DERELICTION OF DUTY: ELECTED OFFICIALS TOLERATING INJUSTICE IN NEW MEXICO

      New Mexico is a state historically dominated by Democrats at state, county, and city levels.  In my 19 years in Las Cruces, I, a left-leaning Independent, have watched them hold power and do little good.  All of the people-centered domains—education, environment, health, public safety, social services—are perpetual shambles.  In most of these domains, New Mexico leads or strives to lead to the bottom of national rankings.

Las Cruces shares in the state’s pervasive political culture of incompetence, corruption, and complacency about it all.  Those in Las Cruces who pride themselves on their progressive approaches to and stances on issues are strutters who are nevertheless about as ineffectual as political strutters can be.  If you want to see back scratching and glad handing at its best, go to a meeting of the Progressive Voters Alliance and listen to its members’ two-minute soundbites.  What exactly has the PVA actually accomplished?  Nothing.  But its members assume a pervasive smugness about the virtues of Democratic predominance despite clear evidence that all is not well in Las Cruces.  To give the Police Chief his due, Jeremy Story has reduced petty crime in the city.  But homelessness and vandalism are still problems; violence, domestic or random, is rife; and sexual predators abound.

 

As readers of my blogs know, my attention focuses on public safety, a euphemism for policing, and good government, a matter to which neither the public nor politicians pay much attention.  Senator Jeff Steinborn’s effort to reform legislators’ ethics is the outer limit of such a concern.  Probably because the state’s Attorney General is elected, not nominated and confirmed as part of the Governor’s administration, there is little control over an office responsible for law enforcement to ensure good policing and good government.  Since many AGs aspire to higher office, political considerations too often enter into decisions about which cases to pursue and which to elide.  No AG wants to offend the police community or the political powers-that-be.  Accordingly, AG Raul Torrez brought in an expert specializing in defending police to clear LCPD officer Jared Cosper of killing Sra. Amelia Baca and is letting NMDOJ lawyers resist my complaint about four former Las Cruces city counselors who violated the Open Meetings Act.

 

I offer my experiences with the Las Cruces legal community—police officers, judges, and attorneys—as proof of my point.  I have no way of knowing whether my experiences are more or less numerous than or different from those of others.  My responses have been actions, never for my personal benefit, which most people do not take.  I have taken them on the assumption that my experiences are typical and in the hope that I might do some public good.  When I received $22,000 from a settlement, I gave $20,000 to Community of Hope and kept the difference only to cover my taxes.  My actions engaging the powers-that-be reflect my passion for justice—quite a different thing from the retrograde Right’s cry for “law and order.”

 

After I challenged five Las Cruces Police Department’s false allegations of code violations, Internal Affairs Sergeant, now Deputy Police Chief, Sean Mullin reported to Police Chief Patrick Gallagher that the allegations were unfounded, that is, false.  Neither IA nor Gallagher reported this finding to me; the LCPD did not want to admit its mistake.  When I discovered it through an IPRA request, Gallagher and succeeding Police Chiefs Miguel Dominguez and Jeremy Story refused to clear my file.  Story even lied that there was no file, then broke his promise to look into it and get back to me when I proved there was one.  Hypocritically, the “I” in the LCPD’s slogan P.R.I.D.E stands for “integrity.”  Meanwhile, when City Manager Ifo Pili accepted that I was owed an apology detailing the facts, City Attorney Jennifer Vega-Brown prevented it and substituted verbal pablum.  Every counselor knew the facts; not one—not my Progressive District 1 representatives Kasandra Gandara and Cassie McClur—did a thing about this injustice.

 

When I filed complaints about violations of my due process rights and about bias-based policing, the New Mexico Department of Justice under Attorney General Hector Balderas ignored both of them; it did not even acknowledge receiving my electronically filed complaints, much less address them.  Balderas clearly wanted to steer clear of complaints which would rile LCPD officers and perhaps their comrades elsewhere in the state, and taint any political ambitions.  My blogs went to all city counselors and state legislators; none took any action.

