I wrote a few weeks back about the notable decline in US carbon emissions in recent years. The mainstream media picked up on it and gave a few details in a recent story which stated that US carbon emissions are at 20 year lows.

Great news, right? Huzzah for the environment and the positive impact such emissions reductions will have on global warming. Yeah, right. As Rob Nikolewski points out over at  Capitol Report New Mexico, enviros are not exactly dancing in the streets. Rather, they are instead attacking the “fracking” process which has freed up so much cheap, clean, natural gas, thus reducing carbon emissions and frustrating their efforts to mislead Americans into believing that hare-brained, government schemes are the only possible way to achieve a cleaner environment (assuming that we are to believe carbon dioxide is a pollutant). Oh, and if you believe that the recent, hot summer is the result of global warming as many enviros do, it would appear that US efforts to turn the tide may not have the significance many would desire.

There is no pleasing some people.

If you aren’t already aware, the Rio Grande Foundation has a weekly radio show on AM 1550 KIVA. This week’s show which airs Sunday afternoon from 3-4pm is available online now due to the time-sensitive nature of an upcoming opportunity for New Mexicans to demand this new option.

Before sharing more about that option, check out this incredible story from USA Today of a 14 year-old girl from Florida who attends an online school so she can manage her burgeoning small business. It’s just one of many ways in which online schooling can be tailored to the needs of students with diverse interests. So, if you want similar options for New Mexico kids….

A public hearing on New Mexico Connections Academy is scheduled on Monday, August 20th!

Come show your support for school choice and for New Mexico Connections Academy by attending the Community Input Hearing on Monday, August 20th at 2 p.m. The hearing will be held at Mabry Hall, Public Education Department, 300 Don Gaspar, Santa Fe. This is your opportunity to share your story about why your family and New Mexico need this high-quality full time virtual educational option. We really need you to come out and show your support for this proposed school! Please plan to attend.

New Mexico Connections Academy will be:

• tuition-free, public school;
• grades K-12;
• available for students throughout New Mexico;
• providing instruction from New Mexico-certified teachers experienced in online instruction;
• providing instruction from New Mexico-certified teachers experienced in online instruction;

If you can’t make it to the hearing, please write to the Commissioners of the Public Education Commission. We need interested families to attend the hearing and also write a short note to the Public Education Commission asking them to approve our application. A “yes” vote on our application is a “yes” vote for your children and other children across our great state!

Public input should be sent electronically by clicking here and written input should be sent to Public Education Commission, c/o Beverly Friedman at 300 Don Gaspar Ave., Santa Fe, NM. The deadline to receive your comments is 5:00PM. on August 23rd.

Please email infoNM@connectionseducation.com if you have any questions or comments about our charter application, the public hearing, or the Founding Board.

A final decision on our charter school application is expected no later than September 30, 2012.

I guess if I were Barbara Couture and I got my paychecks from the higher education establishment, I’d be willing to say anything to keep the money flowing, but the reality of higher education is far different than she portrayed it to be in her recent column.

For starters, yes, people with a college degree do indeed tend to earn more, but there are a number of things to consider:

College tends to attract the most intelligent and ambitious. They are going to tend to rise to the top regardless of a college degree;
Four/five years of foregone earning combined with thousands of dollars spent and potentially-untold piles of debt;
A few extremely-high earners like Bill Gates skew the earnings picture;
There are wide differences in earning power between various degrees of study. Engineers are going to make more than arts majors (by and large).

By all means, go to college if it is right for you, but ambitious and intelligent people can make a good living no matter what as John Stossel recently found:

Of course, the President of NMSU cares even more about keeping the spigot of public money flowing to higher education than she does about the success or failure of individual students. As the chart below illustrates, the price of a college education had been rising for decades, long before the recent economic downturn:

What Couture and the higher education establishment refuse to admit is that the easy money in the form of federally-subsidized student loans and capital projects paid for by the states have inflated the higher ed bubble and increased the cost of college. Reducing the amount of taxpayer dollars flowing into higher ed would reduce costs in the long-term as universities were forced to respond to market reality, not “free” money. Unfortunately, Obama and his crew seem hell-bent on blowing more air into the higher ed bubble.

Politicians rarely talk about economic freedom, but one New Mexico elected official who “gets it” is Rep. Dennis Kintigh of Roswell. His opinion piece from today’s Albuquerque Journal explains some of the ways in which New Mexico falls short and explains how tax and regulatory policies have negatively impacted our economy.

