Oma on Board

Esquivel can't deal with my lack of respect

APS School Board President and Defendant Marty Esquivel can't stand that I don't respect him; not personally, not as the School Board President, and most especially, I do not respect him as the district's senior most role model of the Pillars of Character Counts!

If you ask him if he takes personal offense, if it upsets him when I point to his cowardice and corruption, he will tell you no. "Consider the source" I believe, are his exact words.

Clearly it does bother him that I do not respect him as a School Board President. No where, any where, does it say that the people have to respect politicians and public servants. Our rights do not hinge on our willingness to kiss a ring before we exercise them.

There is, "respect for the office". Respect for the office is manifest in the laws that govern the conduct of the people in the presence of their servants. Respect for the office allows bona fide police officers to arrest anyone for an unlawful expression of their disrespect.

Esquivel, self proclaimed First Amendment authority, admitted in his deposition, that I have never broken the law.

He would like to hold me accountable to higher standards of conduct than the law, co-incidentally the very same thing I am trying to do to him. There is a difference, the higher standards he has in mind for me, are whatever he would like them to be. The higher standards I have in mind for him are the Pillars of Character Counts!; a nationally recognized, accepted and respected code of ethical conduct; and most importantly, the same standards of conduct Esquivel et al, established and enforce upon students.

"Students will model and promote the Pillars of Character Counts!"

Esquivel imagines himself a judge, sitting high above a courtroom, giving orders that no one questions. In particular, he imagines the power to "send someone to jail" for having the temerity to stand up and say, you can't do that.

Having no courtroom to rule over, he imagines the John Milne boardroom is a court room. He imagines he can have people arrested for standing up and saying, you can't do that.

Esquivel losing it; I was photographing him while he was videotaping us.

He imagines, he is going to get away with it.

That's not going to happen; I will accept

his confession,
his conviction, or
his resignation

Currently, he is pursuing a fourth option; cost is no object litigation, without signed contracts, and without oversight. Most importantly; without oversight.

The APS board is hiding from a presentation of a "case analysis" of my suit against them and the district. The board doesn't want to know the truth.

Why not, except to provide plausible deniability, wikilink;

they just "didn't know" that Esquivel and Brooks and Armenta and Tellez were spending operational dollars, dollars which could and should be spent in classrooms instead, trying to litigate against the public interests and at great taxpayer expense.

Taxpayers are not outraged, because Journal Editor Kent Walz has decided to not tell them the truth about what's going on in APS' City Center.

He has decided to not investigate and report upon the ethics and accountability scandal in leadership of the APS.

He, is by the way, a "Journalist".

And a damn fine one, by Esquivel's estimation.

photos Mark Bralley

Monahan is not "a Journalist"

During his sworn testimony yesterday, APS School Board President Marty Esquivel said blogger Joe Monahan was not a "journalist". Being "a journalist" is Esquivel's prerequisite for being afforded the respect shown to reporters from "newspapers" and "TV stations; TV stations like the ones he represents, or has represented; the Journal and KRQE.

"Blogger, says it all" Marty Esquivel offered in response to a question about my protection under the First Amendment.

When pushed, he had to admit his exclusion included one of the most widely read bloggers in the state; Joe Monahan.

When pushed further, he argued, Heath Haussamen, one of the state's most respected bloggers, was not entitled to the protection for "the press". I am relying on my memory of his indictment of Haussamen; I will bow of course to any contradictory evidence in the not yet available, transcript of his testimony.

Being "a journalist" is Esquivel's prerequisite for entitlement to the protection according to the first amendment to the Constitution, the first in the Bill of Rights, wikilink.

Congress (the APS Board of Education) shall make no law ... abridging the freedom ... of the press.

Including taking it upon themselves to decide who and who isn't entitled to the protection of the First Amendment.

Reporters working for Esquivel's friends like Kent Walz, are of course, "journalists". They are protected from disparate treatment under the law. Bloggers are not.

Esquivel and Walz are both recently elected to the Executive Board of the NM Foundation for Open Government and transparency.

Go figure.

photos Mark Bralley

Esquivel's deposition

APS School Board President and Defendant Esquivel arrived at his deposition 45 minutes late and disheveled. He spent a lot of the day with his head in his hands, eyes closed, or gazing out the windows at the mountains. His hands trembled visibly most most of the morning. He brought nothing with him to write on and ended up taking notes on what appeared to be a motel courtesy note pad.