 

When I requested all records pertaining to the City Council’s Public Safety Select Committee, City Clerk Christine Rivera initially provided only a small fraction of them.  When I sued, she released a few more, some redacted, and withheld others, without complying with the IPRA requirements to describe them.  When my suit looked to prevail in court, the City settled; it released about 500 records, unredacted much of the redacted records, and withheld only a few.  The cost to the City: about $150,000 to pay for IPRA violations which City Clerk Rivera well knew how to avoid, it being her job to fulfill IPRA requests.  Again, every counselor knew the facts; not one did a thing about this criminal conduct.  With one exception: Progressive City Councilor Becky Corran nominated Rivera for New Mexico's Clerk of the Year in April 2025, who then won.  Such was the appreciation of Rivera’s criminal conduct in City Council.

 

In a recent (21 August) blog, “New Mexico DOJ’s Political Shenanigans Require Legislative Correction,” I copiously detailed the many and various ways in which Department lawyers were attempting to avoid the gravamen of my complaint about members of City Council—the-mayor Ken Miyagishima, Gabe Vasquez (current incumbent Democratic candidate for District 2), Tessa Abeyta, and Kasandra Gandara—who, on a Public Safety Select Committee operating in secret, violated the Open Meetings Act over several years.  My suspicions were amply vindicated by a thorough, year-long investigation by the Foundation for Open Government.  Every member of the state legislature, including my local representatives Jeff Steinborn and Angelica Rubio, has received my blogs on this complaint; this recent blog was an open letter which I sent to every member of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees; no one in the legislature, notably those on these committees, has replied to me or, so far as I know, taken any action on my complaint.  What surprises me is that even Republican legislators in an election year have nothing to say about it.  Apparently, a shared interest in protecting fellow politicians overrides considerations of party affiliation, the rule of law, and justice.

 

In contrast are two experiences with my Virginia representatives when I had trouble with state and federal agencies about my taxes.  In the first instance, the Virginia Department of Taxation improperly applied the additional payment accompanying my amended return to the following year, then billed and penalized me for underpaying my taxes for the current year.  When I contacted the Department about this mishandling of my taxes, I got no response.  My state senator intervened, got the Department to change its methods of handling amended returns, and elicited an apology to me from the Department director.

 

In the second instance, I asked the IRS whether I was supposed to pay social security taxes for a once-a-week housecleaner.  Advised that I was, I filled out 6 years’ worth of quarterly social security returns, paid the taxes due, and later paid all penalties for late payment.  The IRS mishandled my returns and claimed that I owed payments of taxes and penalties for a missing quarter.  The Taxpayer Advocate, instead of correcting the mishandling, doubled down on the claim and blamed me for a failure to file for that quarter.  My senator brought my case before the Senate Finance Committee then investigating IRS performance respecting taxpayers’ complaints.  The chair was so outraged by IRS mishandling of my returns and allegations against me that he insisted that an IRS agent to be transferred from her detail to the committee stay with the case until I was satisfied with its resolution.  Meanwhile, it turned out that I had been misadvised, that I did not owe social security taxes, and that the IRS had to refund my payments of taxes and penalties, and pay accrued interest.  In the end, I received a long and detailed apology from the Taxpayer Advocate; it is framed and hangs in my office, perhaps the only one of its kind in the country.  Without the intervention of my senator, I might be sharing a cell with Al Capone.

 

The point of these two stories is obvious.  The non-performance of elected representatives or appointed officials at the city and state level in New Mexico is not typical of those in other cities and states.  It is reflective of incompetent, corrupt, or complacent personnel in the Las Cruces Police Department, the Las Cruces City Council, and the New Mexico Department of Justice.  It has to be this way, however, because the citizens of Las Cruces and New Mexico are, except in the most outrageous, publicized incidents, indifferent to police misconduct or bad government.  And Democrats, especially Progressives, know so, and thus can dodge the duties which would ordinarily be theirs to discharge.

