(Albuquerque) The proposed bus rapid transit (BRT) line is a solution in search of a problem, and our bankrupt federal government should steer clear of providing 80 percent of the infrastructure costs for this unnecessary project. That’s the conclusion of a new Rio Grande Foundation report, “Throwing Taxpayers under the Bus,” which analyzes the case for bus rapid transit along Central Avenue in New Mexico’s largest city.

“Throwing Taxpayers under the Bus,” authored by Rio Grande Foundation Research Director Dowd Muska, argues that the current Rapid Ride bus system along Central has been quite successful in generating ridership. Muska wonders what benefits, in terms of mobility, the new system will provide that the current system does not.

In fact, as Muska argues, in addition to the temporary construction which would tie up traffic throughout the Central corridor, the BRT would limit motorists’ left turns onto Central while removing two traffic lanes to make way for buses. The loss of traffic lanes would result in the elimination of parking along some of Central’s busiest corridors.

The cost estimate being put forth by the city today is likely to rise once construction gets underway, argues Muska. “Throwing Taxpayers under the Bus” cites Willie Brown, a former California politician, who once said, “In the world of civic projects, the first budget is really just a down payment. If people knew the real cost from the start, nothing would ever be approved. The idea is to get going. Start digging a hole and make it so big, there’s no alternative to coming up with the money to fill it in.”

Ultimately, as Muska notes, BRT advocates are less concerned about mobility within the Central Corridor than they are about “redevelopment” in the area. Advocates claim that so-called “Millennials” are avoiding Albuquerque in search of more densely packed urban areas.

This claim simply doesn’t hold water. As Muska points out, sprawling Western cities such as Oklahoma City, Phoenix, and Dallas are growing rapidly and attracting young people. Albuquerque’s poor job growth is the likeliest reason for the city’s ongoing struggles to draw and keep Millennials.

With Washington trillions of dollars in debt, “Throwing Taxpayers under the Bus” concludes that an Albuquerque transit project in need of a purpose is unworthy of federal taxpayer dollars.

I spent July 16 driving down and back to Las Cruces to testify before the Legislative Health and Human Services Committee hearing on the Martinez Administration’s proposal to re-impose work, volunteer, or education attainment requirements for able-bodied adults without children and adults without small children.

Somehow, we have gotten to the point that asking able-bodied adults to improve their standing is simply beyond the pale because the liberal advocates that testified and all the Democrat legislators who attended spoke against the proposal.

An article from the Las Cruces Sun-News details the issue and Democrats’ opposition nicely.

Ironically, one of the main points the opponents of the work requirements repeatedly brought up was that New Mexico’s job growth is lagging its neighbors. While a true statement, one wonders if they realize that it is their policies that have put New Mexico in this sorry position. My testimony in support of the Administration’s work requirement is below:

Testimony on New Mexico’s Plan to Re-impose Work Requirement on Food Stamp (SNAP) Recipients
By Paul J. Gessing

Since 2009, New Mexico has waived federal work requirements tied to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

The Martinez Administration’s proposal is to reinstate the rules limiting able-bodied people to three months of SNAP benefits unless they work or attend job training classes at least 20 hours per week. The new requirements would be imposed on parents of children older than six-years to complete up to 80-hours a month of activities such as community work to continue to receive the SNAP benefits. It would also apply to teens who are not in school.

Over 21 percent of all New Mexicans receive food stamps, behind only Mississippi.
Somewhere between 26,000 and 80,000 people could be impacted by the proposal. According to a September 2014 report from the Pew Center, no fewer than 17 states were working to re-instate their work requirements.

Other states have seen dramatic effects in terms of reduced dependency from re-imposing food stamp work requirements. In 2014, for example, Maine re-imposed a three-month limit (out of every three-year period) on food stamps for a group often known as Abawds — able-bodied adults without minor dependents — unless they work 20 hours per week, take state job-training courses or volunteer for about six hours per week. The number of Abawds receiving food stamps in Maine has dropped nearly 80 percent since the rule kicked in, to 2,530 from about 12,000.

Maine’s requirement has been in effect for about a year now and I have heard no reports of even a single person starving as a result of this policy change.

