New Mexico’s economy is under attack from the extreme environmentalists once again. This time, the issue is the dunes sagebrush lizard in southeastern New Mexico. Read more details on the debate over at Capitol Report New Mexico. There are also serious doubts about the negative impact, if any, that oil and grass drilling may have on the lizard.

Anyway, if you are concerned about the issue, you can send comments to the Fish and Wildlife service at this link.

Ayn Rand’s epic Atlas Shrugged has made its way to Allen Theatres in Las Cruces. Showtimes here. If you support free markets and limited government, you need to see this movie. First and foremost, it is only part 1 and we need to show the producers that parts 2 and 3 are worth making, but also, the marketplace needs to know that liberals aren’t the only ones who go to the movies.

So, get out there and watch Atlas!

Yesterday, I appeared on Channel 13 to discuss a new plan from the Obama Administration to sell off unused and vacant federal buildings.

345 excessive federal buildings in NM: krqe.com

The full federal report can be found online here. At the end, the reporter mentions my push for federal lands to have a similar process done. No, I’m not talking about selling Yellowstone. There are millions of acres of unused and unnecessary land holdings currently owned by the federal government. These too should be considered for auction or sale.

I’ve been saying for some time that, in terms of how policies have impacted the marketplace, a useful comparison can be made between public schools and supermarkets. Thankfully, great minds seem to think alike because Nobel Prize winning economist Don Boudreaux makes the same point in a highly-eloquent manner in the Wall Street Journal.

To elaborate a bit on the point, vouchers are considered “extreme” and “free market” within the context of our socialized school system. A comparable “voucher,” known in the realm of food as a food stamp, is hardly what we’d call “free market,” but even in its flawed current form, it is far superior to total government monopoly power.

The Rio Grande Foundation, New Mexico’s free market think tank, is pleased to alert New Mexico high school students to the following opportunity:

The Bill of Rights Institute is pleased to offer 1 FULL scholarships (a $3,000 value) for a New Mexico student to attend the Constitutional Academy this summer. This premier program for high school students to study the Constitution will be held in Washington, D.C. July 24-31.

The 6-week program, with 5 weeks of reading (Federalist papers, Founding documents) and online discussions and then 1 week in Washington, D.C. explores the Founding principles of limited government, freedom of religion, and economic liberty. While in D.C. students will explore the Capitol, Supreme Court, Mount Vernon, the Archives, and other sites while in D.C. and have reading discussions with college professors. For more information please visit their website or contact Laura Vlk at (703) 894-1776, ext. 31.

This is a fascinating piece on the reality of the “green” economy and what we can reasonably expect in terms of “green” jobs. The article is not written by a free market conservative, but by a recruiter who deals with the industry.

We are constantly told by President Obama and local advocates like the environmental group New Energy Economy that so-called “green” energy will create thousands of jobs. The reality, as this recruiter points out, is not so simple (or promising for those who want a speedy transition).

As the recruiter notes, natural gas, while not green in the purist sense of the word — even wind isn’t green in that world — does have the potential to fulfill a greater percentage of our future energy demand.

We recently were sent a link to a questionnaire that was sent to all candidates for Chairman of the Democratic Party of New Mexico.

It is well-known that the Democratic Party and government labor unions work hand-in-glove and it is also obvious that a labor union that benefits from bigger government will inherently support even bigger government, but it is enlightening to see exactly what policies actually drive decision making and candidate selection.

So, among the questions in the survey can be found several efforts to lock in the union’s monopoly status and prevent competition from anyone willing to do the job for a lower cost. Read the full survey for yourself, but specific “demands” made for union endorsement include:

support for collective bargaining which prevents employers (in this case the government operating on behalf of taxpayers) from hiring workers who would do the same job for less than union wage;

authorizes the union to automatically-deduct dues from workers’ paychecks;

oppose privatization (thus increasing union membership and locking out lower-cost providers);

oppose any efforts to reform New Mexico’s pension system in a way that takes taxpayers off the hook for luxurious government employee benefits;

raise taxes;

universal (socialized) health care;

indexing government-mandated wages to inflation;

From the looks of this survey and the fact that AFSCME is a dominant force in Democratic Party politics, it is hard to see the Party moving towards anything resembling free market principles without some extremely courageous leadership from someone who understands that government is not a firm basis upon which to build New Mexico’s economy.

I saw the headline “Obama Lacking Clear Vision” in the Albuquerque Journal and said to myself “duh” and almost didn’t read the article. Good thing I did.

