A few weeks ago, the Albuquerque Business Journal carried a story by Winthrop Quigley with a lot of hand-wringing from policymakers over how to keep New Mexico’s “best and brightest” at home. Of course, the real issue should not be keeping highly educated New Mexico’s at home, rather the issue, if there is one, should be continuing to attract the most educated and economically-productive workers to the state. It matters not where they come from. Unfortunately, policymakers are missing the forest for the trees, so I responded with the following letter which appeared on Monday:

Take a tip from Texas

The UNM researchers and elected officials have it exactly wrong when they say, as Sen. Tim Keller did, that “we can’t expect to build a rich, diverse, growing economy when 60 percent of our work force leaves our state.” (“N.M. faces struggle to keep best and brightest at home”)

The importance of a strong educational system cannot be understated and reforms to our K-12 system and university systems are desperately needed but, contrary to Keller’s assertion, the way to improve our work force is to create a stronger economy in New Mexico. After all, bright people, whether they are from New Mexico or Ohio or Beijing will move to the places that have the most favorable economic climates and thus the most jobs available to them.

Texas is a good example of this. According to the Department of Labor, in 2008 Texas created 59 percent of all the new jobs in the country and the state’s unemployment rate remains about 2 percent lower than the national average. It is no surprise that Texas lacks a personal income tax and ranks highly in most studies relating to business friendliness.

New Mexico, while it has cut its income tax from 8.2 percent to 4.9 percent in recent years, is not as business-friendly and our regulatory climate makes things difficult for entrepreneurs. Rather than spending money to bribe educated New Mexicans to stay home, legislators should abandon efforts to raise taxes to fill the budget deficit and focus on removing barriers to job creation in New Mexico. That is the way to keep the “best and brightest” at home.

Americans love their pets. Americans also love the environment and want to be green. While recycling and treading lightly on the land are not bad things, the hard-core environmentalists want to go much further than that. In fact, according to a new book called “Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living,” if Americans really want to be green, they need to get rid of Fido and Mr. Whiskers. Get your copy here.

According to the book, “The eco-pawprint of a pet dog is twice that of a 4.6-litre Land Cruiser driven 10,000 kilometres a year.” Cat owners are not off the hook either as “cats have an eco-footprint of 0.15ha – slightly less than a Volkswagen Golf.”

The good thing is that the truth about what environmentalists really want from us in terms of lifestyle changes is finally being made public. The bad news is that while cute and smart, I don’t think my Siberian Husky Jack will be very tasty:

Rarely does something appear in the paper that makes me smile, but I was pleasantly surprised to see the article “Responsible People Shouldn’t Pay for Bad Choices of Others,”, written by Albuquerque resident Marsha Thole, in the Albuquerque Journal on Sunday morning. The article was a simple but thorough rebuttal of a previous column that had urged expanded government programs to cover for a variety of personal mistakes.

Writes Thole “The role of government is to provide for the safety and security of its citizens. Somehow it got off track and now supports the lifestyles of the irresponsible. We who have saved are seeing that money go toward higher taxes to pay for jerks who think they are entitled to welfare because they made poor choices.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Later in her article, Thole delivers the coup de grace:

Contrary to what the writer says, the building blocks of a healthy life are not numerous social programs, but teenagers who stay in school, don’t skip classes, graduate, don’t take drugs, don’t get pregnant; people who save, who don’t gamble away their welfare checks and families who do not have more children than they can support on their income.

And no, we are not all in this boat together, as she suggests. Irresponsible people are on a leaking ship, expecting taxpayers to appear in lifeboats full of money to save them.

Thank you Ms. Thole for delivering the message!

When push comes to shove, property rights form the basis of any truly free society. And, while no single group of people in North America has suffered from a loss of property rights to the extent that Native Americans have, Rep. Martin Heinrich has introduced legislation that represents one small step forward in improving the ability of residents of Indian reservations to buy and sell property. The legislation is described here.

As our friends at the Property & Environment Research Council have pointed out, Native Americans often had strong views on property rights, but these traditions were ignored by the federal government in their creation of the reservation system which made the buying and selling of property extremely difficult. So, while we still have a long way to go before individual property rights are completely restored on tribal lands, Rep. Heinrich should be applauded for working to move things in the right direction.

