Give the homeless booze and drive them to the polls

An impressive 'get out the vote' effort.  On one hand, it's rather disgusting.  on the other hand, it's small potatoes when compared to the Koch brothers putting $400M into RomneyPACs, or Florida excluding a list of 180,000 minorities from the voter registration rolls.  (note that Bush beat Gore in FL by just a few hundred votes.  And there were 20,000 mostly minority people stricken from the rolls that year).

Politics and power- a nasty business.

Money has always bought votes.  Only 1% of the US population gives money to candidates for political.  With Citizens United, that further concentrates the power to a very few people.

I've lived in NM on and off my whole life and things like this are entirely too common. 

"You know you're from New Mexico if you have two cousins in Santa Fe: one in the state government and one in the state penitentiary."  

That is sad but true.  I heard someone say once "It may be New, but it's still Mexico"

I certainly don't mean any of my comments to be construed as excusing or trying to justify the behavior; I just see it as business-as-usual for New Mexico and I absolutely hate it. I work for the federal gvt and my GF works for one of the county governments here, and we exchange stories about how screwed-up it all is. I wish I could think of some way to clean it up, but it's what the 'natives' want. Have a great-sounding law, but don't enforce it; have accountability, but don't impose it on me; make sure people follow the rules, except when it inconveniences me. That's the attitude here. When I try to make my personnel take personal responsibility, it's the folks from the local area who fight back.

We do what we can, but there's only so much that we can do.

lol, me too