With Halloween just around the corner, it seems like every day we find out about another “trick” associated with the ObamaCare health plan. Two days ago, the New Mexico Independent reported that Aetna would no longer be writing small group or individual policies in the state.

With Blue Cross already haggling with the state’s PRC over major rate hikes, it seems that the combination of rapidly-rising costs under ObamaCare and the PRC’s unwillingness to raise rates could make individual health insurance plans nearly impossible to obtain in the state, thus forcing more and more people onto government programs.

Perhaps killing the last remnants of private health care was the strategy from the outset?

The Albuquerque Journal’s letters section is often good for a few laughs. Of course it would be even funnier if the letters did not so often display extreme ignorance both about the role of government and economic reality. One recent letter that struck me as particularly funny was “If Tea Party Wins, the People Lose.”

While I certainly disagree with the premise, the letter makes an assertion that I found particularly egregious, that being: “The Bush-Cheney era was the closest the Libertarians have gotten to real power since Hoover.” This is just ignorant.

According to the book, which is written from a libertarian perspective “Recarving Rushmore,” which was written by Ivan Eland (who will be speaking at an upcoming Rio Grande Foundation-sponsored event in Albuquerque), George W. Bush was the 36th best of 40 presidents (not exactly close to the libertarian ideal).

Herbert Hoover was 18th out of 40th which is much better, but still not “great.” So, who is the libertarian ideal when it comes to the presidency? John Tyler and Grover Cleveland top the list, but among modern presidents Clinton and Carter do rather well. To find out who the best “libertarian” presidents really are, come listen to Ivan Eland’s presentation on November 10 and pick up a copy of his book.

Liberals love to claim that Social Security did not cause our current federal deficit situation. While technically-correct in the past, that situation is about to change quickly and for the worse.

According to the Mercatus Center at George Mason University:

Social Security will pay out more than it takes in this year, sending out $41 billion more in benefits than it will collect. This is the first time since 1983 that benefit payouts have outstripped collections, and according to CBO data, the finances of the Social Security system are deteriorating more rapidly than even the CBO expected.

Using CBO’s last three long-term projections for Social Security, the above chart graphs the decline. CBO uses the percentage of taxable payroll left to Social Security at year’s end as the bases for its projections. The percentage of taxable payroll is an estimate of earnings subject to the payroll tax. When the percentage becomes negative, Social Security is paying out more in benefits than it collects in payroll taxes in a given year.

So, Social Security is now causing the federal deficit to increase. It is time for reform. Preferably along the lines of this idea.

Carter Bundy of AFSCME recently wrote an article attacking the Rio Grande Foundation and its data on government employment that appeared over at www.nmpolitics.net. Wrote Bundy, in part:

In what is becoming an annual ritual, I have to point out the incredibly obvious statistical and analytical errors in the Rio Grande Foundation’s analysis.

Well, we certainly couldn’t let such a direct attack go without a response, so economists Scott Moody and Wendy Warcholik penned a response that appeared at NMPolitics today. While responding to several of Bundy’s points, Moody and Warcholik conclude that:

Despite Mr. Bundy’s wishful thinking, New Mexico is poorer thanks to its bloated government workforce. Not only would the average household save $3,732 in taxes per year with a right-sized government payroll, but over the long-run they would also have another $10,857 in personal income to spend on goods and services such as homes, cars, education and health care.

The Rio Grande Foundation’s Watchdog, Jim Scarantino and others have expressed concerns about the conflicts of interest on the Environmental Improvement Board which is expected to rule shortly after the election (coincidence, I think not), on a New Mexico-only carbon cap.

It was nice to see this opinion piece from local hydrologist Michael Wallace which largely echoed and expounded upon Scarantino’s findings, particularly relating to Gay Dillingham.

In case you haven’t heard, there has been a huge hullabaloo over some remarks made by (and subsequent firing from NPR) of Juan Williams. In case you have been living under a rock, Williams said on Fox News that he “worries when I am getting on an airplane and see people dressed in garb that identifies them first and foremost as Muslims.”

NPR, which receives a relatively small (but significant) portion of its revenue from federal taxes, is now under attack by Republicans. While I agree in principle that taxpayers should not fund media outlets (whether those be newspapers or radio stations) I wonder where these conservatives were during the Bush Administration when they had total control of the government and failed to eliminate NPR funding?

According to Wikipedia, the best source I could find, “In 2009, member stations derived 6% of their revenue from local funding and 10% of their revenue from the federal funding in the form of CPB grants.”

