The simplest answer is that it is a new novel by talk show host Glen Beck. But the Overton window was actually developed by Joe Overton who at one time worked for our friends at the free market think tank the Mackinac Center based in Michigan.

The Overton Window applies directly to think tanks. It describes the “window” of political possibility with free market think tanks constantly fighting to raise that window to help create more freedom. An application of the “window” can be seen here as it relates to school choice.

With options ranging from most free “no government schools” to the least free option, “compulsory indoctrination in government schools” and containing a wide range of options in between, the window itself actually applies to those options that actually have a realistic opportunity of being adopted.

The role of free market think tanks is to raise the window so that freer options are available. Yes, I’d like to see no government schools, but like food stamps which are simply a voucher for food, the state or local government could provide vouchers for those families who cannot afford to pay for education on their own.

The Overton Window concept is important in understanding change in our society because it is rare that radical change is welcome or able to “stick” unless the public is ready and willing to accept the change.

K-12 education is a serious and ongoing problem in New Mexico. I wrote about it in The Alibi last week. The Rio Grande Foundation has been impressed with the results of Florida’s education reform under Jeb Bush approximately a decade ago, so Dr. Matthew Ladner wrote a study explaining how Florida turned their educational system around and how that has led to dramatic improvements in educational attainment, particularly for minorities. The full study can be found here.

One chart that explains just how well Florida has done is this chart which explains how low-income Hispanic children are beating New Mexico’s general student population on an important and widely-respected standardized test:

Because of the importance of this issue and the compelling results experienced by Florida, we are hosting Dr. Ladner for a series of events in Albuquerque. More information on Ladner’s presentations in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Las Cruces — including information on how to register and attend these events — can be found here.

Guess which ones wants taxpayer-funded full-time bodyguards and which one carries a .45?  New Mexico Watchdog’s latest look at the candidates for Governor.

The Rio Grande Foundation has been doing a great deal of work on the need for higher education reform in New Mexico. Our policy paper and Channel 13 KRQE interview are just two of the most recent efforts, not to mention several opinion pieces that have appeared statewide.

The topic came up in a recent Winthrop Quigley interview with former Gov. Garrey Carruthers in the Albuquerque Journal’s business section. In the interview, Carruthers noted that:

In 2008 New Mexico employed 7.3 people per thousand population to administer and provide support services in the state-run institutions of higher learning. Arizona had 2.8 employees per thousand population, Colorado had 4.6, and Texas had 3.3.

Carruthers goes on to question the reasons behind this out-sized bureaucracy such as the presence of too many schools in New Mexico, but the reality is that without additional transparency and either coordination of majors or genuine market-based competition for funds, nothing will change. The data don’t lie, however, hopefully the Legislature tackles this important issue in the 2011 session.

At the Rio Grande Foundation’s recent “Lights of Liberty” luncheon, syndicated columnist Deroy Murdock was the keynote speaker. His presentation can be found below:

Murdock’s powerpoint slides from the luncheon are available here.

Who is this lobbyist who took up Nancy Pelosi’s request and adopted U.S. Rep. Martin Heinrich?  Meet him over at New Mexico Watchdog.

If you haven’t heard yet, the Supreme Court has handed down a favorable 5-4 decision on McDonald v. City of Chicago. The decision extends second amendment protections to cities across the country which is a big deal and represents the restoration of an important Constitutional right.

But that’s not all, the really good news, as our friends at the Institute for Justice point out, “Today’s ruling should be celebrated not just by gun owners, but by everyone who cares about liberty and the unique role played by courts in protecting it under our system of government.” Why is that?

Justice Thomas agreed that the gun ban should be struck down, but instead proposed “a more straightforward path to this conclusion, one that is more faithful to the Fourteenth Amendment’s text and history”—namely, the 14th Amendment’s “Privileges or Immunities Clause.” That Clause states that “[n]o State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.”

“The most important takeaway from today’s decision is that it remains an open question which provision in the 14th Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms against state infringement,” said IJ Senior Attorney Clark Neily, who was one of the three attorneys who litigated District of Columbia v. Heller, the 2008 case that struck down the D.C. gun ban.

The phrase “privileges or immunities” may be unfamiliar today, but as Justice Thomas’s concurrence shows, 19th-century Americans used it synonymously with a term modern Americans know very well: rights. After the Civil War, officials throughout the South systematically violated the rights of newly freed blacks and white abolitionists in their states and sought to keep them in abject poverty and terror. The whole point in amending the Constitution to add the 14th Amendment—and with it the Privileges or Immunities Clause—was to end the pervasive culture of oppression and tyranny by state and local governments. As the Institute for Justice explained in its amicus brief, two rights the Privileges or Immunities Clause was clearly intended to protect were armed self-defense and economic liberty.

