Carter Bundy with the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), recently attacked the Rio Grande Foundation on NMPolitics.net. The gist of his argument was that we at the Rio Grande Foundation are not seriously engaged in solving New Mexico’s public policy issues and that we are just “out to get” government workers because of the problems that have occurred in the private sector.

Well, there is a lot of meat on that bone, so to speak. Government workers have a lot at stake in terms of growing government. I respond to Bundy and make a number of points of my own. Check it out over at NMPolitics.net. And, if you like what you read, please leave a comment!

I just love how advocates for massively-subsidized transit will obfuscate reality and throw up smokescreens in order to defend their favorite boondoggles. A case in point is the article in today’s Albuquerque Journal by Ike Benton and Chris Blewett. The article is downright silly in so many of its statements in response to Mark Mathis’s recent, excellent column on stopping the Rail Runner that it almost doesn’t deserve a response, but the issue is sufficiently controversial, that I’ll respond below. In the meantime, if you want to find out more about the ways in which transit advocates attempt to sell these projects, regardless of their impact on taxpayers, attend our meeting with transportation expert Randal O’Toole on Thursday, May 6.

First and foremost, regardless of the exact costs of construction, both sides agree that the Rail Runner cost in excess of $400 million to build. 100% of this money comes out of taxpayers’ pockets. This is a huge expense that Benton and Blewett do not honestly account for. After all, a highway lane would be paid for by gas taxes (a user-fee paid by motorists);

Then, Benton and Blewett make the argument that the “real” congestion problem is not BETWEEN Albuquerque and Santa Fe, but WITHIN the two cities. Fair enough. So, why would we build a commuter rail train (the RailRunner) between the two cities? After all, the Rail Runner only has only three stops within each city. The train runs for more than 100 miles between Belen and Bernalillo. Why didn’t we spend the money — far less would be necessary — on bus rapid transit or something that will actually target our “real” congestion issues?

Then, there is the issue of other cities and their rail boondoggles. Benton and Blewett imply that it is inevitable that cities embark on these projects at some point in the future. The fact is that the rail projects in these other cities are every bit as wasteful and unnecessary as the Rail Runner. Unfortunately, there is a transit lobbying interest that holds a great deal of sway in pushing these projects forward. If you want to find out more about this transit lobby (and arm yourself with ways to stop it), I cannot stress how important Randal O’Toole’s presentation is.

This week’s question at the New Mexico Independent Forum centered around Blue Cross Blue Shield New Mexico and its recent efforts to raise rates on individual policies relatively dramatically (in excess of 20% this year). As a policyholder with Blue Cross, I am impacted directly by this, but unlike government from which we all should demand close to 100% transparency, I don’t think hearings are the best way to decide whether an insurance company can or should raise prices.

The real issue at hand here is the need for federal market-based health care reforms and some at the state level here in New Mexico as well. In a competitive, market-based health care market (like car insurance), there would be no need for an elaborate, inefficient, and costly hearing system. Unfortunately, that is not what we have and ObamaCare is not a step in the right direction.

Over the weekend the Kerry/Graham/Lieberman Climate Change Legislation—commonly known as Cap and Trade—was postponed. It was scheduled to be introduced, but it has been delayed (at least briefly). Supporters were expecting it pass by June or July. Reports now predict that it may not get on the legislative calendar this year.

An article out of Rueters closed with this: “If Congress fails to approve climate legislation this year, it could try again in 2011. If all efforts collapse in Congress, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said it would begin regulating greenhouse gases for the first time, an outcome business and environmental groups wish to avoid. They prefer legislation tailored to their needs.”

With this in mind, now is the opportune time for opposition to U.S. EPA’s plans to be heard. Our friends over at the Citizens Alliance for Responsible Energy are looking for business owners, trade associations, and corporations who are willing to sign the letter below which will be sent to Senators Udall and Bingaman. To participate, we need a scan of your signature, a jpg of your logo and how you want to be listed (such as: Marita K. Noon, Executive Director, Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy).

If you receive this invitation to participate, but are not a business owner, a trade association representative, or corporate spokesperson, please forward this to anyone you know who fits this profile.