The truth is that food stamps were meant to provide a bridge for people who are between jobs or have fallen on hard times. They are not a way of life. Completely removing oneself from the work or volunteer forces hurts the very people that SNAP is supposed to help. Sitting at home watching television or waiting for the phone to ring is no way to look for work.

Indeed, while unemployment rates in New Mexico remain somewhat higher than the national average at 6.2%, the rate in neighboring Texas is currently 4.2% which economists consider to be “full employment.” Even New Mexico’s largest cities have reasonably-low unemployment rates with Albuquerque at 4.9%, Santa Fe at 4.2% and Las Cruces at 5.2%.

It would seem that the only thing one truly needs to do to get a job in New Mexico is to move to one of her major cities. Absent that, there are opportunities aplenty in neighboring Texas.

The Martinez Administration’s proposal is eminently reasonable and encourages self-reliance rather than dependency which is very important. What doesn’t work is spending $80 billion a year on a rapidly-expanding program and imposing little or nothing in the way of requirements.

Lastly, food stamps are not an economic stimulus. The money has to come from somewhere and dollars that are taxed away and spent on food stamps can no longer be invested in our economy. Welfare programs do not stimulate the economy. Average New Mexicans working every day and honing their skills will make our state better and more prosperous.

Thank you for your time.

The New Mexico Rail Runner Express threw itself a birthday party today. Riders in Albuquerque and Santa Fe enjoyed “snacks and giveaways,” as the rail line marked its ninth anniversary.

“Trax” was at the Downtown ABQ Station, distributing hugs.

“Free” luggage tags!

In a press release announcing the festivities, the Rio Metro Regional Transit District listed some “fun facts” about the Rail Runner, including the “number of bicycle lockers at NMRX stations” and “Veterans Annual Passes issued to VA veterans from November 11, 2014 to July 1, 2015.”

One number that went unmentioned: 9.9. That’s the percentage of the Rail Runner’s 2014 operating costs that were covered by fares.

Who paid for the rest of the expenditures? Look in the mirror.

The Tax Foundation’s latest look at “the real value of $100 in each state” should generate more frustration for New Mexico’s economic-development establishment.

Costs in the Land of Enchantment are 21 percent cheaper than in New York, 18 percent cheaper than in California, and 8 percent cheaper than in Virginia. With the exception of Oklahoma, a hundred bucks goes further in New Mexico than it does in each of its neighbors.

Great weather, friendly folks, stunning scenery, a strategic location, and low costs — the Rio Grande Foundation has long maintained that New Mexico has the potential to be an economic powerhouse.

But excessive occupational licensing, an all-powerful PRC, no right-to-work law, a cumbersome tax on gross receipts, a work-ethic-sapping welfare complex, too much federal control over land and employment, and trendiness-driven corporate welfare as economic development? It all adds up to a spectacularly ineffective prescription for wealth creation and job growth.

The Rio Grande Foundation hosted Tom Palmer of the Atlas Network for a luncheon talk. Palmer was on his way back from giving a similar talk at FreedomFest in Las Vegas. Palmer travels the world assisting free market think tanks. His Albuquerque talk is below:

(Albuquerque) In an effort to improve government transparency throughout New Mexico, the Rio Grande Foundation has requested and published payroll data for all New Mexico Counties.

Unfortunately, several counties were unable or unwilling to comply with the request. We hope that residents of those counties will put pressure on them to make information available to the public. New Mexico’s largest county, Bernalillo, is a leader in providing transparency.

To find the data for your county, just click on the link below:

Bernalillo County

Catron County

Chaves County

Cibola County

Colfax County (not available)

Curry County

De Baca County (not online)

Doña Ana County

Eddy County

Grant County

Guadalupe County

Harding County

Hidalgo County

Lea County

Los Alamos

Lincoln County

Luna County

McKinley County

Mora County

Otero County

Quay County

Rio Arriba County

Roosevelt County

Sandoval County

San Juan County

San Miguel County

Santa Fe County

Sierra County

Socorro County

Taos County

Torrance County

Union County

Valencia County

Rio Grande Foundation's Friedman Day 2015

Breakfast Discussion of New Mexico's
Impending Demographic Challenges
and How Policymakers Can Cope
Presentation by Matthew Ladner

Free Registration Form

New Mexico's elderly population is set to explode in the years ahead according to new demographic research by Dr. Matthew Ladner. According to Ladner, New Mexico's working age will shrink as a percentage of the total population, with the Land of Enchantment projected to have the highest total age dependency ratio in the nation in 2030.

