TODAY’S BLOG ROUNDUP: Keeping an open mind about Obama’s team

We’ve decided to do a daily blog roundup here at the Independent, much like the “Today’s Top Stories” we do every day to highlight particularly interesting news from around the state.

Blogging, of course, isn’t like “the news.” It’s full of opinion, wit and diatribe (a caveat — we all know “the news” has those elements also. Our more traditional reportorial colleagues just have to keep it all much more “tongue in cheek”).

Being a local blogger myself, I have my favorites — those who keep me thinking, or in stitches — who I’ve followed for years now. They’re on my own personal blog roll at m-pyre (yes, that is a shameless plug but I promise I won’t do it again). This weekly blog feature, though, presents an opportunity to look for new bloggers in a more structured way than my current haphazard approach. I hope that all the bloggers out there will weigh in — let us know you exist. That’s one thing about blogging — anyone can do it. Fresh faces pop up all the time. And one of the things the old-timers should always try to do is give you exposure — that’s the ethic of the blogosphere.

So… here is some good Friday afternoon reading for you:

What kind of team will President-elect Obama really put together? Matt Brix at Clearly New Mexico wrote a few thoughts about Larry Summers that gets at how a lot of us are approaching Obama’s choices: with an open mind. In The Economic Czar, Brix says that Summers seems to have two important traits that make him a good choice for top economic advisor: He seems to be a “truthteller” and he doesn’t appear to be an ideologue: “…he appears to have learned from both his own mistakes and the mistakes of other countries. His revised position on deregulation, as well as his position on countries facing a credit crisis shows me he is not an ideologue.”

In Justifying Albuquerque sprawl, Albuquerque blogger Coco gives a new entry in her continuing focus on SunCal Corporation’s quest to wrangle Tax Increment financing from New Mexico’s Legislature—which means they’d be able to keep future tax dollars from their real estate developments to pay for infrastructure. In this post, Coco makes the point that the public has already financed massive infrastructure projects that facilitate the ability of private land owners on the west side to develop their property: “What about the river crossings at Alameda, Paseo del Norte and Montano? Freeway interchanges at Coors, Unser and Paseo del Vulcan? Extension of Paseo and Unser through the escarpment? That water and sewer line extension all the way out to Double Eagle and the mattress factory?”

Coco, by the way, is always very amusing. As is Scot Key at ’Burque Babble, who gives advice on how to get started blogging in this post about a new APS policy: The APS Kremlin Issues a Communique. Actually, a better word for Scot might be “hilarious.” In this post, he’s ostensibly having a meltdown over his inability to figure out the “cryptic” meaning of an APS press release and an Albuquerque Journal article about the new APS block schedule. He knows there’s a hidden link between the two documents but doesn’t have an enigma machine to figure it out. And Scot, a middle school teacher, just wants his questions answered—mainly, “Do teachers get a ‘prep’ period every day or every other day in this plan (Friday being assumed as a prep day for sure)?” Calling APS: teachers want to know.

One of the best blogs for keeping up with New Mexico environmental news is that of freelance writer Laura Paskus. Yes, she plugs me in Big Bill heads back to DC, but she also offers up a history lesson I haven’t seen elsewhere: “He opposed WIPP as a representative, then presided over its opening as a federal official.”