According to 24/7 Wall Street (as received from Yahoo!), New Mexico is the 2nd-worst-run state in the entire nation, beating out only California. Astonishingly, the publication ranked us lower than Illinois a state that has been a basket case for years. According to the report’s entry for New Mexico:

The state’s debt load relative to its size was average, and its budget shortfall of 8.3% for going into fiscal 2012 was better than many states. Outside of fiscal management, however, New Mexico performed poorly in several areas in several areas. The state was among the worst 10 nationwide for violent crime, high school graduation rates among adults, and health insurance coverage. More than one in five residents lived below the poverty line in 2012, worse than all states but Mississippi. Last year, state GDP grew by just 0.2%, worse than all but a handful of states.

The specific rankings and tools contained int the report are relatively broad and somewhat unrelated, but when taken as a whole, they certainly don’t contain good news for the Land of Enchantment.

(Albuquerque) Just in time for the first meeting of the Criminal Justice Reform Subcommittee, the Rio Grande Foundation is providing an update on its original, 2009 report, which arguably started the ball rolling on criminal justice reform in the Land of Enchantment.

The new report, “Criminal Justice Policy in New Mexico: Keys to Controlling Costs and Protecting Public Safety (Updated),” which was authored by Marc Levin, Policy Director of Right on Crime with Paul Gessing, President of the Rio Grande Foundation, provides a variety of bi-partisan, but fiscally-conservative ideas for the Subcommittee to consider, including:

• Expanded use of drug courts;
• Introduction of courts similar to Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation with Enforcement Drug (HOPE) Courts where offenders are ordered to treatment and must call in a number every morning to see if they have to report to the court to take a drug test. If they fail, they are jailed for several days, usually weekend jail in order to preserve employment;
• Mandatory Probation, Treatment and Work Requirements for First-Time Drug Offenders: This policy should apply only to individuals caught with small quantities of drugs that are for personal use;
• Graduated Responses for Probationers and Parolees: Research indicates this approach reduces technical revocations to prison because the swift but proportionate responses effectively lay down the law, deterring future violations;
• Performance-Based Probation Funding: Under this incentive-based approach which has not been adopted in New Mexico, probation departments receive a share of the state’s savings from less incarceration when they reduce their revocations to prison without increasing probationers’ convictions for new offenses. The probation departments are required to reinvest the additional funds in victim services, substance abuse treatment, and strategies to improve community supervision and reduce recidivism;
• Modernize Sentencing Laws: New Mexico should revise its sentencing laws to ensure prison space is prioritized for violent and dangerous offenders;
• Utilize Victim-Offender Conferencing: Conferencing is often used in property offense cases, particularly for first-time offenders, and must be chosen by both the victim and the offender, since the offender is required to take responsibility for his conduct. New Mexico Attorney General Gary King recently called for similar efforts; and
• Reduced Barriers for Nonviolent Ex-Offenders to Obtain Occupational Licenses;

Many of these reforms have been introduced with great success in other states that can provide both data and a road map for successful implementation.

November 22nd, 1963 is a day that many Americans will never forget. I wasn’t around back then, but can only imagine what it was like to have such a young, optimistic, and charismatic president shot down in the prime of his life. Of course, that is the basis of the Kennedy myth. One of the myths perpetuated by liberals is that Kennedy was a standard “liberal.” This myth was given additional credence in a story in the Albuquerque Journal.

Certainly, the term “liberal” can be applied to a lot of different policy areas from foreign policy to race relations and the economy, but Kennedy was by no means an Obama-style big-spending tax-hiker. For starters, as I wrote a decade ago while at National Taxpayers Union, Kennedy’s tax cuts reduced federal spending by more than 12 percent. As a comparison, George W. Bush’s tax cuts reduced spending by only 8 percent. So, Kennedy was a bona fide tax-cutter.

And, as the following chart shows, unlike George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Kennedy didn’t embrace massive increases in government spending either:

Undoubtedly, the Kennedy myth transcends his tax and fiscal policies and has a great deal to do with the way he died, but it is worth noting historical reality as we mark the 50th anniversary of this tragic occasion.