But the Supreme Court essentially wrote the Privileges or Immunities Clause out of the 14th Amendment in an 1873 decision called the Slaughter-House Cases. The result was predictably disastrous: Those who were politically disenfranchised would continue to be economically marginalized and stripped of any meaningful ability to protect themselves from the vicious reprisals and Klan violence that soon became a shameful hallmark of Reconstruction.

Have you seen their organization chart? Check out the posting over at Capitol Report New Mexico.

$2.4 million in “stimulus money” for a pedestrian bridge in Belen (a Channel 7 story yesterday said it was $3 million, but the story is not online). Here’s a press release on the bridge. Somehow I suspect that this bridge is not only not worth $2.4 million in terms of economic benefit. What is all the more ironic is that Belen is furloughing government workers for lack of $145,000.

Brings up the question: where was AFSCME when the Rail Runner started rolling down the tracks?

Lodger’s taxes are often requested by well-connected owners of hotels, motels, and even campgrounds for the purpose of paying for advertising for the purpose of bringing tourists to town. Eddy County has had a lodger’s tax in place that was collected by the county but spent for the supposed benefit of the lodgers in the community. Then the lodgers decided that the tax money was not being used as efficiently as it could be — heaven forbid, government not using tax money efficiently — and that the businesses and community would benefit from eliminating the tax. A slam dunk, right?

Not so fast. The Eddy County Commission decided 3-2 to continue the tax, ignoring the pleas of those who supposedly benefit from the tax. The lesson here is not to ask for higher taxes, even if you think they will help your particular cause. After all, while you might think your industry or business will benefit from a particular program, once the tax is in place, you no longer have control.

The Rio Grande Foundation recently added a new Adjunct Fellow, Dr. Deane Waldman, to its stable of policy analysts. More information on him is available here and here. Waldman recently wrote and published an opinion piece in the Portales News-Tribune on the need for “rationing” of health care — or any resource — and the proper way to do it (hint, individuals have the most information about what they need and want).

On that Harrison Ford, Calista Flockhart ceremony in the Governor’s Mansion:

Looks like state subsidies of the film industry include a free event center for movie stars to get married.  Also looks like the subsidies are breeding a new class structure in New Mexico.  The elite glitterati get preferential and free use of state facilities like the Governor’s Mansion.  The little people can just watch from the curb.  New Mexico Watchdog reports

New Mexico has some problems including a struggling economy and serious political corruption, but I believe that no single institution is holding the state back to the extent that the K-12 system does so. I wrote about the situation and offered some specific, cost-free solutions in this week’s copy of The Alibi.

Last Friday, the Rio Grande Foundation honored two legislators and the Albuquerque Tea Party for their efforts on behalf of liberty and individual freedom in New Mexico during the past year. Recipients were Sen. Tim Keller for his work in reforming the State Investment Council, Sen. Sander Rue for helping to create the Sunshine Portal website (not online yet) which will dramatically improve government transparency, and Tina Carson and the Board of the Albuquerque Tea Party.

We sat down with each of the award winners and briefly interviewed them about their efforts:

Sen. Keller’s interview is here:

Sen. Rue’s interview is here:

Tina Carson’s interview is here:

City Council (minus Dan Lewis and perhaps Brad Winter) is obsessed with wasting $400 million of your tax dollars on a convention center expansion. At Monday night’s City Council meeting, Council voted 7-1 with Lewis opposing and Winter abstaining to ask the mayor to enter into an agreement with Albuquerque Public Schools to secure at least part of the First Baptist Church property for the events center/convention center expansion. APS is already moving forward with an $11.3 million offer for the site (a questionable deal in and of itself), at Broadway and Central, for use as a fine arts magnet school and performing arts charter school.

The City needs to expand its convention center about as much as we need higher taxes in this down economy. Oops, we’ve already got that. It’s just that a majority of the Council thinks 7% gross receipts tax is just too low. Effective July 1, 2010 our tax rate will increase from 6.625% to 7% for previously-enacted tax hikes. As we’ve pointed out in the past, the gross receipts is the worst tax imaginable.