The article is worth the read, but it is imperative that New Mexico elects more public officials at all levels that understand the importance of economic freedom and the steps we need to take to achieve it and greater wealth.

(Albuquerque) In response to efforts underway to raise the minimum wage in Albuquerque from $7.50 to $8.50 and indexing it to inflation, the Rio Grande Foundation has released a new report detailing the negative impacts of minimum wage hikes. The report, “Raising Albuquerque’s Minimum Wage: A Misguided Anti-Poverty Measure at Best, A Cruel Impediment to Work at Worst,” is available on the Rio Grande Foundation’s website.

Among the items to be found in the report is the fact that any increase in the minimum wage would be poorly-targeted in terms of reaching those who is supposed to benefit from the bump in wages.

• “According to data from the Census Bureau, approximately half of all minimum wage workers are in what might be called their “prime working years (26-65).” Said Gessing, author of the report, “As one would expect, about half of New Mexicans working at the minimum wage are either just getting started in the workforce or are working “odd-jobs” that allow them to make some extra money as the move towards full retirement”;

• Also, only approximately 20 percent of those currently earning the minimum wage in New Mexico are the breadwinner in their families and supporting children. More than 50 percent either live with their families, a spouse, or have some other family support structure in place to pay a majority of the bills;

• The average family income of families with a minimum-wage earner exceeds $55,000 and the median exceeds $43,000 annually. Clearly, the archetypical single mom supporting kids on a minimum wage salary is not the norm.

• Advocates assume no negative externalities of their preferred policies, but New Mexico’s teen unemployment rate is currently 22.6 percent – up dramatically from 13.2 percent in 2002 (prior to the last Congressionally-mandated bump in the minimum wage and the recent economic downturn). Increasing Albuquerque’s minimum wage could push even more young people out of the work force entirely.

Concluded Gessing, “Even if we assume nothing but benefits will accrue to those at the bottom rung of the employment ladder, an increase in the minimum wage is a poorly-targeted anti-poverty policy. After accounting for the fact that some otherwise employed individuals will lose their jobs as a result, a hike in the minimum wage becomes an impediment to the skills, discipline, and self-esteem associated with holding down a first job.”

As readers of this space know, we’ve covered Gov. Johnson’s campaign for president relatively closely here and here for starters. So, it was with great interest that I read this article about a dispute between “Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, aka: the next Ron Paul” and our own former Gov. The issue is none other than New Mexico’s film subsidy program which Johnson inaugurated and Richardson expanded.

I have to agree with Rep. Amash on this one. The worst thing about Johnson’s statements on the film subsidy program he started is his fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between “tax breaks” and outright “government subsidies.” As I’ve said before in this space, there is a big economic and moral difference between government deciding not to collect taxes on a particular, favored activity (often morally acceptable, sometimes economically logical) and taxing one group of taxpayers to then turn around and hand money to another group (neither morally acceptable, nor economically logical).

The latter is what New Mexico’s film subsidy program does and Gary should know better.

The Sierra Club is the latest environmental group attacking PNM for having the temerity to produce reliable, inexpensive, electricity. Their ad which appeared on my sports page in the ABQ Journal yesterday (August 12) claims “PNM’s Coal-Burning Power Plant Gives us More than Just Energy” and shows a kid with an inhaler. It also claims: “more than 1 in 5 New Mexico middle school students has suffered from asthma.”

Unfortunately, their claims just don’t hold up under scrutiny. They are more of a feeble attempt to spread fear. As this report and map from the Centers for Disease Control shows, the real percentage of children with asthma is less than 10 percent in New Mexico.

Now, compare that map with this one which shows the states that produce most of America’s coal-fired electricity.

Not exactly a “cause and effect” if I may say so. Texas, for example, is a serious coal state, but it has lower childhood asthma rates than we do. And, not surprisingly, New Mexico is not that big of a coal burning state. Oklahoma, like us, is not a big coal-burner, but has high asthma rates. Correlation between coal and asthma on a statewide basis is tough to come by, much less causation. Scientists don’t even know what causes asthma and what, if any role is played by air pollution (some in the linked article say more air pollution may REDUCE asthma rates).

Is coal without its problems? No, no energy including wind and solar comes without a price. But, environmentalist scare-tactics are not contributing to the debate over energy usage and sources.