Not surprisingly, since the writer was affiliated with UNM, the article is an attack on Obama from the left. He takes the president to task for not taxing his buddies at GE and for being wishy-washy. Fairly boiler plate stuff so far. But then the author makes two statements that still has me shaking my head:

First, “the most critical issue immediately facing our country is not entitlement reform, but global warming” and then “Global warming and its mitigation is to the 21st century what the abolition of slavery and the Civil War was to the United States in the 19th Century.”

WOW!!! First and foremost, it is clear from a variety of polls that a vast majority of Americans care a great deal about many issues much more than they do about global warming. Obviously, polls don’t make for the truth, but how can the clear collapse of the US economy and the destruction of our living standards due to over-spending even compare to the potential for man made global warming which may be addressed through improved technology or may not even occur.

Comparing global warming — something that is happening as a result of our own actions (if it is indeed happening) — to human slavery is just plain silly and not really worth debating at length.

Two of the economists whose ideas dominate public policy debates even to this day go toe to toe for Round 2 in this rap video. If you missed Round 1, check it out here. Also, check out an interview with the producer.

As I’ve written in this space before, the Governor’s “Business-Friendly Task Force” recommendations were spot-on. I shared this view and elaborated upon it in the Albuquerque Journal’s business section last week. My comments can be found below:

Issues of economic development are all the rage these days in New Mexico and we are glad to see the discussion. The latest addition to the discussion comes from the Small Business-Friendly Task Force, the recommendations of which were written about in this paper.

While regulations are not always well-understood and are often difficult to compare across state lines, the fact is that collectively they add tremendously to the costs of doing business in New Mexico and make our state less competitive with our neighbors.

All of the Task force’s recommendations should be considered for adoption by policymakers, but the most urgent and economically-impactful include returning to a more cost-effective “prevailing wage” law and elimination of New Mexico’s state-level carbon cap by becoming an observer instead of an active participant by capping carbon emissions within the state. The prevailing wage law drives up the cost of schools and roads while the carbon cap makes New Mexico less economically-competitive with no measurable environmental impact.

New Mexico has always been a poor state in large part because it is a tough place to do business. Tackling even a few of the most costly, unnecessary rules and regulations outlined in the Business-Friendly Task Force will go a long way towards creating jobs and spurring economic growth in the Land of Enchantment.

The Rio Grande Foundation is part of the State Policy Network, a 50 state network of free market policy think tanks. These organizations are providing the ideas that are fueling conservative majorities in the various states to reform education, tax, spending, and labor policies in a more market-based direction.

Naturally, the left-wing finds our ideas threatening and — at least when it comes to liberal talker Ed Schultz — is almost hysterical. Check out the video here:

Obviously, we disagree with the story in its view that our efforts are undermining the middle class. It is government policies that, more than anything, are preserving benefits for the elites and government workers while destroying our economy, but Schultz is right in touting our effectiveness.

If you support our efforts to bring free markets to New Mexico, please donate here.

When talk turns to cutting the budget, it is often viewed as a zero-sum game. Supposedly, the poor and less-fortunate always lose while the greedy fat cats always win. Or so the left would have us believe. The reality is usually quite different. Right here in New Mexico, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on the Rail Runner, film subsidies, a spaceport, and generous government employee pensions, all of which benefit wealthier people at great expense to the rest of us.

Well, when it comes to federal food policy, there is a great opportunity for “win-win” when it comes to the ways in which existing federal programs encourage obesity while devolving those same programs to the states could actually spur innovation and result in better outcomes at dramatically-lower prices to taxpayers. Along with RGF Board Member Dr. Deane Waldman, I write about those here.

I recently spoke to a reporter from an online publication called “New West” about the New Mexico RailRunner. While fiscal conservatives obviously have deep concerns over the financial impact this train is having on the state budget, it doesn’t appear that the train will be stopped unless the budget takes another major downturn and deeper cuts must be made.

Of course, the fact that taxpayers are on the hook for $400 million to build and $20 million annually to operate the train — not to mention another $400 million in maintenance costs every 30 years that are not currently accounted for — makes the Rail Runner a huge subsidy for a relatively small group of workers, most of whom live in Albuquerque and work in Santa Fe.

The real issue at this point is in making sure that efforts to extend the train — discussed in the article — are not successful. Martinez wouldn’t go along with such a scheme, but you can bet that liberals around the state who worship mass transit will be looking for every opportunity to do so.