In New Mexico's case the increase in the total age dependency ratio projects to be entirely due to a near doubling of the elderly population between 2010 and 2030.

Unfortunately, despite reforms enacted under Gov. Susana Martinez and some modest improvements in students' educational performance, New Mexico's school age population continues to under-perform.

What does New Mexico's demographic situation – driven by an aging population – mean for the state in the years ahead? Is New Mexico's workforce adequately trained to support a growing group of dependents? What can realistically be done to eases this demographic transition?

Celebrate Dr. Milton Friedman's birthday with us at a special breakfast event on what would have been Dr. Friedman's birthday, Friday, July 31.

• Where: Auditorium of the Albuquerque Museum which is located at 2000 Mountain Road NW.
• When: 7:30am to 8:30am.
• Cost: There is no charge for this event and we will have coffee and donuts. Please register online by clicking here. It's quick and it's free!
• Who: Dr. Matthew Ladner is Senior Advisor of Policy and Research with the Foundation for Excellence in Education. He previously worked with the Rio Grande Foundation to bring the “Florida Model” for education reform to New Mexico.

Dr. Matthew Ladner is the Senior Adviser of Policy and Research for the Foundation for Excellence in Education. He previously served as Vice President of Research and Goldwater Institute. Prior to joining Goldwater, Dr. Ladner was director of state projects at the Alliance for School Choice.

Dr. Ladner has written numerous studies on school choice, charter schools and special education reform. Most recently, Dr. Ladner authored the groundbreaking, original research Turn and Face the Strain: Age Demographic Change and the Near Future of American Education, outlining the future funding crisis facing America's K-12 public education funding. He also coauthors the American Legislative Exchange Council's annual Report Card on American Education: Ranking State K-12 Performance, Progress and Reform.

Dr. Ladner has testified before Congress, the United States Commission of Civil Rights and numerous state legislative committees. He is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and received both a Masters and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Houston. Dr. Ladner is a Senior Fellow with the Foundation for Educational Choice. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

Free Registration Form

Natural gas may now be the most common fuel for electricity generation nationally, but in New Mexico, coal is still king. (Don’t tell the Sierra Club.)

Last week, the U.S. Energy Information Administration released 2013 data for state-level electricity pricing, generation, and fuel sources.

Slightly more than two-thirds of all power generated in New Mexico in 2013 originated in coal-fired plants. Natural gas supplied 25 percent of our juice. Wind produced 6.1 percent. The contribution of solar, in the fourth-sunniest state? A whopping 1.1 percent.

As for regional competitiveness, the retail price for a kilowatt hour in New Mexico was 9.25¢. Not the costliest, but there’s room for improvement. Neighbors Oklahoma (7.87¢), Utah (8.15¢), and Texas (8.66¢) were cheaper, while Colorado (9.88¢) and Arizona (10.14¢) were more expensive.

Rio Grande Foundation president Paul Gessing recently sat down with KNAT TV to discuss the results of the 2015 special legislative session and its passage of a capital outlay bill and a small tax cut package.

“Ranking the States by Fiscal Condition,” just issued by George Mason University’s Meractus Center, offers a valuable survey of revenue and expenditures in New Mexico. As one might expect, the news isn’t pretty. The state isn’t in the company of such perennial deadbeats as New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Illinois, but there’s plenty of room for improvement.

Author Eileen Norcross analyzed five “dimensions of solvency” in order to determine overall fiscal condition:

* Cash solvency looks at whether a state can “pay bills that are due over a 30-to-60-day horizon.” New Mexico fares well in this category, ranking 19th.

* Budget solvency examines “whether the state can meet its fiscal year obligations.” The Land of Enchantment performs quite poorly here, landing in 46th place.

* Long-run solvency is determined by three metrics: net asset ratio, long-term liability ratio, and long-term liabilities per capita. New Mexico achieves it best score in this category: 14th.

