ROUNDHOUSE ROUND-UP: DELAY vs VIGIL

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
October 20, 2005

The campaign is still very young, but by the campaign rhetoric already arising from the Heather Wilson/Patricia Madrid showdown, one might think that the 2006 First Congressional District race is a battle between Tom DeLay and Robert Vigil.

Republican DeLay stepped down as U.S. House majority leader after being indicted in his native Texas on felony charges of money laundering and conspiracy.

Democrat Vigil was indicted in federal court on 21 charges of extortion. He has refused to step down from his post, although his lawyer told the Associated Press Wednesday that Vigil “continues to weigh his options” whether he will resign because he feels the ongoing House impeachment proceedings against him are unfair.

In declaring her candidacy last week, Madrid issued a statement that spoke of “culture of incompetence, corruption and cronyism.”

“The marriage of special interest politics and the Republican leadership of George Bush and Tom DeLay and the complicity of Heather Wilson have failed New Mexicans,” Madrid said.

Even before Madrid got into the race, state Democrats were criticizing Wilson for taking nearly $47,000 from DeLay’s political action committee Americans for a Republican Majority. Wilson has returned the $10,000 she collected from DeLay’s PAC in June, but not the $36,959 she received from the PAC between 1998 and 2003.

But Republican leaders say the corruption issue could backfire on Madrid.

Enter Robert Vigil.

Last week on the eve of Madrid’s announcement, Marta Kramer, executive director of the state Republican Party, said the kickback scandal at the state Treasurer’s Office could bode ill for the entire Democratic ticket, but particularly Madrid.

Kramer recalled a scathing 1999 audit report on Vigil’s tenure as state auditor, which, according to the state police chief, showed “strong patterns of public corruption” at the auditor’s office during Vigil’s tenure there.

Madrid later said that the audit was “not unbiased” because of the long-standing political feud between Vigil and his successor as state auditor, Domingo Martinez. No state legal action was ever taken in the 1999 audit.

“Madrid turned a blind eye to the biggest corruption scandal in the state's history by refusing to investigate the state treasurer when called upon to do so by Gov. Gary Johnson in 1999,” Kramer said. “Madrid should first work toward ending corruption and promoting accountability in New Mexico before pointing fingers at Republican elected officials in D.C.”

Political Chatter: Some of Vigil’s thoughts about state politics were captured on tape by the FBI in conversations between the treasurer and San Diego investment counselor Kent Nelson — who was wearing a wire.

In May, while driving from the Albuquerque airport to The Quarters barbecue restaurant on Yale, campaign contributions were on Vigil’s mind. The deadline for reporting contributions was only four days away.

You’ve got to report at least some of your contributions, Vigil told Nelson, “so it'll scare some of your opponents away.”

“They gonna be scared?” Nelson asked.

“No, not that scared,” Vigil said, “but I mean it's at least it makes them think twice if you don't report anything.”

Vigil explained that it was too early at that point for opponents for the 2006 race to be coming out of the woodwork, “but if you don't have any money man, you'll get 'em lined up like hot cakes. They see a report and they see you don't have any money . . . the Governor's gotta report 2.6 million.”

He was close. Richardson actually reported $2.9 million in the May campaign finance reports a few days later.

In talking about big campaign coffers frightening off potential challengers, Nelson noted that Vigil didn’t have any Republican opponent in 2002. Vigil had a theory about that.

“Well that's because they thought I wasn't gonna win,” Vigil said. “Jan Goodwin, my opponent was being supported by the Republicans thinking she was gonna win.”

Three days later Vigil filed a campaign finance report with the Secretary of State that showed he’d collected $26,205 since the last report and had a total of $127,732 in his campaign treasury.

Something tells me that if Vigil stays in the race, this amount won’t be enough to scare off opponents.

WOULD YOU CARE TO COMMENT?

If anyone gives a hoot, I've just changed the "comments" feature of this blog.

My old comments service, Haloscan recently removed all the comments odler than, I think, three months. Didn't delete them, mind you. I could get them all back if I upgrade to their paid service.

But freeloader that I am, I decided to switch to Blogger's inhouse comments feature. (THis prompted a paranoid thought: Are Blogger and the other free blog services just getting all of us us blog junkies hooked before they lower the boom and start charging us? Will there be a crime wave of bloggers ripping off car stereos to support their habits?)

The only drawback is that all the recent posts you fine readers left are now gone. So you'll just have to make more comments from this point on.