How long do you keep spending money on something before you quit and cut your losses? New Mexico’s Legislature will soon face some difficult decisions as to how much taxpayer money to spend on two high profile, Richardson-era projects, the Rail Runner and the Spaceport.

Let’s start with the RailRunner. The train already costs taxpayers nearly $50 million a year in payments on the initial infrastructure and operations. That doesn’t include two balloon payments of $230 million (made in addition to operations costs) which will come due next decade.

Now, due to a new federal regulation, New Mexico taxpayer could be on the hook for another $30 million to implement a federally-required safety system for the Rail Runner. It is worth pointing out that the federal regulation behind this requirement is a huge waste. Even Cass Sunstein who was President Obama’s administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs has stated during testimony in the US House that the new “Positive Train Control” regulation produced benefits that are lower than its costs.”

The fact that this regulation is an absurd waste of money is of little consolation to New Mexico taxpayers who will nonetheless be forced to pay this $30 million in addition to the ongoing costs for infrastructure and operations.

A second project that just keeps getting pricier is New Mexico’s Spaceport. Taxpayers initially spent $210 million to construct the facility in hopes of bringing a new, private space industry to the state. Unfortunately, the launch schedule of the facility’s main tenant, Virgin Galactic, has repeatedly been delayed. These delays along with costly additions to the facility have led to a nearly abject lack of positive economic activity generated by the facility and have instead caused the Spaceport to suck up even greater amounts of taxpayer money above-and-beyond the original cost.

In 2012, taxpayers spent an unexpected $7 million to extend a runway at the Spaceport that was allegedly too short for spacecraft to launch. Now, as delays continue and Virgin Galactic continues to push back expected launch dates, the Spaceport will be requesting another $6.8 million to pave the road to the facility from the South. The 23-mile road is currently an unimproved dirt road maintained by Doña Ana County. The northern road, which connects to the Spaceport via Truth or Consequences, is paved.

Lastly, in terms of the Spaceport, taxpayers are on the hook for yet another $5 to $6 million required for management and operations for each year that Virgin Galactic delays commercial flights from the southern New Mexico spaceport.

Obviously, as New Mexico’s economy continues to struggle and tax revenue growth remains slow, the Legislature faces some difficult decisions on these two projects. Are there any limits as to how much taxpayers should be expected to pay to support these facilities before we decide to abandon them or take drastic steps to cut costs? If so, when is enough, enough?

What priorities are we giving up in order to attract a manned, private space industry that has yet to take flight and a train that can never come close to breaking even at a total cost of over $1 billion (before accounting for this new federal regulation)?

While it is easy to dismiss the additional money as just another cost of these publicly-beneficial projects, from a budgetary perspective, a dollar spent on spaceports and trains is a dollar diverted from schools, tax reform, and other economic development priories.

Regardless of how the Legislature decides to move forward regarding these two projects, I hope that policymakers in Santa Fe understand realize that the embracing the basics of government is tough enough.

The painful lessons here are that hitching one’s star to “the next big thing” or spending massive amounts of taxpayer money in an effort to change transportation patterns may prove a costly gamble.

Paul Gessing is the President of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation. The Rio Grande Foundation is an independent, non-partisan, tax-exempt research and educational organization dedicated to promoting prosperity for New Mexico based on principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility

The poorly-designed ObamaCare website is really the least of the health care law’s problems. Now, one of the program’s supposed “success-stories” has gone public to say that the program has not helped her get health insurance.

The Rio Grande Foundation hosted its latest event on ObamaCare with syndicated columnist and ideas-man Deroy Murdock speaking on the health care law’s myriad problems in Albuquerque:

11-20-13 Deroy Murdock ObamaCare from Paul Gessing on Vimeo.

I call Murdock an “ideas man” because unlike so many writers and pundits, he doesn’t just focus on the problems with the current system. Instead, he actually brings creative solutions to bear:

— Approach health care from an individual, not group perspective;
— Give insurance companies tax breaks for taking on high risk patients and people w/ pre-existing conditions;
— Give doctors tax benefits for treating charity cases/indigent care;
— Allow purchase of health insurance across state lines;
— Provide vouchers (like food stamps for health care) rather than reworking the entire health care system.

Click here for Deroy’s powerpoint presentation.

