I am a sapient (self-aware) resident, registered voter and taxpayer of the District.

What qualifies me over my opponent? What qualifies him over me? What qualifies either of us over any other resident of the District?

Beware the person who tells you that they have all the answers to all of your problems, if only you surrender a bit of your liberty to them. To paraphrase what Lord Acton said, “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. All great men are bad men.” And no, I don’t see myself as being immune to this tendency.

Open up all closed-door conference committees in the Legislature.

Require that all State spending over $1000.00 be posted to a publicly-viewable website within twenty-four hours. Considering that you can be tracked in real time when you use your credit card to pay for gas, fast food, etc., this is a very doable idea.

Allow private citizens to make audio and video recordings of all Legislative and regulatory-agency proceedings.

We can start by using a zero-services baseline, and put all of the State budget onto the table for discussion.

As for cutting specific budget items, we can start with the Rail Runner and the Film Office.

Refrain from expanding existing programs without cause, or from creating new programs or agencies that do the jobs of existing agencies or programs. Consolidate duplicative programs and agencies. Require every agency and program to justify its existence and budget on an annual basis.

Inasmuch as the State requires any form of permission slip for two consenting adults to engage in romantic or sexual relations, the State should NOT discriminate against anyone of the gay / lesbian / bisexual / transgender / polyamorous / kinky persuasions, especially when it’s often clear that such discrimination is done just because of this factor.

Still, it should be remembered that marriage-licensing laws started out under “Jim Crow” in the post-Reconstruction South as a way to enforce segregation, by outlawing interracial marriages between whites and blacks.

The current “rehabilitation” programs offered by the State as an alternative to jail or prison can often be more intrusive and onerous than incarceration.

Instead, let’s try repealing the stupidity, insanity and evil known as Drug Prohibition. Consider that all it really does is corrupt law enforcement. Until I hear otherwise, I will assume that anyone who supports Drug Prohibition also supports the 10,000 drug-related murders per year in America caused by Drug Prohibition. Drugs being illegal won’t stop people from wanting them, and someone else will find ways to make money providing them.

The Film Office is just as much a corporate welfare handout program as was Isotopes Stadium when it was built, as is the Balloon Fiesta Park. Eliminate them from the public budgets, and then cut the gross receipts tax, cut the personal income tax, so that poor people can save some more money to support their kids. Let the Hollywood studios, all owned by multimillionaires, pay their own way. How many of the jobs created by the production companies still exist after the movie is completed?

APS is one of the State’s biggest spenders and employers, yet apparently the following was written by someone in the eighth grade:

ABOUT THE “All Work, No Play” article, I disagree with the run artical on how if the students do poorly on the standard based test then they cant have an elective. I feel bad that you feeled on the test.

See http://tinyurl.com/2a7fmuf for more.

And we should give APS MORE money?! When I was that age, I would have been ashamed to write that. Is APS even fixable?

I’m more focused on charter schools, private schools, and homeschoolers.

All of this hysteria about Mexicans coming north like Genghis Khan’s Golden Horde is just that – hysteria. Joe Miller, the Alaska GOP’s candidate for U.S. Senate, unwittingly reinforced my point when he said that East Germany was “effective” about enforcing its border around West Berlin – http://tinyurl.com/25mf2ml – nice guy, isn’t he?

Seriously, what kind of society do we want to end up with – one with fences, walls, scanners, regulations and subgun-toting guards all over the place, or one where people can interact with each other on a basis of voluntary consent?

The usual kinds that just about every other district needs – the roads are the most visible ones. Driving around some parts of Albuquerque can be like four-wheeling, considering the potholes, cracks, bumps, etc. that I often see around town. This is what we spend millions on road bonds for every two years?! There has to be a better way to build roads.

One thing that needs doing around here is speed-bump removal – people still routinely go over them at 40 MPH, and I wouldn’t want to be a patient in an ambulence going over them.

I haven’t had the cash to do any surveys or polling, but I’m guessing that they would want their individual rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness to be respected by State government. I suspect that they want to provide for themselves and their families in a productive manner by interacting with others on a basis of mutual consent. State (and local, and federal) government should do what it can to defend that liberty, while not infringing that same liberty. Other than protecting those freedoms, government should leave people to their own devices.

1. Personal blogs – WordPress / Xanga
2. KCUF Media – New Mexico’s Consumer Advocate / The Weekly Sedition
3. New Mexico Liberty / The BTPNM Blog / The LPNM Blog