New Mexico’s maximum estimated pension liabilities are 59.8 percent of GDP. That may not mean much, but how about the fact that they are third greatest in the nation? How about the fact that only Wisconsin and Ohio have greater pension burdens as a percentage of GDP?

Bill Gates has an outstanding article in today’s Albuquerque Journal on education. Gates hits on many of the Rio Grande Foundation’s points on education reform, specifically the out of control spending of the last few decades with little in the way of results.

Gates then points out that the correlation between small class sizes and learning is very weak, that hiring, measuring, and keeping excellent teachers is key, and that money spent to get teachers additional certifications and degrees is largely wasted.

Oh, and even though he has probably spent more of his time and money on the issue than anyone else in America to look at education reform issues, if Gates miraculously wanted to come to New Mexico and become our PED Secretary, he couldn’t. He’s not an educator. Duh!

Along with RGF Board member Doug Turner, Rep. Conrad James, and Rep. Alonzo Baldonado, RGF President Paul Gessing debated the liberals on whether New Mexico should raise taxes or cut services. As Turner points out in his opening remarks, this is a false dichotomy, but the debate was fun and I look forward to participating in more of them. Total length is about an hour:

In today’s Albuquerque Journal, readers received a lesson in the “butterfly theory” and its application to K-12 education. I’m not sure if the author is simply an education bureaucrat and part of the establishment who views any and all reforms as harmful to his own power or if he has an alternative (unstated set of reforms), but his claims that Gov. Martinez’s proposed reforms “won’t work” are all wet.

For starters, he claims that the “A-F” grading mechanism is not useful because it is a “reductionist approach.” There is really nothing that can be said about that except that any and all tools used to measure success/failure found in this world are “reductionist” by definition. If your kid gets an “F” in a particular class, that doesn’t mean that they don’t know ANY of the material in that class. Instead, it means that on the whole, there is a major problem that must be addressed.

It’s the same thing with a movie’s rating. A movie may have had some nifty special effects or a really great plot, but if some aspect of the movie just didn’t make sense, it is not going to get a “5 star” rating. The “reductionist” approach is not perfect, but it is the only way to analyze the situation without having parents actually sit through every class with their child. That is the point.

Anyway, the fact is that the reforms making up the so-called “Florida Model” go far beyond the “A-F” grading system and stopping social promotion. Increased school choice, virtual schools, and an increased focus on literacy all contributed to its success. Rather than throwing stones, Mr. Bower should try proposing some specific reform ideas.

There was an excellent article on the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in the Albuquerque Journal today. The author mostly defends the safety of the project which is located between Hobbs and Carlsbad, but he also explains that “hot” nuclear waste is already stored at the facility.

The big question that is being asked now is whether another facility located near WIPP could serve as the nation’s primary storage site for waste from America’s nuclear power plants. With the Obama Administration having (unwisely in my opinion) shut down Yucca Mountain in Nevada, there is most definitely a need to get nuclear waste stored in a more secure location than is now available on-site at numerous nuclear facilities nationwide. It would seem that New Mexicans, particularly those from Southeastern New Mexico, have seen that nuclear waste can be contained effectively and that having it stored in their community is an economic boon that provides high-paying jobs.

So, it would seem that it is definitely worth looking into. The waste must be stored somewhere, why not here?

The meme on the left is that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and anyone supporting him is out to destroy labor unions. As Jonah Goldberg explains, nothing could be further from the truth. Private sector unions have a proud history of standing up to abusive business practices. Although even private sector unions are susceptible to their own abusive practices (as are businesses), as Goldberg makes clear:

Private-sector unions fight with management over an equitable distribution of profits. Government unions negotiate with friendly politicians over taxpayer money, putting the public interest at odds with union interests, and, as we’ve seen in states such as California and Wisconsin, exploding the cost of government. California’s pension costs soared 2,000 percent in a decade thanks to the unions.

And, while there is some controversy over whether Franklin Delano Roosevelt outright opposed public sector unions (he seems to contradict himself in this letter), he clearly felt that there were issues with allowing government workers to bargain collectively when he wrote:

All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations.

So, understand that no one is trying to kill unions, but that allowing government workers whose bosses in government have no profit motive and are often less than careful about how they spend taxpayers’ money was a big mistake. It is time to resolve this problem and I applaud Gov. Walker for taking this courageous step.

Immediately prior to our debate on Wednesday night in Santa Fe, a man accosted me and told me that the Rio Grande Foundation was “bought and paid for” by the Koch brothers. I wish.

But it got me to thinking…”who is the biggest, most-powerful lobbying group in New Mexico?” Surprise, surprise, it is not the Koch’s or even the supposedly all-powerful oil and gas industries. Instead, it is the big-government lobbyists at AFSCME (American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees).

