the more public awareness there is about it, less than, you know, a name like the international zone, is really going to help.

And, you know, I'm sorry, I got to get over that. I'm like, there's a lot of different neighborhoods in the international district. But no, I mean, I think that it's just a matter of talking about it because I think people are in the back of their heads aware of the fact that these particular neighborhoods have really have really become, you know, very, well, very viable in many different ways and a safe place to be in town in a lot of ways as well. Sure. Absolutely. Now, the U.S. House recently passed its $819 billion version of the economic stimulus package. It's now in the hands of the Senate, probably back to the House. The New Mexico Congressional delegation has outlined what they believe the most necessary in economic recovery package proposals and to the biggest items on the agenda are transportation and education. Joan, education makes you happy, I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. Transportation, which one do you want to take? I want to take all of them. First of all, I want to say that we're passing on to our children and passing on to ourselves in inflation. Mm-hmm. I mean, it's going to happen. We're going to have to pay for that. So I look at education and I just said it was in Santa Fe yesterday. And it isn't just about money.

Education is getting good teachers in the classroom. It's not about some of the extra stuff that we do. So I don't see putting that much more money into it. I look at what they're putting it into. They're putting it into sorting the mall. They're putting it into insurance for beekeeping. They're putting it into, let me see, 246 million for Hollywood movie producers to buy movie pictures. Now, that bothers me a little bit. 248 million for furniture for the Homeland Security Department. That bothers me. That's my money. 600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for all of those things. For government employees. Yes. They're not for me. But the problem is, is that this is money that they're saying is getting injected into the economy in a somehow going to grow job. Yeah. Absolutely ridiculous. It is less than 10% of that. I own a staffing firm. And I know people are looking for less than 10% of this will create jobs. The jobs they create would cost about $200,000 per employee that you hire from the stimulus package.

Yeah. President Obama is saying that the stimulus, the spending package is going to result in three million jobs. No. But with the price tag, that's about $275,000 per person that he's planning on putting back to work. It is. I mean, it is absolutely ridiculous. It's a massive spending package. And honestly, I mean, I like the Republican's position on this. If we really want to put people back to work, cut taxes on small business. Let them go higher in additional person. Don't try to shore up because what's ending up, what's going to happen is we're going to end up shoring up the state governments that are coming up short in their own tax collections, meaning the state of New Mexico. All of our stimulus money is basically going to go to cover up all of our ills. And instead of us tightening our belt like we're supposed to do this year, we're going to be using the stimulus package to keep us from having to make the tough decisions. And if there are money, whether it's state taxes or paying our federal, they say it's coming from the federal government, that's okay. Jim, two things here. Whitney mentioned that the Republican caucus in unison said, I don't think so. And probably a good thing, by most sober minds. What interesting headline in Thursday's Politico, the website that President Obama is losing the messaging battle on this plan, as more information about what's in this bill, as

Jones pointed out, people are not too happy about this. Well, when you have Alice Riblin, who was Bill Clinton's chief economist, testifying to a Democratic Congress that this bill doesn't make sense, because it does not address the economic problems we have here. She said, you need to take out all the long-term social spending that is in here, which is most of it, and at least get something done now to address jobs, the fact that people aren't spending the housing market and what's happening with the auto industry. There's nothing in this bill that addresses the housing market, homeowners. There's nothing in it that addresses automobiles, except to have government employees now drive hybrid. And for our state, the major portion of it, as Jones said, goes towards the state fiscal stabilization money, and it's not job-creating. And even the tax cuts, I think Bill Richardson told him about this tax cut of $500 a person. We have learned in this state that that does nothing.

When you dribble out little checks like that, it goes to either pay debt, only 15% of that ever gets spent on something new. Now what's happened is that the Democratic plan that came through the House is not going to be the final bill. There's enough Democrats in the Senate who realize that all this thing does is balloon the deficit and threaten the stability of the dollar-long term. One last thing, less than half of the money in this so-called stimulus bill would be spent before 2010. If you need stimulus now, you do something now. A lot of this is long-term planning. It's a terrible bill. And Theresa, that makes a good point there, because the buzz phrase three weeks ago was things were going to be shovel-ready. Things were supposed to be ready to go, but it's jump points. What are we shoveling? Well, I think part of what we're shoveling are infrastructure projects. One of the things that when Obama first was, President Obama was first thinking about putting this package together.