NEW MEXICO DOJ'S POLITICAL SHENANIGANS REQUIRE LEGISLATIVE CORRECTION

[Note: I sent the following text under the title "Open Letter to All Members of the New Mexico Senate and House Judiciary Committees" to them and members of the media.]

The New Mexico Department of Justice (NMDOJ), under the leadership of the Attorney General Raul Torrez, is doing everything possible to avoid enforcing the Open Meetings Act (OMA) against former members of the Las Cruces City Council who, through a select committee operating in secret, influenced public safety policies and practices usually without the knowledge of City Council or the public and thereby violated OMA for several years.  Its investigation of my complaint about OMA violations avoided this core of my complaint.  Its response to FOG’s request that it re-open my complaint in light of its year-long investigation documenting OMA violations is silence.  Its rationale for refusing my request that it re-open my complaint defies logic.  Its responses to my Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA) request to know about NMDOJ’s decision making in this matter have violated this act.

 

I do not know the purpose, mission, or writ of either Senate or House Judiciary Committees, but I assume that some element of oversight is involved in your work.  I hope that there is no parallel between the USDOJ and the NMDOJ, both contextualized by one-party control of government and liable to political considerations, and that New Mexico’s Democratic-controlled legislature has more integrity and courage than the Republican-controlled Congress has.  So I write to bring your attention to NMDOJ’s reprehensible response to my complaint and to request that you review its performance and prompt NMDOJ to do its proper work properly.  Those who have read my blogs know some of the details; I summarize them for those who have not.

 

Context is important.  In his 20 December 2024 letter to the Las Cruces City Council about improper hiring practices, Mr. Blaine Moffatt, Director, Government Counsel and Accountability Bureau (GCAB), concluded with a warning: “Future complaints related to your public body will be examined with increased attention.”  With respect to my complaint, his office and lawyers did not practice what he preached.

 

My 19 December 2024 complaint about OMA violations was assigned to Isabelle Lopez, an Honors (that is, a newly hired) Attorney.  In May 2025, her questions to the City Attorney and the City Attorney’s answers failed to address the core of my complaint.  I wrote to Ms. Lopez and criticized her investigation, but she did not reply.  In October, Rebecca M. Guay, Deputy Director, GCAB, replied with an elaborated restatement of Ms. Lopez’s answer to my complaint; it, too, failed to address the core of my complaint.  I wrote to Ms. Guay and criticized her reply, but she did not reply.  And there my complaint has rested, closed out.

 

In May 2025, I contacted the Foundation for Open Government (FOG) and provided it with the approximately 500 records which I had received from the City of Las Cruces in response to my successful suit about IPRA violations by the City Clerk and City Attorney: improper redactions, improperly withheld records, and failure to describe the records redacted or withheld.

 

On 28 May 2026, FOG submitted a report of its findings to the Las Cruces City Council and to NMDOJ.  City Council responded by implementing FOG’s recommendation to repeal the ordinance establishing select committees.  NMDOJ did not reply to FOG.  On 29 May, I wrote to Ms. Guay to request a “reconsideration of my complaint in view of documentary evidence supporting allegations of OMA violations.”  She did not reply.  On 30 June, I wrote to Mr. Moffatt to request that his Bureau reopen my complaint.  He did not reply.

 

In late July, I submitted an IPRA request to NMDOJ to learn about its handling of these requests to re-open my complaint.  In an exchange of correspondence with Ms. Carrie Cook, IPRA Attorney, about this request, she has feigned to be responsive, but she has given me wrong, misleading, or no reasons for not complying with IPRA requirements: to provide all relevant records, to state the exemption for any redaction or withholding, and to describe the records redacted or withheld.  I do not know whether she provided all relevant records; the nature of her emails does not inspire trust.  She cited the attorney-client privilege to justify redactions and withholdings; I doubt that the attorney-client privilege applies to inter-departmental NMDOJ communications.  She failed to provide descriptions—in particular, repeatedly failing to identify the authors or the audience–by falsely claiming that providing this information would require NMDOJ to create a record—which it is not required to do; she tried to mislead me by equating the disclosure of required information and the creation of a record.

