Santa Fe has made news recently with plans to increase the City’s minimum wage to as much as $10.32. This is certainly not a cause for celebration. Rather, as the Hoover Institute points out in a new brief, “As the wage demanded increases, the jobs offered in the labor market will decline.”

The paper goes on to note that, “after the wage level was increased, unemployment rates did move sharply upward. Some of today’s workers will be lucky enough to ride the living-wage tide upward, but others are likely to be cast aside.” These and other regulations have not made the City a high-unemployment city, but Santa Fe continues to grow less-quickly than other cities in the state.

Of course, it is only intuitive that forcing businesses to pay more for employees will reduce employment, but it bears repeating.

Our friends to the West at the free market think tank Goldwater Institute recently received some good publicity in, of all places, The New York Times. The article clearly showed the Institute to be a principled, conservative voice for free markets and limited government.

It detailed some of the organization’s successes, including upsetting Sen. John McCain. While we at the Rio Grande Foundation don’t have the same resources, or the same conservative political climate as our neighbors to the West, an organization like Goldwater gives us a model and a clear understanding of just how effective a state think tank can be.

If you agree and want to help us truly become the “Goldwater of New Mexico,” donate to the Rio Grande Foundation here.

William Yeatman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute previously wrote a paper on the issues surrounding the Four Corners Power Plant and the EPA.

He recently posted an update on the situation on his blog here.

Recently in the Business Journal Winthrop Quigley discussed the transition taking place in our economy. Key to that transition is an educated, innovative work force. The problem is, as I pointed out in the following letter to the editor, our education system — especially in New Mexico — is woefully inadequate for preparing tomorrow’s work force.

Albuquerque Journal Business Outlook

Winthrop Quigley, in a wide-ranging analysis of the current economy through the lens of Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz, makes the point that the US economy is in a state of transition that has exacerbated our current economic woes. He further notes that the US workforce is lagging behind in terms of needed skills. This, as our country and world shift away from a manufacturing economy and towards an information and knowledge economy.

This issue should be especially noteworthy for New Mexico policymakers as our state repeatedly comes in at the bottom of the pack relative to the nation as a whole in terms of educational achievement. Of course, in a globalized economy, workers in our state – and by extension the educational system that produces them – are not just competing against other Americans, but also Chinese, Indians, and others.

To say that education reform is an economic issue is to re-state the obvious, but our business community needs to engage in the upcoming legislative session and demand reforms that will allow for greater educational choice and accountability.

Both our nation and our home state of New Mexico face major economic changes. We will only survive and thrive in this transition with an educated and competitive workforce.

Paul J. Gessing
President
Rio Grande Foundation

Everyone in New Mexico is aware that Indian tribes are not beholden to state laws on gambling in the same way that other entities are. The interesting thing is that gambling could be just the start and, if they decide to be entreprenurial, tribes could be a useful check against government overreach.

The latest example is the payday loan industry. A few years ago, the Legislature and Gov. Richardson decided that they, not those seeking loans, knew better what terms money should be lent at. While I am certainly not going to run out and get a payday loan, the fact that some people need them is understandable.

Now, with tribes getting into the loan business, the fact is that consumers will have access to the loans regardless of New Mexico law. This is a good thing and I look forward to more efforts by the tribes to take advantage of/check the spread of draconian state laws.

Mora County Commissioner John Olivas wants a ban on oil and gas drilling in Mora County because he is concerned with the environmental impact of a drilling process named hydraulic fracturing – or “fracking,” as it is colloquially called.

Mora County is not alone in its concern about fracking. Santa Fe, Rio Arriba and San Miguel counties have halted or discouraged drilling and fracking with ordinances and moratoriums.

Fracking involves a process wherein, once a well has been drilled to hydrocarbon-bearing rock (usually shale), the rock is blasted by a mixture of water, sand and chemicals. Fractures in the rock then allow the trapped gas or liquids to make their exit.

Why are county commissioners in New Mexico jumping on the “ban wagon”?
Maybe they have been watching too many Michael Moore-like documentaries on Netflix. An Oscar-nominated documentary, “Gasland,” says that fracking contaminates our water supply with chemicals. In the movie, some homeowners set their tap water on fire. Industry experts maintained that the film was fraught with errors and misinformation, but nevertheless it dealt fracking something of a blow.

