Great, New Mexico taxpayers are now on the hook for another $21 million for the spaceport. The money is supposedly needed to build two visitor centers for the facility. This is on top of the $209 million the taxpayers put up to pay for the project in the first place.

RGF has been a long-time opponent of taxpayer support for the Spaceport, but we did support efforts to create liability protections for the Spaceport during the 2012 and then 2013 sessions (the protections were adopted in the 2013 session).

While we stand by both views on their merits and I still hope the taxpayers are able to see some benefit from this facility, I wonder: absent the liability protections, would Virgin Galactic just have picked up and left us alone? Would we have to fork over another $21 million (not to mention maintenance on the entire project and other potential projects like the extended runway).

In other words, should we have just helped the trial lawyers kill the project entirely when we had the chance? Comments welcome.

We have to admit that between Aragon’s comments in the article “There is no absolute assurance that taxpayers won’t at some future point be obligated to these facilities that are being financed” and the fact that the Spaceport Authority had to go to the Board of Finance, that we assumed that taxpayers could legitimately be on the hook for all or part of the $21 million. Then I received a call from Aaron Prescott with the Spaceport Authority which puts my mind at ease to a large extent:

This $20.8M loan is entirely privately sourced, with no burden on the taxpayer. It has been sought as a way to bring private money into the project for the first time, and to take advantage of historically low interest rates. We are answering Gov. Martinez’s call for private investment and public private partnership.

NMSA’s underlying statute, the Spaceport Development Act (NMSA 1978 §58-31-1 et seq.), permits NMSA to seek private loans on the condition that 1) it cannot pledge the full faith and credit of New Mexico or create a general obligation of the state, and 2) the financing package receives approval by the State Board of Finance. Our banks are fully aware of the lack of a taxpayer backstop (it will be in the loan documents), and the Board signaled its approval yesterday.

Today’s ABQ Journal coverage of the loan had an accurate quote from SBOF member Robert Aragon, but it was in the context that just because it is state law that the taxpayers won’t be obligated by our loan, doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen.

His comments notwithstanding, NMSA fully intends to obey its own enabling legislation. The only collateral in this loan is the project being financed, i.e. buildings and land.

How much do New Mexico’s Democratic House members LOVE the unpopular law known as ObamaCare? So much that they have voted to impose the individual mandate as planned even while the Obama Administration has delayed implementation of the employer mandate for one year. In other words, you the average person should not receive the same benefit as big businesses with more than 50 employees who simply can’t be expected to comply with the health care mandate.

Needless to say, this is not a position supported by large numbers of Americans. In fact, the position advocated by Lujan and Lujan-Grisham has a “robust” 12 percent support according to new polling.

Interesting that New Mexico’s Congressional Democrats —self-appointed advocates for the little-guy — are so willing to throw the average person under the bus while supporting big business, no? It would be nice if these two — along with the rest of our delegation — supported a year-long delay in the law our outright repeal of this law which is no longer even popular with the union base of the Democratic Party which supported passage of the law in the first place.

I’ve written and blogged about the ongoing discussion of federal lands management in New Mexico and what we might do about the situation.

Then I came across an interesting news story about the federal government’s inability to manage trails in national forests. The story is based on a June 2013 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that found:

The Forest Service has more miles of trail than it has been able to maintain, resulting in a persistent maintenance backlog with a range of negative effects. In fiscal year 2012, the agency reported that it accomplished at least some maintenance on about 37 percent of its 158,000 trail miles and that about one quarter of its trail miles met the agency’s standards. The Forest Service estimated the value of its trail maintenance backlog to be $314 million in fiscal year 2012, with an additional $210 million for annual maintenance, capital improvement, and operations. Trails not maintained to quality standards have a range of negative effects, such as inhibiting trail use and harming natural resources, and deferring maintenance can add to maintenance costs.