The Rio Grande Foundation primarily handles state and local issues, but if Washington doesn’t get its act together, we’re all in trouble. Now that Paul Ryan and President Obama have staked out their parties’ respective positions on the issues, I have my own analysis about what needs to be done and where the sides can work together.

Read the full article at NMPolitics.net.

Walter Rubel of the Sun News, while acknowledging some realities of the current budget situation, unfairly takes Rep. Pearce to task for not wishing to raise taxes in this recent opinion piece. I understand the desire by many in the media to get fiscal conservatives to agree to tax hikes, but the fact is that while tax revenue has been stagnant over the past few years — due to a combination of the recession and the Bush tax cuts — it is spending, not taxes that have caused the budget situation to spiral out of control.

In fact, as the folks at Reason clearly show, the federal government has collected just about 19 percent of GDP over the span of several decades and several tax hikes and tax cuts. It is highly doubtful that the feds could possibly raise taxes to levels high enough to generate the revenue necessary to increase revenues as so many in the media and on the left would like to see.

The reality is that tax reform is in order and conservatives will agree to it if it closes loopholes and rationalizes our tax system, but avoiding a fiscal collapse really is a spending problem.

The Obama Administration’s antics continue to amaze in their brazenness and single-minded pursuit of political power. The latest extreme example comes from The Examiner and involves an attempt by the Administration to keep production of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner from being shifted to South Carolina.

The reason for the Administration’s all-out push? Washington State requires union membership to do the job. South Carolina does not as it is a Right to Work State and thus the workers Boeing would hire may or may not choose to be part of a union. New Mexico is, of course, not a Right to Work state (unfortunately).

Obama is playing a dangerous game here. Of course, in the short-term, they want political donations and greater union power. In the long-term, if they push too hard to mold Boeing’s labor practices, they may be pushing them to do more work abroad. This fight highlights the power of Right to Work in attracting businesses and it shows how Obama will seemingly stop at nothing to preserve power.

I just love environmentalists. According to this article about an ongoing legal case relating to carbon emissions adopted by the Environmental Improvement Board in New Mexico, the executive director of the group “New Energy Economy,”

“contends the regulations were adopted based on scientific and economic merits and should not be repealed.” Going on, she stated, “that Martinez’s EIB has an ideological bias against the carbon pollution reduction rules and has prejudged the merits of this important public policy.” Uh, huh.

Our government watchdog, Jim Scarantino, reported repeatedly here, here, and here about the inherent conflicts of interest on Richardson’s EIB. As if that were not enough, according to our own Rob Nikolewski, at least three members of Martinez’s EIB gave more to Democrats than Republicans.

We at the Rio Grande Foundation have contended all along that the EIB regulation should be overturned and that, in the end, the EIB should be disbanded and that major decisions like a statewide carbon cap should be made by our elected officials like the Legislature and Governor directly.

Sandy Springs, Georgia, rather than relying on traditional command-and-control government, has instead taken the approach of relying on private enterprise to provide quality services at a reasonable price. Reason recently put together this video illustrating the City’s success:

A more critical view, including information on other cities that have considered privatizing some services can be found here.

While Albuquerque and other New Mexico cities are a long way from “privatizing everything,” garbage, airport terminal management, and water and sewer are all privatized in many areas, but not in Albuquerque and some other New Mexico cities.

It was not much discussed except for an article in the Business Journal, but Gov. Martinez’s “Business Friendly Task Force has released its findings. Most of them touch on things that we’ve discussed in the past or expand upon certain economy-stifling regulations. The specific recommendations can be found here.

Among the specifics contained in the report: where they exist, adhere to federal regulations rather than developing our own, more stringent ones;

Get out of the Western Climate Initiative as a participant and instead be an observer;

The report also advocated eliminating the cap and trade rule;

Review the necessity of the “Pit Rule.”;

Return to pre-SB 33 prevailing wage rules;

All of these are good moves and the entire document contains ideas that, if implemented, would help grow New Mexico’s economy at no cost to taxpayers (and without any tax revenue reductions).

As this article from the Albuquerque Journal notes, liberals hate the idea of block granting Medicaid. The governors’ letter cited in the column can be found here.  Of course, the myth is that Medicaid is a particularly effective federal program that does great things for low income and needy families. The reality is far different as the “low wage trap” chart on page 3 from Cato’s Michael Cannon illustrates. Contrary to improving the lives of the poor, the way the system is set up, it is very difficult for low income families to get ahead.