Warning: I've been plagued recently with some of those pesky SPAM comments. ("Your blog is fantastic. Check my (stupid commerical site) at (link)") So far it hasn't been difficult just to delete 'em when I see 'em. But if it gets worse I might go to the system where comment-posters have to fill in the annoying "word verification" secret code before posting. Such is the price of freedom.

Now leave me some damn comments!

UPDATE: Since changing over this morning, I've gotten several of those accursed SPAM automated comments. I'm not talking about NewMexiKen, whose blog I encourage all to visit. I'm talking about geeks from Herbalife, free video web hosting services and other stupid advertisers. Sneaky bastards tend to post their crap on older posts in your blog, so there might be some I missed. (Please report to me any you come across. And for the love of Christ, don't click on their links or buy any of their products.)

Anywho, I've made good on my threat to use "word verification." Please don't hestitiate to use it.

MESSING WITH TEXAS

Former New Mexico journalist Walt Howerton has been exiled in Austin for a few years now.

By the looks of his new blog, apparently it's starting to get to him:

Says Walt:

"I live in Texas. I came here with my wife a few years ago because she needed to be here. I love my wife, I like my house, I like the weather, I like the music. But I do not like Texans."

So there you go ...

It should be noted that Walt loves The Drive-by Truckers and Kings of Leon as much as I do.

By the way, nice hat.

STEVE YOUNG ON SANTA FE OPRY

Songwriter Steve Young will play live on The Santa Fe Opry shortly after 10 p.m. Friday. That's on 90.7 FM. (It'll be Webcast live HERE.)
KSFR,

Steve is best known for his song "Seven Bridges Road," which has been recorded by The Eagles, Dolly Parton and a zillion others. But my personal favorite is "Lonesome, On'ry and Mean," made famous by Waylon Jennings.

Mr. Young is in town for a house concert in Santa Fe the next night, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, October 22. That'll cost you $15.00 at the door.

Please Call 466-2209 for reservations.

There's also a Steve Young house concert -- actually a gallery concert -- at The Donkey Gallery, 1415 4th Street SW, Albuquerque on Oct. 27. $10 at the door.

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, October 16, 2005
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Hey Gyp by The Animals
Rock and Roll by Lou Reed
Your Love Belongs Under a Rock by The Dirtbombs
Yo! Beanhead by BigUglyGuys
Scene of the Crime by Kevin Coyne & The Pine Valley Cosmonauts
Death Sound Blues by Country Joe & The Fish
The Godfather by Satan's Pilgrims
Yakety Yack by The Coasters

Everybody's Going Wild by The Detroit Cobras
I See the Light by The Five Americans
Johny Hit and Run Paulene by X
Sing Me Spanish Techno by New Pornographers
Steppin' Out by Paul Revere & The Raiders
Jailbait by The Flamin' Groovies
Walk Idiot Walk by The Hives
Night Time by The Stangeloves
Baby Bitch by Ween

Wild Rover by Dropkick Murphys with Shane McGowan
Fourty Deuce by Black 47
Grace Cathedral Hill by The Decemberists
Brutal by The Mekons
Truck Stop Cheii by James Bilacody & The Cremains
The Story of Jazz by Yo La Tengo
Dead End Street by Lou Rawls

Find Me Now by The Reigning Sound
Little Hands by Alexander Spence
The Boys of Mutton Street by Richard Thompson
Have You Seen the Stars Tonight by Paul Kantner & The Jefferson Starship
Maricela by Los Lobos
The Foggy Dew by The Chieftains with Sinead O'Connor
Danny Boy by Frank Parker
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

HATE FACTORY

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
October 15, 2005

A horrifying book about the most horrifying bloodbath in modern New Mexico history is back in print.

The Hate Factory by Georgelle Hirliman is an unbridled and frequently graphic account of the February 1980 Penitentiary of New Mexico riot, which left 33 inmates dead and many other inmates and guards scarred for life.

Hirliman will read passages from the book and sign copies 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. today at Borders, 3513 Zafarano Drive.

Originally published in 1982, the book has been off the shelves since the mid 1980s. “But it’s become a cult classic,” Hirliman said, pointing out that on some used book Web sites such as Abebooks.com, original copies of The Hate Factory sell for as much as $144.99.

She decided to self-publish the book after a former-inmate Oakland-based filmmaker, Sean Wilson bought the movie rights last year. Wilson in January told The New Mexican, the film “will make a great story of survival and heroism amongst some of the most brutal, inhumane acts ever documented.”

The Hate Factory was written by Hirliman based on interviews with a veteran prison inmate who was back in the joint on a parole violation, and scheduled for release several weeks after the riot.