Conservatives are often portrayed as “heartless” by the left and those in government. After all, it is our view that individuals who earn money, should by and large be able to keep it and that expansive government programs (even those supposedly dedicated to benefiting the poor) are ineffective and even immoral. The ongoing saga of Garduños and their difficulties in paying their taxes, however, illustrates another phenomenon — that of government bureaucrats acting in a heartless manner in a quest for money.

Now, I’m not familiar with all of the ins-and-outs of the Garduños case, but from the articles I’ve read, the restaurant experienced a significant case of theft by one of its employees and, given the harsh economic climate, paying taxes has been difficult if not impossible. So, New Mexico’s Tax and Revenue Department is threatening to close the restaurant down.

Garduños is now hanging by a thread. But the question must be asked, “As long as they are legitimately making efforts to pay their taxes, who benefits from shutting Garduños down?” In this tough economy, 450 workers will lose their jobs and the store locations will sit empty, with little prospect of generating tax revenue for the state in the near term. That seems like a “lose-lose” to me.

So, without full information, all I can say is that Rick Homans and Tax and Revenue should make every effort to work with Garduños to get this issue resolved. The state is having trouble paying its bills, one can only hope they’d have some sympathy for a business that finds itself in a tough position.

In case you missed it, the Rio Grande Foundation has been doing a great deal of work on the issue of New Mexico’s bloated government bureaucracy. This should be a prime area for cuts during the ongoing special session.

Thankfully, it seems like we have a fair amount of support for this position, at least among readers of the Albuquerque Journal. As letter writer Gary Hays wrote in support of our work:

BULL’S EYE for the Rio Grande Foundation’s revealing of what is really going on in Santa Fe regarding deficit spending.

While the Democrats are consistently blaming revenue shortfall, specifically the oil and gas industry, the real picture is an over-bloated and gluttonous government. It doesn’t take much observation to note that New Mexico’s government is tremendously over-sized for the population.

As the Rio Grande Foundation points out, the state is 51 percent above the national average of government worker for every private sector worker. What is especially troubling is that 60 percent of these government workers are employed somewhere in education in New Mexico. One would think that with the budget dollars committed to education and the vast number of employees receiving those funds, the graduation rate would be in the 80 percent range.

Reducing the government work force to the national standard in 2007 would have saved $2.7 billion, as the foundation reported. For those still thinking, that would have been a tremendous tax break for the New Mexican taxpayer.

But don’t get too excited about getting any money back. Gov. Bill Richardson isn’t about to turn his back on the government employee unions who financed his election and re-election. Besides, he is on his way out and has nothing to lose.

Have you noticed how government officials are quick to criticize and ridicule private sector management for mismanagement of a private company but turn a blind eye to their own mismanagement of taxpayer money? That kind of behavior should result in an immediate pink slip.

A second letter writer, James McClure, followed up on the theme, citing data from our recent work on the issue:

ARE GOVERNMENT workers entitled to keep their jobs while the rest of the economy is downsizing? The public employee unions want to raise our taxes rather than lay off a single government employee. Some politicians apparently agree that government workers are fireproof: Gov. Bill Richardson says he wants to avoid employee furloughs.

New Mexico’s government is bloated. A recent study showed that in 2007 (before the recession) state and local government employed 24.5 people for every 100 employed in the private sector, compared to the national average of 16.2 percent. The average state and local government job paid 9.2 percent higher than the average private sector job, more than in most other states. As private-sector employment continues to shrink, we taxpayers can no longer afford to support 60,000 state employees.

Please spare us the charade of threatening to lay off teachers. The state can make significant force cuts by doing what private companies have been doing for years: eliminating layers of management, reducing administrative and staff positions, outsourcing some services and redeploying employees where they’re most needed. The first step is a no-brainer: Immediately terminate all double-dipping employees who are drawing both a state pension and a state salary.

It’s time for Gov. Richardson to act like an executive and create a lean, efficient state government. It’s also time for legislators to remember that they represent taxpayers and not just government employees.