Any chance the government as currently organized will solve the problem? I doubt it. In my search for the June 2013 report I ran across this 1989 report from GAO on the very same topic. Said the GAO at the time:

(1) the Forest Service had a trail maintenance and reconstruction backlog of about $195 million, involving about 59,000 miles of trails; (2) 11 of the 121 forest units accounted for $91 million of the backlog costs; (3) funding fluctuations over the past decade resulted in a lack of Forest Service personnel and a declining pool of contractors and volunteers to keep the trails in good condition; (4) about 5,000 miles of trails were unusable because of deferred maintenance; (5) although the Forest Service annually reported the number of miles of trails maintained and constructed during the year, it neither routinely gathered data on maintenance and reconstruction needs or costs nor categorized needs by trail condition severity;

With the trail maintenance backlog growing (this is merely one indicator of the lack of management capacity), it would seem that Washington is institutionally incapable of maintaining its lands. Perhaps it is time to try a new approach?

It is great to see the opposition continue to build against ObamaCare. For an update on the latest health care-related news, come to this event on Saturday, July 27, at which I’ll be speaking along with RGF board member Dr. Deane Waldman. So much news, most of it bad for the law, continues to come out. The new letter from some of America’s largest private sector labor unions.

While the entire letter is worth a read, the following paragraphs encapsulate some of the major issues the unions (and millions of Americans) have with ObamaCare:

First, the law creates an incentive for employers to keep employees’ work hours below 30 hours a week. Numerous employers have begun to cut workers’ hours to avoid this obligation, and many of them are doing so openly. The impact is two-fold: fewer hours means less pay while also losing our current health benefits.

Second, millions of Americans are covered by non-profit health insurance plans like the ones in which most of our members participate. These non-profit plans are governed jointly by unions and companies under the Taft-Hartley Act. Our health plans have been built over decades by working men and women. Under the ACA as interpreted by the Administration, our employees will treated differently and not be eligible for subsidies afforded other citizens. As such, many employees will be relegated to second-class status and shut out of the help the law offers to for-profit insurance plans.

And finally, even though non-profit plans like ours won’t receive the same subsidies as for-profit plans, they’ll be taxed to pay for those subsidies. Taken together, these restrictions will make non-profit plans like ours unsustainable, and will undermine the health-care market of viable alternatives to the big health insurance companies.

The letter concludes, “We continue to stand behind real health care reform, but the law as it stands will hurt millions of Americans including the members of our respective unions.”

There are a few points worth noting here:

1) Unions can’t be this gullible. They should have seen this coming and their desire to “play ball” with Obama on health care is directly harming millions of union members;

2) You won’t see government employee unions like AFSCME among the opponents of ObamaCare because they benefit directly from bigger government. Private sector unions have to balance their desire for a robust market economy with the desire to obtain maximum benefits for their workers. It’s why FDR opposed government labor unions;

3) Opponents of ObamaCare must not only work to overturn this highly-vulnerable law, but to work to promote market-based health care reforms.

WatchdogWire.com, a project of the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity, mentors citizen journalists to hold their local and state officials accountable by reporting on public meetings, reports, etc.– the issues that the legacy media fails to cover.

They’re holding a writing contest through the end of July that asks citizens to judge the media.  Winner gets a cash prize of $300. There are 2 writing options:

Question 1: How has media changed since you were a child? Have the changes been for the better or worse?

Question 2: In the wake of recent scandals and national security violations, have the traditional media properly served our nation? How have they failed us, how have they served us, and what have you come to expect?

Check out the rest of the details here and please pass it on to anyone who you think might be interested!

Another opponent of New Mexico’s reasserting control over federally-managed land within its borders has spoken up, this time in the Las Cruces Sun-News. I previously responded to the charge that New Mexico couldn’t financially handle such commitments here, but this author makes another claim that I expect would be common among environmentalists and others who fear such a move: that the states will sell off their newly-acquired federal lands.

Aside from the fact that governments at all levels LOVE to acquire land and property, this might sound like a reasonable fear. One must also account for the large numbers of interest groups — including enviros and sportsmen — who would also completely freak out if any of their desired lands were sold off to private interests.

The reality is that sportsmen are steadily losing access to federal lands as bureaucrats and environmentalists work together to impose limits on their activities. States like New Mexico know that hunting and fishing pay a lot of money for those permits and will be more responsive to their concerns than will Washington.

