I remember a time when liberals liked the First Amendment to the US Constitution (the ACLU, for one, still does). You know, the one that reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

That was before the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. So, a bunch of left wingers who don’t like speech they disagree with have been busy trying to undermine the decision by passing resolutions in opposition of the law (like the one that was pushed through the Legislature this year). Albuquerque City Councilor Rey Garduño is the latest culprit with this resolution which will be discussed at City Council tonight. Sorry Rey. Free speech is free speech whether you like it or not. That’s the point.

An interesting article caught my attention in the “careers” section of the Sunday paper. The article discussed something called a “portable skills certificate.” Basically, it is a private certification that you have a particular set of skills.

Why is this important? For starters, in an age when a high school and even a college diploma means little in terms of specific skills, it is a private sector attempt to actually quantify what skills a potential employee has. Even better, this is an end-round of the traditional, failing, government education system and it shows a potential path forward for increased reliance on meaningful certification developed in the private sector not just for basic manufacturing skills, but for basic skills like reading and math.

I’m sure that the people behind this certification process do not want to be seen as “competing” with the traditional school systems, but I can only imagine how much more cost-effective and responsive to the needs of both individuals and the marketplace itself, the private sector could make the educational/skills acquisition process.

Jonah Goldberg will be joining many friends and supporters of the Rio Grande Foundation for lunch on Wednesday (more info here). He has a great column over at National Review Online, where he writes a regular column, on the left’s broad-based support for any conservative that is no longer in office.

The simple fact that Mitt Romney seemingly is the GOP’s nominee for President (with his many apostasies from conservative thought) would seem to illustrate that the Republican Party is not more conservative than it was in the past, but that fact seems to be ignored by too many pundits.

By State law, payroll information is considered public information. We at the Rio Grande Foundation have been working under this law to provide to the public payroll information for New Mexico’s largest cities, all counties, the largest school districts, and universities.

Unfortunately, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) doesn’t seem to like transparency and is suing Gov. Martinez for placing the payroll for state workers on the Sunshine Portal. The good news? For starters, this action makes AFSCME look out of touch. The better news? Regardless of the outcome of this lawsuit, payroll records for all state employees will remain online because I have sent the following request for public records to the State Personnel Office and the Rio Grande Foundation will be posting the records on our website as soon as we get them.

This is a formal request under the New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act. I wish to obtain electronic copies of the employee name, department, title, rate, and annual salary of all employees of the State of New Mexico for 2012. I request this information to be sent in an electronic format, preferably a pdf or excel spreadsheet to me at info@riograndefoundation.org.

If the file is too large to be emailed, I can provide a USB drive for copying electronic records. Please notify me when the records are available for inspection. I can be reached by phone at (505) 264-6090. Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.

The debate over the merits of unions is often muddled and confused by advocates and detractors alike. The recent article from someone named Tim Taylor that appeared in the Albuquerque Journal is only the most recent case. The article which defends unions has several problems

The author makes the unfortunate mistake of not differentiating between government and private sector unions. Generally, conservatives have no problem with the existence of private sector unions, but there are problems with the mere existence of public sector unions which represent government workers. As long as unions and the companies union members work for must compete in a private sector, the worst that can happen is that the union strangles the host company and makes them uncompetitive (as happened with the domestic auto industry). But, in a free market, consumers can choose to patronize or not patronize union companies. UPS which is heavily unionized, competes against FEDEX as just one example.

The problem, of course, with government unions is that they don’t compete in a free market. Money used to pay them is forcibly taken in the form of taxes and consumers cannot easily choose a competitor. Also, government labor unions are able to organize and contribute to electing their bosses and then sit across a bargaining table from them. Even FDR opposed them.