In the book, this inmate is known by the pseudonym “W.G. Stone.” In an interview Friday Hirliman said her collaborator’s real name was W.G. Gannons.

“He died in 1985 in prison of cirrhoses of the liver,” she said.

Hirliman became involved in prison issues when she was a radio reporter in the 1970s for the long-defunct KAFE-AM in Santa Fe and KUNM in Albuquerque.

(Ironically the book tells how an early riot plot involved inmates taking hostages during a planned live KUNM broadcast from the prison in December 1979. This plan, according to the book, was thwarted when prison authorities got word of it and canceled the show.)

“I got to know the prison system and I hated it,” Hirliman said.

Hirliman covered the infamous Vagos case — in which four California bikers were convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a college student in Albuquerque and later exonerated when the real killer confessed. She eventually married one of the bikers, who has since died.

“I wrote a book about that case, which was supposed to be published by Easyriders magazine,” she said. (She hopes to revise and publish the Vagos book in the near future.)

But then the riot happened.

Through her prison sources, she met Gannons, who had been in and out of prison since the 1960s.

The Hate Factory describes in grim detail the brutal deaths of several inmates — including mutilations, a beheading and torture with acetylene torch — and the beatings and rapes of corrections officers.

But it also deals with the severe conditions in the prison that led to the uprising. There was the prison psychologist who “treated” inmates by putting them in plaster casts from neck to ankles (with appropriate holes for body functions) and the dreaded “Dungeon Hole” where problem inmates were stripped naked and left for days in darkness with a hole in the floor as a toilet.

The Hate Factory deals with the politics of corrections and the cliques that ran the prison.

The revised version of the book has a new introduction that begins with the 2004 shooting of the Adam Sandler/Chris Rock comedy The Longest Yard at the site of the old main facility, which hasn’t been used to house inmates since 1998.

“New Mexico’s Film Commission and Tourism Department will be happy to take you on a tour of the empty old prison,” Hirliman waxes sarcastically. “Perhaps they will even point out the hatchet marks permanently cut into the floor where Paulina Paul’s head was so agonizingly severed, or where the one-armed man nearly lost the other to the blade of a berserk biker.”

In the introduction, Hirliman writes about many of the state corrections controversies that have occurred in more recent years — privatization of prisons, the 1999 murder of Corrections Officer Ralph Garcia at the private prison in Santa Rosa, the policy of non-contact video visits (halted two years ago), and even former Corrections Secretary Lane McCotter’s involvement in the planning of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

“We have to start doing something else besides prisons,” she said. “Punishment just doesn’t work. We’ve proved that over and over.”

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, October 14, 2005
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Hot Dog by Rosie Flores
Mama Tried by Old 97s
6 String Belief by Son Volt
Fat Boy by Marah
Raining in Port Arthur by The Gourds
If I'd Shot Her When I Met Her, I'd Be Out of Jail By Now by Diesel Doug & The Long Haul Truckers
The Crawdad Song by The Meat Purveyors
I'm a Nut by Leroy Pullens
Psycho by Jack Kittel

I Hung it Up by Junior Brown
Alone at a Table For 2 by Marti Brom
I Met Her in Church by Dan Penn & Spooner Oldham
My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy by Dolly Parton
Maybe Mexico by Jerry Jeff Walker
The Combines are Comin' by Joe West

Kinky Friedman Set
All songs by Kinky except where noted

We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to You
Wild Man of Borneo by Guy Clark
Men's Room L.A.
Western Union Wire
Before All Hell Breaks Loose by Asleep at the Wheel
Highway Cafe
Ride 'em Jewboy

Bringing Mary Home by Mac Wiseman
Silver Wings by Earl Scruggs with Linda Rondstadt
A Few More Years by Tim O'Brien
As Victims Would by Will Johnson
Entella Hotel by Peter Case with David Perales
With His Old Gray Beard a Shinin' by Clothesline Revival featuring Pearl Brewer
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: RIDE 'EM, KINKY!

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
October 14, 2005

I don’t often get to review music by people running for political office. To be honest, I don’t often want to. For instance I wasn’t really interested last year in reviewing The Electras, John Kerry’s band from the ‘60s.

But Kinky Friedman is Kinky Friedman. And though I view him first as a musician, it seems somehow natural that he’s Mayhem Aforethought, a recently unearthed live recording with his original Texas Jewboys in a 1973 radio concert, will seem so refreshing in contrast to the safe, sanitized, focus-group-tested rhetoric of the “serious” politicians it will propel the Kinkster to victory.