We were blessed this week to have the heads of the state think tanks from Oklahoma and Michigan in town this week to discuss the concept of “Competitive Federalism” and Right to Work.

No Right to Work event is complete without protesters and a few union supporters were out to express their opposition to worker freedom. Check out the photos here, here, and here.

Michael Carnuccio of the Oklahoma Council for Public Affairs had the following thoughts about his visit to New Mexico as expressed in his weekly column.

And lastly, we have video of Carnuccio’s presentation on “Competitive Federalism:”

How Competitive Federalism Can Spur New Mexico’s Economy from Paul Gessing on Vimeo.

And, here is the panel discussion that took place with Lehman, Carnuccio, and Gessing explaining the issues surrounding Right to Work in the respective states.

7-11-13 Right to Work Panel from Paul Gessing on Vimeo.

The House, with only Republican support (including New Mexico Rep. Pearce), passed a terrible farm bill of which Heritage Foundation had this to say:

Virtually every pro-free market organization opposed this legislation which is both a policy and a political debacle including the R Street Project and Competitive Enterprise Institute.

In my opinion, agriculture subsidies are among the most economically-harmful dollars spent by the federal government because they are the “low-hanging-fruit” of deficit reduction. Now, we have Republicans giving Obama a golden chance to look like a fiscal conservative by opposing this legislation. Farmers in New Mexico and around the nation need to be taken off welfare just as the food stamp program needs to be dramatically reformed to root out significant fraud and waste.

Land ownership means power and if there is one thing that we know, government officials love to accumulate power. Let us count the ways:

Syndicated writer Paul Jacob notes in this article that legislation has been introduced in Congress HR 2617 to create a National Park at the site of the Apollo landing site. Never mind that the United States doesn’t own the moon or that it is uninhabited (and possibly uninhabitable), Washington needs to control a portion of the moon.

Of course, Washington owns plenty of land here at home. Here is a map showing the exact holdings and this map shows the percentage by state. President Obama recently increased federal control over lands in New Mexico with the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument designation while some advocates for increased federal land ownership intensity wish to completely surround Las Cruces with yet another national monument.

Lastly, there is Bernalillo County which already owns dozens of properties throughout the County and is the largest single property owner in downtown Albuquerque (including a building that houses a Verizon call center!). Now, the County has engaged in initial discussions to purchase the massive Alvarado Square building (formerly occupied by PNM).

The same rule should apply from the federal government on down: any new property acquisition must be offset by sale of land/property of similar value. Whether the issue is simple mismanagement or the fact that government lands are not taxed and therefore get taken off the tax rolls (thus burdening the rest of us with higher taxes), governments at all levels own more than enough land/property.

<p align="center"
Join the Rio Grande Foundation in
Celebrating "Milton Friedman Day"

The late economist Milton Friedman was one of history's greatest opponents of occupational licensure. In his writings and repeatedly in interviews, Friedman made the case for worker freedom and against the cartelization of various professions.

No other organization in American has done more to preserve and advance Friedman's vision of a free market in human labor than has the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm. The organization published a detailed report on licensing laws in the 50 states "License to Work" which details licensing laws in the various states. According to the 2012 report, New Mexico has the 12th most burdensome licensing laws and is the 9th most extensively and onerously licensed state.

Unnecessary licensing laws place obstacles in front of entrepreneurs, thus making their lives more difficult, but also reducing voluntary economic activity and making us all poorer.

As part of global celebrations of Dr. Friedman's legacy and in celebration of his birthday on July 31, the Rio Grande Foundation is hosting a luncheon with Tim Keller, Executive Director of the Arizona Chapter of the Institute for Justice.

The luncheon will be held from noon to 1:00PM on Wednesday, July 31 at the Marriott Pyramid at Paseo del Norte and I-25. Cost is $25 if you register by Wednesday, July 24. Cost is $35 if you register after the 24th.

Click here to register online or send us a check with a note including the names of attendees at: PO Box 40336, Albuquerque, NM 87196. If you have questions, call us at 505-264-6090.