The author also asks “what is the one democratic institution in the workplace?” I’m not even sure what this means. Yes, unions vote on lots of stuff, but they also take a portion of workers’ paychecks and in New Mexico this is done automatically. In Wisconsin, when Gov. Scott Walker gave public employees the choice of whether or not to pay union dues — as opposed to having them automatically pulled from their paychecks — the number of dues-paying union members shrank rapidly. The state’s second-largest union, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, had membership fall to 28,745 in February from 62,818 in March 2011, the Journal said Thursday. The organization’s Afscme Council 24, composed of state workers, fell more than two thirds to 7,100 from 22,300 last year.

So, it would seem that government workers who are given a clear choice on whether to join the union or not, often decide not to join the union. That’s one reason I’m skeptical of “democracy.” Votes are cheap. In New Mexico they can be bought and sold for liquor. What I support is people who are willing to invest or remove their money from a specific company or union based on the value they believe they are getting from it (after all, we spend time working for money). In the case of Wisconsin, apparently workers aren’t buying what their union is selling.

Scary, that’s how I’d describe the fact that the author of this misguided and racially-charged piece once headed up the health care reform offices of Gov. Martinez. Clearly, the Administration either didn’t vet Derksen or they don’t understand just how central the issue of health care reform is to human freedom.

Here is my critique of the article:

1) Bringing up George Wallace and racism simply doesn’t fly. Denial of equal rights under the law is far different from not being given “free” health care at taxpayers’ expense. There is not a doctor in this country that I have ever heard of refusing to see minorities. Conflating these issues does nothing to move the debate forward.

2) The author states that “It’s estimated that someone dies each day in New Mexico for lack of health insurance.” This is simply wrong and illustrates an obvious misunderstanding of the appropriate role of insurance. No one in the history of the planet has died from a lack of insurance. People do die for lack of quality and affordable health care, but that has nothing to do with insurance per se.

In fact, insurance is a major problem in American health care, not a solution. We need to restore the fiduciary relationship between doctors and their patients, not provide even more incentives for Americans to expect their employers and insurers to pay more for our routine care and checkups.

Of course, if anyone DOES die for lack of care in this country, it should not be for lack of emergency care as hospitals cannot refuse to treat those who cannot pay for emergency care.

3) Derksen is all for expanding Medicaid as will be done if ObamaCare is upheld, but questions about as to whether Medicaid actually improves health care outcomes or expands access to health care.

Obviously, health care is a complicated issue. Most of this complexity is the result of government meddling. ObamaCare and its 2,700 pages, certainly does nothing to reduce this complexity. Hopefully, the departure of Derksen from the Martinez Administration means that she will fight for real health care reform, not more government control.

Today the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced that it is withdrawing its proposal to add the Sand Dune Lizard to the list of species protected under the Endangered Species Act. The lizard, which is native to Southeastern New Mexico, has generated a great deal of controversy and concern that listing would negatively impact both New Mexico’s oil and gas industry and the state economy. The Rio Grande Foundation is pleased with this decision. Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar praised the efforts of the oil and gas industry in working to preserve the lizard’s habitat through Candidate Conservation Agreements, saying they were “nothing short of historic.”

The good news is that New Mexico gets a reprieve on the lizard. The bad news is that the Endangered Species Act remains open to abuse by environmental groups.

More information from our friends at Energy Makes America Great can be found here.

(Albuquerque) Deane Waldman, MD, MBA, is a practicing pediatric cardiologist, adjunct fellow with the Rio Grande Foundation, and author of three books as well as hundreds of articles on health care and health care reform. In a new report, he makes a compelling case that even in nations where health care is presumed to be a right; it really isn’t – not in the world that we all live in. His full paper is available here.

Americans eagerly await word from the US Supreme Court as to whether or not the power of the federal government can be used to force Americans to purchase health insurance. Their decision on whether the health care law (ACA) passed by Congress and signed by President Obama is constitutional – will impact the future of American health care.

In his paper, Waldman examines the fundamental question that everyone is intentionally ignoring. That is the question of whether Americans (or anyone) has a right to health care. For example, as Waldman points out, “Great Britain,” where health care is supposedly a right, “denies kidney dialysis or heart surgery over certain ages.”