Recently, Rio Grande Foundation president Paul Gessing appeared in Silver City on a panel on Western lands issues and federal management alongside Rep. Yvette Herrell, economist Alex Thal, and rancher Hugh B McKeen to discuss what should be done with New Mexico’s federal lands (not including Native lands, military installations, and National Parks). See the footage below:

Federal Lands Panel Discussion in Silver City, NM from Paul Gessing on Vimeo.

Also, the Council of State Governments has covered the issue of what, if anything, should be done with certain federal lands in its latest Capitol Ideas publication.

With all of the division, controversy, and angst that splits our nation, it is worth thinking back 150 years to the split over slavery and the Civil War. Lincoln’s powerful words to commemorate the cemetery and heal the nation are worth reading and remembering.

The Gettysburg Address:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863

The Rio Grande Foundation doesn’t typically get involved in issues of race and ethnicity. It doesn’t mean that these aren’t real and important issues, but that our primary goal is freedom. That freedom has been negatively-impacted by misguided federal land use policies and we have pointed out the economic bonanza awaiting us if the state took over management of many federal lands now managed by Washington.

In terms of New Mexico’s federal lands, today’s Albuquerque Journal contained an article by an Hispanic advocate for changes to federal lands policies that would respect the historical Hispanic claims to those lands and their uses. The good news is that such concerns are shared across the ideological and political spectrum by people who think New Mexico lands should be managed by New Mexicans.

Average people who have been stewards of these lands for generations are losing access to those lands due to strict land-use policies out of Washington. That is sad and very frustrating both to the article’s author and to me.

One caveat: While the high-handed and bureaucratic approach of federal officials may be appalling and frustrating, I’m not convinced that it amounts to “racism” or “anti-Hispanic” as the author claims. The mentality of too many in Washington is to demean and marginalize anyone who stands in the way of their grand plans, regardless of race or ethnicity. It’s not that the US Government, The Forest Service, or its employees are racist, but that Hispanics are the primary group standing in the way of their control of ever-larger swaths of land and thus more power for themselves.

It is time for anyone concerned about this issue to support efforts in NM’s Legislature to return control of these lands to New Mexico!

Recently, the New Mexico Green Chamber of Commerce hired a high $ consulting firm to come up with economic data showing that the proposed wilderness designation of the Organ Mountains would be an unmitigated boon for the economy.

According to the Green Chamber’s report, “The expected annual economic impacts of National Monument designation could reach $17.6 million, which represents an increase of approximately $7.4 million in regional economic activity.” From the free market perspective, the idea of putting resources off limits to a large number of uses (as a wilderness designation would do) leading to increased economic activity, simply doesn’t make sense.

Unfortunately for the greens, as recently discussed in the Las Cruces Sun-News, two experts on the economics of such designations attempted to replicate the report. According to the experts, “We attempted to replicate these types of studies and failed. That is, using a careful methodology and making comparisons between counties through time, we find at best no effect on local economies and, more likely, negative effects of monument designations.”

Recent statements by Obama’s Secretary of the Interior indicate that President Obama may be looking to circumvent Congress by using executive power to name monuments. I’m certainly not a fan of such a move no matter the president, but purported “economic benefits” of such designations are tenuous arguments indeed.

ProgressNowNM, a far-left cookie-cutter (even down to their name) organization financed by George Soros and others is attacking the Rio Grande Foundation and members of the State Policy Network. The new attack campaign focuses primarily on money and where it comes from rather than any honest discussion over the issues and their merits.

Amusingly enough, however, ProgressNow has created alleged “fact sheets” on the Rio Grande Foundation and other SPN groups. To say that there are errors and downright falsehoods in the attack on the Rio Grande Foundation would be an understatement. Let’s go through them:

1) ALEC’s home in NM: Yes, the Rio Grande Foundation works with a wide variety of organizations including the American Legislative Exchange Council which we have hosted for an event. I once appeared alongside (on the same side) of an issue with Pat Davis of ProgressNowNM at a panel discussion sponsored by the Drug Policy Alliance of New Mexico. So what?

