Juarez is Catching up to Tijuana Death Rate:  Is New Mexico's Race to the Bottom Contagious to Our Neighbors to the South?

La Polaka reports that in the early morning of January 19 the charred body of a man was found in Colonia Francisco Villa, not far from the river and I-10 and UTEP on the other side.  Other than that there appears to have been a lull in homicides this week, although the monthly total so far is 68 and counting

Meanwhile Norte Digital reports that over 73% of juarenses feel less secure than they did three months ago, a huge increase over the 59% recorded by a National Urban Security Survey.  Juarez is now the second most dangerous city in Mexico, behind Tijuana, also on the border with the US.

 Rio Grande Foundation Files Ethics Complaint Against Rep. Dayan Hochman Vigil:  More Stuff About What has become known as Spacepork America

Paul Gessing, of the Rio Grande Foundation, has filed an ethics complaint against Dem Representative Dayan Hochman-Vigil, for several conflicts of interest between her role as a legislator and her private client, Spaceport America.  The Spaceport came to be known as "Spacepork New Mexico" after Kathleen Sloan, of the Sierra County Sun used the term as she summarized some of the wrongdoing outlined by an audit of the agency conducted in 2020.  Dan Hicks, Spaceport Director, was fired as some of these revelations became known.

More recently, Andy Lyman of the NM Political Report reports the chief financial officer at Spaceport during Hicks' tenure filed a whistleblower lawsuit in early January of this year against Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham and 20 other state officials for what he alleges was an effort to cover up much of the wrongdoing. 

As Paul Gessing put it in his Errors of Enchantment blog yesterday, referring to Rep Hochman-Vigil, for a legislator to "legisla(te) on behalf of a client is just not right."