The Rio Grande Foundation has launched an investigative news site: http://newmexico.watchdog.org/ We’re still building the site and will do a “hard launch” soon. This is an early notice to our friends who visit this site. New Mexico Watchdog is associated with other Watchdog investigative reporting sites launched so far in Texas, West Virginia, Kansas and Nebraska. More and more Watchdog sites will be coming on line soon. I am busy learning how this baby works. Once I can steer the thing at full speed, expect a lot of action.

A few days ago I discussed President Obama’s “reverse Robin Hood” plan to send $250 checks to all seniors because they are not receiving a cost of living adjustment during the coming year.

I decided to write an op-ed on the issue and it has appeared in a few papers including the Clovis News Journal. Check it out here.

New Mexico’s Legislature is now engaged in a difficult special session. The crux of the issues they face is whether to raise taxes, cut government spending, or patch the hole with one time money in hopes that the economy turns around. At this point, it appears that the latter two routes are most likely, but there is no doubt that the tax hikers will continue to make their case throughout the session and through the special session in January.

Well, there is a state that has followed the advice of those who would continue to increase taxes in hard economic times. The model to avoid is Michigan and, to say the least, it is not one New Mexico should be following. As the article notes:

In 2007 Governor Jennifer Granholm signed the biggest tax increase in Michigan history, with most of the $1.4 billion coming from business. The personal income tax—which hits nonincorporated small businesses—was raised to 4.2% from 3.95%, and the Michigan business tax levied a surcharge of 22%. The tax money was dedicated to the likes of education, public works, job retraining and corporate subsidies. Ms. Granholm and her union allies called these “investments,” and the exercise was widely applauded as a prototype of “progressive” budgeting.

Some prototype. Every state has seen a big jump in joblessness since 2007, but with a 15.2% unemployment rate Michigan’s jobs picture is by far the worst. Some 750,000 private-sector payroll jobs have vanished since the start of the decade. For every family that has moved into Michigan since 2007, two have sold their homes and left.

Certainly, the death of the Big Three at the hands of managerial incompetence and union intransigence has played a big role, but policymakers could have capitalized on the arrival of the “transplant” automakers from Japan and other nations, but Michigan was not a friendly climate. Nonetheless, it is notable that Michigan’s top income tax rate is 4.2%, lower than New Mexico’s 4.9% rate which many on the left are trying very hard to raise to 8.2%. A cautionary tale indeed.

In case you were unable to attend our showings in Santa Fe and Las Cruces, you missed out. We had turnouts of 70+ people for each showing of Note Evil Just Wrong and the crowds were enthusiastic about the film and its message of not falling prey to the hysteria of Al Gore and others who are attempting to convince humans all over the world to live at much lower standards and sacrifice billions of human lives to solve the supposed “crisis” of global warming. Oh, and in case you are not a football fan, it snowed yesterday in the Boston area.

If you did see the movie, you know that Roy Innis of the Council on Racial Equality was among the film’s stars. He authored the following opinion piece, Climate assumptions from another planet, which decries the direction of global warming and energy policies currently being discussed in Washington.

Lastly, if you want to help us set up a showing of “Not Evil Just Wrong” in your community, please contact us at: info@riograndefoundation.org If you want your own copy of the film, you can order that here.

In case you haven’t heard, because the federal government’s cost of living indicators are showing slight deflation, there will be no cost of living increase for Social Security recipients next year. Of course, seniors vote in large numbers and are a politically-powerful voting bloc, so as soon as word came down that there would be no COLA, spineless members of Congress and President Obama started looking for ways to give seniors money anyway.

It appears that they have settled on $250 payments to the more than 50 million seniors on Social Security for no good reason. On top of all the other deficits including those we already face for Social Security, this is a $12.5 billion in debt that will be placed on the backs of America’s children and grandchildren.

The dirty little secret here is that senior citizens as a group actually are the wealthiest segment of society. Back in 2002, Indeed, the average net worth of seniors age 65-74 was $146,000, while the average net worth of Americans under age 35 was a mere $9,900. With the addition of the prescription drug benefit under President Bush, this disparity has only grown.