Waldman shows that the government “in universal health care nations…is the balancer (rationer) of health care goods and services. The right to health care constitutes what the government says it is,” not what your doctor says you need. Thus, nowhere is health care truly a right.

There cannot be a true right to health care in the traditional sense of rights, like that of free speech, free press, and all our other rights in the Bill of Rights that constrain the government. A right to health care enslaves one person – a provider – in the service of another individual – a patient. That is simply un-American. The focus of health care reform must be on economic policy decisions such as who can allocate resources more efficiently and effectively: central, government planning or individuals operating in a free market.

Rio Grande Foundation President Paul Gessing said of Waldman’s report, “Once the charged moral-sounding issue of rights is removed from the debate over health care reform, the issue becomes a more honest discussion over conflicting economic policies in the health care sector. In this regard, Waldman’s paper performs a valuable service.”

More information on Waldman’s books – “Uproot U.S. Healthcare,” “Cambio Radical al Sistema de Salud de los Estados Unidos,” and “Not Right!” – is available at www.uproothealthcare.com.

Indiana now has a Right to Work law. Wisconsin has completely renegotiated how the government interacts with organized labor (in a more taxpayer-friendly direction). But, the folks in the “City Different” continue to live up to their name with the nation’s-highest mandated minimum wage and now a “Project Labor Agreement.”

The law is entitled “community workforce agreement,” but it does the same things as the more controversial and well-known PLA’s. The law mandates contracting with construction unions in order to work on Santa Fe city construction projects that cost more than $500,000.

A community workforce agreement is a special interest scheme that discourages competition from nonunion contractors and their workers by requiring a construction project to be awarded only to contractors and subcontractors that agree to recognize unions as the representatives of their employees on that job; use the union hall to obtain workers; obey the union’s restrictive apprenticeship and work rules; and contribute to union pension plans and other funds in which their nonunion employees will never benefit unless they join a union.

Obviously, the good folks who have controlled Santa Fe government in recent years are not concerned about economic development and freedom. Unfortunately, while David Coss was rejected in his bid for the Legislature, he remains the Mayor of Santa Fe. These policies have been adopted under his watch and with his support albeit not by him alone.

Higher education has been a hot topic both nationally and in New Mexico recently. Congress has been haggling over the interest rates charged on federal student loans while economists question the economic impact of deeply-indebted college graduates. Here in New Mexico, UNM faculty complains that their salaries are not competitive with other, similar schools.

Unfortunately, decisions are being made and policy reforms are being discussed based on inadequate information. Sometimes, this lack of information appears to result from a strategic plan to make it more difficult for the public and policymakers to make sound decisions.

Recently, the University of New Mexico released payroll data for the school online. We applaud this measure but note that just this April, when the Rio Grande Foundation requested the same information from UNM, we received a letter stating that the University “did not have this information in electronic format” and summarily declined our request. Most other institutes of higher ed were more responsive, but not all.

NMSU, ENMU, Highlands, WNMU, NMMI, CNM, and San Juan College all received top marks because, as proscribed by law, they had a clearly-noted point of contact on their websites for information requests and they complied within the allotted time.

Unfortunately, other schools did not have clear contacts made available and for some we were completely unable to track down points of contact and thus, received no information. Obviously, this is unacceptable.

Sadly, posting payroll data online is just an indicator of bigger issues within higher education in New Mexico. Information is essential in allocating scarce resources. This is the power of the free market. We obviously don’t have that in higher education, so we need to ask other questions to better understand the goals of higher education in the state, such as:

Should students in a 300-person lecture pay the same rate per credit hour as someone in a 10 person lab? What about offering some of those large lectures in an online environment (especially given our campus bloat)? Should policymakers allocate greater resources to “in-demand” STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) that generate high salaries and form the basis for New Mexico’s economy?

