Skip to main content

Corruption and Jewelry

New Mexicans were ordered to stay in their homes except for essential business. Curbside deliveries were not authorized exceptions.

So the Governor's handlers are obfuscating and well, lying like politician's handlers do. We're told, that nothing in violation of an order occurred to get the governor some shiny object which she had time to shop for while buckling down to manage your staying put.

The official story. The governor was web surfing over at Barrack's and spotted a bauble she wanted. So the governor "goes online" to order the bauble and arranges for two people to arrange a drop off and pick up at a residential address. Here's the problem.
-picking up a jewelry order for the governor cannot in any sense be construed as conducting essential personal business. Whoever did that, violated the Executive Order.
-they violated the Executive Order at the direction of the governor.
-online orders are delivered by mail, FedEx, or UPS. They are not delivered curbside to third places for pickup. That's called curbside delivery.
-picking up jewelry orders for the governor is not state business. If the mule was a government employee, they provided a personal service for the governor at taxpayer expense, using most likely government transport to do so.
Despite the obfuscating and misdirection being attempted by the governor and her handlers, the reality is that there was a clear conspiracy involving the governor to violate the Executive Order limiting New Mexicans to their homes except for essential personal business. She may have directed a government employee to perform a personal service for her benefit.
In short, the governor doesn't think the order applies to her, her government staff, or her friends. They only apply to you.

This story isn't about jewelry. It's about personal and government corruption. The governor's handlers will obfuscate and distract to make this purchase seem within bounds and benign. They are paid to do that - to lie to you.

This behavior illustrates the danger of unfettered power given to politicians. They will abuse that power for any reason they care to, and in doing so will corrupt government employees and agencies, and entice their sycophant friends into participating in conspiracies to satisfy the politician's personal desires for baubles.
It was neither inbounds or benign.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Freewheeling

Merton never disappoints. Here's an excerpt from "Love and Living," a collection of individual writings collected after his death in 1968: "Life consists in learning to live on one's own, spontaneous, freewheeling; to do this one must recognize what is one's own—be familiar and at home with oneself. This means basically learning who one is, and learning what one has to offer to the contemporary world, and then learning how to make that offering valid." This short passage is pregnant with meaning and spiritual insight (would we expect anything less?). Let's start with the last few words: "…make that offering valid." The offering of ourselves, of our lives is our calling. We offer ourselves to assist the re-creation of Creation; the reconciling of Man to God. The validity of our offering is measured in how closely we mirror the work of God; to what extent our motivations are based on knowing who we are rather than a slavish obedience to p...

Wineskins II

       In chapter 16 of Matthew, Peter ‘makes the great confession’ - Jesus he says is the Son of the Living God. At Covenant, when someone wants to become a member or to be baptized, we ask them who Jesus is and we expect this response. Peter is correct when he says this, but it is not clear that Peter (or the other disciples) understood the ramifications of his statement. Following Peter’s statement we find a series of incidents that make us wonder just how much Peters actually believed what he had said.      In the first instance, Jesus compares Peter to Satan. Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to Jerusalem and there he will die. Peter exclaims that he will not let that happen; Jesus will not be killed. Peter is expecting great things from Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God on behalf of Israel and he cannot fit Jesus dying into his hope for a greater Israel under this Messiah. This cannot happen, he reasons. Jesus’s response is a harsh re...

Where’s the Church Building?

This past Saturday morning was spent at the Children's Home in Albuquerque. The summer clean up was in preparation for the two week nigh annual open house and barbeque at the home. This day there were about sixty people from a local congregation helping weed, move rock, and generally spruce up the entire campus. Great folks all, and I'm sure they were a bit sore come Sunday morning. One of the people who came to help was a boy of about seven years who helped clear some of the larger weeds from a fallow section of the campus. As we worked on removing Russian Thistles, he said that tomorrow is church. Having sixty of his fellow church goers on campus, in turn assisting a Christian organization accomplish tasks too large for the staff to do by themselves, I observed that he was in church right now. Understandably, his retort was "where's the church building?" As I was readying a short instruction on "church" and community, someone yelled that it was time fo...