We need to strike while the iron is hot. Ideally, we will get this letter out by the end of this week. If you have questions about the U.S. EPA’s decision to regulate greenhouse gases using the Clean Air Act, please contact Marita at Marita@responsiblenergy.org or 505.239.8998.

Here is the letter:

(List of businesses and groups) collectively write to urge you to support the Murkowski resolution prohibiting the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) from regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act (CAA). Your support of this resolution will help save New Mexico’s businesses, jobs, and families.

As you are aware, the U.S. EPA announced last December its intention to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the CAA. U. S. EPA made this announcement despite ongoing efforts on Capitol Hill to address climate change and energy issues.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski has introduced a resolution to prevent the U. S. EPA from regulating greenhouse gases because, she believes, Congress is a more appropriate forum for addressing such major issues that have economy-wide impacts. We agree that this is a matter for Congress, not the U. S. EPA.

While we (the above businesses and organizations) may have a variety of different viewpoints on climate change and energy issues, we all agree that U. S. EPA regulations would be all cap and no trade. This approach would be inflexible and cost prohibitive, thereby hurting New Mexico businesses, workers and families.

The Murkowski resolution is expected to come up for a Senate vote within the next few weeks. We are asking you to declare your support for the Murkowski resolution as soon as possible. The future of New Mexico may depend on this vote.

Please let us know if you need more information or if we can help you otherwise with respect to this vital matter.

The Lt. Governor has no real power. She sits on boards, presides over the Senate, votes in cases of a tie, etc.  But she has a small staff, and no executive powers to direct any part of state government.  Yet, she flew around the state for brief meetings, photo ops and parades.  Sometimes her only passenger in a jet with two pilots (costing us over $1,200 per hour) was her husband.  What’s interesting is the comparison between our Lt. Gov. and the Governor of the entire state of Texas.  That state has five times the land mass of New Mexico, a lot more people and a whole lot more photo opps awaiting.  But Perry uses state aircraft “sparingly” according to a report by Texas Watchdog.  In the period of time they examined, he used state jets only five times, not including eight trips to responed to the Hurricane Ike crisis.  Denish, by comparison, used state planes 26 times, and her use spiked before elections.  We hash it out over at New Mexico Watchdog.

A new study called “Taxifornia,” by the free-market Pacific Research Institute studies state tax burdens and mechanisms for tax collection nationwide. As you might be able to assume from the study’s title, California does not perform especially well. In fact, according to the study, California’s state and local spending as a share of gross state product is fourth-highest in the nation (New York, South Carolina, and Alaska score worse).

What does this all mean for us in New Mexico? Well, we happen to be fifth worst in terms of spending, only slightly worse than California. Where’s Texas? Not surprisingly, Texas’ tax burden is third-lowest in America with only South Dakota and Delaware lower.

Given this data, it is no surprise that California is quickly becoming America’s equivalent of Greece. It is also not surprising that Texas’s economy is one of the healthiest in the nation.

Needless to say, New Mexico policymakers have long relied on federal spending to make our economy run. Given the need to cut federal spending, it would be great if we decided to change directions by taking a cue from economically-robust Texas rather than failing California.

If you haven’t been following the debate over Albuquerque’s budget, government employee unions are winning. The debate is over whether to cut the employee pay by about 3% as Mayor Berry has proposed or whether to raise taxes or embark on some other hare-brained schemes (like looking for precious metals in local landfills…why don’t they do this on their own time?) proposed by the unions.

Unfortunately, if public outcry is any indicator, the unions are the only ones paying attention. At the first budget hearing on Thursday, April 22, hundreds of city workers and union representatives packed the council chambers. The chambers were filled to capacity with overflow – probably over 400 people were there. 39 people signed up for public comment and most opposed the mayors proposal and expressed anger at any cuts. They encouraged a raise in taxes to “spread the burden to all city taxpayers.” Only one person out of 39 spoke on behalf of fiscal responsibility and protecting private citizens. This person was shouted out of the chambers by the crowd!