According to the Albuquerque Journal, AFSCME handed out $592,300 in contributions from last April through the end of 2010 while the “mighty” oil and gas industry handed out a mere $183,000 (30% of what AFSCME spent). While New Mexico has a disproportionately large government sector, AFSCME is a powerful force in almost all states (including Wisconsin where a major battle is now under way). It is worth noting that AFSCME members benefit from more government spending, the hiring of additional government workers (both of which create more dues and greater influence for the union), and they don’t necessarily care if government cannot pay its bills as long as they “get theirs.”

Before jumping to the conclusion that oil and gas exercise undue influence in New Mexico politics, it is important to realize who is writing the biggest checks and how they benefit from bigger government.

The Santa Fe New Mexican wrote up a post-mortem on our debate on government spending and taxes last night. Considering that the event was organized by the leftist Progressive Action Network and took place in Santa Fe, I’m pretty pleased with the vote. I was more pleased with the way two of our freshman legislators, Conrad James and Alonzo Baldonado (who was pulled from the crowd to replace Sen. Beffort who was tied up on the Senate floor).

The future is bright for these two and I think we haven’t heard the last from our fourth team member, Doug Turner, when it comes to New Mexico politics.

With all that is happening in Wisconsin (and now Ohio and other states) with regard to government workers, some observers are wondering how we arrived to this point.

Well, Hal Stratton, New Mexico’s former attorney general (and co-founder of the Rio Grande Foundation), has written an excellent history of government union collective bargaining. Now, more than ever, it is worth the read.

I’ll bet Hanna Skandera is wondering what she’s gotten herself into at this point. The point of view of New Mexico’s education establishment seems to be: we’re 49th and we’re proud, take your high-falutin’ reform ideas elsewhere….

The latest issue is the definition of “educator.” According to this morning’s Albuquerque Journal, the latest demand from the unions and their supporters is that Skandera prove that she is an “educator.” According to the article, Skandera “Skandera also was a lecturer and adjunct professor at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy in 2002 and 2003.” I’m not sure what further questions there might be on the topic.

Of course, our Constitutional requirement that the head of PED be an “educator” is ridiculous. It’s like demanding that every pro football coach or baseball manager have played in the NFL or major leagues (many coaches and managers do not). While both skills are important, the idea that teaching makes someone qualified to manage a $3 billion bureaucracy is silly (and vice-versa).

The unions are simply doing everything they can to frustrate and wear down Skandera and Gov. Martinez. For the good of New Mexico’s children, this cannot happen.

The Rio Grande Foundation and American Tradition Institute recently released a report showing that New Mexico’s renewable portfolio standard will cost rate-payers $2.3 billion over 10 years starting this year. RGF president Paul Gessing discussed the study and a variety of other issues with Mike Jaxson of KSVP Radio in Artesia. Listen here.

The full study is available here. A two page summary can be found here.

Legislation to limit the economic damage of New Mexico’s RPS has been introduced in this session.

Paul Jacob has an excellent and brief article about the supposedly “non-violent” protests going on in Wisconsin now. Oh, and remember all that hot air about toning down the (tea party) rhetoric when Gabrielle Giffords was shot?

Check out this video of the unions in Wisconsin calling the Governor all kinds of nasty names. I’m not a believer in the media being “liberal,” but they are inherently pro-state and will tend to support those who hold state power with fawning admiration. Don’t believe me? Check out the “New Mexico’s Mr. Smith” article on retiring Sen. Jeff Bingaman.

In order for New Mexico to get out of the nation’s economic basement, Gov. Martinez is going to have to take some tough stands against the unions as well. I hope she is up to the challenge.

There are two main fronts in the battle for America’s future right now. The first is the effort to make all Americans dependent on the federal government (and the ongoing effort against the initiative) through ObamaCare.

The second is now taking place in Wisconsin where Republican Governor Scott Walker is making a stand against belligerent public-employee unions. Sign a petition in support of Walker’s efforts here. The petition simply states:

Union dues should be voluntary, and the state should not be in the business of collecting them. Union certification should require a secret ballot. Collective bargaining should not be used to force extravagant pension and health benefits that cripple state budgets.

These common-sense reforms have made the union bosses desperate to disrupt Wisconsin government and overturn an election. They must not be allowed to succeed. In fact, every state should adopt Governor Scott Walker’s common sense reforms.

Simply put, allowing government workers to unionize and lobby the government puts taxpayers at a disadvantage because they don’t have a seat at the table. Politicians have strong incentives to cater to the highly-organized unions and the taxpayers are left in the cold. If states are going to avoid the economy-killing tax increases recently passed in Illinois, it looks like the battle will first be waged in Wisconsin.