I like the pick of Rep. Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney’s vice presidential candidate. Given where Romney comes from ideologically, I think it was the best pick he could make. But the media coverage of Ryan is going to be skewed badly because both Republicans and Democrats share a desire to portray Ryan as some sort of free market purist who believes in “slashing” government. He is nothing of the sort.

As Jesse Walker over at Reason points out, “On the economic front, he has backed the bank and auto bailouts, Medicare Part D, even Davis-Bacon. His reputation as a free-market stalwart rests on his exaggerated reputation as a budget hawk and his habit of praising Ayn Rand.” Of course, on the positive side of the ledger, of course, Ryan is one of the only politicians in Washington who seems to grasp the serious nature of our entitlement problem and is willing to propose specific reforms that address it.

Ryan, unlike myself, is no free market ideologue. Of course, he’s a politician and has to run for office. As a moderate reformer, he has outlined specific plans to return the United States to solvency (eventually). Unfortunately, he’s at the bottom of the ticket, not the top. The real question is whether Romney shares his VP-candidates views on reforming entitlements or whether he’s just throwing a bone to conservatives.

We at the Rio Grande Foundation have long argued for tax and economic incentives that are fair, simple, and available to all comers. As we’ve seen in recent years with the pullout of Schott Solar (incentives cost NM taxpayers $16 million) and the collapse of Eclipse Aviation which cost us $19 million, “investments” of taxpayer dollars in specific companies is a risky business (for taxpayers at least).

Now, we have Hewlett Packard which set up shop in Rio Rancho a few years ago and received $2.2 million in incentives, but is experiencing significant (albeit undisclosed) layoffs. The good news is that unlike the other deals, a majority of the incentives involved foregone government revenues that may or may not have been collected absent HP. Little of the money was in the form of outright expenditures. Of course, if you’re not HP and you’re just a regular resident or business in Rio Rancho, you are paying taxes that HP is not paying for services that benefit HP. That is certainly not fair. Worse, it is proving to be ineffective in actually developing the economy.

A better way to do economic development is to lower barriers to job creation across the board by reducing tax rates or enacting laws like “Right to Work.” Chasing the latest big-name company and offering them the sweetest incentives possible is ultimately a losing game.

Oh, and for those who opposed the Union Pacific deal, the fuel tax cut applies to any railroad.

As the scandal at the New Mexico Finance Authority continues to unfold, we at the Rio Grande Foundation attempted to answer the question “What is the NMFA and what does it do?” Our follow-up question, asked of any government agency is, “Why does the government need to do this or could the private sector handle it better?”

On the first point, NMFA acts as a bank for government agencies in New Mexico and as the article discusses, this is not the first time it has been at the center of a scandal. The primary mission, although by no means the only job of NMFA, tends to center on accessing capital (bond) markets for government agencies throughout New Mexico. The particular beneficiaries of this activity are smaller cities and governments.

Of course, when the NMFA was organized in 1992, the bond market was concentrated in a few major cities like New York. You can now find people willing to buy and sell bonds here in New Mexico and even if you are in New York, through the use of technology, you can likely undertake the groundwork necessary to underwrite government bonds.

The questions I have regarding NMFA are: “Does New Mexico really need the NMFA as currently organized? How much is this entity costing taxpayers? It would seem that the bond markets are pretty efficient these days and, with return rates depressed, there will be plenty of lenders eager to sell bonds to New Mexico’s cities, counties, and other governing entities. Am I wrong? Why not privatize the NMFA?

The chart below shows just how terrible Obama’s record is:

A few more points.

1) Presidents obviously don’t operate in a vaccum (Congress and world events play a role), but the deficit was the lowest under Clinton of any modern president, thus defying critics of spending cuts on the left and right.

2) Presidents don’t create or destroy a single job, but the policies that they and Congress enact have a tremendous impact on the long-term health of the economy.

3) George W. Bush was a terrible president (saved only by Obama’s even more pitiful record) who makes Jimmy Carter look great by comparison. Sorry folks, Carter deregulated the airlines, trucking, and not-to-be forgotten, the craft beer industry. Bush’s tax cuts, while nice at the time (and I support their preservation), have, along with Obama’s subsequent health care and regulatory policies like Dodd/Frank, contributed to greater economic uncertainty as their renewal is debated on a monthly basis. Of course, they don’t make up for his terrible record on spending and regulation.

4) As the years wear on, Bill Clinton looks better and better.