* Service-level solvency “attempts to capture how much ‘fiscal slack’ states have by measuring the size of taxes, expenses, and revenues relative to state personal income.” The results for New Mexico are abysmal — only two states fare worse.

* Trust fund solvency is an estimate of “total indebtedness in the form of bonded debt, risk-adjusted pension liabilities, and [other post-employment benefits]. Ditto here, with a downright scary rank of 48th.

Overall, New Mexico ranks 36th in fiscal condition. Not surprisingly, each of our neighbors posted a superior score: Arizona (32nd), Colorado (22nd), Texas (19th), Utah (11th), and Oklahoma (9th).

New Mexico’s economy faces serious issues, but we know one tool that has led to job creation nationwide at no cost to taxpayers: adoption of a “right to work” law.

The 30-day session kicks off on January 19, but we know that “right to work” will be on the Legislature’s agenda. It passed the House on a bi-partisan vote in 2015, but the Democrat-held Senate refused to even vote on it!

Click here to search for your Senator or click on their picture/name to send them an email with the simple message: Support “right to work” and at the very least New Mexicans deserve an “up or down” vote on the issue of “right to work.”

“Right to work” is not anti-union, it simply means that you cannot be required to be a member of a union or pay union dues to one. New Mexico is one of 25 non-“right to work” states. Right to work is strongly associated with stronger job growth among states where it is adopted:

The Rio Grande Foundation tracked announcements of expansions, relocations, and greenfield investments published on Area Development‘s website between January 2015 and August 2015. “Right to work” states attracted 80% of the new jobs.

Methodology notes:

* All job estimates — “up to,” “as many as,” “about” — were taken at face value, for RTW and non-RTW states alike.

* If an announcement did not make an employment projection, efforts were made to obtain an estimate from newspaper articles and/or press releases by elected officials and economic-development bureaucracies.

* If no job figure could be found anywhere, the project was not counted, whether it was a RTW or non-RTW state.

* Intrastate relocations were not counted, interstate relocations were.

Public officials should use taxpayer dollars for the benefit of the citizens they serve, not for self-aggrandizement. I spoke to Chris Ramirez at Channel 4, KOB TV on what certainly seem to be some issues in the Sandoval County Treasurer’s office.

I recently wrote this article in which I made the case for free trade (broadly-speaking) as well as the export of crude oil and liquefied natural gas. The case for crude exports is relatively simple and I should have mentioned that New Mexico Congressman Steve Pearce has been an outspoken advocate for ending the decades’-old ban on exporting American crude. President Obama could, with the use of his pen, end the ban on crude exports.

The recent votes on behalf of “Trade Promotion Authority” was quite a bit more nuanced. As I noted, Congressman Pearce voted against it, but that does not make him hostile to free trade. Rather, Pearce and 53 of the most conservative Republicans joined most Democrats in opposing the bill which passed the House narrowly. Final vote here. The split was significant among conservative policy organizations with Americans for Tax Reform and National Taxpayers Union supporting TPA and the respected Heritage Foundation and some “Tea Party” groups opposed giving President Obama such negotiating authority.

Trade Promotion Authority is a tool that Congress has granted presidents dating back to 1975 for the purpose of negotiating trade agreements with Congress having an “up or down” vote on the issue (as opposed to individual members of Congress “negotiating” the agreement by tacking special interest provisions onto each agreement, thus killing them. Of course, the Obama Administration has been less-than forthcoming about a wide variety of uses of executive power and conservative opponents of TPA including Pearce expressed concern over Obama’s “near reckless disregard for the rule of law.”

So, to be clear, Congressman Pearce had a significant portion of the conservative community with him in opposing TPA. It is a close call. We at the Rio Grande Foundation certainly appreciate the fact that conservatives don’t have a lot of faith in President Obama negotiating an agreement that benefits American businesses and consumers, especially when he has sat on the crude export issue for so long. We applaud Congressman Pearce for his principled stand regardless.

New Mexico’s heavy — and unsustainable — reliance on federal largesse was well illustrated by Curry County Commissioner Tim Ashley’s recent trip to D.C. for “At a Crossroads: The Future of Defense Communities and Installations.”