Wait, aren’t big box stores supposed to be evil? Isn’t that why the liberals want to tax them? You wouldn’t know they were evil from the remarks of some of their small-store colleagues when it became public information that Borders Books was going to go out of business.

Said one shop owner near the Sanbusco Borders which is to be closed, “Borders increased sales for surrounding shops” and “Before Borders, this place was bad, there were empty stores all the time.” Another Borders neighbor said, she’s “worried about losing Borders” because her store “has plans to expand and we can’t sit empty.”

Thankfully, mandatory combined reporting is not going to happen because of Susana Martinez, but if liberals had their way and taxes were raised, I wonder which big box store would close next (thus causing a crisis for its New Mexico-owned neighbors)?

I haven’t written about Hanna Skandera and her consultants because I think the issue is so ridiculously-fabricated by the teachers’ unions as to be not worth mentioning. After all, the unions will criticize reformers like Skandera for the act of breathing, much less actually reforming our failing schools.

Then I saw the front page of today’s Albuquerque Journal with Linthicum’s silly column saying that “she’d like Skandera’s deal” of having consultants paid a total of $152,000 to write her columns. Perhaps if Linthicum had consultants, they would have told her not to write the column in the first place. Or they might have told her that dealing with federal regulations, an entrenched bureaucracy, and teachers unions’ to name just a few obstacles, is a bit different than writing a newspaper column….

Thankfully, Michael DeWitte and Larry Langley of the New Mexico Business Roundtable have a much more common sense take on the consultant non-issue on the editorial pages of this morning’s paper.

I simply don’t understand how — unless you are in a teachers union — you can criticize Skandera. She’s like a football coach who has taken over a failed football team like the Carolina Panthers or Denver Broncos. She hasn’t even had the chance to make a draft pick yet. And, unlike a football coach, she doesn’t actually have the ability to control her “team” which is really led by the unions. How can you criticize her at this point?

The Rio Grande Foundation will be involved in several upcoming public policy discussions. You are invited to attend the following:

Republicans In Business Network: 11:45am to 1pm, Wednesday the 23rd at Shoney’s at Menaul and Louisiana in Albuquerque; Paul Gessing of the Rio Grande Foundation will be discussing K-12 education in New Mexico and its importance to New Mexico’s economy;

Should we cut education and programs or raise taxes? Debate with New Mexico Progressive Action;
Will be held:
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Scottish Rite Temple, 463 Paseo De Peralta, Santa Fe
Debate begins @ 7 pm
Reception @ 8 pm
Admission is free

Participants include: Paul Gessing, Doug Turner, Sen. Steve Fischmann, and Rep. Conrad James vs. Carter Bundy, Kelly O’donnell, Sen. Eric Griego, and Rep. Moe Maestas.

Lastly, for those of you in Deming, Rio Grande Foundation President Paul Gessing will be discussing K-12 education costs and reforms at the Deming Rotary Club meeting which will be held on Thursday Feb. 24 from noon to 1pm at the Rio Mimbres Country Club. More information on the Deming Rotary Club is available from: Club President: Jarod Hofacket (575) 545-3418.

New Mexico has a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) that mandates that so-called “renewable” sources account for 10 percent of all power generated by 2011; 15 percent for 2015; and 20 percent for 2020 and thereafter. While environmentalists would have us believe that these government regulations will create jobs and spur economic growth, the real story is far different. According to a new study commissioned by the American Tradition Institute and the Rio Grande Foundation finds that New Mexicans will pay $2.3 billion more for electricity than they otherwise would because of the RPS. The new study can be found here.

A “quick findings” page can be found here.

I have been writing quite a bit recently on the ever-increasing amount of money New Mexico taxpayers spend on K-12 education. My column on the issue is now posted at Heath Haussamen’s site.

Albuquerque Journal Business journalist Winthrop Quigley recently wrote about American health care. The theme of the article is basically that there are often unintended consequences when it comes to changing health care laws.

Quigley also relied on a GAO report that attacked health savings accounts for being targeted at the wealthy when this study was flawed and other studies have shown that health savings accounts are attractive for everyone, not just the rich.

I responded with a letter to the editor that appeared in the paper on Monday and is found below:

Winthrop Quigley is absolutely right that policy decisions – even ostensibly pro-market ones – made in Washington, DC, often have unintended consequences. Nowhere is this clearer than in the area of health care where policies are adopted on top of policies, often with contradictory results.