The movie got a lot of attention (maybe Commissioner Olivas’?), but the movie’s arguments against fracking turn out to be deceitful.

Apparently, the dramatic tap water blaze had little to do with fracking. In many parts of America, there is enough methane in the ground to leak into people’s well water. The best fire scene in the movie was shot in Colorado, where the filmmaker is in the kitchen of a man who lights his faucet.

But Colorado investigators went to the man’s house, checked out his well and found that fracking had nothing to do with his water catching fire. His well-digger had drilled into a naturally occurring methane pocket.

It’s not overstating the case to say that unconventional hydrocarbons have shifted the world’s energy balance of power. The “shale gale” has spread the wealth around. Vast volumes of hydrocarbons are not just Middle Eastern plays anymore.

This shift has been enabled by new technology, revolutionary, really. Across the world, we’ve seen vast, stunning improvements in applied mathematics and computational abilities. Just on that basis along, today’s energy industry works with much-better exploration tools than in the past, better seismic and geochemistry.

Then there are new dramatically improved capabilities in directional drilling, with better drill bits and better fluids. After the holes are drilled, there’s fracking. The modern energy industry has more powerful pumps, more control of down-hole pressures and even better nanomaterials for holding the cracks open in the fractured shale and other tight rocks. What’s more, there are better post-completion treatments.

Here, in the U.S., the shale gale has eliminated the need for liquefied natural gas imports, likely for several decades and perhaps longer. In addition, the shale gale has the potential to significantly reduce Russia’s influence over the European natural gas market. At the same time, the shale gale will dramatically diminish the “petro power” of other major OPEC players, such as Iran and Venezuela.

Fracking plays a very important role in energy production nationally and in New Mexico.
A recent report from the American Petroleum Institute concluded that if Congress were to place additional federal regulations that govern the oil and gas industry practice of fracking, the number of new U.S. wells drilled would plummet 20.5 percent over a five-year period.

The oil and gas industry provides significant revenues to the state of New Mexico and local municipalities. For fiscal 2010, oil and gas revenue payments in the form of taxes, royalties and other revenues totaled nearly $2.2 billion – that represents a 27 percent contribution to the state’s general fund.

Natural gas is not risk-free, but no energy source is. Perfect is not one of the choices, Commissioner Olivas.

Thomas Molitor is an adjunct scholar with the Rio Grande Foundation in New Mexico and a regulatory analyst with the American Action Forum in Washington D.C.

I provided a few comments for this article which appeared in the Santa Fe New Mexican. Seems like the City of Santa Fe would rather not post salaries at all if they can’t provide a searchable database like the City of Albuquerque has done.

Certainly, Albuquerque’s efforts at transparency are to be emulated, but that doesn’t mean you can’t start somewhere. In the meantime, check out what we got when we requested payroll information from the City of Santa Fe.

I ran across this excellent column from Jonah Goldberg awhile back. Simply put, while China is to be applauded for adopting freer markets that have helped bring hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, the United States is still in a better position, especially when it comes to living standards.

Certainly, China has surpassed the US in SOME aspects of economic freedom, but, as the Heritage Foundation’s annual rankings show, it has a long way to go. As Goldberg notes, however, the left in particular seems to have a China fetish when it comes to government planning and “green” subsidies.

The major problems in the US are over-spending and over-regulation, but they pale in comparison to those of governance and basic freedom in China.

The fact is that government pension reform is essential if New Mexico is going to survive economically. The commitments that have been made by our state (and other states) were never viable because they were political, not economic decisions. The Rio Grande Foundation has been a leader in pointing this out here and here, for example. Also, check here for an outrageous case-study.

While Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has been a national lightning rod for the unions, but Rhode Island, a liberal state controlled by Democrats may provide New Mexico’s liberal politicians with both a model and a cautionary tale. This report on the reforms enacted in Rhode Island was enlightening to say the least.