2) I am indeed on the board of New Mexico Connections Academy, an online charter school here in NM. Much like other schools contract with private, for-profit providers for textbooks, bus service, and technology, we contract with Connections. I am proud to play a direct role in increasing educational choice here in New Mexico!

3) My credentials in publishing in a wide variety of media outlets are strong. This accusation is just a rehashing of a blogger’s rantings from a few years ago. The original has been taken down. Wall Street Journal: here, here, here, and here.

Washington Post here, here, and here.

US News & World Report: here.

If you take a look at these press clips, you’ll notice that I have been advocating for free markets and limited government for well over a decade since my days at the National Taxpayers Union in Washington, DC. I’m clearly in this work because I believe in free markets and limited government, not because some big $$ donors are paying us off…and you know what, I believe that the folks at ProgressNow are principled in believing that government has all the answers for society’s woes.

4) Regarding our supposedly “extreme” agenda for New Mexico, again I’ll take it point by point:

a) Defund and privatize New Mexico’s public schools with voucher programs and virtual schools: We support the rights of parents and children to choose the education that makes the most sense for them. Funding for education should flow through the child, not through the bureaucracy.

b) Block access to affordable healthcare for New Mexican families: We oppose the health care law known as ObamaCare and expansions of government programs like Medicaid. Rather, we support reducing government-imposed regulatory and tax barriers to health care that come between patients and their doctors.

c) Oppose environmental and pollution protections: Simply not true, but we do support cost-benefit analyses of all government regulations and weighing them against the economic benefits of industries such as oil and gas that support New Mexico’s economy.

d) Destroy public pensions: This is another false statement. Rio Grande Foundation supports reforms such as “defined contribution” retirement plans that give government workers control over their own retirements (much like private-sector workers) and removes control over government pension investments from politicians who have proved repeatedly to be poor stewards of these resources.

e) Attack workers’ right to organize and bargain by pushing so-called “Right to Work” legislation: Right to Work does nothing to prevent workers from organizing. It simply makes it illegal to force a worker to join a union as a condition of employment.

f) Cut off funding and revenue for essential government services: This is so general as to be utterly meaningless. RGF has never urged the elimination or dramatic reduction of government funding for police, fire, or roads.

We are hosting a luncheon with Travis Brown of How Money Walks on Thursday, November 21 in Albuquerque. Prices have been reduced to $20 per attendee. You can sign up here.

Wondering what this is all about? Check out some recent interviews with Travis Brown below:

Register here right now!

I appeared on KRQE Channel 13’s news at 5:30pm yesterday (Monday) to discuss the case of an inmate who was allowed to stay LONGER than their sentenced time at taxpayer expense. An odd request under most circumstances to be sure, but taxpayers paid $128 a day to keep this individual incarcerated beyond their sentence.

We certainly don’t want this kind of thing to become a regular occurrence (as noted in the story), but as far as we can tell, this was a highly-unique situation were a potentially-violent, severely mentally-deficient person was kept longer because there was no other place for them to go and releasing them could have been dangerous for the individual and the public at large.

Problems could certainly arise if criminals simply wish to remain incarcerated to take advantage of the “three hots and a cot” or medical care that they are provided while incarcerated and that potential precedent is the primary concern we have. We don’t have any specific concerns with the Department of Corrections’ handling of this situation. See the story below:

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There has been an incredible amount of angst among the education establishment over New Mexico’s newly-enacted system of teacher evaluations. Unlike other aspects of Gov. Martinez’s education agenda including the A-F grading system, elimination of 3rd grade social promotion, and an emphasis on digital learning, these evaluations were not based on Jeb Bush’s successful reforms in Florida.

In fact, New Mexico’s educators might be surprised to know that these hated evaluations came to our state via the Obama Administration. A few years ago, the National Education Association gave $60 million to candidate Obama to re-elect him to the White House. Ironically, these angry union members funded the very source of their considerable angst.

This background is worth noting, but the more important question for New Mexico’s families and children is whether they are good policy that will lead to improved educational results, or not.

Certainly, there is nothing wrong with evaluating teachers. Few private sector employers lack some form of evaluation system for their employees. It is worth noting, however, that in the private sector, there is no single evaluation system imposed upon businesses from the top down or the government (yet). Rather, independent, competing businesses work to create and implement their own evaluation systems which are then used to ensure that workers are serving the needs of customers and the business itself.