A report from National Information Center for Higher Education Policymaking notes that New Mexico students pay the 2nd lowest combined tuition and fees of any state in the nation while taxpayers in our state bear the 2nd-highest burden for higher education expenses as a percentage of personal income of any state in the nation. Is it wise for taxpayers to pick up a disproportionate percentage of the costs of higher education when the benefits largely accrue to those who actually receive the educations?

New Mexico has 65 higher education campuses spread over 16 schools. Do we really need that many or should relatively more money be allocated to attracting and retaining the most effective teachers?

Finally, can individual schools (like the UNM law school, for example) be given greater budgetary autonomy and incentives to innovate by operating as independent institutions, free of taxpayer subsidies, as opposed to one component of a university?

The fact is that higher education needs to evolve and become more efficient and more transparent. The question is whether policymakers will be forced to blindly cut in the next budget crisis or whether the leadership both of the individual schools and in Santa Fe will act now to provide needed information and make changes now.

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.

Like fiscal conservatives throughout the nation, we at the Rio Grande Foundation were heartened by Scott Walker’s big win in Wisconsin this week. People on all sides of the issue are attempting to parse the results of the election and what they mean going forward.

One of the most interesting aspects of the election is that despite Walker’s big win, a variety of polls found Obama outpolling Romney in the race for President. The accuracy of these polls has been called into question, but I believe that Obama is leading Romney right now in Wisconsin.

This is good news/bad news for conservatives and advocates of limited government. Obviously, Walker received some measure of support from Obama supporters, thus showing that not ALL Obama supporters are knee-jerk advocates for bigger government and big labor. That’s good. The flip side is that conservatives are stuck with a Republican candidate who has shown no signs of being willing to make the tough choices that Walker has. This could hurt him among conservatives and independents on Election Day.

So, it would seem that nearly all conservatives and many independents are concerned about the fiscal future of their country and their state governments. If Mitt Romney can seize the mantle of reform a la Scott Walker convincingly, he has a great chance to win. If he fails to differentiate himself from Obama on government reform, Americans will likely choose to “stay the course” in November.

With all of the election-related news here in New Mexico and nationwide, you may have missed Gary Johnson’s appearance on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. In that case, video of his interview is below:

The Rio Grande Foundation works on a variety of public policy issues, but no single issue is more important than that of out-of-control spending. That is why we have joined the newly-formed “Coalition to Reduce Spending,” a nationwide coalition that believes that the “country’s escalating national debt is the challenge of our generation.”

To show that spending is not a partisan issue, I recently responded in an unprinted opinion piece to an article written by Allen Weh in which he argued against any cuts to military spending. Of course, Weh is by no means alone in opposing cuts to preferred government programs. I also take the Democrats running for Congress in New Mexico to task for misleading Americans on the need (or lack thereof) to reform so-called “entitlement” spending.

I respect Allen Weh’s service to his country and our state, but I have to take issue with his recent article in which he argues that the US military cannot withstand more cuts. Let me preface this article by stating clearly that, while a strong national defense is the most basic and proper role of government, too many in Washington (of both parties) have been unwilling to take a critical look at what is necessary and what is not when it comes to the military.

First, there is the issue of “cuts.” Back in 2000, the US military spent $300 billion. Today, that number is close to $700 billion. That is not a cut by any definition of the term.

Weh notes that military spending now comprises “only” 4.7 percent of gross domestic product. That may not sound like much, but in what other area of the federal budget do conservatives justify spending based on a portion of the overall economy?

We need a military that is strong enough relative to those of other nations to provide an effective deterrent. Military spending as a percentage of the economy is irrelevant. More importantly, the US spends nearly 5 times annually what China spends and nearly 10 times what Russia spends (the second and third biggest military spenders globally). Factor in our allies, Britain, France, and Japan (fourth-sixth) and the US and its allies are clearly the world’s military superpowers.

Interestingly, America’s military establishment is catching on to the fact that budgetary issues as opposed to military threats from abroad are the greatest threats to American prosperity. In April, Richard Haas, president of the Council on Foreign Relations stated that it was “crushing debt burdens and poor domestic policy planning. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff argued much the same thing as well.

