Susana Backpeddles

October 08, 2013

By James Burbank

A Few short months ago Gov. Susana Martinez was hobnobbing with the Koch brothers out at Tamaya. This was a Tea Party love fest where Vice-Presidential-Hopeful Sooz was shmoozing and political french kissing the likes of Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor, architects of the current exceptionally smart government shutdown pulled by Republicans in the House.

Anyone who thinks the Democrats or Obama orchestrated this ill-conceived and silly catastrophe, hasn’t been paying attention for the past thirty or so years since Ronnie Reagan said in 1981 that government wasn’t the solution but it sure was the problem.

This totally untrue principle, like the equally repudiated piddle-down economics, became a central pillar of Republican orthodoxy, an orthodoxy seized upon with a fixed and obsessive freneticism by Neo-Randist Conservatives who have gone one step further in believing government is not just a problem, Government is The Mortal Enemy, a sort of doppleganger Other that must be obliterated.

Susana has been happy to join this suicidal fantasy quest to make government not work, wreaking havoc here in New Mexico by attempting to dismantle public education through privatization, by destroying the state’s Dept. of Health, and by appointing a bevy of inept and soulless deputy managers like the clueless Sidonie Squier who still thinks poverty and hunger are myths here.

Now Susana’s good buddies in Congress with whom she was rubbing elbows only last summer have flushed the New Mexico economy down the toilet by shutting down the federal government and idling 800,000 “non-essential” government workers across the country. Many of those folks work here in New Mexico and they are being directly and indirectly zapped by this heartless and just plain stupid brinksmanship generated through these insane ideologues and supported by cheering fanatics in their gerrymandered congressional districts.

No wonder Susana is running as fast as she can away from her Neo Con buds right now. Sooz is offloading on all those nasty pols from both parties, those Washington insiders who in her eyes are the villains in this disastrous scenario, when in truth virtually everyone knows the House Republicans have made a botch of it, another self-made, self-inflicted Republican catastrophe that this time threatens to take everyone in the country down the tubes.

This piece was written by:

James Burbank

James Burbank has written and published over 200 articles for regional and national publications such as Reuters International News Service, The World & I Magazine, National Catholic Reporter, Farmer’s Almanac, Los Angeles Herald Examiner, La Opinion, New Mexico Magazine, Albuquerque Journal, Albuquerque Tribune. He is author of Retirement New Mexico, the best selling book published by New Mexico Magazine Press, now in its third edition. He is also author of Vanishing Lobo: the Mexican Wolf in the Southwest, published by Johnson Books.

As a professional writing consultant, he has written and edited publications, video and radio scripts, annual reports, and investment information for a wide variety of corporate clients. A Lecturer II for the Department of English, Burbank has specialized in teaching technical writing and professional writing. His interests extend from composition and writing theory to environmental and nature writing. He has played a leadership role in developing and implementing the English Department’s teaching mentorship program.