The case against these projects is compelling from the left and the right. But plenty of special interests are pushing the issue and will not back down until the Mayor takes a firm stand for fiscal restraint and against higher taxes. Tell him what you think by clicking here.

What a mess.

Canada’s economy is receiving some good publicity these days. For starters, check out this recent article from the Associated Press.

While the Canadian banking system receives a great deal of praise in the article, late in the piece there is a brief mention of “slashed spending…and spending cuts,” but one unspoken, major, piece of the puzzle relating to Canada’s improving economy must be the increasing economic freedom of its citizens. According to the most recent Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom, Canada is now more economically-free than the United States! Yes, Canada. Check out the top-10 most economically-free nations here.

According to the rankings, Canada beats the US in: “Business Freedom,” “Fiscal Freedom,” “Financial Freedom,” “Property Rights,” and “Corruption.” It will be interesting to see if Canada seizes upon its current momentum and moves towards additional reforms and whether the US is able to turn things around and move back toward “Economically Free” instead of falling further down to “Mostly Free.”

Sure, it’s radical, but this article makes a pretty good case that public employee unions are not really unions at all. Instead:

They’re collusive cartels that use campaign donations, organized get-out-the-vote onslaughts and sometimes physical threats to literally buy the acquiescence of those with whom they should be “negotiating”. The politicians are supposed to be working for we the taxpayer. But we the taxpayer have no seat at the table between the public employee unions and their political benefactors.

These unions are particularly strong in New Mexico, a state with a bloated government workforce. Of course, that strength in numbers makes the unions even more powerful and abusive of their power. How else would you explain AFSCME’s recent, illegal use of the state’s email system, to bash Republican gubernatorial candidate Susana Martinez even though she has not campaigned on reducing the government work force.

In Albuquerque, government employee unions, this time for the police, are also mounting a public relations campaign to avoid layoffs among their membership. While some conservatives think no amount of police is enough, I find it hard to believe that significant cost-savings cannot be found by cutting back — or extending the number of years that must be worked before cops can retire with a generous public pension.

Banning public employee unions is unlikely to happen, but there is no need for them and the public/policymakers need to understand this and make decisions accordingly.

In case you missed Friday’s 10pm newscast, the Rio Grande Foundation’s new study on higher education was the basis for a story on KRQE Channel 13.

Watch the full story here:

I am glad I don’t live in Santa Fe County. I’m not saying the rest of New Mexico’s government entities are much better — remember the famous anti-Wal Mart balloon landing site debacle in Albuquerque a few years back — but it is pretty amazing how badly the Commission got snookered on the recent $7 million land deal recently profiled by Channel 13’s Larry Barker.

The real problem, of course, began before the County decided to waste $7 million of taxpayers’ money in tough economic times. In fact, the County’s refusal to supply water to the area in order to allow the developer to actually make the land economically productive is nothing short of immoral and a brazen abuse of government power.

While government at all levels owns massive tracts of land — including nearly half of New Mexico –strict limits need to be placed on what governments can do in terms of putting land off limits, takings, and purchases. Otherwise, debacles like what the Santa Fe County Commission did (and Albuquerque’s City Council did before) will keep happening and taxpayers will keep taking it in the shorts, both in terms of wasted tax dollars and stalled economic development.

Tune in to 770 KKOB tonight from 7pm to 7:30pm to hear Scott Stiegler interview Deroy Murdock who will be speaking at our Friday “Lights of Liberty” luncheon. Tickets are still available!

Also, tune in to KIVA AM 1550 starting tomorrow to hear one-minute updates on various important policy issues.

Remember the silly Copenhagen Climate Conference last year? Perhaps you remember the impassioned plea of the Tuvalu delegate to the conference on behalf of radical restrictions on fossil fuels in order to stop the supposed destruction of his tiny island?

Well, it is all bunk. According to Earthweek: A Diary of the Planet which runs regularly in the Albuquerque Journal (and is available online), Pacific coral atolls, once feared to be disappearing due to rising sea levels, are about the same size or actually larger than they were 60 years ago.

It turns out that predictions that global warming would create rising seas that would inundate low-lying islands are just wrong. In fact, 43 percent of the islands remained stable in size while another 43 percent grew. Sounds like pretty dramatic expansion to me! Oh well, you know what Queen said “Another one bites the dust!”