Why would these military men make such a big deal out of America’s deteriorating fiscal situation? Quite simply, they understand that American military might has always relied on its economic might.

This year, the federal government is overspending by $1.3 trillion. Out of a $3.8 trillion budget, that is a shortfall of 36 percent each year. Set aside the fact that much of this money is borrowed from China (a prospective military rival) and note that the annual deficit is nearly double the size of the annual military budget!

Obviously, the budget deficit is not going to be resolved through military cuts alone, nor should it be. However, conservatives lose all credibility on budgetary issues if they take military spending off the table at the outset.

Of course, Weh is by no means the only politico living in a budgetary dreamland. Martin Heinrich and Eric Griego are just two of the most prominent New Mexico politicians advertising that Medicare or Social Security are “off limits” to any cuts or reforms. These people are even more unrealistic than Weh due to the nature of these programs.

Notably, defense, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, add up to approximately 65 percent of the federal budget, but the real problem is that so-called “entitlement” spending – primarily Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security – is set to explode in the years ahead, consuming all federal tax revenues by 2045.

Heinrich and Griego (as well as other candidates using this tactic) are doing themselves and their nation a grave disservice with ad campaigns claiming that these programs are sustainable absent major changes. Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has started the “adult conversation” on the budget in Washington with a plan that would reform Medicare and Medicaid. Unfortunately, too many in Washington would rather portray Ryan as “throwing grandma off a cliff” rather than engage in a serious debate.

The unsustainable federal budget should not be an ideological issue; rather it is a mathematical issue. The only way to put America on a sustainable budgetary path is to put all spending on the table, not to open the discussion by making our preferred programs sacred cows.

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 Rio Grande Foundation is pleased that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has defeated efforts to recall him. This is a major win for taxpayers nationwide and here in New Mexico. Wisconsin policies are now in line with the views of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who opposed public sector collective bargaining. The state has taken a significant step towards closing the gap between generous public benefits packages which are decided in the political sphere and private sector workers whose salaries are determined by market forces.

New Mexico, by mandating collective bargaining, remains to the left of FDR on collective bargaining and now faces a more economically-competitive Wisconsin.

How can anything be both earth-shattering – monumental – and unimportant – irrelevant? The Supreme Court of the United States will shortly announce its decision about the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act of 2010.

That decision will have profound policy implications regarding the reach and scope of federal government and at the same time have little impact on our daily lives in terms of health care.

The time to consider this paradox is before the decision is announced. Afterward, all anyone will talk about or even think about is political and financial effects, winners and losers. Any thoughts about how the ACA will affect you, me and our health care needs will be ignored in the scorekeeping, especially effects on the general election in November.

While we can do so, let’s consider how the ACA will impact Mr. and Mrs. Everyperson and family.

Suppose the court strikes down the individual mandate that forces people to buy insurance and penalizes them if they do not. This takes away a large revenue stream from Washington. Otherwise, it changes nothing.

Will striking down the individual mandate change the availability of health care service? Since the number of insured people will not change from what it is now, the answer is no. Since ACA cuts in Medicare reimbursements are unaffected (unless they go up), there will be the same shortage of providers able to care for Medicare patients.

Will striking down the individual mandate change the expansion of the bureaucracy? Will it stop the creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board and five other whole new federal agencies? No.

Will striking down the individual mandate stop the development of accountable care organizations, which are “accountable” to everyone except the patients? No.

Will striking down the individual mandate halt the creation of health exchanges, which impose further federal control of health care on the states and suppress competition? No.

Will striking down the individual mandate expand the number of jobs? Yes and no. It will massively increase the number of administrative, legislative and regulatory oversight positions, but not one new doctor or nurse. Quite the contrary, as the Medicare reimbursement cuts take effect. The job expansion will do nothing to improve access to health care. It will in fact reduce care as money is taken from care providers and given to managers and overseers.