Seniors and the rest of Americans should unite in opposing this $250 transfer from the poor to the rich.

If you don’t normally read the Albuquerque Journal, you’re missing out. There’s my plug for dead-tree media. But in all seriousness, there have been some really interesting articles on the paper’s opinion pages recently and I’m not just saying that because one of ours ran yesterday. One recent opinion piece called “Schools Can’t Take More Cuts” argued that “Our schools have already felt the pain” of the state budget crisis.

The author goes on to talk about reductions in “unit value” for operational funding, but doesn’t really get specific until he says “this year’s budget reduced the state’s commitment to public education by $165 million and supplanted that amount with non-recurring federal stimulus money.” Now, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that this is a long-term problem, but it is obviously not a “cut” and the schools haven’t experienced any pain thus far.

The rest of the article talks about the potential for future cuts to education, a threat that is very real if the budget situation does not improve, but the fact is that our schools have really been spared any significant cuts to date. We’ll see what happens in the special session.

Another article worth reading was written by the “Santa Fe Alliance.” The idea behind the group seems to be “buy local,” but the article “Public Sector Spending Important to Economy,” is nothing but a justification for bigger government and bad economics. The short rebuttal to their entire article is that while government can perform some useful functions in our society, every dollar that government spends has to be taken from businesses or private citizens. Usually, there is a significant “dead weight loss” because businesses and citizens undertake less economically-worthy projects in order to avoid the tax man. Thus, $1 of taxes actually costs society $1.25 or something on that order (it depends on what is being taxed).

It is shocking that even in Santa Fe you’d have businesses on board with such a big-government, high-tax organization like the Santa Fe Alliance.

A friend of mine from my days at the National Taxpayers Union wrote an excellent piece for the Washington Times about a transit system that works (Hong Kong) and a transit system that is showing ever-increasing signs of failure (Washington, DC). You can find the article here.

While Albuquerque seems unlikely to go down the trolley/streetcar path for at least the next four years while RJ Berry is Mayor, the fact is that privatizing operations can result in significant service improvements and cost savings, even in bus systems like Albuquerque’s. Should New Mexicans care about the DC Metro? Sure, after all, federal taxpayers pay a significant portion of the cost for construction and operations.

The Legislature meets this Saturday, and possibly for longer depending on how reasonable Governor Richardson plans to be, New Mexico’s Legislature must act now to solve the state’s significant budget deficit. The Rio Grande Foundation has put forth a number of ideas and today, the Albuquerque Journal ran an article by two RGF economists showing how government employment needs to be reduced as part of the Legislature’s efforts.

As such, the budget cuts should fundamentally restructure the way government does business. One such area of spending that they should look closely at is the state and local government workforce.

For too long the government workforce has grown out-of-control with few, if any, constraints. For example, since the current recession began in January 2008 to August 2009, the private sector has lost 33,200 jobs, a decline of 5.2 percent. For these workers their lives have been turned upside-down. State and local governments, on the other hand, have added 1,300 jobs, an increase of 1.2 percent.

Moody and Warcholik continue:

Unfortunately, Richardson was recently quoted as saying: “I will not cut schools or education….”

Is he serious? State and local education spending is the single largest expenditure at $5.2 billion out of $16.4 billion total (32 percent) FY 2006 spending according to the Census Bureau. If you can’t find budget savings in education, then where else are you going to find budget savings?

There are cuts to be had and permanently reducing government employment in the areas in which we have a surplus is an essential part of solving the current budget crisis and improving New Mexico governance for the long haul.

There will be a Tea Party rally at the State Capitol on Saturday, October 17th – the first day of the Special Session. This is one of the most important events for the TEA Party movement because the State Legislature will begin work on the budget shortfall – now estimated to be nearly $700 Million!

The organizers are asking everyone from around the state to join us in sending a message to our elected officials.

DETAILS & SCHEDULE:

Saturday, October 17

8:30 – Meet at the Capitol
Group 1 will line the sidewalks to greet legislators as they come. Voter Registration and Information Tables will be set up.