While unpopular with government employees who seem to believe every promise, no matter how unbelievable, Rhode Island’s political leaders understood that the state was on its way to insolvency if something was not done. And, unlike many New Mexico Democrats who seem to believe that higher taxes are a panacea, Rhode Island’s made tough, sometimes unpopular decisions, in the wake of opposition from one of the best-funded, best-organized special interests around (government employee unions).

So, kudos to Rhode Island and my fellow New Mexicans, it is time to get serious pension and benefit reform!

I co-authored an article on NMPolitics.net on our efforts to better understand what taxpayers are spending their money on in terms of higher education. Check it out here.

Our full report on the issue can be found here.

Last legislative session, Gov. Martinez led the charge (along with Rep. Dennis Kintigh) to restrain and reform New Mexico’s film subsidy program. The cause was helped by the myriad scandals (and here) and shady bookkeeping around the nation.

Well, film subsidies, though reduced, haven’t gone away. And that means that scandals are still happening as well. Here is a story about a filmmaker in Massachusetts that was indicted on 10 counts of making false claims and larceny after receiving $4.7 million in tax credits from the state, according to the attorney general’s office.

Interestingly-enough, the program in Massachusetts appears to be quite similar to that offered here in New Mexico with filmmakers receiving a 25% rebate on all “eligible” expenses.

While eliminating the program in its entirety is probably not realistic, I’d like to see efforts to gradually wean the filmmakers off of the taxpayers’ teat over time.

We at the Rio Grande Foundation don’t believe in telling people how to live their lives. To this end, we tend to stay out of most social policy issues. But, sometimes statistics just scream for attention.

Take this recent story. According to the story:

“What’s the best way to improve your chances of finding someone to put a ring on it? Stay in school and get rich:

Fifty years ago, 72 percent of those who never went to college got married, which was just 4 percent less than rate for those who did. Today only 48 percent of those with a high school diploma or less get married, but for college graduates the rate is 64 percent.

Furthermore:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median weekly earning of someone with a college degree is $1,140 — nearly double that of someone who only graduated from high school. (Also, 24.8 percent of Americans have college degrees today, that’s more than twice the number 50 years ago.) Not only does income increase the amount of marriage, marriage also increases the amount of income. Married people tend to earn more and also benefit from economies of scale — sharing the costs of housing and utilities for example.

So, what’s the takeaway? First and foremost, when those dreaded 99%ers start talking about inequality, they might want to look in the mirror first to better understand why income inequality may be growing. Also, perhaps if the poor and low income folks took the institution of marriage more seriously and stuck with it, they’d be better off economically. Lastly, marriage (like getting an education) requires commitment. It only makes sense that people who are more successful at one are also more successful at the other.

What can government do? A good start would be to reduce dependency on government programs that give people the incentive to rely on government rather than friends, family, and their spouses.

The federal Fish and Wildlife Service is collecting comments on the Sand Dune Lizard in southwestern New Mexico. The listing information can be found here and you can click here to submit your comments (I have done so).

Rep. Steve Pearce has been a leader on this issue on behalf of New Mexicans concerned about the economy and their way of life. Plenty of information on the lizard is available, but Pearce has an excellent synopsis here.

Sat down with Mike Jaxson of KSVP Radio for an episode of “This week in Chaves County” to discuss 2011 and look forward to what we should expect in 2012. Check out the 10 minute interview here.

Recently, a series of letters to the editor responded (mostly in a hostile fashion) to an op-ed published by Dr. Deane Waldman. Read the letters in their entirety (and a response by Dr. Waldman) below:

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Faith in Regulation
RE: DR. J. Deane Waldman’s op-ed (“Government Drives Up Health Care Cost”): … First of all, Dr. Waldman should leave his politics out of the discussion regarding health care costs. He quotes a Heritage Foundation spokesman, and he is an adjunct scholar with the Rio Grande Foundation, both very conservative think tanks. When he quotes that 40 percent or $1 trillion in 2010 just disappears in money spent for health care, there’s no reference to where that number comes from.
I would like to quote some numbers that do have a credible source. The Centers for Disease Control and the Institute of Medicine have reported between 100,000 and 135,000 deaths annually due to hospital and doctor error. Based on those numbers, it’s hard to argue for less regulation. The free-market approach to health care hasn’t worked, so to blame government for all its cost problems is factually not true. I would recommend that Dr. Waldman read T.R. Reid’s recent book,”The Healing of America.”
On a personal note, I have over 45 years of experience as a heath care advocate and also lost two sons due to the lack of health care regulations being enforced. We don’t need less regulation.
RICHARD J. VALDEZ Albuquerque