Wednesday, August 22nd 12:00 Noon to 2:00 PM Luncheon

The Albuquerque Marriott Pyramid North

5151 San Francisco Rd. NE  87109

A panel discussion on the new law and how it will affect you, your family and your business. As implementation draws near, what you need to know about compliance with expert analysis from the medical, legal, and faith community.

Confirmed panelists include:

Former U.S. Congressman Bill Redmond

Rio Grande Foundation President Paul Gessing

Rio Grande Foundation Scholar Dr. Deane Waldman

This is a free event and space is limited:

RSVP by August 20th to:

elisa@thelibreinitiative.net

505-717-9868

In the spirit of transparency and open government, the Rio Grande Foundation and its arm, the New Mexico Watchdog, have posted all public employee data that was previously available on New Mexico’s Sunshine Portal including pay for all employees (which is a public record). The site is available here. Jim Scarantino, our New Mexico Watchdog, has a story on the topic and efforts by the unions to undermine the Sunshine Portal here.

The Washington Examiner picked up the story nationally.

(Albuquerque) The Rio Grande Foundation has updated its legislation-tracking tool, a website called: www.NewMexicoVotes.org. The website includes votes and bills introduced dating from 2008 through the 2012 legislative session.

RGF launched the site in order to provide a more transparent window for New Mexicans to follow what happens in state government. The site is free and open to the public.

With plain English bill information for each legislator (as opposed to being in legalese and grouped by bill number in an unalterable pdf format), links that show everyone who has donated to each legislator and the amount of each donation, and a whole host of additional features, those who want to track what happens in Santa Fe will find New Mexico Votes particularly useful.

Paul Gessing, President of the Rio Grande Foundation, said of the public service, “‘Votes’ is part of our organization’s efforts to bring more transparency and accountability to New Mexico state government. While the Legislature has made great strides in recent years, a constituent looking for information on votes by their legislator will have a much easier time with our site than with the Legislature’s site.”

Continued Gessing, “We want everyone to be able to find out, with a few clicks of a mouse, what his or her legislator is doing, to be able to sign on and read plain English descriptions of what each bill does in a way that the average person can understand, and know immediately what our tax money is being spent on, or whether the bill increases or decreases taxation, regulation, or government transparency.”

The Santa Fe Reporter has had some interesting articles recently discussing the topic of government workers who are concerned that their pension investments are being invested in companies with which they disagree politically. The initial article framing the debate can be found here. The father of the editor! of the paper who happens to be a CPA had an insightful posting on the site recently as well in which he explains that pension funds are NOT really used to fund corporate speech and lobbying efforts, but then questions the very real impact of government unions on the political process.

I weighed in with my own letter to the editor on the topic which I have pasted in its entirety below:

Letters to the Editor
The Santa Fe Reporter

I may not agree with the philosophical reasons that government employees may not want their pensions invested in corporations, but I cannot help to sympathize with their plight.

Whether the issue is truly one of “free speech” or not is a question for the courts, but the whole debate points to the outdated model upon which government employee pensions are based. After all, today’s workers, even in government, tend to change jobs more frequently, be more savvy when it comes to retirement planning, and demand more autonomy over how their money is spent and invested than prior generations.

Pensions are a classic “one-size-fits-all” model from a bygone era. In New Mexico, by the way, that model is massively underfunded and could leave today’s young workers – private and public sector alike – holding the bag.

New Mexico could avoid the free speech problem by embracing much-needed reforms that give individual workers the freedom and responsibility to plan for and invest for their retirement in 401k-style plans. States are increasingly looking at this model due to the massive underfunding of traditional pension plans, but these free speech questions and potential legal challenges will only hasten the switch.

Recently, Congressman Steve Pearce had an excellent column outlining the reasons he opposes the “ObamaCare” health care law. Among other outlets, the article appeared in the Albuquerque Journal.

One letter writer attacked the Rio Grande Foundation and claimed that health insurers and pharmaceutical companies are behind attempts to overturn the law. As I wrote in an unpublished letter, this could not be further from the truth:

Letters to the Editor
Albuquerque Journal

In attacking Rep. Pearce for his opposition to “ObamaCare,” one of your readers attacked the Rio Grande Foundation for providing “misinformation” on the issue. In reality, the reader provided misinformation in stating that pharmaceutical and insurance companies opposed President Obama’s health care program. The truth was and remains exactly the opposite.

According to journalist Tim Carney and the Center for Responsive Politics, Obama’s 2008 campaign raised $1.2 million from the pharmaceutical industry during the 2008 election, the most it had ever given to a candidate, and more than triple its contribution to John McCain.