10:00 – Press Conference in the Rotunda
We will hold a press conference in the Rotunda from 10 – 10:30. I will be speaking on behalf of the Rio Grande Foundation and Marita Noon will be speaking on behalf of the Citizens Alliance for Responsible Energy. Our elected officials have done more to push the gas and oil industry out of New Mexico – and along with it goes revenue and jobs!

The Special Session begins at Noon – You are encouraged to go the gallery and into committee meetings to make the case against tax hikes and for responsible spending cuts.

Recently, our friends at the Goldwater Institute — our sister think tank which is based in Arizona — did a 50 state analysis of state constitutions. The idea behind the analysis is to figure out which state constitutions are the strongest in protecting individual liberties and to analyze which states have done the best job in preserve those liberties.

New Mexico’s constitution does a reasonably good job of laying out the case for individual rights, unfortunately, the New Mexico courts have done a pretty lousy job of interpreting the document in ways that preserve those individual rights and liberties. The full text of the study which includes tables outlining the relative pro/anti-liberty nature of each state constitution can be found here.

The state constitutions may not seem relevant in a nation in which the national constitution is largely ignored. However, as the Legislature considers ways to close a massive budget deficit, the left will undoubtedly use the vague term found in the New Mexico Constitution: “A uniform system of free public schools sufficient for the education of, and open to, all the children of school age in the state shall be established and maintained” to argue that any cuts to education will make New Mexico’s educational system “insufficient” whatever that means. Where possible, advocates of individual liberty should use the New Mexico constitution to their ends as well.

While the debate over global warming rages, the Obama Administration and other policymakers in Washington continue to make it more difficult to find and use home-grown resources. As Jon Basil Utley wrote for Reason recently, drilling in Alaska would have a positive impact both in terms of economic activity and lower prices.

Sound familiar? New Mexico has lots of resources that, like Alaska’s, could be used to grow the economy and reduce reliance on foreign energy sources, but our elected officials, specifically our Senators in Washington, continue to put those resources off-limits. This includes “El Río Grande Del Norte National Conservation Area Establishment Act” introduced by Bingaman and the “Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks Wilderness Act,” both of which will put millions of acres of New Mexico land out of production.

Hopefully these two will not succeed in their efforts to further hamstring New Mexico’s economy. Obama also needs to wake up and realize that he has a genuine opportunity to take proactive steps to increase employment.

Phelim McAleer is one of the co-directors/producers of “Not Evil Just Wrong,” a new film, the premiers of which the Rio Grande Foundation is co-sponsoring in Las Cruces and Santa Fe this Sunday.

At a recent conference, McAleer asks former Vice President and high priest of global warming Al Gore a question about some factual inaccuracies in his film “An Inconvenient Truth.” The question and subsequent cutoff of McAleer’s microphone were caught in an audio recording here. Film footage of the event — there is a cut within the footage that loses some of the flavor of the event — followed by an interview McAleer did with Neil Cavuto can be found below:

If you’ve been watched the news recently, you are probably aware that Michael Moore has a new movie out that picks apart all the problems with capitalism. Of course, socialism hasn’t fared so well either.

The reality is that, despite its flaws and the fact that we have not really adhered to capitalist principles, as blogger Mark Perry points out, capitalism has resulted in longer life expectancy, a better environment, and better civil rights worldwide. Perhaps this would be a good topic for Michael Moore (or a more objective filmmaker) to look into.

Recently re-elected City Councilor Isaac Benton is one of Albuquerque’s leading proponents of the deeply unpopular streetcar. Not surprisingly, his support for mass transit does not begin and end there. Recently, he wrote about the federal transportation bill and the “need” to direct more transportation money to alternatives to cars.

Of course, Benton omits the fact that 40 percent of highway user fees collected from drivers are diverted for uses other than roads and bridges. This despite the fact that transit accounts for only about 1.5 percent of Americans’ daily trips. Obviously, transit is already over-funded relative to its results. Oh, and taking a poll that says “a majority say they’d take public transportation if it were easily available where they live and work” doesn’t mean anything. I’ll take more of something if there is no tradeoff. But we live in a world of limited resources.