There was a request that was made to municipalities, various jurisdictions throughout the country. Prepare your list of shovel-ready projects. The county did it, the water authority did it, the COG did it. I believe also the city did it. And the criteria there, again, was a shovel-ready. So let's just, a mafia did it, for example. So let's take a mafia, our flood control authority. They do have projects on the table ready to go that are shovel-ready that deal with some very serious flood control issues, levy issues, for example, here in this area. And the part that I think, despite the ways in which I think this bill needs to be refined and improved upon, and I think will be by the Senate, there are a lot of really important aspects to it, one of which is the fact that it's going to direct money to these huge infrastructure projects that need doing. For the last eight years plus, there's a lot of our infrastructure that it's been crumbling whether we look at the interstate system, our interstate road system, whether we look at levy's and flood controls, for example, various local roads. I mean, there's a whole list of capital improvements that are needed at the local level, which is very

excellent. That is also a fraction of the essentially trillion dollars that is in this. They're going to be shoring a Medicaid for us. I mean, we were going to be looking at- I agree with you. And I think there's a great consensus that these infrastructure deficits have to be addressed the problem with this bill is you've got this agenda that I'm in, I'm reminded of George Bush invading the wrong country. He wanted to go there. He used 9-11 as an excuse to do something he wanted to do. We have this terrible crisis in our economy that is really scary, and instead what you've got is the democratic majority, writing all their little wish list and saying it's going to be a catastrophe. The economy's going to crash unless he gives us all this stuff. Also, because as I was driving over here tonight, I heard the first commercial for a local car company that is now saying things are looking great on the economic horizon. Come on down by a year, blah, blah, blah. And you know, that's exactly- Yeah, people are banking on this thing as if it's going to pull us out of a recession,

and it's not- That's what we needed to do. But it's not going to do it. That commercial that says to people, look, be optimistic- Spend your money. And this- And one of the ironic things about the recession is that people respond by saying, oh, I better tighten up my wallet, you know, and not spend. And yet the very thing that we need to get us out of this is for people to spend. The spend creates the demand, the demand creates the production, that's what's going to get this thing going. But we can't afford to blow a trillion dollars and not do it right. I agree with that. But what we need to do- We can't afford to do either. And I agree with you. What we can't afford to do- It's what I think needs to be refined. Is if we do more tax cuts, we've already, as you said, we know that that is not the answer here. People at a certain level get such high tax, because they're not going to use that. But you can do it. Massive payroll tax cuts. Massive payroll tax cuts. Hold up, hold up. I can't go ahead. The veto pin is out. And I wonder, in my action, all kidding us on a wonder of President Obama, will wield his first veto pin here for some of this stuff? This should be interesting.

Right. Now it's time to put our panelists on the clock. They have just one minute as a group to tackle each of the following topics. So starting with, the ongoing food fight at the Albuquerque public schools, despite public outrage, among some, the school board says it's sticking with its cheese sandwiches and oranges for kids whose lunch accounts are in the red gym. I say it's working, the numbers say so. Do we just give credit what credit to do here and just push on? All those people that are complaining have said they're willing to raise the money to pay the bill with all these contingencies if they get this deal. Look, it fits for the kids. Go ahead and hold your fundraiser and pay off these kids, you know, lunch bills so they can get a hot lunch. Sure. John, what do you think? I don't think the cheese sandwiches, I don't think that's a horrendous thing. I mean, I would like cheese sandwiches when I went to school. But the kids are getting something and I don't think there's a stigma to the fact that they have a cheese sandwich. Were the board correct here? Yes. I was, when we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, I was supportive of what APS was doing and proof is now they've got 1,300 additional students that have signed up for free lunches, which was the point that I was making that you had a lot of kids who needed

to just get on the program and get the real lunches and that's what's happening. Ten seconds. The bill has gone down to 50,000, I mean, where it started and it actually isn't the poor kids who aren't getting the meal because those are the ones who qualify. It really is sort of middle-class families, you know, whose kids, or they don't, you know, all forget to pay and the bills now being paid. This is really an opportunity for us to be talking about new ways of providing food. Why aren't we doing farm? Why aren't we doing farm? I don't think we're going to stop you there. All right. You've heard of sister cities, but sister space ports, it's true. Our state's budding spaceport has a sibling far away, it's an extended new agreement with the spaceport Sweden to increase global cooperation in the commercial space industry. Whitney, I'm not quite clear with this sisterhood is supposed to accomplish, do you have any sense of this? No, I'm going to guess that they have no idea either. I think that there just, you know, a lot of this is about trying to, you know, remind the public that it is still going on. I mean, it's tough economic times, you know, this is a flashy thing on top of everything else.

You know, good. And there's still junk it from Virgin going to swim for someone. It's going to be pipe and abba, you know, over over the sound system. It's for Shell. Look, there's still no, there's still no space flight industry. It's just just literally hasn't taken off, folks. Right. Right. And I think it's silly because if there's only a finite number of people that can afford to go into space. So I see Sweden as a competitor to the Mexico side if we ever have a site. Exactly. Are you going to take a space right there? Not likely. And so, you know, part of the question really is, you know, can we afford this? Right. And what's really going to be the economic benefit to New Mexicans and isn't going to come anytime soon? The presumption of this partnership is that somehow it's going to, it's going to breed this sort of global cooperation, as you said, in the space industry. Right. I mean, they're very big on it and they're very big on it and with our new sort of sister partner on this and, but really, what's the, it's going to be an economic benefit anytime soon. There's the bell now. Should the bird fly south before it goes north, what I'm talking about, the expanding railrunners route to Colorado, a group of Donia Anna County legislators are