The three-day conference was sponsored by the Association of Defense Communities, a taxpayer-subsidized organization that “unites the diverse interests of communities, state governments, the private sector and the military on issues of base closure and realignment, community-military partnerships, defense real estate, mission growth, mission sustainment, military privatization, military families/veteran support and base redevelopment.”

Before leaving for Washington, Ashley told the Clovis News Journal that the association was “instrumental” in helping Cannon Air Force Base escape the last round of the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process. The Pentagon wants another dose of BRAC, but eternally vigilant about preserving their fiefdoms, politicians in the Senate and House of Representatives have been able to block the proposal.

As government expenses go, Ashley’s trip wasn’t large. It cost taxpayers $2,673.03 in total, including $1,127 for airfare and $1,325.91 for three nights of lodging. But it did reveal that a reflexive desire to preserve — if not expand — federal facilities continues to infect New Mexico’s elected officials.

Fighting the military’s desire to unload surplus and/or duplicative installations is useful for securing votes and boosting the image of economic-development bureaucracies. But it’s a disappointing distraction from the need to pursue policies that foster a vibrant, growing private sector in the Land of Enchantment.

If it weren’t for bad news, Spaceport America wouldn’t have any news at all.

June brought a number of dismal developments for the taxpayer-funded facility:

1) A KRQE report found that New Mexico’s boondoggle-in-the-desert has “a serious competitor chomping at [its] heels from a private spaceport in far West Texas.” After years of secrecy, Jeff Bezos, the Amazon billionaire, is promoting “his personal rocket company, Blue Origin.”

2) Alabama’s governor announced “a series of preliminary studies to assess the feasibility of landing Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Dream Chaser spacecraft at Huntsville International Airport.”

3) Houston Spaceport earned licensing approval from the FAA, and the city’s airport bureaucracy “now turns its attention toward securing partnership opportunities with leading companies operating within the aerospace industry.”

4) Diana Alba Soular of the Las Cruces Sun-News reported that the yet-to-be-completed southern road to Spaceport America “will be delayed because surveying work … didn’t align with the corridor studied in a key environmental review.”

Isn’t it time for New Mexico’s politicians to admit that Spaceport America is a failure, and hire a liquidator to get taxpayers back some of their “investment”?

Last week the Pew Research Center’s “Stateline” website noted some good news for U-Haul: “Americans are picking up and moving again as the recession fades, personal finances improve and housing markets recover. Counties in Nevada, Arizona, eastern California and Tennessee also saw some of the nation’s biggest growth in movers last year.”

We already knew that New Mexico was one of only six states to lose population between 2013 and 2014. But Pew’s granular analysis reveals the extent of the problem. Twenty-four of the state’s 33 counties lost population. Doña Ana County neither gained nor lost residents, so just eight counties saw positive migration. Growth in Bernalillo County, where about a third of New Mexicans live, was a dismal 0.1 percent.

Happy New Fiscal Year. Ready for higher taxes?

Starting July 1, furniture, haircuts, toys, shoes, lawn care, and milkshakes will be more expensive for most New Mexicans. The gross receipts tax (GRT), the dominant source of local-government revenue, will rise in many communities, including Albuquerque, Rio Rancho, Las Cruces, Roswell, Las Vegas, Deming, and Silver City.

In Santa Fe, the rate is slated to increase from 8.1875 percent to 8.3125 percent. But not if the city has its way. A few weeks ago, the City Different filed a taxpayer-friendly lawsuit to block the GRT hike the county adopted in March. Citing state statutes, Santa Fe — as well as Española and several local businesses — allege that “within the boundaries” of incorporated Santa Fe County municipalities, the tax should not apply.

It’s up to the courts to decide the validity of the lawsuit. What’s not in dispute is that the the city-county faceoff would not exist were it not for governors’ and legislators’ never-ending tinkering with the GRT. When Santa Fe’s commissioners adopted the one-eight-of-a-cent tax increase three months ago, it was justified as a way to raise money to compensate for funds the state would no longer provide. The soon-to-be-ended subsidy was created to ease the fiscal pain of the 2005 removal of groceries from the GRT.