ACA does of course spend money, huge sums of it. Estimates range between $1 trillion and $2.7 trillion.

What do We the Patients get for all those expenditures? Answer: no more, or better, or safer, or quicker health care. Just more regulations and more bureaucrats.

If your teenager goes to the store and spends cash, she cannot spend more than is in her wallet. If she uses your credit card, the sky’s the limit. The same is true for the federal government. The loss of the revenue from a struck-down individual mandate will not slow down the general spending spree because it can do one thing that you and I and the 50 states cannot: print money. So whether the Supreme Court upholds or strikes down, nothing of substance will change except the size of the bill we are passing on to our children.

We need to realize that the justices, whatever they decide, will not save us from the harmful effects of the ACA. Only repeal can do that. And of course repeal alone still leaves us with a critically ill, dying in fact, health care system. Stopping the bad medicine – ACA – only reduces the rate of decline for health care. We need to start practicing good medicine on health care, something we have never done before.

Keep all this in mind when the hysterical reactions to the Supreme Court decision – whatever it is – take over the airways. Everyone will be talking about politicians, justices and bureaucrats. No one will be paying any real attention to We the Patients.

Dr. Deane Waldman is a professor at the University of New Mexico as well as the author of “Uproot U.S. Healthcare” and “Not Right!”

Recently, the lefty’s over at “ProgressNow” made a big deal over Matt Ladner’s receipt of the “lifetime achievement Bunkum Award” from the official-sounding “National Education Policy Center (NEPC).”

If you haven’t been following New Mexico education policy over the last few years, you’ll know that Ladner, working with the Rio Grande Foundation, brought the “Florida Model” for education reform to New Mexico.

What they fail to point out in giving Ladner this “award” is, as Ladner points out in this biting response posting, that the NEPC is funded by teachers unions which have a vested interest in opposing any and all serious education reforms that don’t involve funneling more money into the education bureaucracy.

And, lest you think that only conservatives are awarded with such prestige as the Bunkum Award, liberal groups with whom Progress New Mexico would normally align themselves, including the Progressive Policy Institute and the Center for American Progress, earned NEPC Bunkum Awards this year from NEPC.

No word from Progress New Mexico as to what they’d do to bring our state’s graduation rate up from the very bottom among US states. More of the same?

(Albuquerque) The Rio Grande Foundation, in its ongoing effort to flex New Mexico’s transparency laws, has attempted to obtain the payrolls of each of the state’s 16 institutes of higher education.

Under New Mexico state law, information kept in an electronic format must be made available to the public in that format if it is requested as such. Also, a specific point of contact must be made available to handle Inspection of Public Records (IPRA) Requests. Whether information was provided in the format requested, within the appropriate time frame, and whether or not a point of contact was on the website, formed the basis for our A-F ranking.

As Rio Grande Foundation President Paul Gessing noted, “Higher education transparency is in the news these days with the University of New Mexico recently having made waves by becoming the first institute to place all payroll information on a publicly-available website. We at the Rio Grande Foundation applaud UNM’s leadership and encourage other institutes of higher learning to follow UNM’s path.”

“Unfortunately, responsiveness and ability for average citizens to obtain supposedly public information varies widely from school to school, making it difficult or impossible for average citizens to obtain even basic information.”

The full report is available here. The grades for individual institutes are listed below (and in the paper itself) and include live hyperlinks to the payroll data for each school.

University of New Mexico: A+

New Mexico State University: A

Eastern New Mexico University: A

New Mexico Highlands: A

Western New Mexico University: A

New Mexico Military Institute: A

San Juan College: A-

Central New Mexico Community College: B+

Clovis Community College: B

New Mexico Junior College: B

Santa Fe Community College: C+

New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology: C

Northern New Mexico College: F

Mesalands Community College: F

Doña Ana Community College: F

Luna Community College: F

For years, the left has claimed that conservatives and others who do not view global climate change as a “crisis” are simply “anti-science.” The reality, according to a new study, “High science literacy actually boosts the likelihood that certain people will challenge what constitutes credible climate science.”