calling for expanding the railrunner to New Mexico's second largest city, Las Cruces. Meanwhile, Espanola's mayor is pushing for an extension into his city, while Towsleaders are launching a feasibility study to, Theresa, this is everybody wants a piece of this suddenly. Everybody was against it and now everybody wants it, so. Well, the first question we have, I think, what do we go for? Well, the first thing we need to look at really is the different markets here because what we, what the railrunner is is a commuter train. Right. They lend to, to Santa Fe, and it may make sense up to Espanola, for example. If we're talking about going down to Las Cruces, we're no longer talking about a commuter train. Right. And it's a whole different market. We're now talking about rail service. And if we're going to talk about Las Cruces, one at El Paso, and if we're going to talk about El Paso, we really need to think of it in a whole sense, El Paso to Denver. Right. And it's, and we're talking about rail service, and that's a very different market than a commuter train. All said. What do you think about that? Well, I think that was originally the intent. I mean, I think the governor had said he wanted to connect to Mexico to Colorado. So maybe I'm wrong about that, but that's what I remember about it. You know what? They got to figure out how to pay for what they have right now, first, so.

Sure, Joe. Well, the stimulus bill contains another billion dollars for Amtrak, since on the busy Northeast quarter, or it can't make ends meet. It's crazy to put it down to Las Cruces. There are no traffic jams from Sacoro to TRC. But I think looking at a line from Santa Fe to Espanola is worth looking at. That is a terribly congested corridor, and it's going to get worse over. Joe, they're going to hold you off on that one. I'm so sorry. Now, it seems like Governor Bill Richardson was just the leader of the pack. What I'm saying is Nancy Kellefer, with Drew Hercanecy, to be the first chief performance officer, interesting title there for the federal government. Hours later, we all know Senator Dashel with Drew, his nomination to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. Wow. This follows, of course, Jim Geithner's pull out. What are we doing here? Who are these people? Why can't they pay the taxes? Why can't they not have a nanny? I just don't get what's going on here. But my question. Is this a mark on the Obama administration or something, just a blimp? Absolutely.

This is a black eye to the Obama administration. More than a black eye, this is substantive because he promised a new era, this higher standard. And yet he stood by people who were scofflers that were not paying taxes. And the IRS comes down real hard on little people who don't make it. These folks have gotten by for years and not paying it. He lost a lot of credibility this time. Sure, let me get started, skip you on the last one. No, I agree that it's ridiculous. But another thing I look at, if these people aren't paying their taxes and we want to make them cabinet secretaries, I think they're either stupid, they say they didn't know they weren't supposed to pay it, so that's not an excuse to me. So they're either too dumb to pay it or they knew they were going to pay it and they just wanted to get out of it. How many people you think are going to blame TurboTax for problems now? I'm absolutely starting to wonder how many people are out there that are serving that they don't have some of these black eyes. It's starting to, that maybe he's ranking them, you know, like, I'll take the nanny problem over the, you know, maybe that's it. That's a good point. All right. The American people have elected their first black president and the GOP has elected the first American, African American to head the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele,

former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, and most famous Teresa for the phrase drill baby drill. Interesting choice here because, well, I'll skip over that. The politics are interesting, but for another time. Significance of his choice. What do you think of this? Well, you know, you can't help but wonder the choice and was there an intent to say, hey, we like black folks too. And I think that the question there is, who is going to take the Republican Party, I think, into the, into the, into the, to the next point because Whitney the Rasmus, Rasmus and latest Rasmus and report, of course, famously has said that a lot of the Republican registered Republicans want to see it more like Sarah Palin, you know, I absolutely disagree with what Teresa said. I was there. Yeah. And, you know, watching the election happen in all of its glory because, you know, the way people have to drop off and concede, you know, during the elections, there was no, there was no attempt to do a race balancing election here.

Everybody just liked him. Sure. There was a lot of time. And people were excited about him and it, he really is. I mean, I think a very, very good choice for the, well, he's good choice for the Republican Party. I think the Sarah Palin issue is that we continue to have a divide over the social issue. Sure. And speaking of divides, I got to cut you guys out of this last one. I'm so sorry. Now, thank you very much for watching. That's all the time we have a, send us your thoughts, your notes, complaints, praise. We take it all here in Mexico and focus. Cana me and please stay tuned for more next week. Thanks. That's all the time we have this week on New Mexico and focus. If you missed any of this episode or want to catch it again, just head to our website at newmexiconfocus.org. You can also vote in our online poll while you're there. This week's question, will the portion of the southeast heights known as the war zone be able to change its image by changing its nickname to the international district? Until next time, thanks for watching and we'll see you next week.