Unfortunately, from the perspective of free market education reformers, by their very nature, any one-size-fits-all, tightly-controlled teacher evaluation system imposed from the top down does not share the best characteristics of private sector evaluation systems. The missing component in education is choice. As a parent, I may not agree with what is being evaluated and how. In the private sector, I can choose another provider. This is not so easy when it comes to education.

In other words, the best way to introduce accountability is to allow parents to choose where to send their children. This will put pressure on those schools that the “marketplace,” (meaning parents) deem to be inadequate to improve their educational product.

Of course, to make any system competitive and to bring true accountability to the education system, school administrators must be empowered to make personnel decisions, including the hiring and firing of teachers. A one-size-fits-all teacher evaluation system has generated tremendous opposition from teachers, but these same teachers must understand that outside of government schools, those who fail to contribute to the success of an enterprise are let go.

The need to allow that small minority of underperforming teachers to be fired is not meant to disparage the teaching profession or the hard work that teachers do. In fact, our desire is to give teachers the freedom to teach and innovate in the classroom while balancing that with real accountability enforced by the customers. Such a system would effectively ensure teachers’ ability to innovate and diverse, quality options for students at the same time.

In fact, Jeb Bush’s successful reforms in Florida relied on a healthy dose of school choice. Florida has both a robust voucher system and a system of tax credits for school choice, both of which are geared to empower parents and students. It also has a large and innovative digital and online option.

The results are nothing short of stunning. Between 1999 and 2010, Florida’s graduation rate leapt by more than 20 percentage points (from 53 to 73 percent) while New Mexico’s remained stagnant at about 59 percent, according to the national Diploma’s Count report. Florida students also saw a rapid rise in NAEP reading scores among all income and ethnic groups with particular improvements among Hispanics and blacks. This led to a substantial closing of the achievement gap between whites and minority groups.

Study after study nationwide shows that increasing educational options leads to improved results. For example, in Washington, DC, recipients of a school choice voucher through a random lottery are 24 percent more likely to go to college than those who did not receive the voucher.

Any professional doing an important job must be evaluated and held accountable. Unfortunately, the education establishment’s long-standing opposition to systematic, dispersed accountability enforced by parents in a free education marketplace has led to this top-down, bureaucratically-enforced, one-size-fits-all accountability system that they have deemed unacceptable.

Paul Gessing is the President of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation. The Rio Grande Foundation is an independent, non-partisan, tax-exempt research and educational organization dedicated to promoting prosperity for New Mexico based on principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility

A few months ago, before the initial launch of ObamaCare, I noted a preliminary report from the Manhattan Institute that stated New Mexico would face some of the largest rate increases in the nation under the ObamaCare health law.

Now that ObamaCare has launched with all the buoyancy of a lead balloon, we have more details on actual rate increases. According to the latest from Manhattan Institute, New Mexico’s rate hikes will be second-greatest in the nation, second only to Nevada (see chart below). Read an article on the study from Forbes:

Supporters of the law will claim the report is biased against ObamaCare, but the reality is that the reports find that rates under the law will drop in a few states, including Colorado.

HT: Jack McHugh

APS Superintendent has been suspended for three days for his recent bullying tweets. A few things struck me in today’s Albuquerque Journal when it comes to Brooks and education in New Mexico.

For starters, it appears that the sanitation department fires people for offensive behavior has higher personal conduct standards than APS. But the real issue involves the lack of success of New Mexico’s entire education system (of which APS is a big part). That failure is borne out in our scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) which also happened to be covered in today’s paper.

Of particular interest to Rio Grande Foundation and others in terms of NAEP performance is 4th grade reading. After all, the idea is that children are generally learning to read up until 4th grade and after that they are reading to learn in all subjects. These scores formed the basis for our research on the “Florida Model,” parts of which were embraced by Gov. Martinez and have been opposed by APS in the Legislature. Unfortunately, even Gov. Martinez has not (publicly) embraced broad-based school choice in the ways Florida and Arizona have.