Don’t Believe the Hype
A RECENT LETTER by Dr. J. Deane Waldman, “Government Drives Up Health Care Cost,” perpetuates many of the myths and scare tactics that have long been advanced by those against health reform and consumer protections.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (recently) released its long-awaited rules that will require insurance companies to spend at least 80 percent to 85 percent of their revenue on actual patient care, a big win for consumers and patients alike, many of whom are now covered by plans that Dr. Waldman correctly notes spent as much as 40 percent of revenue on nonpatient expenses, without any accountability to their patients or the public.
Earlier this year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services noted that more than 100,000 New Mexico Medicaid recipients had received free preventive care services thanks to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and increases in health care costs were held to new 10-year lows. Up-front preventive care keeps thousands of New Mexicans out of hospital emergency rooms every year, and that saves taxpayers big money.
In the same edition of the Journal , the Career Section ran a piece highlighting the need for more health care providers to tend to the greater number of people already receiving health care. The Dec. 6 Journal ran stories highlighting the benefit to more than 18,000 students who received primary and behavioral health care from schoolbased health centers funded in part by the ACA and new provisions of the act that will help to integrate and modernize patient medical records to prevent records mix-ups and malpractice claims.
As the nation and state move forward in implementing provisions of the act, we have a responsibility to set aside divisive political rhetoric and focus on the progress New Mexico is making in creating healthy families thanks to greater access and transparency in our health care system.
RAYMOND SCHALL Bernalillo

The Dangers of Dogma
RE: OP-ED by Dr. J. Deane Waldman, adjunct scholar, Rio Grande Foundation:
The public policy “contributions” in the Journal from the Rio Grande Foundation are so consistently flawed and so predictably fatuous that they are cold comfort to those of us interested in civilized and informed debate.
The trouble this time, argues a Rio Grande acolyte, is that the government — always bad — has a unseemly hand on the cost of health care in this country. The villain of course is the country’s new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act —“Obamacare” — and the crime is the desultory effect of policy intervention on the free-market cost of health care services. The real problem I would argue is that the “free-market” libertarian apologists of the Rio Grande variety are simply unwilling or unable to think about “us” in the plural in any constructive way. Any common and legitimate goals we might have as a society must pass their inane free market test. If the country were being ravished by a plague killing everything it its path, should we, the people, the government, mount a coordinated and concerted intervention? No, they would have to argue — to be consistent — let the free market figure it out. Is there any point in having any constructive ideas about the direction of the country and the health and welfare and future of its citizens? Not really; the free market will figure it all out!
Our common purse — government resources — fields a military, explores space, helps build highways and, yes, invented the Internet. In the same way, our government is in a unique and powerful position to establish rules for the private sector that bend the cost curve on health care and provide a level of coverage available to almost all citizens of the developed world except those in the United States. A stopped clock is right twice a day, but cross Rio Grande off your mustread list: The free market tooth fairy clouds their thinking about even the most basic human needs.
DOUG BYERS Albuquerque

Here is Dr. Waldman’s response:

Healthcare Dialogue, At Last! Thank You.

Deane Waldman MD-MBA is the author of “Uproot U.S. Healthcare.”

Thank you, Albuquerque Journal. Thank you, people. We have taken a first, admittedly tiny, step toward actually fixing healthcare in this country. That first step is discussion, dialogue, discourse, debate, and certainly difference.

In the Journal of 12/4/11, I wrote about how the costs of healthcare were in, not “out of,” control. I wrote that the government was the controller as well as biggest consumer of our healthcare dollars rather than We The Patients and the people who provide health care.

Obviously, people responded to that article. I write obviously because the Journal printed three responses on 12/17/11 probably out of a much larger number. Though the comments are opposed to what I wrote, I deeply appreciate them. As I have written repeatedly in books, articles, and online, the necessary first step to fixing healthcare is people talking with other people.

