In recent days, the ABQ Journal has devoted a plethora of news ink about Hillary’s emails. The Saturday Journal had an editorial ‘Inspector General Slams Clinton’s Private Email Use’ and the Sunday Journal had ‘Clinton’s email lies premeditated.’ The Monday Journal had ‘Hunkered Hillary Blew it Again’, while the Tuesday Journal featured ‘Punish Clinton for Breaking Law.’On Friday, May 27, the “Republican Nominee for President” railed against the “Mexican” judge. According to Reid Epstein from the Wall Street Journal, Trump went off for 12 full minutes! “I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. He’s a hater. His name is Gonzalo Curiel,” Mr. Trump said, as the crowd of several thousand booed. Mr Trump also told the audience, which had previously chanted the Republican standard-bearer’s signature “build that wall” mantra in reference to Mr. Trump’s proposed wall against the Mexican border, that Judge Curiel is Mexican. “What happens is the judge who happens to be, we believe, Mexican, which is great. I think that’s fine." Judge Curiel was born in the USA.In the Saturday, May 28, edition of the Journal, on page A6, there were stories like ‘No Drought in California, Trump says,’ ‘Hispanics For Trump’ and stories about #CrookedHillary and GOP support for #NeverHillary. And on May 27, a federal judge ordered the release of internal Trump University documents.Yet the Journal failed to report on any of these events swirling around the GOP nominee? The Journal wrote an editorial about 30 Trump protesters, but made no mention of his attacks on Governor Susana Martinez, the first Latina governor elected in US history. The Journal has not mentioned Trump’s attacks on ‘sleazy’ journalists for doing their job.If the Journal is so concerned about email etiquette, why didn’t it report on UNM Regent President Rob Doughty deleting his nontransitory emails about UNM’s takeover of the Health Sciences Center? On April 5, Chris Quintana from the Journal wrote, “Emails reveal opposition efforts to stop Health Science Center restructuring” according to “emails obtained by the Albuquerque Journal. Ten days later Trip Jennings from New Mexico In Depth reported “Doughty’s missing electronic communications were discovered after NMID reviewed hundreds of pages of regents’ e-mails from Feb. 1 through March 14, which the university provided in response to a public records request." The Journal, the Daily Lobo, KOB4, KOAT7, KRQE13 never followed up. The Journal has a staff of nearly 100 people, yet it got scooped by one journalist! The ABQ Journal is the N.M. paper of record and should step up its game!
Letters: Berry’s Folly: A Harebrained Scheme Berry’s Folly: A Harebrained Scheme
ART has not received adequate (if any) coverage from the point of view of the daily bus rider. I am 76 years of age and my husband is 86. Neither of us has a driver’s license. Hence we both depend totally on public transportation despite its limitations.We fail to understand how ART will improve travel for us (the elderly) when it requires crossing to the middle of the road while dodging oncoming traffic. The same applies to parents with strollers and young children as well as the disabled.Spare me talk of widened sidewalks. Their only advantage—if you could call it such—is to narrow traffic lanes. Their major disadvantage will be to cause further havoc to pedestrians and vehicular traffic.How, indeed, did one arrive at the magic figure of a “two times” increase of Rapid riders? (In a car town? Really?) Can one be sure it isn’t simply a hoped-for guesstimate to justify the folly of ART and the waste of taxpayers’ (local and federal) hard-earned dollars?Surely, bus riders should have been considered and—dare I say—consulted when planning such a major and costly change to the current system. If that had been done and, moreover, all properly thought out, the architects of the scheme might have better provided for the needs of the passengers rather than the coffers of the “developers.” The real need is for additional buses and bus routes, particularly north/south.An added disadvantage for these riders will be the access to ABQ Uptown, Coronado Mall and Winrock Center. With ART, riders will have to alight the Rapid at Louisiana and cross streets for a second bus—a major, and possibly dangerous, inconvenience upon returning riders, laden with packages such as groceries from Trader Joe’s and Target.The proposal should have been put directly to those of us who actually use the transportation system, meager as it presently is. At the very least, via a referendum. Public meetings do not hold. They are all merely a sham. Vox populi is never heard. Certainly never listened to.
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