Recently, Bob Samuels wrote on Inside Higher Ed that one way for colleges to close their budget holes would be to open their doors wider:

If public universities are really committed to promoting access, affordability, and quality, they should consider increasing their funding by accepting more undergraduate students instead of raising tuition and restricting enrollments. While many would argue that higher education institutions are already unable to deal with the students they currently enroll, in reality, it costs most public research universities very little to educate each additional student, and the main reason why institutions claim that they do not get enough money from state funds and student dollars is that they make the students and the state pay for activities that are not directly related to instruction and research.

The basic idea is that universities aren’t maxing out their revenue because they don’t let everyone who is willing to pay the tuition attend. From an economist’s perspective, this is a fascinating suggestion, but also puzzling: why would schools fail to maximize their revenue? Afterall, if by letting in some extra students they could further support research activities and all the other fun stuff, why wouldn’t they do this? Why shouldn’t they do this?

Samuels suggests that the universities are not eager to do this since they would have to come clean about the true marginal costs of educating those students:

…I believe the main reason is that universities do not want to admit to the public that student dollars and state funds are spent on other things than instruction and related research.

William Patrick Leonard, Rio Grande Foundation’s Higher Education Advisor, responding to Samuels, suggests that letting more students might solve the budget problem, but it doesn’t necessarily help the students:

Bob Samuels’ argument is clearly aligned with the American ideal, that a college education should be available to all. His argument is flawed and serves only to benefit his constituency. I am not an elitist. Higher education should be available to all who can benefit. The question is determining these additional students’ ability, and I might add the disposition, to benefit. The problem is that our metrics for accurately identifying students with the minimal ability to benefit are grossly inaccurate. In our egalitarian society, many institutions have already pushed the limits of the left tail of the normal distribution in their pursuit additional tuition revenue. Ultimately, institutions have two choices when it comes to increasing revenue, increase tuition or admit more students.

The cynic in me suggests that Samuels is offering a self-serving rationale to ward off a potential reduction in force among his constituents. The more students enrolled the more revenue is earned under the guise of a core national value. On the surface, the institutions will do good, by doing good. These additional students, however, will likely be drawn from normally distributed populations. I suspect that more applicants from the left trail rather than the right will be enrolled. As more less capable and ill disposed students are enrolled, our already dismal retention and completion rates will sink even lower. Tuition revenue may increase and delay staff cuts but at the expense of ill prepared or disposed students.

I don’t think it is simply a matter of more or fewer students. I think that Samuels is wrong that state universities could simply admit more people because of the non-uniformity of students ability levels, as Pat Leonard suggests. The value of the education, in so far as a degree is a signal to employers, varies depending on how many people possess it as a credential and what kind of students are holding it.

In New Mexico, we need more clarity about what the inputs and outputs of higher education are, and what strategy is likely to increase the total welfare of the state’s population and its economy. As Pat Leonard says, increasing the universities total funds is not in and of itself a proper goal of state policy. It is only a means to an end.

The above chart by Mercatus Center senior research fellow Veronique de Rugy uses data from the International Monetary Fund’s Cross-Country Fiscal Monitor to compare projected 2010 structural deficits across the G-20. These structural deficits reflect each nation’s long-term attitude toward deficit spending, with the effects of business cycle fluctuations removed. When taking into account entitlement and all other obligations, America’s structural deficit as a percentage of our GDP is far bigger than almost any other country’s; it is, in fact, worse than Greece’s.

The United States’ high level of structural deficit means that our level of debt is projected to grow into the future. This massive deficit reflects a baseline level of spending that is not feasible at current levels of taxation. Even if no new spending increases are enacted, we will still be required to borrow; in turn, this borrowing will continue to increase our level of debt.

The increasing level of debt, when coupled with the fact that our current debt has a far shorter maturity than that of most other countries, means that our country is spectacularly vulnerable if the market suddenly decides it doesn’t want U.S. debt. The short maturity of U.S. debt means that even if it the level of borrowing weren’t growing, we would still have to refinance large amounts of debt over very short periods of time. Any change in investors’ attitudes towards the riskiness of United States’ debt will cause our costs of maintaining debt to skyrocket. Throughout the financial crisis, investors have viewed U.S. debt as a relatively safe asset; it doesn’t mean that things won’t change.

Investors judge default risks on a curve. They will assess one government’s risk against other’s (for instance, the United States vs. France, Germany, China, and Norway). When the markets do lose confidence in a government’s fiscal rectitude relative to others, a crisis can arise quite quickly, forcing countries into painful political decisions. And this could very well happen to the United States.

Learn about our dangerous cycle of deficit. If you want to make a difference, take part in the upcoming America Speaks townhall meeting in Albuquerque.