Could it be possible that in a couple of years Kinky Friedman will be posing for photo ops beside Bill Richardson at governors conferences and pardoning singing Texas murderers in hopes of finding the next Leadbelly.

A long shot for certain, but stranger things have happened in politics.

(Full disclosure time: Twice in the 1990s, I opened for Kinky Friedman in concerts at the El Rey Theater in Albuquerque. I got paid money for my performance and Kinky autographed my Sold American CD “Steve, God luv you.” Otherwise there’s no personal, financial or political connection between us.)

Basically Mayhem Aforethought contains the core of Kinky’s notorious repertoire that has carried his reputation for decades.

There’s “The Ballad of Charles Whitman,” a black-humor, happy stomp ode to the infamous Texas Tower sniper. (Check this story by Marlee MacLeod.)

Even more controversial at the time was “Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed,” (“You uppity women, I don’t understand why you have to go and act like a man … You’d better occupy the kitchen, liberate the sink …”), which sparked countless debates between those who thought Kinky was an evil sexist and those who argued that he was just making fun of sexism. Needless to say, large numbers of feminists in the 1970s failed to see the humor in the song.

While songs like these and “They Ain’t Making Jews Like Jesus Any More,” (not included in this CD) made Friedman a national phenomenon, unfortunately they drew attention away from the seriously beautiful country songs he also was writing.

Friedman had a knack for writing sad tunes about washed-up, broken down singers. “Nashville Casualty & Life” is about an old banjo player getting arrested at Nashville’s Union Station. “They busted him for loitering when he was making memories rhyme.”

Even more poignant is “Sold American,” the title song of his first album, which has been covered by Billy Joe Shaver and Glen Campbell.

“Writing down your memoirs on some window in the frost/ Roulette eyes reflecting another morning lost/ Hauled in by the metro for killing time and pain/ With a singing brakeman screaming through your veins.”

One of the strangest but loveliest songs Friedman’s ever written is “Ride ’em Jewboy.” Despite the title, which sounds like the song’s going to be one of the funny ones, Over a mournful cowboy melody, “Jewboy” mixes imagery from the range with what seems like oblique references to the Holocaust -- “smoke from the camps,” “helpless creatures” being led to slaughter, “dead limbs play with ringless fingers.”

It indeed is a heavy song, and it’s to Friedman’s credit that he can pull it off so gracefully in the context of so many sardonic tunes and wicked stage banter.

Friedman gets away with saying things most musicians -- let alone politicians -- wouldn’t even attempt these days.

Introducing bassist Willie Fong Young, Friedman says, “We got a little Chinese boy in the band.” At another point he announces, “we’ve been in Nashville, Tenn. for the past few months at the Glaser Sound Studios workin’ on a Tampon jingle …”

But the Jewboys were a fine musical unit -- unless you include Kinky‘s crony Jeff “Little Jewford” Shelby and his kazoo, which mars this version of “Biscuits.”

Featured in the band is guitar man Billy Swan, just a year before his big country/pop hit “I Can Help.” He gets a solo spot on this CD on his song “Lover Please,” a hit in the ’60s for Clyde McPhatter.

Take my word for it: Mayhem Aforethought is a lot more fun than almost any political speech.

Also Recommended:
* The Austin Experience by Junior Brown. While all of his studio albums are enjoyable, what Brown’s fans say is true: The best way to appreciate this former Santa Fe musical stalwart. Known for his flashy picking and geological baritone, is live.

In Santa Fe we’re lucky. The artist formerly known as “Jamie Brown” plays here pretty often. But if you haven’t had a chance to see him in person performing miracles on his magic guit-steel (a combination electric guitar/steel guitar Brown invented) this CD, recorded live at Austin’s Continental Club in April, is your next best bet.

(More disclosure: I went to Mid High and Santa Fe High School with Brown circa 1968 -70. We even shared a locker until he dropped out of high school. I haven‘t seen him in a few years.)

Most of Brown’s best loved songs are on this album -- “My Wife Thinks You’re Dead,” “Highway Patrol,” and “I Hung It Up,” done here as an eight-minute blues jam.

Brown makes a surprisingly effect stab at Tex-Mex music with “uan Charasquado,” aided by Flaco Jimenez on accordion, though my favorite duet here is the sweet stomper “I Want to Live and Love Always,” which he sings with his wife Tanya Rae Brown.

And no Junior album would be complete with a so-dumb-it’s-inspired tune. Here’s we’ve got “Lifeguard Larry,” an original beach-blanket boot-scooter about a lifeguard who loves the mouth-to-mouth.