 

On 19 August, I received an 18 August close-out letter from Christopher M. Harrington, Assistant Attorney General, GCAB.  He states that my complaint is now void because the Las Cruces City Council repealed the ordinance establishing select committees.  He avoided the core of my complaint: city counselors in a select committee violated OMA by operating in secret and making decisions about policy and practice.  His position is that a case against a bank robber is mooted if the bank later installs better vault locks.

 

NMDOJ’s handling of my complaint reflects badly on NMDOJ lawyers—from staff lawyers Isabelle Lopez, Rebecca M. Guay, and Carrie Cook to officials Blaine Moffatt and Christopher M. Harrington.  Their performance discredits NMDOJ and Raul Torrez.

 

When NMDOJ responds to a citizen with discourtesy, dissembling, dishonesty, and defiance, the question is why.  I have two answers: partisan political considerations to protect Democratic incumbent Congressman Gabe Vasquez in the fall election and protection from embarrassment at the exposure of its politically corrupt investigation.  NMDOJ lawyers who found no basis for my complaint after a cursory investigation now confront FOG’s thorough investigation rebutting their finding.  Rather than reveal political motives, admit investigative error, and take corrective action, these lawyers have not replied to FOG’s report and request to re-open my complaint and have denied my request to re-open it.  In short, in my case, NMDOJ has deliberately failed to follow its IPRA guidance, to enforce OMA, more generally to adhere to the rule of law, and to pursue justice in response to a valid complaint by a citizen who trusted that NMDOJ was more ethical and professional than its federal counterpart.

 

I make this letter to members of the New Mexico Senate and House Judiciary Committees public so that it can better understand NMDOJ’s efforts to protect Democrats and to maintain a cover-up of its flawed investigation.  I also want the public to observe how elected officials with legislative and oversight duties in their respective judiciary committees react to NMDOJ’s reprehensible performance.

SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE U.S. WAR AGAINST IRAN

       There is no better example of the ill consequences of actions based on ignorance and motivated by arrogance than Trump’s self-initiated attack on Iran launched on 28 February.  Anyone who knows anything about foreign affairs in the Middle East has long known that Iran has had the option to close the Strait of Hormuz as a strategic response to an American or Israeli attack.  Military planners expected Iran would close the Strait in the event of hostilities between it and America, and so advised the President.  He rejected their advice out of blind pride.

 

Yet, despite the hostile relationship between Iran and America for nearly half a century, Iran had not exercised the option to close the Strait until this war.  The question is why; the answer is that exercising that option, with its severe worldwide consequences, would, without justification, have incurred the wrath of many nations.  Trump’s attack provided that justification, and many countries in the region, though not allied with Iran, understand and in part forgive its response.  They may chafe under its new regime of controlled shipments and payments of transit fees, but they are unlikely to do more than try to alleviate its terms by negotiation and political pressure.

 

So the question is why Iran did not close the Strait when America and Israel attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities.  The answer depends on a crucial distinction between hostility and hostilities.  The June 2025 American/Israeli attacks had no political objective—that is, regime change.  Instead, they had only a military objective, the destruction of those facilities, with tacit support from countries in the region which fear Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons.  Trump’s February 2026 attack on Iran was different because it also had the political objective of regime change.  That objective ensured that Iran would react, to the surprise of no one but Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.  Both were either ignorant of this likelihood or indifferent to it in the hubristic belief in America’s military superiority.