In keeping with the concept of dialogue, let me respond to the responders.

The Centers for Disease Control and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) are credible sources of data. But so are the Cato Institute as well as the Heritage and Rio Grande Foundations. Just because one may tend toward your political persuasion and another leans in the opposite direction is unimportant. What matters is the validity of data and correctness of conclusions.

The IOM estimated that 98,000 or more Americans die avoidably during medical treatment annually. This is, of course, unacceptable. Unfortunately, the writer, like Samuelson in his “out of control” costs article, leaps directly from symptom identification to treatment, urging additional government regulation.

In the medical world, this is called malpractice. You must first diagnose the cause of the patient’s illness before recommending therapy. WHY are people dying needlessly? Determine that, with evidence. Treat it.

One writer reported that his two sons died from lack of regulation. I would love to see the evidence proving this assertion. Further, I would welcome hard evidence that regulations actually protect us, and that such protection is worth the expense.

My evidence to the contrary includes the increased error rate due to information security regulations, the successful infection checklist from Michigan that was banned for not following NIH guidelines, and my personal experience of being “out of compliance.”

Every few years, the Joint Commission (On Accreditation of Hospitals) performs a review to assure regulatory compliance, presumably to confirm that We The Patients are being protected. Do they check patient outcomes? Do they suggest ways to improve such outcomes? Several years ago, I was found “out of compliance.”

What was I doing wrong that was harming patients? Did I do unnecessary, risky procedures? Was I doing catheterizations improperly? Were my diagoses consistently wrong? Did I operate while intoxicated? I was out of compliance – seriously, I couldn’t make this up – for: a) having books too tall in my office, and b) using a doorstop. Is that how regulations the patients? Is that a wise use of our healthcare dollars?

I did not write that insurance plans spend 40% of their dollars on non-patient expenses. I do not know how much money insurance companies use for administration and keep as profit. That is closely held, proprietary information. I only observe that the highest paid CEO in America in 2010 was the head of UnitedHealth Group, receiving $101.96 million in direct compensation alone, not counting other benefits. You do the math.

The 40% of healthcare dollars “not going to health care” that I reported was a simple calculation that anyone can do. Add up, as I did, all the money going to anyone who cares for a patient whether by service or by producing a product (wheelchairs, pills, apnea monitors, etc.). Subtract that total from the amount published by the GAO that the U.S. spends every year on healthcare. The difference is 40%.

Of course, anything that gets people preventative or earlier sickness care, and puts them in doctors’ offices or their homes rather than ERs is good. It makes people healthier (less sick), and it costs less both short term and in the long run. But how can you say that the PPAHCA provides “free care” when it is slated to cut Medicare reimbursements to physicians – and therefore patient services – by 27%, not even the 21% I previously cited?

The basic point of my 12/4/11 article is that PPAHCA steals money from health care, the service, and gives it to healthcare, the system. Can anyone show me evidence that it does the opposite? If implemented, PPAHCA hurts both We The Patients and our nation.

Another responder to my 12/4/11 repeatedly derided the “free market.” I do not care about passing or failing some litmus test as a free marketer. I am only interested in results, specifically a healthier America and healthier Americans. Any system that totally disconnects the consumer from his or her money for consumption fails. Look at what is happening in Canada, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, and Spain. The reason I want some free market forces, some reconnection, is this. Capitalism and market forces have been proven to produce the best for the most at the least cost, instead of an equal sharing of the misery, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and others.

I welcome a continuation of this dialogue. I implore others to speak up, not only here, but at town hall meetings such as the one sponsored by the Rio Grande Foundation on December 8, 2011. Only when We The Patients in our hundreds of millions, communicate, argue, debate, and finally get to some form of consensus on basic principles for healthcare, only then can we begin to fix our sick system.

With the Iraq War finally over, it is time to take account. Whether you supported the War or not on principle, it is worth noting that the Iraq War’s costs to the US economy were not trivial. The latest estimate is that the War added $1 trillion to the US debt. I would expect that number to rise as the costs of caring for vets is still to come.