It would seem that eliminating the small amount of funding it receives from the federal government would benefit NPR rather than harming it by insulating it from criticisms that it is a mouthpiece for big-government, left-wing causes. Freed of its federal sponsors, perhaps NPR could become the left’s version of Fox News or Rush Limbaugh?

With the term “tejana” being thrown around this election as a pejorative and Diane Denish saying that “Texas policy is bad for New Mexico,” it would seem that some analysis of Texas’s economic policies relative to New Mexico’s (and the rest of the nation for that matter) might be in order.

First and foremost, it is worth noting that the two main traits of the Texas economy that differ from New Mexico are 1) lack of an income tax; 2) less onerous labor union laws in Texas.

I’ve previously blogged about Texas’s economic success here and here, but the positive data from Texas just keeps coming.

Recently, Investors Business Daily compared the Texas economy (very favorably) with California. According to the article:

By August, the job count in Texas had rebounded to where it was when the recession officially began in December 2007. California’s payroll was still 1.46 million below the pre-recession level. The nation as a whole was down by 6.42 million jobs. In other words, California, with one-eighth the nation’s population, accounts for more than a fifth of its job deficit left over from the downturn.

This chart is particularly interesting:

Another article extolling Texas as an economic model comes from Rich Lowry over at National Review.

Simply put, the BEST thing the Richardson/Denish Administration has done is to move New Mexico slightly closer to the Texas model by reducing our top income tax rate from 8.2 to 4.9 percent. It seems hard to believe that Denish really believes that what has worked in Texas won’t work here. While time is tight, perhaps Martinez should campaign on the possibility that she can bring some of Texas’s economic prosperity to the “Land of Enchantment?”

There was an interesting AP article recently in the Albuquerque Journal that explained how politicians and taxpayers are leery of signing off on and paying for major infrastructure projects. The economy and a lack of money are cited as the major reasons, but some wonder if America has lost its “mojo” if you will, in terms of building big things.

I don’t know about that. My view is that such projects should be built on a “user-pays” basis and that labor for such projects should be paid at market wages, not inflated “Davis-Bacon” rates. So, the railroad tunnel that Chris Christie has abandoned — which would never pay for itself — should probably not be built.

The local “bike-bridge to nowhere” is another project that would have never gotten off the ground if local bike riders had to pay for it.

Another project that shouldn’t be built is the silly $26 million project that will turn Lead and Coal, roads that were meant to be major throughways, into bike-friendly parkways with slower traffic. Paying good money to decrease mobility is just silly.

There are plenty of big projects begging be built around Albuquerque like major interchanges at Paseo and I-25 and Paseo and Coors, but our infrastructure funding system is broken. Alas, that is the real issue. Until government is competent in funding projects that make sense, I think Americans will rightly question government’s competence to prioritize and build these projects.

The future if our politicians don’t cut spending and do it now:

Find out more about CAGW here.

A while back, the Legislative Finance Committee published what can only be described as a report that is biased against charter schools (the original study link was broken at the time of this writing). Criticisms included performance, expense, and a supposed lack of accountability. We at the Rio Grande Foundation believe that charters, while not a panacea, can be a valuable alternative to traditional public schools. In fact, my own cousin is a charter success story.

So it was with great interest and pleasure that I read liberal lion of the New Mexico SenateJerry Ortiz y Pino’s opinion piece in today’s Albuquerque Journal in which he spells out the specific flaws in the LFC study and explains why charters actually operate at a significant disadvantage relative to their traditional public school brethren.

Ortiz y Pino’s column not only effectively defends charters against the repeated attacks by those who oppose education reform, but shows that left and right can agree that reform is indeed needed.

Ever wonder why most historians think FDR is one of America’s greatest presidents even though he utterly ignored the US Constitution (which is supposedly the law of the land)? Ever wish that presidents were considered “great” if they adhered to the principles of limited government this nation was founded on? I know I have!

Well, for an overview of the presidents — and an effort at putting the first two years of Obama’s presidency in perspective — attend the Rio Grande Foundation’s upcoming luncheon with keynote speaker Ivan Eland, author of “Recarving Rushmore.”

Eland judges presidents not by how much they expand the power of the executive, but by how they preserve your life, liberty, and property. Reservations are $35 and can be made online here.

Tune in to 1550 KIVA between now and the election and you’ll likely hear a minute-long commentary from me about the bond measures on the ballot this fall.

So far I’ve done three commentaries which should be in heavy rotation. Take a listen by clicking here, here, and here.

Funny how things catch up with you. Back in 2005, as Director of Government Affairs for the National Taxpayers Union, I (along with several other conservative leaders including Grover Norquist) signed an open letter outlining our groups’ collective opposition to expanded federal subsidies for local law enforcement.

