I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Attorney General Gary King might ask for increased powers to prosecute financial fraud, spokesman Phil Sisneros told The Independent this week.
“Turns out the Martin Act is something we have been studying to see if there are applications for N.M.,” Sisneros wrote via e-mail Wednesday. “We have not yet asked for such powers but it is a possibility in future sessions.”
The Martin Act, as you may recall from an earlier post this week, is a powerful anti-fraud weapon wielded by the New York Attorney General. New Mexico and many other states don’t have the same beefed up powers as given to New York’s top cop through the Martin Act. The law gives broad powers to the New York Attorney General that allowed former New York AG and governor Eliot Spitzer to go after abuses in the wake of the Enron collapse a few years ago.
And New York’s current attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, has followed in Spitzer’s prosecutorial footsteps, using the same law to win guilty pleas in his investigation of pay-to-play allegations involving investments made by that state’s Comptroller Office.
That New York investigation has revealed connections to New Mexico’s own investments scandal.