Tim successfully defended Mesa brake shop owner Randy Bailey, when the City sought to take his property through eminent domain so it could hand the property over to the owner of an Ace hardware store.

Among Tim's victories was his work on behalf of Christian Alf, a teenager from Tempe, Ariz., who sought to help senior citizens rat-proof their home by bending wire mesh around any openings. Until Tim stepped in on Alf's behalf, an Arizona state agency had demanded the young entrepreneur secure an exterminator's license.

Tim's legal strategy, like that of the Institute for Justice, is to fight for people's liberties not only in the court of law, but also through legislation and the media.

According to recent news reports, taxpayers continue to pour money into Ladera Golf Course. Full disclosure, I am a golfer and as a West Side resident, have played Ladera many times.

However, it is hard to argue that golf is a core function of government and that millions of dollars should be paid by taxpayers for something that can and is provided by private sector providers. Even Detroit has taken the step of privatizing the management of its golf courses to positive effect and it is just one of many cities to have done so.

So, let’s have an experiment. Leave the other golf courses alone, but let a private company come in and do what it can to salvage the situation at Ladera. Give them control over hiring and firing and pricing, but tell them “no more tax dollars” and see what happens. It can’t get any worse than it is now and it might just result in a turnaround. Nothing will happen if we don’t do something different.

The fallout continues from the recent “Kids Count” report. A couple of liberals penned an article discussing a “paradigm shift” needed for New Mexico children. I couldn’t agree more, but disagree on the shift being towards even bigger government.

We’re dead last. That’s the sorry news according to the latest “Kids Count” report. The gist of the report is that in terms of health care, education, economic conditions, and family unit cohesiveness, New Mexico children are worse off than kids in other states.

The report was co-released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and New Mexico Voices for children. While Voices and Rio Grande Foundation would generally be considered the opposite ends of the political spectrum, the report itself was data-driven and informational.

While the news is not good, it is refreshing to see the political left decrying New Mexico’s serious economic and educational problems. After all, within the last year, we at the Rio Grande Foundation have pointed out that New Mexico is 50th in economic freedom, was named the number one “death spiral” state by Forbes for its poor maker/taker ratio, has the lowest graduation rate in the nation according to the Diplomas Count report, and was named by United Van Lines as the only state west of the Mississippi to be a “top-outbound” state in 2012.

New Mexicans can be forgiven for losing hope that things can improve. But, for the sake of our children and grandchildren things MUST get better, even while our leaders must wean our state from our historical dependency on Washington largesse.

The negative results boil down to a poor economy and a poor educational system. There are other issues including family cohesiveness and health, but if you improve the economy and educational outcomes, you go a long way to improving everything else.

Fortunately, economic and education policies are the central focus of Rio Grande Foundation’s work and we have several policy ideas that must considered if New Mexico is to get out of 50th place.

1) Adoption of a Right to Work law: Such an initiative costs taxpayers nothing and can have positive economic results. Such laws are not “anti-union,” rather it simply ensures that workers can choose whether or not to join a union and they cannot be coerced into joining as a condition of employment.

In addition to respecting individual rights of association, such laws have spurred economic growth where they have been adopted. Oklahoma, which adopted such a law in 2001, has seen a dramatic improvement in its economy in recent years;

2) Elimination of Personal Income Tax: There is an old saying in tax policy, “If you want more of something, tax it less, if you want less of something, tax it more.” Turning around New Mexico’s economy requires going beyond “job creation” to focusing on “wealth creation.”

Creating wealth means incentivizing business formation and entrepreneurship. New Mexico needs more of its people in the work force. In part this means creating jobs for them, but these jobs must create real wealth and should not necessitate business-specific tax breaks or outright subsidies designed to cover for the fact that New Mexico’s labor, tax, and work force are less competitive than necessary.

According to Arthur Laffer, “in any 10-year period since 1960, the no-income tax states consistently outperform the equivalent number of the highest income tax states.”

3) “Rampant” School Choice: While the aforementioned items directly impact poverty in our state, choice-driven education reform is the most direct means of improving the lives of young people in New Mexico.