As seen in the chart below, two states, Florida and Arizona, both of which have embraced school choice, are seeing improved results on the NAEP. Florida’s reforms have been particularly impressive, but Arizona (a state that is in many ways similar to New Mexico) has achieved positive results in recent years as well through a broad array of choice programs.

New Mexico is among the poorest states in the nation depending on your measuring stick. It is also the least economically-free state in the nation according to the Canada-based Fraser Institute. Coincidence? I think not.

The latest international rankings of economic freedom are in from the Heritage Foundation and Fraser Institute recently published their international rankings of economic freedom and the results are not good. Shockingly-enough, the US population has grown increasingly-frustrated with slow economic growth and economic conditions on the whole.

We are down to 17th-most free in the Fraser study and yet the media remain almost completely oblivious to the issue and the potential connections. Neither political party really “gets” it or is willing to talk about it because the decline began during the Administration of George W. Bush when Republicans also controlled Congress. Needless to say, Democrats and their admirers in the media don’t want to focus on the accelerating decline in economic freedom under the Obama Administration either.

Check out the chart below from Heritage Foundation which actually paints a rosier picture of economic freedom in the US than does that Fraser Institute report:

Joe Montes, the head of Americans for Prosperity in New Mexico, had an excellent article on the need for Congress to allow wind tax credits to expire. We totally agree. The Rio Grande Foundation joined more than 100 other organizations around the country in expressing opposition to the ongoing subsidies. If you agree, you can contact Congress here.

Supporters of subsidies for wind will of course counter that fossil fuels are subsidized as well. And we agree that ALL such subsidies should be eliminated. However, when you actually look at which means of generating electricity receive the greatest taxpayer support, check out the following chart:

To say the least, wind is disproportionately subsidized relative to most other electricity sources. And, while Congress is the immediate focal point on this particular wind subsidy, New Mexico’s Renewable Portfolio Standard is another costly mandate. This recent study shows that such regulations result in higher electricity costs…one would think that such policies which directly harm the poor would be a concern for folks on the left, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.

Bullying in schools has become a national cause celebre. But what about bullying by school superintendents? The recent tweets in which he personally attacked both Gov. Martinez and Sec. Skandera and called them names are apparently only the most recent instance of his bad behavior.

According to the blog Diogenes’ Six, Brooks was a bully back in his days in Kansas as well.

I can’t imagine the head of New Mexico’s largest school district essentially calling the Secretary of Education who makes $258,560 a cow and getting away with it without serious repurcussions, can you?

Join the Rio Grande Foundation at this Albuquerque early evening event on November 19th featuring nationally sydicated columnist and Fox News contributor, Deroy Murdock

The supposedly unsinkable S.S. ObamaCare launched on October 1st to tremendous pomp and circumstance. A month later, it already has begun to slide into the sea, as the increasingly nervous passengers head for the lifeboats. What happens next? Will anyone survive this disaster?

Deroy Murdock has written extensively on ObamaCare and the concept of government medicine. He strongly believes that average citizens and voters should work to repeal this destructive law.

Murdock will discuss this burgeoning controversy at an upcoming Rio Grande Foundation event.

• When:  Tuesday, November 19, 2013 from 6:00PM to 7:30PM
• Where:  UNM School of Law, 1117 Stanford Dr. NE, Room 2401, Albuquerque, NM  87106
• What:  Light snacks and non-alcoholic beverages will be available
• Cost:  $10 payable in advance online here or at the door

New York political commenter Deroy Murdock is a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a Senior Fellow with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, a supporter of about 460 free-market think tanks in 90 countries world-wide. Mr. Murdock’s column — “This Opinion Just In …” — reaches approximately 400 newspapers across America each week, including the New York Post, the Washington Times, the Boston Herald, and the San Francisco Examiner. He is a Fox News Contributor and has been a frequent guest on CNBC, CNN, C-Span, MSNBC, and other TV and radio outlets.

As a popular public speaker, he has lectured or debated at the Cato Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations; Harvard Medical School, the Heritage Foundation; the National Academy of Sciences; Dartmouth, Stanford, and Tulane universities; and various fora, from Bogotá to Buenos Aires to Budapest. He is a native of Los Angeles, a graduate of Georgetown University, and a resident of Manhattan, where he earned an MBA from New York University. His program included a semester of study at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Deroy Murdock hopes that someday the free society will bring him — and every American — more leisure time to experience fine dining, motion pictures, skiing, live music, and the priceless joys of friends and loved ones.