Well, as the Santa Fe Reporter has found, this federal program has been expanded dramatically (nearly tripled) under President Obama’s so-called “stimulus” program. Funds from the program, as The Reporter notes in a detailed article, were used in part for a mistaken drug raid in Española.

Law enforcement — like nearly all other government programs — are better left to local government. President Obama certainly does not understand this fact and his “stimulus” is a great example.

In today’s Journal, I read with an article by Diane Kerschen, an Associate Superintendent for Elementary Education with APS. There has been a great deal of discussion recently about Reid Nunn’s all-boy class at McCollum Elementary and whether single-sex education works. For the record, I went to an all-boy high school and did not find the single-sex aspect to improve things, but that was only my experience.

This brings me to Kerschen’s assertion that because the all-boy class had only 15 students in it (as opposed to 15), that the smaller class size is what caused the improved results. That is plain silly. The fact is that the connection between class size and educational achievement is not well established.

More importantly, extrapolating data from one class — one in which same-sex teaching was also implemented — defies any standard of statistical analysis. It’s called “sample size.” The fact is that you need to allow many different techniques to be tried in a controlled environment before jumping to such conclusions.

I’d like to see a great deal of experimentation — including smaller (and larger) class sizes (and a whole host of other schooling techniques) — and have relevant data collected and made available for analysis. Unfortunately, this is the very kind of thing that the teachers’ unions have attempted to stop in the past.

One wonders if Diane Denish understands what the term “tax increase” means. She is on record as saying she “didn’t see any scenario in which she would support a tax hike “over the next several years.”

Then, during the most recent debate which was held on Sunday, she stated that she favored “closing a tax ‘loophole’ (combined reporting) that would raise $70 million.” Sounds like a tax increase, right? Denish then went so far as to call the candidates’ disagreement on the issue “the defining moment” of the New Mexico gubernatorial campaign. I’ll agree with her on that one.

What this “defining moment” makes clear is that Denish is either not serious about her pledge not to raise taxes or she simply doesn’t understand the definition of the term “tax increase.” Of course, Denish MAY have some plan in her back pocket to offset the $70 million tax hike that combined reporting represents, that would make her plan a mere tax shift instead of a tax hike, but I have heard no plans to this effect.

There has been a lot of talk recently about the economic situation in Chama, see here and here. The town is very reliant on the tourist train that saw a trestle burned this summer. That is a shame and I am sympathetic to the folks of Chama, but that doesn’t mean I think average New Mexicans should pay the bill to restore train service.

I explain what should be done in a letter that was published in today’s Business Journal.

Privatize Chama’s tourist train

It was only a matter of time. The town of Chama, the economy of which is heavily reliant on the state-owned Cumbres & Toltec train, is in need of a taxpayer bailout because a train trestle fire this summer has limited train traffic to the town.

While it is hard to feel anything but sympathy for Chama residents whose businesses have been impacted, it is silly for taxpayers in one part of the state (or nation) to subsidize tourist attractions in other parts of the state (or nation). Tourist attractions should either be privately run or funded through local taxes.

But this is not the case. Rather, the train is reliant on the taxpayer.

Just this year, New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman requested $1 million in federal dollars for the Cumbres & Toltec. This comes on top of annual contributions from the governments of New Mexico and Colorado which jointly own the railroad. This makes no sense in the best of economic times: With core government programs on the chopping block and federal and state taxes on their way up, government needs to stick to the basics.

The Cumbres & Toltec should be privately owned like the similar Durango-Silverton train. Rather than a taxpayer bailout, we should look for ways to make the Cumbres & Toltec — and other tourist attractions — profitable, private enterprises.

Paul J. Gessing
President
Rio Grande Foundation
Albuquerque

If the Tea Party is the biggest single split among Republicans, the Democrats’ biggest split is between entrenched labor unions and education reformers. This issue is coming to a head in many ways, but one is the departure of Michelle Rhee from the DC Public Schools. Columnist Ruben Navarette had an insightful article on this topic in the Albuquerque Journal today. Rhee is heading off into the sunset because reformist Democrat Mayor Adrian Fenty was beaten by the labor machine candidate William Gray.

Another symbol of this split is, of course, the film “Waiting for Superman” which has now hit Albuquerque and is showing at the Rio 24 off Pan American. The film was directed by David Guggenheim, a self-described “liberal Democrat” and is highly-critical of the unions.

Michelle Rhee is on the market. Maybe we could hire her to turn around APS?

This “receipt” shows where Americans’ federal taxpayer dollars go. While it breaks things into categories that I don’t necessarily agree with that make the situation a bit less clear than it could be, the message is clear: if politicians are going to put our nation on a sound financial footing, we need serious reforms to Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and military spending.