Also worth noting is that the US unemployment rate was a mere 5.9% back in March of 2003 (the month the war started). Notably, the onset of the Iraq War ushered in an era of dramatic increases in overall federal spending and debt.

So, am I saying that the Iraq War led us to our current economic condition? No, not by itself, but conservatives need to realize that war is a government program and an expensive one at that.

Recently, the National Forest Service announced that the Capulin Snow play area in the Sandias would be open for only 3.5 hours per week. The problem, of course, is supposed federal budget cutbacks. I don’t understand how you can’t afford to hire some minimum wage, temporary help to stand around and supervise a bunch of sledders for a few months when the budget has doubled since Clinton’s last year in office, but that’s another story.

Leaving all that aside, however, what if the bureaucrats at the National Forest Service got creative (ha, ha, creative bureaucrats, I know) and outsourced management of the play area to a private company for the winter? People who want to bring their kids to sled ride or play could pay $1 a head and more than pay for the necessary staff. Similar ideas have worked at parks elsewhere as our friends at PERC (the Property and Environment Research Center) have pointed out.

With all of the federally-funded boondoggle programs out there (ostensibly for the children here and here), it is high time for the feds to leverage the private sector to get our kids out of doors in the mountains.

Sometimes, the title of a newspaper article doesn’t convey the content of a particular article. In the case of “House Builders Want Profits, Not Communities” which appeared in the Albuquerque Journal and was written by a local architect (more on that later), it certainly did. The entire article was a rant about Americans being “fat,” “lazy,” “only interested in the short term,” and simply needing to be told what is best for them.

I am no expert on building codes, but I can tell a control freak from their writing and the author of this piece is definitely one. Not surprisingly, the driving force behind the Albuquerque building code is/was Isaac Benton who just so happens to be an architect.

If you don’t like condescending jerks and you do like saving money on new buildings and houses, tell your City Councilor to support repeal of the current building code and replacement of that code with the “International Energy Conservation Code” or show up at the City Council meeting on Monday, January 19.

(Albuquerque) Florida Gov. Rick Scott recently made headlines around the country when he argued that institutes of higher education in his state of Florida should prioritize funding for the study of science and technology in the his state’s institutes of higher education.

Said Scott, “If I’m going to take money from a citizen to put into education then I’m going to take money to create jobs…so I want the money to go to a degree where people can get jobs in this state. Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists? I don’t think so.”

One may agree or disagree with Scott’s statement, but prioritization of limited resources is essential. In order to better understand how those resources should be allocated in higher education in New Mexico, the Rio Grande Foundation undertook an effort to survey members of the boards of regents of the state’s six public senior universities on their views of their schools’ mission statements. Unfortunately, poor returns – only 26.7% of the regents responded – seem to indicate that many of the people responsible for leading these institutes do not take their mission statements seriously.

Said Pat Leonard an adjunct fellow with the Foundation and the lead author of the new Rio Grande Foundation report “Are Mission Statements Mere Window Dressing in New Mexico?,” “The regents are political appointees charged with the guidance of New Mexico’s public universities. As such, we expected far more enthusiastic participation and willingness to share views on their institutes’ mission statements. Unfortunately, this was not the case.”

Rio Grande Foundation president and co-author of the report noted that, “Without a clearly-stated mission, policymakers are left to judge for themselves whether New Mexico’s higher education institutions are achieving their goals or not. In times of constrained budgets, it is more important than ever to have a clear understanding of what these schools are attempting to achieve.”

The full report is available online here.

A sample survey containing the questions that were sent to each regent can be found here.

Canada has abandoned the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. According to the aforementioned report, Canada will save $14 billion in penalties for not achieving its Kyoto targets — targets that other nations in the Kyoto agreement seem unlikely to reach as well.

This decision by our neighbors to the north further begs the question as to why New Mexico would cap its own carbon emissions when the shift seems to be heading in the opposite direction.

Also, it continues the move by Canada towards economic freedom and away from socialism and big-government as illustrated in the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom. Yes, Canada has socialized health care which means that 1) American medicine isn’t that far from socialism already 2) Canada must be pretty damn free market outside of the health care sector.