If you ARE someone who takes science seriously, this finding should not be surprising (although it was apparently surprising to the folks doing the study). After all, anyone who is more knowledgeable about a given topic is likely to be more willing to buck the dominant paradigm and have their own views on various issues. The ignorant, on the other hand, are likely to fall in line with whatever the media and/or the so-called “experts” say.

Given that the media and government so often work hand-in-hand to promote the belief that more government is always and everywhere the answer to all of our problems, the role of organizations like the Rio Grande Foundation is to encourage skepticism of these institutions through education.

HT: Ted Berthelote

The Santa Fe Reporter has an interesting article this week in which they discuss the controversy over construction of a “Higher Education Center” at Santa Fe Community College. I am quoted relating this issue to our recent study on the proliferation of higher education branch campuses around the state.

Whether this new facility winds up being built or not, the point is that New Mexico needs a systematic method of determining what facilities are constructed and where. We also need policies in place to emphasize excellence, not just a “one size fits all” mentality. Does Santa Fe need a four-year college of its own? Could we close another campus elsewhere in the state prior to constructing this one? It would seem like a good idea.

As a rule, I don’t have much faith in government officials. Perhaps it is the combination of limited accountability and massive amounts of my tax money. Perhaps it is cases like this one from that most irresponsible of state governments, California.

The state has been selling special license plates with the pledge that the additional cost paid by motorists would go to funding scholarships for the children of 9/11 victims. A worthy cause indeed. Unfortunately, as the AP reports:

$3 million was raided by Gov. Jerry Brown and his predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to plug the state’s budget deficit. Millions more have been spent on budget items with little relation to direct threats of terrorism, including livestock diseases and workplace safety.

Moreover, the California Department of Motor Vehicles has been advertising the plates as helping the children of Sept. 11 victims, even though the state stopped funding the scholarship program seven years ago. The specialty plate fund continues to take in $1.5 million a year.

Californians who lost loved ones in the attacks take the raid on the license plate fund as an affront to the memory of those who died. “I can’t believe that they would do that,” said Candyce Hoglan, who lives in the San Francisco Bay area and bought a plate to commemorate her nephew, Mark Bingham. “We’re paying extra for the plate; we’re making a point, and it means a lot to us.”

Sad. But, I’d suggest that people who want to help others not give their money to broken state governments (California being among the worst). I’d also suggest never voting to give the government more of your hard-earned money.

A sleazeball, yes, but John Edwards was right about there being two Americas. I’ve written and discussed the differences between public vs. private sector Americas. There is another dividing line out there and that is between states that are serious about economic development and making themselves attractive to business and those that are trying to get by on their past glories.

Take Kansas and California. Kansas just enacted some of the most sweeping pro-growth tax cuts in recent memory. Kansas is already a relatively economically-free place with a “right to work law” and relatively reasonable taxes and regulations.

Then there is California where Gov. Jerry Brown is pushing a $10 billion tax hike that would, among other things, give California a top income tax rate exceeding 12 percent!

For additional comparisons, check out the relative tax burdens of these and other states here.

Truly, California and a few other “deep blue” states seem to be rushing towards a fiscal meltdown while Kansas and other “heartland” states are pushing ever harder to generate economic growth within their own borders.

Higher education has been a hot topic both nationally and in New Mexico recently. Congress has been haggling over the interest rates charged on federal student loans while economists question the economic impact of deeply-indebted college graduates. Here in New Mexico, UNM faculty complains that their salaries are not competitive with other, similar schools.

Unfortunately, decisions are being made and policy reforms are being discussed based on inadequate information. Sometimes, this lack of information seems to result from a strategic plan to make it more difficult for the public and policymakers to make sound decisions.

Take something as simple as faculty salaries at UNM. When we requested payroll information from all public colleges and universities in the state, UNM dubiously claimed that they do not keep their employees’ salary information electronically and directed us to the UNM salary book at Zimmerman Library. No other school made such a bizarre assertion.