The reality is, as Cannon points out in this column, that Governors who like Medicaid like it because it is a source of “free” money. They don’t have to be responsible for managing limited resources effectively because the federal government is there to bail them out. New Mexico, under Gov. Richardson, took this attitude. And, Voices for Children which is run by far left-wing legislator Eric Griego, believes that New Mexico’s living at the expense of taxpayers in other states is a good thing! Thankfully, Gov. Martinez did not sign this letter and has not fallen for the left-wing claptrap on Medicaid.

Medicaid is just one unsustainable portion of both the federal and state budgets. Block granting worked in the 1990s under Clinton when welfare reformed. It can and must work again with Medicaid.

We’ve come a long way from Martin Luther King’s March on Washington and his “I have a Dream” speech. To a great extent, America has achieved his vision of a color blind society. Obviously, no society or state is perfect and if you look hard enough, there are plenty of places where racial and gender preferences can be found.But should the government be one of those places?

Whether the issue is a fiscal one or Gov. Martinez sharing Dr. King’s vision of a color-blind society, she certainly kicked up a controversy when she vetoed appropriations for the African-American Performing Arts Center and zeroed out funding for the Commission on the Status of Women for a total savings of about $800,000.

The amount is indeed relatively small within the context of a $5.4 billion budget, but Martinez’s move is a wise one and I hope she’ll continue to veto race and gender-based spending around the state. After all, we all pay taxes to the government. Therefore, government is supposed to benefit ALL of us. Using money that is taken from taxpayers to benefit one or another group is unnecessarily divisive. Of course, this does not preclude private funding for any of these initiatives. The African-American Performing Arts Center and Commission on the Status of Women could both be funded through private donations if there are enough people out there who support these projects.

And, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the blossoming scandal at the National Hispanic Cultural Center — another publicly-financed, race-based project — where, as the Albuquerque Journal reports, $380,000 in capital outlay money was used to pay salaries. The kicker, which the article doesn’t focus on, is that the woman in charge at the time when this money was used inappropriately was Clara Apodaca, the ex-wife of former Gov. Jerry Apodaca. Wouldn’t you think that a former first lady would have at least a cursory understanding of the difference between capital and operating funding?

Rarely does vindication come so quickly, but last week I noted the school district in Chicago that had banned kids from bringing their lunches to school. I stated that the issue was one of control, not nutrition. Well, it was with great interest that I saw this article in the paper today which noted a “statistically-significant” connection between kids who are on the federal school lunch program and obesity.

Of course, what would we expect from a federal government that directs billions of tax dollars in subsidies towards unhealthy foods? So, when can we expect noted nutrition advocate Michelle Obama to direct her husband to adopt a firm stance against fattening farm subsidies? Thing is that she’d actually be helping her husband in the budget fight at the same time!

then the economy would really be booming. Or, so implies Patricia Anders, an attorney at the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty about Medicaid in a front page story in today’s Albuquerque Journal. How else is one to interpret her statement that “Every dollar spent in SNAP (food stamp) benefits actually generates $1.79 in total economic activity.”

Obviously, that is a pretty sweet multiplier — even better than the $1.50 we’re supposedly getting back on film subsidies — so I guess it makes sense to add even more New Mexicans (and Americans) to the program. Of course, this is indeed being done as there has been a concerted effort by the Agriculture Department to expand the program. But, as I have pointed out repeatedly, multipliers are almost entirely bogus and are simply used to prop up bad policy.

Ultimately, while I’d prefer to rely on charity, I can go along with state-run and financed food programs. Unfortunately, advocates like Anders benefit greatly from the status quo and will fight any such fiscal restraint tooth and nail as it is a direct threat to their jobs.

The left’s reaction — if there is one — will be interesting to the latest controversy between the Albuquerque Police Department’s union and the Berry Administration. The issue came to a head after the latest APD shooting and the Berry Administration’s call for more officer training.

There are three salient points from which we can begin the discussion:

1) Officers at APD have been involved in a lot of shootings recently;

2) In the private sector/real world, if your boss tells you to get more training and is paying you for this activity, you salute and say “thank you very much.” This is not a controversy;

3) Broadly speaking, “the left” tends to have more concerns about police shootings than those on the right.

The police union is being completely unreasonable here. It appears that the union believes that even accepting training on dealing with volatile situations is some kind of admission of guilt. I just don’t get it. The union is being confrontational for the sake of being confrontational. Is there any question that relations between City Hall and APD would be better without union hostility? Would Albuquerque be safer without a unionized police force? Will the left defend the Berry Administration or just sit by and let him fight a fight they should be a part of?