Unraveling this mess of policies will take political will and humility, two things that are in very short supply in Washington, but things will move in a better direction if certain principles are followed including:

• Not all wisdom comes from Washington. Let the 50 “laboratories of democracy” tackle the health care issue their own way;
• Spending on health care programs – including Medicare and Medicaid — should be managed at the state level. The block grant model worked in the 1990s with welfare reform, it could work again;
• Better decisions and greater efficiency will result from putting health care dollars back in the hands of patients and consumers, not governments and insurance companies.

The aforementioned principles have been ignored by Democrats and Republicans alike, leading to our current mess. President Obama’s health care law, like Bush’s massive Medicare prescription drug bill, centralized decision-making and has led (or will lead) to massive deficits and inefficient delivery of health care services.

We can and must do better in health care for our own health and for the fiscal health of the nation.

In case you missed it, the Albuquerque Journal had a friendly editorial in Saturday’s paper in support of Sen. Fischmann’s (D-Mesilla Park) legislation, SB 52, that requires public records that exist in an electronic format be provided that way if the person requesting them agrees. The legislation passed the Senate unanimously and is in the House.

The editorial noted that we at the Rio Grande Foundation traveled to Deming to obtain public records that the district possessed in an electronic format. Rather than simply giving us the information in that format as we requested, we were forced to accept printouts and scan them back in to an electronic format. Fischmann’s legislation would change that and we applaud him for that. Hopefully the House supports the effort.

Was I the only one who was repulsed by the fact that Al Sharpton was asked to speak to the New Mexico Legislature recently for “African-American Day?” Aside from the fact that he is a proven liar, Sharpton is an extreme liberal who used his speech to the Legislature to “boost public education (read more spending) and shield governmental workers from ‘unfair’ budget cuts.”

While I suppose that the lefties should have their moment in the sun, I think it would only be fair to have a principled, black advocate of free markets and limited government out for the next “African-American Day.” May I suggest Walter Williams, Deroy Murdock, or entrepreneur Herman Cain. We at the Rio Grande Foundation would be happy to work with legislators in their future endeavors to ensure that more perspectives than that of the extreme left wing of the black community are presented.

County Commissioner Michael Weiner is proposing that Bernalillo County purchase the County Line Restaurant and turn it into a community center due to disagreements over noise from outside musical performances.

Weiner’s is a bad idea for many reasons. Most importantly, while I don’t know how how much the County Line pays in taxes, it is a taxpayer. I’ll bet a decent amount of the money spent at the place is from tourists who want a bite to eat after visiting the Tram. Noise issues can be difficult to resolve because they involve two sets of conflicting property rights, but I think that as long as the noise is kept to reasonable levels and is not done late into the night, deference should be given.

The bigger issue is that New Mexico needs every private sector job it can get. Using taxpayer money to close down a restaurant and put a community center in is a bad idea. The neighbors need to sit down directly with the restaurant management to work something out.

We at the Rio Grande Foundation pretty much focus our attention on New Mexico. But, New Mexico taxpayers pay federal taxes and that means that we pay for the billions of dollars the federal government sends overseas in the form of so-called “foreign aid.”

Foreign aid is both ineffective and immoral because we are using government force to transfer money from US taxpayers to foreign despots. With all that is going on in Egypt right now, it is readily apparent that the $1.5 billion the US is sending to the country is not being used for the benefit of that nation’s people, but to keep a corrupt regime in place.

Sen. Rand Paul is one of the few people in Washington who is serious about eliminating the budget deficit and putting the federal government on a sound fiscal footing. He says that we should eliminate all foreign aid. I think he’s right.

Sen. Tim Jennings made front page news this morning with his proposal that cities chip in to pay a portion of the costs for the New Mexico film industry’s subsidies which totaled $65 million last year. From a tax policy perspective, this proposal makes a lot of sense.

Simply put, the state’s General Fund bears the whole price tag of the subsidies currently. According to the Film Office’s own numbers, this program generated $600 million, which, as an aside, when taxed at the 5% state GRT rate or the 4.9% personal income tax rate, generated approximately $30 million in taxes. Thus, the program is a money-loser.

Nonetheless, you may have noticed that I did not include the city portions of the GRT in this calculation. Regardless of how much the film industry actually generates in tax revenue, since local governments pay nothing for the film industry, they are getting a free ride at the moment.

It only makes sense that the cities that benefit from this program, primarily Albuquerque and Santa Fe which have benefited disproportionately from the subsidies. Of course, as the article notes, the financially-strapped cities are not exactly jumping on the bandwagon to support this industry that is supposedly so important to their economies. While I have no knowledge of Jennings’ actual reasoning for this effort, I think that actually asking the various entities — whether they be cities or the industries that benefit from the film program — chip in a significant amount, will show just how deep the support for this program really is.