School choice empowers parents and students to choose the educational option that best serves them and not bureaucrats or “the system.” In just one example of their success, African-American kids in New York were 24% more likely to attend college if they won a scholarship to attend private school.

In states where aggressive school choice programs have been adopted, graduation rates have soared. According to the Diplomas Count report, between 1999 and 2010, Florida and Arizona saw their graduation rates rise from 52.5% and 48.2% to 72.9% and 67.2% respectively. New Mexico, in the meantime, saw its graduation rate go from 58.1% to 59.4%, an insignificant increase by comparison.

The latest in a string of negative news for New Mexico families must be a wake-up call for its political leaders that the time for half-measures has passed. Tough decisions and dramatic reforms are needed to improve our economy, reduce poverty, and ensure that our children and grandchildren have the opportunity to succeed here in New Mexico.

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

Recently, I wrote an article that appeared in several papers statewide on the need for New Mexico to re-assert control over land within its boundaries that is controlled by Washington (not tribal, national park, or military, but much of the rest). Not surprisingly, given the dramatic nature of the problem and the paradigm shift that such a process would entail, that article drew a response.

In essence, the author notes the large number of wild fires taking place in New Mexico and elsewhere and claims that our state could not afford to fight such fires absent assistance from the federal government. I believe that this article misses the point entirely and is quite simply not a good reason for New Mexico not to reassert control over its own land. Here are some reasons:

1) The author assumes that existing land practices would continue much as they have in the past. That is not the case. For a variety of reasons, the federal government has badly mismanaged many of these lands. Absent thinning and a variety of other management to reduce the likelihood of raging fires, we have seen the intensity of those fires increase dramatically. See this article for details.

2) States can increase revenues from activities on federal lands. The federal government does not have the same incentive to maximize revenue on its lands while also preserving those lands. It is quite likely that states could generate a great deal more revenue to more than offset the additional cost of managing these lands. As the following chart shows, in recent years, oil and gas production has declined on federal lands while it has increased dramatically on privately-held lands in the US.

3) While the federal government does fight Western wildfires, it is by no means the only entity to do so and Washington has been cutting funding for such efforts while states are exploring ways to cooperate and share resources. Washington gets money from the same place as the various states do (taxpayers) and it makes sense for regional and local leaders to step up to the plate as Washington steps back. At the same time, shouldn’t we get more say in how our lands are used?

While residents of the west are hoping for more water in the form of rain, the arguments outlined in this article won’t hold any water.

There is a disturbing trend that I’ve noticed in recent years. That is, government officials choosing which laws they will enforce. Just yesterday, the Obama Administration decided not to enforce the employer mandate part of ObamaCare for at least a year until 2015. This may be a good or a bad policy in and of itself, but ObamaCare is one law. How can you take a law that is still on the books and just not enforce it? As Michael Cannon over at Cato Institute notes, if you delay one part of the law, you really have to delay the whole thing.

The issue has arisen recently in the debate over gay marriage as well. Back in 2011, the Obama Administration made the decision not to enforce DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act) which passed Congress with large bi-partisan majorities and was signed by then-President Clinton.

And then there is the recent Supreme Court decision which essentially allows Jerry Brown, California’s Governor to pick and choose which laws relating to gay marriage he wishes to enforce.

Ultimately, this is not about health care or even gay marriage, but whether the law is the law and whether government officials must obey and uphold the law as written (like the rest of us) or whether they can pick and choose when and whom it is enforced upon. Dangerous precedents indeed, particularly in light of the IRS abuses of conservative organizations that have recently come to light.

With the IRS in charge of enforcing so much of the new health law and Obama now able to pick and choose which portions to enforce and upon whom, it is only a matter of time before his political opponents are targeted, no?

With another debt ceiling debate around the corner, we at RGF have made the point time and again that Washington spends way too much money. That said, in any discussion of tax reform or sensible tax policy, there are several tax breaks and deductions that need to be reduced or eliminated in their entirety. Preferably, this would be done in a revenue-neutral way, but if real spending reductions or entitlement reforms are on the table, the following tax breaks should be the first to go:

1) Tax exempt bonds for local governments: This tax exemption reduces annual federal revenues by $37 billion and simply subsidizes over-investment in infrastructure projects by local governments (including stadiums and arenas). Regardless of revenue generation or lack thereof, local governments should pay full-freight for debt. They’d be less likely to take on such debt which would be another benefit.