There were no tea party representatives and almost no voice for “limiting government, constraining government spending and taxation, and advancing a free market economy”. Unfortunately, I was out of town at one of two annual meetings I attend.

Albuquerque is the largest city in the state. When it comes to the cause that the tea party and all of us are working for I believe that this is the epicenter of our fight. If we (including the tea party) say we are in the fight, but are not fighting in this battle, then I believe we are not in the fight at all.

The next budget hearing is May 6th at 5:00 p.m at Council Chambers downtown. People can sign up for public comment if they arrive and sign up before 4:30 p.m. Hopefully the Albuquerque Tea Party and concerned citizens will make their voices heard before it is too late.

In case you missed it, our investigative journalist over at New Mexico Watchdog, Jim Scarantino, has done it again. This time he exposed the inappropriate use of state vehicles at the New Mexico Department of Corrections. Channel 7 picked up the story and ran with it.

University of New Mexico’s president David Schmidly responded to my comment in the Albuquerque Journal, in which I pointed out that while Central New Mexico Community College has found cost-savings per student, University of New Mexico has increased costs per student. While the response is appreciated, UNM’s president has not responded to the substance of my complaint. I dissect his response below.

Efficiency is the key to the future of higher education. Our institutions must work diligently to make their operations more efficient, thereby bolstering the resources dedicated to student success.

Schmidly sounds like an economist here. But, “efficiency” is a toothless concept if we do not define it in terms of inputs and outputs. Efficiency has a both a numerator and a denominator. My op-ed talks about dollars per student. We could talk more specifically about dollars per English major, or even more specifically about dollars per C-average student in freshman English. We could further control for the quality of incoming students: How much does it cost UNM to train a C-average student with a middling SAT score into an average university writer? We don’t have data to make such detailed comparisons, but this is the direction we should proceed in. Alternative metrics are also welcome, so long as they can actually measure something.

The need for additional efficiencies does not increase or diminish in times of economic boom or bust. Rather it should always be the guiding motivation for all of our public institutions.

In fact, the need for additional efficiencies is greater than ever. The university is part of an economic system in which a decreasing amount of economic output means, ceteris paribus, less revenue for the state government. The state is the majority funder of higher education, thus its economic problems also belong to the state universities. Since post-secondary institutions purport to be generators of economic growth, economic trouble forces the question: Does higher ed generate returns sufficient to justify its costs?

The University of New Mexico has identified $6 million in cost-containment measures in developing its fiscal 2011 budget. The Strategic Advisory Team that I charged with finding efficient and cost-effective ways to conduct university operations will continue its work, as additional and more creative efficiencies must be found to help balance future budgets.

This is wonderful news. I would welcome a discussion with UNM (and other state universities) about the particulars of the cost savings they have found. It is worth asking what these areas of savings are and if we can generalize any conclusions from UNM’s experience.  It is helpful to know how to evaluate which programs are worthwhile, and which are not. This goes back to the question of metrics which is rooted in a theory of what education is attempting to accomplish, and what role it plays in the state’s economy.

Though the premise of targeting inefficiency found in a recent opinion piece from the Rio Grande Foundation showed promise, we find the content disturbing in its oversimplification. Building an argument based on the comparison of a community college and a flagship research university makes no sense, as the operations in mission and scope are too different to even allow comparison.

In fact, my argument is not based on a comparison of a community college and a research university. My Albuquerque Journal op-ed is a derivative product of a larger policy study that asks why some NM schools’ costs have gone up while others have gone down. To say that there is no possible comparison is to completely avoid the challenge.  Asking why the costs are different is an invitation to explain why this difference exists, which should lead to a discourse about what higher education is (and ought to be) pursuing.

Yet we find media stories seeking to do this as though the two were interchangeable. Outstanding community colleges like Central New Mexico prepare their students with skills to enter the workforce or to continue their education at a four-year institution. They offer affordability, accessibility and flexibility.
Research universities like UNM go beyond preparation to provide opportunities to pursue advanced degrees in specialized fields with faculty recognized nationally and internationally in their fields. They provide professional degrees in areas like architecture, law, pharmacy and medicine. They offer research libraries, Division I athletics, housing, museums, a comprehensive health sciences center and a teaching hospital. With all that, UNM remains affordable and accessible when compared to its peers.

