FGGAM received permission from long-time news reporter Joe Monahan to post this, Joe makes some great points here, the truth hurts sometimes.
From joemonahan.com
Amid the budget chaos in Santa Fe comes news that illustrates the slow and painful economic death spiral that has enveloped the state. Intel in Rio Rancho has finally confirmed that the plant shed 700 workers in 2016 and employment there now stands at only 1,200, compared to 7,000 in its heyday. It was little solace that rumors had current employment levels there even lower. The bottom line is, like so many others, Intel is pulling out of here.
The state suffers the highest jobless rate in the nation as well as a long-term stagnant economy. Bekin’s moving company remains one of ABQ’s larger advertisers and the state’s largest city, its “economic engine,” looks increasingly like a low-end border town, checkered with payday loan and dollar stores and afflicted by a maddening crime wave that authorities refuse to take responsibility for.
Compared to all that, the wrangling over a $6.1 billion state budget (the same amount as it was 10 years ago) is small potatoes. Gov. Martinez’s over-the-top veto of the entire higher education budget in an effort to get her way with the Legislature is only going to worsen the perception that New Mexico is a place best left to its own devices.
While ABQ takes on border town status, Santa Fe looks more and more like a banana republic, with a Governor who seems to be reciting lines from The Madness of King George.
Martinez’s approval rating is an anemic 42 percent and probably sinking further as we speak. The doors to any political future for her closed long ago. But she refuses to march quietly or cooperatively into her political oblivion that will begin January 1, 2019.
Only a radicalized pocket of state House Republicans prevent a total repudiation of this governorship. Most Senate Republicans have already abandoned her as shown by the recent override of one of her vetoes. And even many House R’s are stunned by her refusal to sign portions of the budget that even they supported.
In 2002, both Republicans and Democrats banded together to pull the state back from the brink when GOP Governor Johnson’s stubborn authoritarianism had him performing his version of the aforementioned King George. They did so by calling an “extraordinary session” of the Legislature for the first time in state history and passing a veto proof budget and going home.
Johnson, never one to take governing too seriously, laughed off the historic rebuke and went on to enjoy the fortune he made in his pre-gubernatorial years from doing deals with Intel. Back then the wreckage of a governorship stood out. Today’s repeat performance by Martinez just seems like another piece of litter on a battered economic and social landscape.