There were three lawyers on his side of the table, taxpayers paid for two and the third was there on his own dime. For what its worth they seem like decent men, a big step up from my experience with APS/Modrall.

I think its fair to say that Esquivel did not respond candidly, forthrightly and honestly to legitimate questions about his public service. The transcripts will be published at the earliest opportunity. We all watched together, video tapes of my "misconduct". It is difficult to imagine how these men can show these videos, paint them as disruptive to a point beyond the protection of the First Amendment, and keep a straight face. I can't wait.

Esquivel first responses allowed him to express his contempt for me as a journalist. His contempt dripped from every word. Apparently he is practicing soundbites in hope the he can make them sound convincing - so far, not so much.

For the record, I have never claimed to be a journalist. There are probably as many definitions for "journalist" as there are for "ethics". At the very least I think, a "journalist" holds himself accountable to a recognized journalists code of ethics. I don't; not that I have a problem with their code; frankly I've never really studied it; it's not what I'm doing.

I claim protection under the First Amendment as a member of the press. "Journalists" are not mentioned in the First Amendment; the "press" are.

The same press, a political pamphleteer, the First amendment was written to protect. Esquivel shares the view of the privileged class; "the press" are their establishment reporters, period. And to think he is the Vice President of the NM Foundation for Open Government and transparency.

Esquivel objected to the banning letter being called a banning letter. He got quite testy when my lawyer insisted upon calling it one.

For the record, the man who co-signed the life time ban on my free exercise of Constitutionally protected human rights, calls it a "ban letter", link.

I would argue, if the guy who commands their Praetorian Guard; their publicly funded private police force, APS Police Chief Steve Tellez says it's a banning letter, and if he willing to commit sworn officers to enforce it, it's a banning letter.

Apparently Esquivel is leading people to believe that I am capable of bringing a gun to a school board meeting and shooting them all. When asked how keeping me out of school board meetings would keep me from shooting them anywhere else, he could come up with a good answer. Apparently, it's only when I am standing up at public forum asking them for;

an independent standards and accountability audit, or for
an honest answer as to why they are not accountable as role models of student standards of conduct, or
why they have yet to surrender to the DA, evidence of felony criminal misconduct involving APS senior administrators,

that I am likely to pull out a gun and shoot them.

He testified about my conduct during the August 25, 2010 Audit Committee Meeting. He testified about my conduct before the meeting began. He said my behavior before the meeting was part of his justification for banning me for life from school board meetings.

He did not arrive at the meeting until it had already adjourned into executive session. He could not have seen anything that happened before the meeting; he wasn't there.

He testified about a number of other things I allegedly did during the meeting. We watched a video that directly contradicts his testimony.

He let us know that APS Foundation Director and lifelong friend of Esquivel's, Phill Casaus is helping spread the rumor that I might someday "shoot up the place".

Esquivel claimed he lost faith in me when I asked him to help me revisit a previous settlement I made with APS. It is an absolute lie; a complete fabrication. I never asked for his help with respect to resolving any problems with either of my two settlements with APS.

What I did ask from Esquivel, and from then APS School Board Member, now NM Economic Development Secretary Jon Barela, was that one make, and the other second, a motion to put an independent standards and accountability audit of the leadership of the APS, on the table for open and honest public discussion. They would not, link.

The proof that the senior-most role model in the entire APS, of student standards of conduct, APS School Board President Marty Esquivel will not hold himself honestly accountable to the same standards of conduct he establishes and enforces upon students, is the fact that he has not.

He cannot point the system over which he has no undue influence and powerful enough to hold him accountable even against his will, to the Pillars of Character Counts!, a nationally recognized, accepted and respected code of ethical conduct, and most importantly, APS student standards of conduct, and he cannot.

He can point to a few times when my eyes wet as I tried to convince them that, if we really want students to grow into adults who embrace character and courage and honor, someone has to show them what it looks like.

He counts each tear as evidence of the likelihood that I might one day shoot him. It really is impossible to underestimate Esquivel's character.

For the record, there is still no evidence that there is any oversight whatsoever over Brooks' and Esquivel's spending in their own defense. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in litigation expenses will be approved by subordinates. Subordinate oversight is oxymoronic.

No case analysis has ever been presented to the school board as a whole, for their approval. The entire school board is complicit or complacent. Though it can't be proved they know what's going on because they won't meet for that purpose, they remain at best, deliberately ignorant.

photos Mark Bralley