2) Home ownership tax deduction: This policy distorts the housing market and encourages homeowners to take on debt for homes they cannot afford. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the effective tax rate on owner-occupied housing is negative, while the effective tax rate on rental housing is around 18 percent. Interestingly, by tying people to a specific geographical area, home ownership may increase unemployment.

3) Employer health insurance deduction: While ObamaCare will take effect soon, we likely would never have had it shoved down our throats were it not for the misguided tax policy that encourages employers — rather than individuals — to purchase their own health care/insurance. While Republicans talk a lot about “defunding” ObamaCare — something that appears to be unlikely if not impossible — the reality is that a individuals could be given the same tax benefits as their employers (through a system of large HSAs) and we’d likely see dramatic improvement in US health care and the demise of ObamaCare.

While Social Security is indeed set up as a forced Ponzi Scheme that is reliant on finding an ever-growing pool of “investors” in order to be “sustainable,” the major problem with Social Security is the poor rate of return that it provides for recipients. The following video is one of the best I’ve seen explaining why Social Security is a poor investment and what can be done to improve it (hint, fiddling with chained CPI is not the answer):

We at the Rio Grande Foundation have a lot in common with the Foundation for Open Government and have often worked arm-in-arm with the organization in order to improve government openness and transparency. Combined, our greatest achievement would undoubtedly be the Sunshine Portal (of course, kudos go to Sen. Sander Rue, former Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones and all of the other legislative champions of transparency over the years).

However, that was then and this is now. A few years ago Sarah Welsh left the Foundation. We maintained a working relationship with Gwyneth Doland who is undoubtedly liberal, but is also a credible journalist with a long track record as such in the state.

However, Doland recently left FOG and, to say the least, the organization didn’t exactly move to the right with the hire of ardent left-wing activist Terry Schleder. Look here, here, and at his Twitter feed here for details. His most recent activity, a re-tweet: “”We have a retirement crisis and I cannot afford even a penny of my future benefits cut.” pic.twitter.com/r8zFxFqP1C”

Now, Schleder has every right to be liberal and FOG has every right to hire someone from the far-left. One only wonders how the liberals would react if the organization hired me or someone who used to work for RGF. I can’t imagine it’d be pretty. The situation reminds me of Jonah Goldberg’s point that liberals succeed in part by convincing the public and the media that they are non-ideological and that anyone who presents a contrary view (conservatives and libertarians) is inherently “ideological.”

Will FOG take up the pitchforks against conservatives? I hope not, but “you are who you hire” and this hiring decision leaves me with the uneasy feeling that FOG is going to get real political real soon.

Recently, over at Capitol Report New Mexico, Rob noted that education spending in New Mexico is 25th among the states while our results are near (or at) the bottom.

But what about the United States as a whole? Check out the following slide which is directly from the Organization for Economic Coordination and Development (OECD)

The United States spends more per-pupil than any other nation in the world, but our results….not so great:

We know that choice and competition work in all other areas of the economy, particularly the innovative high-tech sector where Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, and others compete fiercely. Why can’t that process be allowed work in education as well?

Check out this fascinating website called How Money Walks. It illustrates how wealth migrates around the nation. Believe it or not, according to data from the IRS that were analyzed and uploaded to this website, New Mexico has actually seen a relative influx of wealth from other states. According to the data, New Mexico:

Gained Wealth From:
$950.09 million California
$267.88 million New York
$141.86 million Illinois
$126.68 million Michigan
$115.30 million New Jersey

Lost Wealth To:
$534.12 million Texas
$459.64 million Arizona
$357.79 million Colorado
$98.12 million Oregon
$87.50 million Nevada

So, what does this all mean? For starters, all of the states that lost wealth to New Mexico are “forced-unionism” states (not Right to Work) while 3 of the 5 states to which New Mexico lost wealth are Right to Work while two of them do not tax personal incomes (all of the states from which NM gained wealth had charge personal income tax).