So, this brings us closer to a fair comparison. But, what of those services that are comparable? Will UNM’s president join me in a call for complete transparency? I would propose a department-by-department comparison between state universities and with national peers.  How does UNM compare to CNM in subjects they both teach? Further, what does it actually cost UNM to produce architects, lawyers, pharmacists, and medical doctors?

CNM and UNM have different missions but we share the same goal — preparing our students to be contributing citizens, providers for themselves and their families, and the scholars who will lead us further into the 21st century.
We must never forget the true costs of failing to invest in the education of our children, failing to give them the opportunity to reach their highest potential, failing to search for the cures and solutions to our most pressing challenges.
It is through partnerships such as the one modeled by CNM and UNM that the real efficiencies and success of higher education will be realized.

All of this is lovely, positive talk. In order to translate good thoughts into reality requires seriously talking about how the cost structure of higher ed works and what is driving some schools to increase costs while others appear to be saving money.

Someone once said, “A goal without a plan is just a dream.” Similarly, rhetoric without accountability is just cheap talk.

Higher ed in New Mexico can be more cost effective. UNM’s efforts towards dialogue and reform efforts are appreciated and admirable. But, we have much work to do.

Good to see that we at the Rio Grande Foundation are not the only ones concerned with the costs associated with the Rail Runner. Mark Mathis penned an enlightening and humorous op-ed in the Albuquerque Journal demanding that our political leaders put a stop to the boondoggle.

Find out more about national views on the Rail Runner at our May 6th event with Randal O’Toole.

We at the Rio Grande Foundation usually tackle state and local spending here in New Mexico, but the Los Alamos labs are a major federal investment in the Land of Enchantment. I recently teamed with the folks over at the left-leaning Los Alamos Study Group to discuss some massively expensive spending projects that have been proposed for the Los Alamos labs.

Check out the article from the Los Alamos Monitor here.

The Contract From America is excellent, you can sign on here. Read the full Contract below. It is far stronger than the Contract with America.

The Contract from America

We, the undersigned, call upon those seeking to represent us in public office to sign the Contract from America and by doing so commit to support each of its agenda items, work to bring each agenda item to a vote during the first year, and pledge to advocate on behalf of individual liberty, limited government, and economic freedom.
Individual Liberty

Our moral, political, and economic liberties are inherent, not granted by our government. It is essential to the practice of these liberties that we be free from restriction over our peaceful political expression and free from excessive control over our economic choices.
Limited Government

The purpose of our government is to exercise only those limited powers that have been relinquished to it by the people, chief among these being the protection of our liberties by administering justice and ensuring our safety from threats arising inside or outside our country’s sovereign borders. When our government ventures beyond these functions and attempts to increase its power over the marketplace and the economic decisions of individuals, our liberties are diminished and the probability of corruption, internal strife, economic depression, and poverty increases.
Economic Freedom

The most powerful, proven instrument of material and social progress is the free market. The market economy, driven by the accumulated expressions of individual economic choices, is the only economic system that preserves and enhances individual liberty. Any other economic system, regardless of its intended pragmatic benefits, undermines our fundamental rights as free people.

1. Protect the Constitution
Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does. (82.03%)

2. Reject Cap & Trade
Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures. (72.20%)

3. Demand a Balanced Budget
Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any tax hike. (69.69%)

4. Enact Fundamental Tax Reform
Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words—the length of the original Constitution. (64.90%)

5. Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally Limited Government in Washington
Create a Blue Ribbon taskforce that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their Constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states or local authorities, or ripe for wholesale reform or elimination due to our efforts to restore limited government consistent with the US Constitution’s meaning. (63.37%)

6. End Runaway Government Spending
Impose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of the inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth. (56.57%)

7. Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-run Health Care
Defund, repeal and replace the recently passed government-run health care with a system that actually makes health care and insurance more affordable by enabling a competitive, open, and transparent free-market health care and health insurance system that isn’t restricted by state boundaries. (56.39%)

8. Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above” Energy Policy
Authorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition and jobs. (55.51%)

9. Stop the Pork
Place a moratorium on all earmarks until the budget is balanced, and then require a 2/3 majority to pass any earmark. (55.47%)

10. Stop the Tax Hikes
Permanently repeal all tax hikes, including those to the income, capital gains, and death taxes, currently scheduled to begin in 2011. (53.38%)

Are you concerned that your kids are being bombarded with pro-green propaganda in their school? If so, check out Balanced Education for Everyone. The organization is helping parents fight the bureaucracy and stop Al Gore and his extremist propaganda from providing one-sided fear-mongering to impressionable children.

If you want to find out more and actually get involved, especially if you have children in school, drop us a line at info@riograndefoundation.org and we’ll help you work with Balanced Education for Everyone.

New Mexico has made some dramatic strides in making government more accessible to citizens and taxpayers. I congratulate deserving political leaders for their efforts and outline some ways in which further improvement could be achieve in this recent article.

This week over at the “Independent Forum” over at the New Mexico Independent, panelists were asked to discuss ways to improve K-12 education in New Mexico. Check out my response and the responses of others here.

Interesting to see a lack of responses this week, particularly from AFSCME’s Carter Bundy? Perhaps he doesn’t have his marching orders from his friends at the teachers’ unions yet and doesn’t want to get his government labor union crossways with the teachers? Or, maybe government employee unions like his don’t really care if statewide graduation rates are much better than 50%?

Liberty, the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights, fiscal responsibility, the freedom to prosper–got a problem with that?  Unfortunately, many of our political leaders seem to have forgotten what has made America great.  A lot of New Mexicans will try to job their memories tomorrow.

Here’s the lineup for Tea Party Tax Day Rallies across New Mexico:

Albuqueruque:  Menaul and San Pedro, 4-7  pm

Las Cruces: Young Park, south of Lohman, west of Bellamah Loop, 5-7:30 pm

Santa Fe: The Plaza 5-8 pm

Los Lunas:  the River Bridge, 4-7 pm

Clovis:  Curry County Courthouse, noon to 1:30 pm

Roswell:  Pioneer Plaza (across from the Chaves County Courthouse)  11 am to 2 pm

Silver City:  Gough Park, 10 am to 6 pm

Moriarty:  Crossley Park, 11 am to 1 pm

Ruidoso:  Wingfield Park, 415 Wingfield Street, 2 pm to 5 pm

Farmington:  NOTE–SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 11 am to 1 pm, Gateway Museum

Check for updates at www.albuquerqueteaparty.com

We have certainly expressed no love for ObamaCare and its “passage” a few weeks ago. But, I’ll admit that I hadn’t seen this: ObamaCare imposes a 3.8% Medicare tax on unearned income including the sale of single family homes, townhouses, co-ops, condominiums, and even rental income.

As our friend Paul Guppy of the Washington-based Washington Policy Center (a fellow free market think tank) points out, ObamaCare’s other fees and taxes include:

Penalties on individuals. Individuals will pay a yearly penalty of $695, or up to 2.5 percent of their annual income, if they cannot show they have purchased a government-approved health policy.

Penalties on families. Families will pay a yearly penalty of $347 per child, up to $2,250 per family, if parents cannot show they have purchased a government- approved policy.

Penalties on employers. Business owners with more than 50 employees must buy government- acceptable health coverage or pay a yearly penalty of $2,000 per employee if at least one employee receives a tax credit.

And what of that pledge not to raise taxes on the middle class?

Check out this FAQ on the new real estate tax here.

This is good news. If New Mexico is to have a carbon cap, it should at least be done legislatively.

Recently, on the pages of the Albuquerque Journal’s business section, some students from the Anderson School at UNM made some salient points regarding the recent federal bailouts. While their points were largely accurate, they concluded by arguing that Congress should dump money that went to the automakers into “green energy” instead.

