New Mexico Mercury

Mercury Q&A: APS Board Vice President Kathy Korte

We speak with Kathy Korte, Vice President of the Albuquerque Public School Board, about her efforts to rally teachers, parents and the public against the onslaught of standardized testing and a teacher evaluation criteria that has many teachers fuming.

Mercury Q&A with Suzanne Sbarge of 516 ARTS

We talk with Suzanne Sbarge, Executive Director and Founder of 516 ARTS, about its array of innovative exhibitions, how it started and the logistics of pulling off large, collaborative projects.

The benefits of owning a polling company (updated)

Last week, the Albuquerque Journal ran a story that stated "Most Albuquerque voters favor a city proposal to build more trails and other recreational access through the city's riverside bosque….The support is widespread across political and demographic groups, the survey found."

Apparently the hundreds of naysayers that showed up in vehement opposition to the mayor's Rio Grande Vision on September 4th were just the vocal riffraff who only represent a small minority of people who "oppose the city's proposal to increase access to the Rio Grande and the Bosque."

Or so the Journal would have you believe...

Raytheon and certain members of Congress want our lunch money

Bless your heart if you believe our current Syria docudrama is about Team America’s moral outrage.  If so, you might also believe that Goldman Sach’s $1 million political contribution to Obama had no influence on his treasury appointments and the eventual multi-billion public dollar give-away to the orchestrators of the largest financial crisis the world has ever seen. Unfortunately, in this modern iteration of our “democracy,” our government’s moral outrage is often dictated by those greasing the gears. In this case, the $65 million put out by the war industry lobby is doing the greasing.  And they don’t fork out that kind of cheese for diplomacy and peace treaties...

The Other Side of the Behvioral Health Audit

A new video gives a voice to those affected by the state's behavioral health audit which has shuttered the majority of New Mexican providers, seen their jobs outsourced to Arizona-based operations and caused what appears to be widespread disruption of services.

Resisting Corporate Citizenship in the Age of ALEC

How do legislators and a concerned public counter ALEC's 40-year head start? A couple of organizations are utilizing the right-wing corporate behemoth's own playbook and harnessing a collective infrastructure already in place.

Behavioral health drama reeks of ALEC (updated)

Does this formula sound familiar: A motley crew of conservative legislators, libertarian philosophers and free-market carnival barkers label a public sector entity as inefficient, wasteful, fraudulent, full of ne’er do wells living high on the hog.  An orchestrated crisis ensues.  Inexplicably, a host of typically for-profit corporations are waiting in the wings with a solution, salivating for the key to those hefty public coffers...

Pray For Brain

The eclectic Pray For Brain kicks off the Outpost Performance Center's 18th annual Summer Thursday Jazz Night Series. We sit down for a Q&A with Mustafa Stefan Dill, lead guitarist for the genre defying trio.

Elite contractor privilege

The Albuquerque Journal reported this morning that Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) has settled a whistleblower lawsuit for billing fraud at New Mexico Tech in Socorro. 

In the world that most of us inhabit, bilking an employer out of millions of dollars usually denotes criminal charges and the possibility of years in prison. Not so with the elite government contractors who spend millions to lobby Congress for no-bid contracts, zero oversight and a mute gaze in the opposite direction of any wrongdoing with the public’s money...

Seasoned Veteran: Journey of a Winter Soldier

On this Memorial Day, a documentary about Scott Camil, Vietnam Veteran turned anti-war and community activist.