Regardless, the site is robust with a lot of great information.

Anyone who has followed this blog closely has probably read about the fact that New Mexico is the least economically-free state in the USA according to the Fraser Institute — a free market think tank based in Canada.

This week, to great acclaim and media coverage, we saw the release of the Kids Count report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Voices for Children. This report also found New Mexico to be 50th.

To be fair, while the “Kids Count” is mostly a reflection of poverty, we don’t necessarily agree with all of the report’s findings which were based on inputs that can be found here. After all, “children not attending preschool” seems to pale in comparison as a measuring stick when compared to poverty or failure to graduate when one considers that kids in Sweden — a nation that performs well on international tests and measures — don’t head off to school until age 6. Of course that nation also has rampant school choice via vouchers.

Also, while the head of a household not having a high school diploma is not a positive indicator, it pales in importance to whether that parent is engaged in productive work as opposed to sitting at home waiting for government handouts.

We often hear about parental responsibility when it comes to educational success and the overall health of children. But how about personal responsibility when it comes to our broken health care system?

I found this recent article on obesity and health fascinating. Obviously, there are many factors that lead people to be thinner or fatter as a group, but as the author points out, we ultimately have the ability to lose weight or not. Calling obesity a “disease” is thus more of a political designation than a descriptive term relating to health.

And then I saw this article which explained that what American health care lacks is some entity that says “no” when it comes to health care spending. The author makes a compelling case that government really won’t do a better job than the current US system, but that so much health care consumption has no relationship to life expectancy that the US wastes more money than other nations.

Of course, as we have repeatedly argued here and here (for example) that market forces and personal choice will solve the problem of “no” while also achieving high-quality care when it actually matters.

This article appeared in the Albuquerque Journal on 6/24/13 and in several other papers state-wide.

Washington can’t seem to manage much of anything these days. Even before the myriad scandals started to take their toll on the Obama Administration, the government’s inability to manage money and resources was clear to even the most passive observer.

Notable among recent policy failures has been Washington’s inability to find even the smallest reductions in a $3.8 trillion budget – a budget which more than doubled in size in just over 10 years. This failure led directly to the hated “sequester” which, while not actually cutting year-over-year spending, did slow Washington’s growth somewhat.

By and large, Americans have gone on with their lives giving little thought to the over-hyped sequester. However, in an effort to inflict some pain on state governments, the Obama Administration saw fit to cancel royalty payments to the various Western states earlier this year. Royalties are the fees paid by companies that engage in certain activities on publicly-owned land. A vast majority of this money in New Mexico and around the West is derived from the various extractive industries.

For New Mexico, the loss amounts to $26 million this year. $109 million in total was cut from the budgets of the several Western states (New Mexico had the second-largest cut to Wyoming). Sen. Tom Udall and a bi-partisan group of Western senators recently penned a letter to the Obama Administration urging that such cuts not be made again next year.

While I appreciate efforts to stop future cuts by our delegation, this is not a discussion that should even be taking place. These lands are part of the respective states. They are supposed to be managed by the federal government on behalf of the states, but the funds are rightfully ours. Unfortunately, Washington doesn’t play by the rules.

If Washington did obey its own rules, many of these lands – excluding National Parks and Tribal lands – would have been transferred to the various Western states decades ago. After all, this was the pattern set up at the founding of our nation. Dating back to 1780, the Continental Congress designed a process by which the national government would “dispose of” lands under its control for the benefit of the nation. That process held true for two centuries, but was not allowed to work when it came to Western states like New Mexico which remains more than 40 percent federally-owned.

Whether federal or state government owns land may appear trivial at first blush, but we already have seen that federal budgetary mismanagement has resulted in the withholding of funds meant to support the activities of New Mexico government. And, of course we have well-documented problems with federal management of lands, including the lack of willingness to extract dead and dying trees, thus creating a “tinderbox” in New Mexico’s mountainous regions that have regularly caught fire in recent years.

Lastly, there is the basic reality that government’s functions are best managed locally. Washington instead enforces “one-size-fits-all” management policies that don’t work well for anyone.