Those programs (not including interest on the debt which is also a big chunk) take more than 50% of your taxes. We need incoming Republicans (and Democrats) to pledge specific programs they’d cut and ways they’d move toward solvency. Paul Ryan and Ron Paul (something about the name Paul) are two politicians with serious ideas.

Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, was flat-out embarrassing when asked what specific programs he’d cut.

According to a new report, Albuquerque is among the metropolitan areas areas in the nation most heavily-populated by government workers. According to the report, The Duke City has 21.58 percent of its workforce employed by the public sector.

This does not include Sandia Labs and other government contractors that are NOT direct employees of a government agency. The findings are no surprise to us at the Rio Grande Foundation. After all, New Mexico as a state is more reliant on federal largess than any other state. We’ve also found that New Mexico has the second most state and local workers (relative to private sector workers) in the nation.

We can only go so far with a government-focused economy. Ultimately, it is up to the next Governor (and Legislature) and Mayor Berry to make New Mexico and Albuquerque attractive to potential businesses. This includes low, flat, and fair taxes and regulations. It also includes improving our dreadful educational performance and public safety.

With the left-wing chattering classes still abuzz over the fire department that let a man’s house burn in Tennessee, I felt that it was important to debunk that this was anything like a “free-market” situation.

While my perspective is laid out in the posting above, I saw an interesting article from John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute over at National Review Online. Berlau adds “fuel to the fire,” so to speak by showing how unionized fire departments have, in the past, allowed fires to burn in order to maximize salary and other concessions. The money quote from Berlau that sums up the issue nicely is as follows:

The answer is federalism. States and local communities should decide what is best for themselves in protecting residents from fire. This could include contracting out to private fire services, allowing insurance companies to create fire brigades for their home-insurance policy holders (my Competitive Enterprise Institute colleague Iain Murray has written on how this worked in the 19th century), or letting homeowner associations contract for fire protection in the same way they often do for services such as garbage collection.

But as with health care, liberals want to take away federalism in fire protection and force all American communities into a one-size-fits-all unionized model. The biggest congressional priority of the IAFF over the past few years has been the so-called Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act, which would force unionization and collective bargaining on every one of the nation’s local fire departments.

The Rio Grande Foundation and Citizens in Charge Foundation, a national voter rights group focused on the ballot initiative and referendum process, have released a new poll of New Mexico voters on the issue of giving voters in the state greater ability to directly vote on issues in state elections.

Read the full story here.

To say the least, we at the Rio Grande Foundation are not big fans of government permits. Often, these permits come in the form of business permits or licensing in order to perform a particular job (like cutting hair). Usually, it is our friends on the right, conservatives and business owners that oppose onerous and unnecessary permitting. We agree with them.

But now, the City of Albuquerque is claiming that a man who has been feeding the homeless needs a permit to do so. In fact, they plan on re-file charges against him. This may be an instance where our friends on the left jump on the anti-permit bandwagon.

After all, it would seem that someone is sacrificing enough to go to the trouble to feed the homeless. Are they going to also go to the trouble and expense of obtaining a permit? What if I give a sandwich to a homeless guy downtown, am I violating this law?

The fact is that receiving a piece of paper from the government and paying certain government fees (actually taxes) does not make the food served, haircuts given, or other services rendered any safer or better. Usually, as Milton Friedman pointed out, licensing and government permits simply serve to reduce the supply of a particular service and increase its cost. It would seem that particularly in today’s economy, the City would try to encourage people to engage in economic or charitable activities, not discourage them.

Surprise, surprise, as the Albuquerque Journal reports, Rail Runner ridership is down yet again. According to the article, the decrease was 11.2 percent decrease compared with the same period in 2009. That is a pretty major drop and it continues a trend.

Ridership had been dropping as reported by Kate Nash back in May in the Santa Fe New Mexican.

With the state as much as $400 million in the red heading into the next legislative session, it would seem that the conversation over whether taxpayers can or should continue to pay close to $20 million annually for the train. Some like-minded people are circulating a petition along these lines. The tracks have been laid and the trains are running, but the system is not sustainable. Regardless of who the next governor is, saving $20 million annually by stopping the train must be a consideration.

Timothy Sandefur, one of the leading pro-freedom lawyers in the nation, recently spoke at a Rio Grande Foundation event in Albuquerque. The subject of Sandefur's talk was his new book "The Right to Earn a Living" which studies the myriad legal cases throughout American history that impact Americans abilities to work, unmolested by government bureaucrats. Apologies in advance for the video quality, but the sound quality is excellent.