That’s why I believe that changes should be made to our transportation funding system. I’d rather see Washington get out of the transportation financing businesses and let the states take over as Gabriel Roth of Cato discusses here. If Oregon wants to build even more transit, that is their choice, but New Mexico and Montana shouldn’t be told what to do based on Congressional whim and funding formulas.

According to the prolific Albuquerque Journal columnist Winthrop Quigley, the concept of “nullification” (or re-assertion of the 9th and 10th amendments to the Constitution) is a terrible idea. He wrote about this in the Business Outlook section of Monday’s paper and the link can be found here if you subscribe or have a password. Unfortunately, as is so often the case with writers who disagree with the Rio Grande Foundation, few actual arguments are ever rendered. Quigley offers only one “If anything can be nullified for any reason, the law is no longer the law.”

I guess that is an argument. So, Mr. Quigley, what about Rosa Parks? Are we all supposed to “just follow the law” no matter how morally repugnant and egregious it may be? Specifically, Quiqley mentions an Ohio resolution that will appear on the ballot to “prohibit any law, including a federal law, from requiring Ohioans to participate in any health plan.” Surely, the creation of a federal health plan is well beyond the scope of the US Constitution. The Founding Fathers, being wise (although imperfect) men, intuitively understood that positive rights don’t exist. I may have the right to walk down the street unmolested, but I don’t have the right to steal a woman’s purse no matter what good I may plan to do with the money I steal. I also don’t have the right to demand health care, housing, clothing, or any other material good from society. After all, what gives me the right to put a gun (even if it is a gun held by a government official) to the head of my doctor or nurse and say “treat me or else!”

So, this all circles back to Quigley, nullification, and the 10th amendment. It all boils down to who has the moral high ground. The South attempted to use nullification in their attempt to preserve the morally repugnant institution of slavery, but if some states attempt to use the same Constitutionally-correct arguments to preserve individual rights that are today being threatened by unchecked federal power, then I find no fault with those efforts.

I predict that RJ Berry and Richard Romero will wind up in a runoff. I believe Berry will win the overall vote total, but not attain the magical 40% level needed to avoid a runoff. Romero will nudge Mayor Marty out by a few percentage points.

I also believe that Dan Lewis will knock off Michael Cadigan and become my next City Councilor. What are your predictions?

A: When Ellen Bernstein says it isn’t. How else do you explain the ridiculous statement, in her recent opinion piece in the Albuquerque Journal in which she writes: “Rolling back tax cuts granted by lawmakers during a time of huge state budget surpluses is not the same as raising taxes. Some would like the public to think they’re the same. But, they’re not.”

She goes on to quickly change the subject, but never answers the question. If taking New Mexico’s top personal income tax rate from 4.9 percent where it stands today and raising it to 8.2 percent — a 67 percent increase — is not a tax hike, then what is it? For much of the 1950’s, the top federal income tax rate exceeded 90%, is anyone willing to say with a straight face that raising the income tax to that level is not a tax hike? Or, is there some kind of statute of limitations on tax hikes that I am missing out on?

Also, Bernstein, like Rep. Miguel Garcia and Allen Sanchez (of the Catholic Church) before, have made the case for various tax hikes. They also pay lip service to the idea of reigning in spending, but never mention specific cuts. Why is that? Are the left wingers in this state afraid to offend someone by calling cuts to an existing program, no matter how wasteful? It seems like they are all “on-message” when it comes to raising taxes, but no one wants to talk about spending because the truth is they don’t really care.

Unlike the lefties, the Rio Grande Foundation has specific budget-cutting ideas on the table including Medicaid, criminal justice, government employment, the film industry, and do I even need to mention the Rail Funner? Rather than being obstructionists and simply protecting their own fiefdoms, I urge Bernstein and others on the left to get serious and make their own specific budget-cutting proposals public. After all, if the government education system is to be a sacred cow, then someone else’s ox is going to be gored.

The $700+ billion federal stimulus represented a massive pot of money. Given that kind of honey pot, it was inevitable that the politicians would direct some of it to their friends. The RGF’s investigative reporter, Jim Scarantino, has found an interesting confluence of political connections and federal stimulus money as it relates to one Albuquerque bar.