The individual states, unlike Washington, have both the incentive and the local knowledge to manage local lands. They can often do so more effectively, without jumping through the hoops of Washington’s bureaucracy. The “rights of way” used by utilities on federal lands are but one recent example. The fact that these areas are too narrow and allowed falling power lines to start several of the fires burning in New Mexico has generated consternation from our Congressional delegation, but any federal action to expand or alter these “rights of way” is likely years away.

The good news is that New Mexico policymakers have seen the problem and are in the midst of working on solutions. HB 292, the Transfer of Public Lands Bill, was introduced on a bi-partisan basis by Reps. Yvette Herrell and Richard Martinez during the 2013 legislative session. Although it failed to pass, it began the discussion about who is best able to manage New Mexico’s public lands. Utah and four other states have already passed similar legislation.

Western states must act to put pressure on Washington to do the right thing by recognizing that local control of resources is not only sensible, but follows historical precedent. Local control was our birthright. It is time for Washington to restore local control of New Mexico’s lands.

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

First and foremost, I want to thank the folks at New Mexico Voices for Children and Veronica Garcia in particular for inviting me to their inaugural “Kids Count” rollout. I went because, while RGF and Voices don’t agree on much, it seemed like an interesting opportunity to learn about some new data and share views with those who may not agree with us.

There was a lot of useful data, albeit much of it depressing, as New Mexico is ranked 50th in the report. If you want some other unsettling information, check out my recent presentation on “How do we rate?”

So, the news is not good, we get it. But what does it all mean? Here are 4 points that encapsulate my take on the event and the poverty/educational system in New Mexico:

1) Poverty is the root cause of most of New Mexico’s problems. Liberals and conservatives certainly disagree on how to solve poverty. In fact, I recently debated Nick Estes (formerly of NM Voices) on inequality (which ultimately was about poverty). It goes without saying that the RGF perspective is that limited government, free trade, and the rule of law (not government programs) create prosperity. Left-liberals support more government spending on social welfare programs and increased regulations like higher minimum wages.

2) It is good to see the folks at NM Voices and the Annie E. Casey Foundation (which is behind the Kids Count report) discussing the importance of reading by 3rd grade. We have been talking about 3rd grade reading for four years (see presentation here and paper here.) We agree that learning to read by 3rd grade is important (as do Gov. Martinez and Education Secretary Skandera) and would love to see Voices step up to support accountability and choice measures that have been shown to improve 3rd grade reading scores in other states like Florida.

3) The keynote speaker at the event (from Annie E. Casey) repeatedly spoke of “a politics-free-zone” for education” and that this was somehow a goal that New Mexicans and people in other states should get behind. This sounds like a great talking point, but as long as the government is demanding tax money and then spending 12 or more years indoctrinating my child (whether for better or worse) in a program administered by no less than three government bodies (the federal government, the state, and the school board), how exactly is this supposed to be “politics-free?”

If you want politics-free education, leave the money with the parents and let THEM pick the school that is best for them and their child and let charities handle educating those whose families can’t afford it.

4) It is interesting when so-called “progressives” complain about the status quo in New Mexico as if they had no part in making our state 50th. After all, outside of the office of governor (which has flipped back and forth in recent years), New Mexico has been controlled from top to bottom by politicians of the liberal/progressive mindset. As I’ve written about before, the Legislature has been controlled by one party for nearly all of New Mexico’s existence with the exception of just a few years. The Courts and legal system have been under the control of the same people. And yet we are 50th in so many things that these very same liberal/progressives claim to want to change!!!

In conclusion, it is good to have these discussions. I don’t have to agree with the folks at Voices to have a discussion and learn something new. Now, if we can only get them to attend a few RGF events!

ADDENDUM: Leave it up to the hyper-political far-lefties at ProgressNow New Mexico to attempt to divert attention from the failure of New Mexico’s “progressive” public policies with a press release blaming Gov. Martinez and her vetoes for the fall to 50th. The same report put NM at 48th back in 2008. Perhaps the problem is the “progressive” left-wing Legislature?