While the Rio Grande Foundation is best known for its work on economic policy issues, we have done a fair amount of work on criminal justice reform. I testified in Santa Fe before an interim committee dealing with criminal justice issues. Criminal justice reform is an important issue for New Mexico’s economy for a number of reasons. Obviously, it is very costly and directly impacts both the victims and the people who get sucked into the system. Then, there is the issue that New Mexico is the 4th-most dangerous state in the country according to a recent report. That’s not going to attract many businesses to our fair state.

The good news is that the Legislature will be tackling a variety of criminal justice-related reforms. The Santa Fe New Mexican had an interesting story about the effort which also included some information on Right on Crime and my involvement along with that of Rio Grande Foundation co-founder Hal Stratton.

According to this story, the ObamaCare website healthcare.gov cost an astonishing $292 million of your tax dollars. As if that were not enough, according to this article, 15 states that have set up their own exchange websites cost a total of $1 billion. This recent media report states that New Mexico’s exchange site will cost a staggering $30 million.

To say the least, there have been numerous, well-reported bugs in the ObamaCare law, but I’m not here to rehash those. What I’d like to know is why taxpayers should be on the hook for a website at all. For starters, there are private websites at which you can purchase health insurance. Cost to taxpayers: zero. Another analyst at Forbes argues that the absurd cost of these websites and their technical glitches is necessary to hide the true cost of the coverage provided under the law.

With anything in life, simpler is better. With government, that is even more important. How are average citizens supposed to keep tabs and hold accountable a government that is so large and complicated that no one could understand it. Health care doesn’t have to be this difficult. It is about a patient and their doctors. Perhaps ObamaCare’s flop will discredit the idea that someone else should pay for my health care? One can hope.

(Albuquerque) Reports of a higher education bubble have become commonplace in recent years. And, while recent data indicate that the trend is slowing, there is a growing belief that higher education in the United States is in need of a new, more cost-effective model.

In a new policy brief which is available here, Rio Grande Foundation Senior Fellow and higher education expert Pat Leonard outlines a new, “lean model” for higher education. Notes Leonard, “Not only has the price of higher education increased rapidly in recent years, but the quality of that education has declined as well.”

The solution, argues Leonard, is to create new, four year streamlined institutions, similar in many ways to K-12 charter schools, which would compete on the basis of value-added and rigorous cost control. Traditional budget formulation in higher education tends to view the bulk of institutional costs as fixed. The Lean College’s budget formulation will regard few if any as fixed. It will provide quality baccalaureate instruction at a minimum cost.

The idea of the “Lean College” is to cut out some of the unnecessary frills like fancy buildings, professors forced to split their time between teaching and research, and the need for expensive sports teams and facilities.

The concept is meant to re-focus higher education on its core and restore the high-quality, low-cost option to American higher education.

Reading Winthrop Quigley’s column today in the Albuquerque Journal about the conflicting best and worst states in terms of taxation is a less-than-enlightening exercise. The article notes New Mexico’s relatively good performance on a Kiplinger’s report on taxes and compares it with our performance on a separate report by Tax Foundation.

For starters, focusing on taxes alone is somewhat misguided if you are trying to understand economic growth. Overall economic freedom which includes regulations and overall property rights is a far better measure of a state’s likely economic prowess.

Secondly, as Richard Anklam notes, methodology and priorities are important. I can’t really figure out what Kiplinger’s is measuring and Quigley fails to mention that the Tax Foundation report measures business taxation, not overall taxes. According to the Federation of Tax Administrators report on tax burdens as a percent of income, New Mexico is 14th.

Lastly, what you tax matters. If you want more of something, tax it less, if you want less of something, tax it more. New Mexico needs more people working and building private sector businesses, and fewer receiving government benefits. As Art Laffer and Stephen Moore pointed out in a Rio Grande Foundation report, states that refrain from taxing personal income experience much faster growth than those that heavily tax work.

Need more evidence? Just look at the economic growth taking place in Texas!