Of course, by not publishing salary data online, UNM makes it far more difficult for the public and policymakers to actually find out for themselves whether UNM salaries are too low, too high, or just right. (this situation changed between the submission of this article and its publication. UNM’s transparency site can be found here)

Then there is the plethora of campuses in New Mexico’s system of institutes of higher education – 65 in all spread out over 17 institutions. Doña Ana Community College alone has a staggering nine campuses throughout southern New Mexico. New Mexico Highlands, based in Las Vegas, has a total of eight campuses spread from Farmington to Roswell.

What we have here is difficulty in allocating scarce resources that are supposed to benefit both the most talented and academically-inclined students graduating from high school and act as an engine for New Mexico’s economy. The information problem varies from being a lack of basic transparency to the fundamental difficulty of determining whether each of these campuses is necessary or whether higher faculty salaries are a logical investment.

Or, perhaps resources should be diverted away from higher education entirely? A report from National Information Center for Higher Education Policymaking notes that New Mexico students pay the 2nd lowest combined tuition and fees of any state in the nation while taxpayers in our state bear the 2nd-highest burden for higher education expenses as a percentage of personal income of any state in the nation.

Clearly, the resources are being allocated to make New Mexico’s higher education system flourish, but it would appear that too much money is being diverted into funding campuses and, (perhaps), not enough is being allocated to attracting and retaining the most effective teachers. Of course, adequate transparency would assist in making those decisions.

Universities (like the public schools) must get away from the mentality that they must be all things to all people and that all of those pursuits must be treated the same.

For example, should students in a 300-person lecture pay the same rate per credit hour as someone in a 10 person lab? What about offering some of those large lectures in an online environment (especially given our campus bloat)? Should policymakers allocate greater resources to “in-demand” STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) that generate high salaries and form the basis for New Mexico’s economy?

Finally, can individual schools (like the UNM law school, for example) be given greater budgetary autonomy and incentives to innovate by operating as independent institutions, free of taxpayer subsidies, as opposed to one component of a university?

The fact is that higher education needs to evolve and become more efficient and more transparent. The question is whether policymakers will be forced to blindly cut in the next budget crisis or whether the leadership both of the individual schools and in Santa Fe will act now to provide needed information and make changes now.

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, Jerry Ortiz y Pino went on the offensive against Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget. While the budget is imperfect, it is a starting point for a much-needed discussion on national priorities.

My response is below:

Jerry Ortiz y Pino predictably attacks Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget for attempting to reduce tax rates while also cutting government spending. While Jerry and I may disagree on the long-term impacts of Ryan’s tax policy changes, I certainly agree that in this area Ryan makes serious political miscalculations.

However, liberals from President Obama on down are not dealing with reality if they believe that our federal government can continue to grow without serious economic repercussions. Federal spending has doubled since Clinton’s last budget from $1.8 to $3.7 trillion and, if left unchanged, so-called “entitlements” like Social Security and Medicare will consume the entire budget very quickly (combined, they already account for 50% of the budget).

How big is the problem? Even if we eliminated all $700 billion in defense spending from the federal budget in a given year, we’d still have a $700 billion annual shortfall. And, while Ortiz y Pino talks taxes, we could confiscate the wealth of everyone in the nation with incomes greater than $250,000 and we’d only close the budget for one year. What we’d do the next year is anyone’s guess.

Ryan’s budget is a starting point. It makes needed changes to Medicare, the fastest growing and most unsustainable major program, but he does not address Social Security. The fact is that Ryan is the only one having the discussion about needed reforms. Obama is not and liberals in Congress have not proposed needed reforms or tough cuts.

The Rio Grande Foundation released its new study decrying the over-expansion of its higher education bureaucracy and received coverage in the Carlsbad Current-Argus. Certainly, we generated some opposition within the education establishment, but all of our data came directly from the institutes themselves and is hard to dispute.