Of course, Canada very much wants to produce oil from its tar sands. If Obama wanted to create jobs, he could have done so with the stroke of a pen by approving the Keystone XL Pipeline. Oh, and, at 7.4 percent, Canada’s unemployment rate is still significantly lower than the US rate of 8.6 percent in the US.

Seems like one country is moving in the right direction and the other is moving in the wrong direction!

As mentioned in recent postings, the Rio Grande Foundation recently hosted a screening of the film “Sick and Sicker” and then had a discussion of health care issues and health care reform led by Dr. Deane Waldman.

Dr. Waldman led the 50 or so attendees in a discussion and here are his notes and responses to the many issues that came up. If you do not live in the Albuquerque area and were unable to attend, keep an eye on this space as we will be hosting other, similar events in the New Year.

(Albuquerque) Recently, a report called the “Trial Urban District Assessment” (TUDA) was released (see charts here). The report compared student scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in 21 urban school districts including Albuquerque. The Rio Grande Foundation and others have used New Mexico’s poor performance on the NAEP to argue for education reforms.

APS Superintendant Winston Brooks, upon release of the report, was quoted in the Albuquerque Journal as being “pretty ecstatic” about data showing that APS was “about average” compared to the 20 other cities in the report.[1] Brooks went on to say, in a press release on the report that, “These results are encouraging because they show that APS is doing at least as well, and in several cases better, than many of the nation’s urban school districts facing similar educational challenges.[2]”

But how similar are they? According to a Rio Grande Foundation analysis of the data (using US Census numbers), the families of students in APS are wealthier than 17 of the 20 districts analyzed in the TUDA report. In some instances, districts mentioned in the report had poverty rates more than two times that of APS.[3]

“Interestingly-enough,” noted Rio Grande Foundation President Paul Gessing, “students in Miami-Dade, which of course has followed the ‘Florida Model’, brought to New Mexico by our Foundation, out-performed APS despite having higher poverty numbers.”

Gessing continued, “Poverty should not be a deciding factor in whether a child is educated or not. That is we have long argued for educational choice and reforms emphasizing accountability. Nonetheless, the worst possible conclusion to draw from the TUDA data is that administrators, parents, and legislators should be pleased because APS students are performing as well as their peers in other major cities, when in reality the students in these cities are in a state of poverty far worse than our own.”

This chart shows where APS is in terms of poverty relative to the other school districts mentioned in the report and which ones outperform APS on 4^th grade reading.

[2] APS Test Scores Comparable to Big Cities, December 7, 2001, http://www.aps.edu/news/aps-test-scores-comparable-to-big-cities

[3] US Census Bureau “Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates”: http://www.census.gov/did/www/saipe/district.html

I find columns like this recent one in the Albuquerque Journal which urges retailers and other chain businesses to look to Southwest Albuquerque especially frustrating. The author complains that chains like Flying Star and Weck’s are overlooking his neighborhood.

Leave aside people like our esteemed Senator Tom Udall who believes that we should all support “small businesses.” Presumably, this eliminates chains like Flying Star and Weck’s, and it most certainly eliminates Lowe’s (another retailer the author complains about not having).

But, if there are so many great business opportunities in Southwest Albuquerque, why doesn’t the author and some of his friends and neighbors gather some money and start their own business? That is, after all, how most of these big chains became big. Someone at some time decided to quit complaining and put their money on the line to start something they believed in. It is the entreprenurial spirit that made this country great and it is this mind-set, not that of whiners and “Occupiers” that is going to get us back to prosperity.

Of course, when you do succeed and people come out in droves to oppose you, it might make you think twice about wanting to start that business in the first place.

Just in time for the upcoming 2012 legislative session, a new scientific poll from the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice shows that large majorities of New Mexicans endorse school choice. A press release on the polling data can be found here. More details on the poll itself can be found here.

62 percent of surveyed voters in New Mexico support proposals similar to those that have been introduced in the New Mexico state legislature to offer individuals and corporations tax credits for donating to nonprofits that distribute private school scholarships.

78 percent of New Mexico voters polled support a tax credit program providing special needs students with private school scholarships.

65 percent of New Mexico voters rate their public school system as “Fair/Poor” compared with only 32 percent rating it as “Good/Excellent.”