Even after ObamaCare passed, the health care industry continued to give to Obama. According to a 2011 analysis conducted by the Center For Responsive Politics, Obama had raised $1.6 million from the health sector, more than the $920,000 raised by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

There is anything inherently wrong with accepting contributions from these industries, but it reflects the fact that Congressman Pearce, the Rio Grande Foundation, and other opponents of ObamaCare are acting on principle and have not been “bought off” by a health care sector that has actually embraced the taxpayer-financing of their products (drugs and insurance).

While we may disagree with the health insurance and drug industries on their support for the law, the “reforms” will result in a windfall (at least initially) for the industries as Americans are forced to use or given (at taxpayer expense) their products.

It’s free money! That’s the line used by actor Jimmy Fallon in a series of credit card commercials. It is also the line increasingly being used by advocates of Medicaid expansion here in New Mexico and across the nation.

After all, who but a bunch of anti-social, uncaring, right wing conservatives could possibly turn down “free” money?

The answer is that anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of economics knows that there is no such thing as a free lunch or “free” money. Even barring that first-semester ECON 101 lesson, in this case the money doesn’t stay “free” forever. New Mexico taxpayers will be on the hook for hundreds of millions of additional dollars in Medicaid spending if they accept this money. Lastly, since when does Congress keep its promises?

First, some background: The Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) tried to force the states to expand Medicaid to cover most people with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. While the Supreme Court accepted a bulk of the new law, it did throw out the requirement that states expand Medicaid. Nonetheless, the federal government can bribe states with taxpayers’ own money.

Currently, New Mexico’s system provides coverage at somewhat lower income levels. Despite the fact that the federal government pledges to cover New Mexico’s Medicaid expansion at rates starting at 100 percent and shifting to 90 percent, the Heritage Foundation finds that the Medicaid expansion will cost New Mexico taxpayers $306 million from the years 2014-2020.

Medicaid – despite the fact that the federal government already picks up about 80 percent of costs in New Mexico – is already the fastest-growing program in the state’s budget. While the General Fund was $5.7 billion back in FY 2008 and it is now about the same at $5.65 billion, Medicaid spending in the General Fund grew by 30 percent. That means less money for education, roads, or tax reform and/or cuts.

Of course, even the federal pledge to reimburse between 90 and 100 percent of Medicaid expenses is based on the massive assumption that Congress will keep its promise to fund the Medicaid expansion indefinitely into the future. Federal Medicaid spending is growing at unsustainable rates (even before the ObamaCare expansion) and the nation is running trillion-dollar deficits every year.

Of course, these top-down, government health care “solutions” always come in over-budget. According to Reason Magazine, at its start, in 1966, Medicare cost $3 billion. The House Ways and Means Committee estimated that Medicare would cost only about $ 12 billion by 1990 (a figure that included an allowance for inflation). This was a supposedly “conservative” estimate. But in 1990 Medicare actually cost $107 billion. Similar cost explosions will likely plague ObamaCare. Who will pick up these cost-overruns?

All of the added expense and debt might be worth it if Medicaid was proven to improve health outcomes, but it isn’t. For starters, a University of Virginia study of nearly 900,000 major surgical operations found that patients on Medicaid are 13 percent more likely to die than those without insurance of any kind.

While some studies – specifically reports from a unique program in Oregon – do find that Medicaid expansions improved self-reported health, questions remain as to whether this improvement could reflect “an improved overall sense of well-being” rather than “changes in objective physical health.”

New Mexico needs more than a costly Medicaid placebo or an expanded program that actually harms overall health outcomes.

Gov. Martinez should “just say no” to Medicaid expansion. Instead, she should take a close look at a pilot Medicaid reform program from Florida where program enrollees are given incentives to take control over their own health care both in terms of dollars and treatments. Recipients in the state’s pilot programs have seen dramatic improvements in health care outcomes combined with lower program costs.

If the ObamaCare Medicaid expansion were based on sound policy, the federal government would not have to print and borrow trillions of dollars to bribe states to participate.

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.

Jim Scarantino has been doing some great work over at the New Mexico Watchdog site, but his recent report on taxpayers footing the bill for workers to represent their union — rather than doing their actual work — is a must-read. Cities across the state have fallen prey to this practice which highlights a real problem of government employee unions.

Cities (and other governments) should hire and contract with their workers individually because that is what they are. Unions simply create hostility unless their chosen candidate (like Marty Chavez) holds office and goes along with union wishes.