In a letter to the editor that was published in Monday’s Business Journal, I express my disagreement with the idea that Congress should pick winners and losers, regardless of their future prospects (as foreseen by politicians):

Picking winners a loser

Reading the “Executive’s Desk” column from the various business students at UNM’s Anderson School (April 5) renewed my confidence in the next generation of business leaders. They made a compelling case against government intervention in the U.S. economy on behalf of specific industries and connected it directly to taxpayers’ pocketbooks and lower living standards. These are the inevitable fruits of massive government intervention.

Better still, the students went on to discuss the concept of “comparative advantage” which explains that the U.S economy can continue to thrive regardless of its prowess – or lack thereof – in specific industries and sectors like manufacturing because U.S. workers and companies do other things quite well.

Unfortunately, the students undermined their own case toward the end of their article by asserting that taxpayer dollars that were allocated to the auto bailout should instead be directed toward promotion of so-called “green” jobs. The idea that government schemes to create jobs are worthy of support is every bit as specious as the idea that saving auto industry jobs is worthy of massive infusions of taxpayer dollars.

If Congress wishes to build wealth and grow the U.S. economy, the best policy is to leave entrepreneurs and the marketplace as a whole, free to allocate resources. Picking winners and losers is both corrupting and a road to reduced standards of living.

Paul J. Gessing
President
Rio Grande Foundation

Our friends at the National Taxpayers Union regularly put out useful information on the state of America’s economy and the burdens our government puts on taxpayers and future generations of taxpayers. For a startling view of the debt burden, check out the chart below:

Rio Grande Foundation research has previously pointed to higher education as an area of tremendous bloat in terms of employment. According to the findings of this study, higher education in New Mexico is the most bloated of any state in the nation.

Where there is smoke, there is often fire. So, in today’s Albuquerque Journal, our adjunct scholar Kevin Rollins explained that there are wide disparities in terms of higher education costs among both State universities and community colleges. Efforts by legislators and the Higher Ed Department should focus on figuring out why such broad cost differences exist and what can be done to reduce costs. After all, with $80 million in potential annual savings, we could do a great deal to reduce or even eliminate state budget problems.

New Mexico government has gotten more transparent in recent years. The Rio Grande Foundation can take some credit for this, but the efforts of individual legislators like Sen. Sander Rue, Janice Arnold-Jones, and even Lt. Governor Denish cannot be discounted.

Nonetheless, there is still much to do and over at the Independent Forum this week, the panelists (including yours truly) offered their thoughts.

I did not always see eye-to-eye with Heather Wilson when she was in Congress. She was never fiscally-conservative enough for my tastes and was one of the worst-scoring Republicans year after year in ratings like NTU Rates Congress.

Nonetheless, I was thrilled to see her come out swinging in the Albuquerque Journal regarding the passage of ObamaCare and New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman’s strong support for the “reform.”

Wilson writes convincingly of ObamaCare’s lack of any real cost controls:

The biggest problem with health care that Americans want addressed is spiraling cost. Year after year of cost growth at two or three times the rate of inflation makes it difficult for any business to offer insurance. One of the biggest reasons take-home pay hasn’t increased much over the past decade is that health care benefits are absorbing what would otherwise show up as pay raises.

The law passed does virtually nothing to address the escalating cost of health care. In fact, health insurance premiums will continue to rapidly increase under the new law, particularly for younger Americans. The law is based on an assumption that greater government control will put a brake on costs. But experience with both Medicaid and Medicare shows this just doesn’t work.

Consumer-driven care and more choices can help control cost growth. The cost growth for medical procedures where the consumer makes a decision — like elective plastic surgery, dental care, chiropractic care, LASIC, hearing aids and eye glasses — are much closer to the regular rate of inflation.

Although Wilson seems to have no plans to run for office in the near future, it was good to see her jump into the health care policy debate on the side of those who opposed even greater federal intervention in Americans’ health care.

Clinton was a fiscal moderate; Bush was a big spender. Unfortunately, Obama has taken Bush’s big-spending ways, expansion of government’s role in health care, and foreign policy and either locked it in or expanded it. If, by some chance, Obama reads the Albuquerque Alibi, I hope he reads my article this week.

So, to answer the question, no, I don’t miss “him” yet. I do miss this Democratic Party president though.