POLITICAL TIDBITS

I have to admit, my goat was gotten this week when the Associated Press ran a story -- that ran in about a zillion papers -- about governors switching to hybrid vehicles that started off like this:

When gasoline prices soared after Hurricane Katrina, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson looked at the Lincoln Navigator that ferries him around his home state and thought about the message he was sending.

The large sport utility vehicle doesn't get the best gasoline mileage -- about 15 miles per gallon. So the former U.S. energy secretary decided to switch to a Ford Escape hybrid, which combines gasoline and electric power.

I don't want to blow my own horn, (in fact, my former colleague Ben Neary is responsible for this) but I truly believe it was more likely that Richardson came to this decision not after looking at his Lincoln Navigator, but after looking at my Sept. 22 Roundhouse Round-up:

Gov. Bill Richardson held a press conference at a Santa Fe gas station Tuesday to announce he’s calling a special legislative session. He wants a rebate program for taxpayers to cover higher oil and gas prices.

“The nation is in a continuing energy emergency because we’re over dependent on oil and gas,” the governor told reporters. “It’s a reflection of weak, shortsighted national energy policy.”

Richardson drove to the press conference in a Lincoln Navigator, his preferred ride since he stopped tooling around in a Cadillac Escalade. According to the Web site www.fueleconomy.gov, Lincoln’s behemoth SUV gets about 13 mpg in the city while the Caddy was good for a whopping 14 mpg.

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It looks like the push by Richardson and Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman for an early Western presidential primary is gaining some momentum.

Come in Idaho!

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For my analysis of the recently departed special session, CLICK HERE. (Looks like Monahan and I might have a common "alligator" here.)

WHERE'S PATSY?

Joe Monahan quotes some alligators today saying that Attorney General Patricia Madrid is once again a likely contender to run against incumbent Republican Rep. Heather Wilson for Congress.

This goes along with a story this week in Roll Call, a Washington D.C. paper specializing in coverage of the U.S. Congress, by Josh Kurtz, a Santa Fe Reporter alumn who is now Roll Call's political editor.

Unfortunately you need a subscription to read the whole story.

But here's how it starts out:

"If Democrats fall short in their efforts to recruit New Mexico Attorney General Patricia Madrid into the race against Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.) next year, they may have to blame their failure on the political trajectory of the state's governor, Bill Richardson (D).

"In the Land of Enchantment, most Democrats are convinced that if a Democrat retakes the White House in 2008, Richardson will either be the next president, vice president or secretary of state.

"So the question of who serves as his lieutenant governor has become a topic of intense discussion -- something that may explain why Madrid is contemplating running for that post in 2006 instead of for Congress, even though there already is a Democratic incumbent in the No. 2 slot.

"Nevertheless, Democrats in Washington, D.C., are becoming increasingly optimistic that the heavily recruited Madrid ultimately will choose to challenge Wilson. And a key Madrid political lieutenant hints that an announcement could come as soon as this week."

I can't vouch for Josh's claim that most Democrats here think Richardson will be on the national ticket or get a cabinet position in 2008. (Remember, the Democrats have to win for the latter to come true.) But I do think most everybody here believes Richardson will try.

Here's another notable section:

Madrid ... has prided herself on her independence from Richardson, and is the rare Democrat in New Mexico who has not shown complete fealty to the powerful governor. Madrid, in fact, is close to a potential rival to Richardson in the next presidential race, former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), though that is just one source of the tension between her and the governor.

Richardson has been mum on the prospects of a bloody primary fight between Madrid and Denish. But his formidable political team is likely to aid Madrid if she challenges Wilson - in part for the political bounce Richardson would get if he helped knock off a perennial (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) target.

Of course Richardson's formidable political team wasn't enough to carry New Mexico for John Kerry last year ...

The story even mentions the Vigil/Montoya scandal and how it might affect a madrid campaign:

"... Republicans in New Mexico, who are unlikely to find viable challengers to Richardson or Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) next year, now have one new factor going for them: the twin indictments late last month of the current Democratic state treasurer and his predecessor for allegedly taking kickbacks from investment firms seeking to do business with the state. ...

"Roxanne Rivera, a spokeswoman for the New Mexico GOP, said Republicans cannot believe that Madrid did not know about the corruption in the treasurer's office. She predicted that voters would punish Democrats up and down the ballot in 2006.

"This scandal is more far-reaching than anyone realizes," she said.

"But a top Democratic strategist in New Mexico said the party has a ready response for anyone who attempts to tie Vigil's woes to other leading Democrats.

"At the same time you have Vigil, you have Tom DeLay," the strategist said ..."