A bit confused? It’s understandable. The GRT is less a revenue-raising system than a political plaything, a mechanism for elected officials to perpetually penalize and reward behaviors, purchases, and investments in the Land of Enchantment. Boosting jobs, growing incomes, luring entrepreneurs, providing tax relief for the poor — it’s all achievable, we’re told, if visionary politicians make the proper adjustments to GRT rates, deductions, and exemptions.

Every New Mexican buys groceries, but very few of us acquire ray guns. The Pentagon does, and with growing interest in directed-energy weapons, the recently completed special legislative session produced a GRT deduction for receipts earned from producing armaments that use “the frequency spectrum, including radio waves, light and x-rays.” The perk will benefit defense contractors, and presumably, “attract new projects and employers to New Mexico and increase high-technology employment opportunities” — boilerplate language for the economic-development schemes frequently embraced by both political parties in New Mexico.

Directed-energy devices might be the future of defense. But perhaps they’ll prove to be of limited value to warfighters. Are state legislators qualified to make the right call? If history is any guide, the answer is no. Unintended consequences are inevitable when politicians fiddle with the tax code.

That brings us back to the GRT and groceries. In 2013, Dick Minzner, a former secretary of the New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Department, and Brian McDonald, a former director of UNM’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research, concluded that the effect of the food-tax exemption “has been the opposite of that intended,” because “by providing “only limited benefit to the poorest … of our households, combined with a tax increase on all other purchases, [it] probably made our tax system more regressive by most measures.”

The rates for New Mexico’s GRT are far too high. And the levy’s broadness induces pyramiding, which legislative analysts noted “occurs when the GRT is applied to business-to-business purchases of supplies, raw materials, equipment, creating an extra layer of taxation at each stage of production.” But as a policy brief written by the left-wing organization New Mexico Voices for Children advised more than a decade ago, “Piecemeal tax policy doesn’t work because tax systems are more than the sum of their parts.” Exactly. The GRT has been meddled with enough. It’s time for a simpler, more affordable, and pro-growth gross receipts tax.

D. Dowd Muska (dmuska@riograndefoundation.org) is research director of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation, an independent, nonpartisan, tax-exempt research and educational organization dedicated to promoting prosperity for New Mexico based on principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility.

No matter what one thinks about recent battles over Trade Promotion Authority and the Trans Pacific Partnership, freer trade would be good for New Mexico’s main private sector industry (oil and gas). In this case, as I argue below, freer trade would impact the industries from different angles.

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New Mexico businessman and entrepreneur Steve McKee was the keynote speaker at a recent Rio Grande Foundation luncheon. He gave an optimistic and detailed talk about the ways in which New Mexico policymakers can turn our state around and even beat Texas in the process. Check out the informative and even inspirational talk below:

The invaluable Tax Foundation has released a map that exposes another disturbing policy reality about New Mexico.

The Land of Enchantment imposes a higher wine tax than four of its neighbors: Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Colorado. (Utah, along with four other states, controls alcohol sales within its borders.)

But the full story is a bit more complex. New Mexico’s economic-development bureaucracy touts the “preferential tax rate” the state offers to winemakers. Converting from liters, New Mexico imposes a tax of 38¢ per gallon for its smallest vintners. Mid-range winemakers pay a tax of 76¢ per gallon. The largest enterprises — more than than 2.1 million gallons of crushed grapes produced annually — pay the full tax of $1.70.

The lesson: Vintners in the Land of Enchantment are welcome to be successful — just not too successful.

The Supreme Court today announced a 6-3 decision upholding the King v. Burwell case which revolved around whether Congress did or did not intend to give subsidies to residents of states that did not set up exchanges under the law.

The Rio Grande Foundation had previously outlined potential scenarios assuming a reversal by the Court. This was based on both the clear language of the law and statements like those from ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber:

In terms of the decision’s impact on American health care and our society in general, here are some initial reactions

Cons: The ObamaCare law remains largely intact with future dire consequences for American health care; the Supreme Court clearly ruled (again) on political expediency rather than the law as written driving another stake in the heart of the rule of law.

Pros: Obama and the Democrats truly “own” this law and all of its impacts now. They passed a poorly-written and ill-conceived law. It now stands largely intact. When/if the law is considered a failure, there will be a strong impetus for reforms in the opposite, hopefully free market direction.