 

After over five months of on-again, off-again attacks and talks, Trump and Hegseth have lost the war.  They have achieved none of its alleged objectives, primarily, regime change and termination of Iran’s nuclear-weapon program.  Indeed, they lost the war before the attack was launched mainly because they had only their arrogant, racist belief that an economically and politically suffering third-world Muslim country would quickly submit to a sudden onslaught of expensive, high-tech weaponry of the worlds’ most powerful military.  Such a belief is the more remarkable because Trump and Hegseth know that America, despite its overwhelming military might, lost its war in Vietnam, a country far more vulnerable because less populous, educated, and developed than Iran.

 

With traditional American hubris, Trump and Hegseth, with their boyish fascination with video-game-like razzle-dazzle weaponry, thought the attack would produce victory in a matter of weeks.  Anticipating their amusement, Hegseth expended vast quantities of costly, sophisticated ballistic and cruise missiles, though a few thousands-of-dollars bombs could have done as much targeted damage as one multi-million-dollar missile.  Using more conventional munitions would mean delivering them by tactical fighter-bombers and strategic bombers, and risking pilots’ lives, but it is unlikely that either considered using missiles to save lives.  If American forces had incapacitated Iran’s air defenses—Hegseth’s claim cannot be readily believed—, then the use of conventional weapons at a negligible increase in casualties would have avoided the far greater problems created by depleting theater arsenals of major military assets, with serious implications for strategic requirements elsewhere in the world, particularly the Far East, especially Taiwan.

 

Trump and Hegseth have lost the war because they foresaw no ill consequences, had no support or strategy, and squandered valuable munitions—and could not have prevailed against a determined opponent resolute in its resistance to an existential threat.  Having lost, America is now a weaker, more vulnerable country.  For many months or some years, the military will be weakened by shortages of major weapon systems.  Its power, as exercised by its armed forces, has been exposed as having diminished effectiveness in achieving political objectives.  More importantly, America’s prestige has been tarnished and its authority undermined by ignorant, arrogant, and erratic decision making.  The world has witnessed a demonstration of collective incompetence at the highest levels of America’s government.  At this point, America is anything but great again—in the words of Richard Nixon, it is “a helpless, pitiful giant"—, and Trump, who campaigned to “make America great again” has done as much to erode its reputation and dissipate its moral, economic, political, and military strength as our adversaries could wish.

 

Trump is in a quandary from which he cannot escape.  His military attacks have failed, and more attacks cannot succeed.  He lacks diplomatic skills and is deemed untrustworthy by foreign diplomats; his substitute negotiators are equally unskilled and untrustworthy.  His ego, brittle but defensive, and his personality, immature and irresponsible, cannot admit error or defeat.  His ego will not let him admit that he has lost the war and much American influence in foreign affairs.  His personality will lead him to insist that others, mainly Obama and Biden, are to blame.  For anyone but Trump, the aftermath—though there looks to be no aftermath in the short term—would provide a steady diet of crow and humble pie.  All in all, his Iran escapade has shown Trump to be a loser to everyone but himself.  Because he cannot admit his mistakes and losses, he cannot learn from the one and cut the others.  Which means a continuation of the armed impasse and its consequences, and more of Trump’s braggadocio, bungling, and boondoggle.

 

Until the Democrats achieve regime change here, America cannot expect any improvement in our relations with countries abroad.  Indeed, Trump is liable to initiate other adventures, like occupying Greenland and Cuba.  In Greenland, he will use the locals’ resistance as a pretext to protect a Texas oil venture illegally landing drilling gear in its northeast region and thereby begin the occupation.  This case of might making right by Trump’s standards will serve Trump and his cronies, but it will do nothing to enhance America’s standing in the world.  What its effect on NATO will be remains an open question likely with an uncomfortable answer.

 

It is unlikely that Trump can be stopped unless Democrats acquire a majority at least in the House.  At the very least, it must restrict or refuse funding for the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security.  In the event of violations of the law and inaction by the Department of Justice, it must restrict or refuse funding it, too.  I am not hopeful, however.  Democrats are not much more courageous than Republicans.  Whereas Republicans act because of their cult-like subservience to Trump, Democrats dither because of their political diversity and their aversion to vigorous though righteous action.