There are two serious issues that I just wish Albuquerque’s City Council would just drop entirely. The first is the “Isaac Benton Preservation Act,” also known officially as R-12-69 which would expand City Council from nine members to 13. This conveniently comes at a time when left-wing Councilor Isaac Benton has been redistricted out of his seat. If there were a compelling case for adding councilors, that should have been made BEFORE the recent redistricting, not afterwards. No compelling case has been made for the additional expense associated with four additional councilors, staffs, potential upgrades to Council chambers, and (presumably) another round of redistricting to create a 13-seat map.

Another issue of “leave well enough alone” comes to us from none other than Councilor O’Malley and involves the reconstruction of the intersection at Rio Grande and Candelaria. The plan has rightfully generated opposition. Although I don’t live in O’Malley’s district, I drive through this intersection multiple times per week.

The simple truth is that this is one of several recent projects that are designed to make Albuquerque less driver-friendly (the Lead/Coal and Central “traffic diet” come to mind as others). We can blame/thank our friends in Washington who, while running trillion-plus dollar deficits, apparently have $1.5 million to throw at a perfectly good intersection here in Albuquerque. This roundabout is a classic example of government waste. City Council should listen to the opposition and stop this wasteful project.

This week, it was reported that a partisan Democratic Party organization, Emerge New Mexico, has been authorized by the Legislative Council to use the Senate chambers in the Roundhouse. What has not been mentioned, but I believe is a critical point, is that they are not being charged for the use of the space.

Certainly, the Roundhouse is a waste of some very nice space for many months of the year and I (and most taxpayers) probably wouldn’t have a problem with allowing groups like Boys State to use it for free or other non-profit organizations to use it for a fee. I just find it hard to believe that taxpayers of this state are being asked to subsidize the activities of a partisan organization by letting them use public facilities free of charge.

It is not too late. Hopefully policy makers will ask Emerge to pay a fair rate for the use of taxpayer facilities.

Larry Reed of the Foundation for Economic Education, one of the nicest people I know and one of the most consistent advocates for liberty in America, has some hard-hitting thoughts for politicians on the Chick Fil A issue.

He rightly takes politicians to task for their bullying tactics. Notably, the use and abuse of government force is always and everywhere the problem, not individuals or businesses. I have zero problem with people protesting (although the kiss-in may prove problematic due to property rights issues); I have zero problem with people turning out in droves to support the company or staying away if that is their wont.

The problem, of course, arises when politicians use bullying rhetoric to play to their political bases. Even the nation’s number one nanny, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg gets this. So, protest or eat mor chikin or whatever you choose, but if you’re a politician, forget about the threats and belligerence.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry every time I drive my gas-burning car past the billboards from New Energy Economy (NEE) which say “Coal Hurts.” Of course, the billboards are blatantly misleading as the smoke stacks pictured might as well be from China or the 1890s United States given the amount of black smoke billowing from them (the EPA would never stand for that these days).

But, what really makes me think about them these days are the 600 million Indians sitting in the dark due to their inadequate electricity infrastructure. Now, I’m not going to mislead you and blame the Indian situation on the environmentalists, but I will note that the preferred energy sources of enviro groups (wind and solar) like NEE are less reliable than coal and environmentalists consistently attempt to gain a “free ride” for their preferred energy sources when it comes to infrastructure.

So, does coal hurt? Yes, there are no “free lunches” in this world. But for generations, human beings all over the world have chosen coal and other steady, reliable, and cost-effective energy sources over their supposedly “green” counterparts. I guess a small and rapidly-declining amount of pollution beats sitting in the dark.

Mayor Berry is a great guy and I love his vision for Albuquerque, but I think the Railyards redevelopment may be an overreach. Unfortunately, Mayor Marty already put us (taxpayers) on the hook for $8.5 million. Mayor Berry is looking for ways to use the property, but problems abound and it would seem that taxpayers might have higher priorities than what could be a costly redevelopment with an unclear vision in mind.

I discussed some of the issues with KRQE Channel 13 on last night’s 10pm newscast.

Mayor wants $800k for Railyards

The Rio Grande Foundation and Drug Policy Alliance recently hosted a briefing for candidates on criminal justice issues including civil asset forfeiture. Marc Levin of the Texas Public Policy Foundation and Right on Crime made the following remarks:

7-31-12 Marc Levin on Criminal Justice from Paul Gessing on Vimeo.