Rio Grande Foundation Speaker Series Event:

State Control vs. Self Control

Click here for registration form.

Fresh off his presentation at FreedomFest (described as the World’s Largest Gathering of Free Minds) in Las Vegas, Tom Palmer, the executive vice president for international programs at Atlas Network will be visiting Albuquerque to discuss the important differences between state control and self control at a Rio Grande Foundation-sponsored luncheon.

State Control or Self-Control?

When governments usurp our freedom they diminish personal responsibility for making good choices at the same time. And when they remove from us responsibility for our choices, they not only generate more bad choices, but they under-mine our freedom. Whether we call it the Nanny State or the Welfare State or the Prohibitionist State, big government is assaulting our freedom and undermining our responsibility. Dr. Palmer will show why freedom and responsibility go hand in hand at every level, from the theoretical to the legal to the very practical, with examples ranging from modern day prohibition of drugs and alcohol to the growing numbers of people on long-term welfare and disability support.

• Location:  Marriott Pyramid 5151 San Francisco Rd NE, Albuquerque, NM 87109
• When:  Monday, July 13, 2015, 12:00 noon to 1:00pm
• Cost:  Seating is limited and can be purchased at the discounted price of $30 until Saturday, July 6, 2015; $40 after the 6th.

Dr. Tom G. Palmer is responsible for establishing operating programs in 14 languages and managing programs for a worldwide network of think tanks at Atlas Network. He is also a senior fellow at Cato Institute and director of Cato University. He frequently lectures in North America, Europe, Eurasia, Africa, Latin America, India, China and throughout Asia, as well as the Middle East on political science, public choice, civil society, and the moral, legal, and historical foundations of individual rights. He has published articles on politics and morality in scholarly journals such as the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Ethics, Critical Review, and Constitutional Political Economy, as well as in publications such as Slate, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Die Welt, Al Hayat, and the Washington Post. He is the author of Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice (expanded edition 2014), and the editor of the Morality of Capitalism (2011), After the Welfare State (2012), Why Liberty (2013), and Peace, Love & Liberty (2014). Palmer received his B.A. in liberal arts from St. Johns College in Annapolis, Maryland, his M.A. in philosophy from the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., and his doctorate in politics from Oxford University.

Click here for registration form.

Ball State University’s Center for Business and Economic Research has more bad news for the Land of Enchantment.

The center’s “2015 Manufacturing & Logistics Report Card” analyzes “how each state ranks among its peers in several areas of the economy that underlie the success of manufacturing and logistics. These specific measures include the health of the manufacturing and logistics industries, the state of human capital, the cost of worker benefits, diversification of the industries, state-level productivity and innovation, expected fiscal liability, the state tax climate, and global reach.”

The report card’s metrics “were chosen as those most likely to be considered by site selection experts for manufacturing and logistics firms, and by the prevailing research on economic growth.” New Mexico flunked five of the nine categories:

Manufacturing Industry Health: F
Logistics Industry Health: F
Human Capital: F
Worker Benefit Costs: C
Tax Climate: C
Expected Liability Gap: D
Global Reach: F
Sector Diversification: F
Productivity and Innovation: D

Job-training “incentives,” increased spending on government schools, GRT deductions, and committing more severance-tax revenue to “critical community infrastructure”? The strategy isn’t working. It’s time for something different.

Solar ranks right up there with mom and apple pie among many who believe that it is the power source of our future. Unfortunately, a recent incident right here in Albuquerque, highlighted an under-appreciated problem with solar panels: fire. In fact, the Taylor Ranch Community Center which is not far from my house had a fire on Friday that seems to have been caused by the panels on the building’s roof (per KOB TV below).

Although an exact understanding of the scope of solar panel fires was difficult to find, it is a relatively common problem caused by manufacturing flaws. Solar panel fires can be particularly challenging for first-responders because the panels may remain electrified even as they (or the building burns).

Thankfully, in the case of the Taylor Ranch fire, there is a fire house literally across the street and apparently the fire fighters were on the spot quickly, but the gym floor is likely ruined. I wonder how a fire like this impacts the net carbon situation when it comes to these solar panels?