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.

Awhile back I wrote about the many issues with “Medicare for All.” Dr. J. Deane Waldman, a
University of New Mexico professor in the Health Sciences Center, offers a few “inconvenient truths” about Medicare.

Medicare was intended to be self-sustaining by having workers pay in while employed and taking out of the fund as needed after they retired. It was supposed to pay for itself: no additional funds required. Hah!

Inconvenient truth #1: Medicare quickly became a Ponzi scheme just like Social Security. According to the Government Accounting Office, Medicare will run out of funds in 2017, even before Social Security. The addition of President Bush’s ill-conceived Drug Program For Seniors sped up a process of collapse by adding another (unpaid for by the contributors) entitlement. Medicare-for-all will be no care for all.

Medicare tries to contain its costs in two ways: neither works and neither is what patients want. First, it rations care. Yes, I said it. Many things your doctor would like for you are denied as not “cost effective.”

Let’s just ignore inconvenient truth #2, that there are at present virtually no scientific cost effectiveness studies on which the government denies payment. Denying payment means denying care and thus again, Medicare-for-all is no care for all.

Inconvenient truth #2A: Beware of what President Obama is touting as cost-effectiveness studies in the proposed health care reform bill. Just like in Great Britain and Australia, what the government defines as effective is often not what patients and doctors want as positive effects.

While the “public option ” seems to be dead for now, it will inevitably come back again. Professor Waldman’s points are highly persuasive.

There is an organization called Hispanos Unidos that is working to make sure that the American principle of “one person, one vote” is adhered to. If you are heading to the polls in municipal elections around New Mexico, you may have noticed that for the first time photo ID is required. This will go a long way towards ensuring that elections results are accurate and that only the votes of those who should vote are counted. For the record, it is my belief that both same-day voters and absentee voters should have more stringent requirements.

Following are some of the excellent television ads run by Hispanos Unidos. Check this one out about a proposal to register and vote on the same day:

Photo ID did not come easy. Here is an ad they did in an attempt to shame some of the opponents of voter ID:

Not directly related to voter fraud is this recent ad encouraging people to attend the Las Cruces Tea Party.

At long last, the federal government has its new stimulus-tracking website up and running. Interested taxpayers and journalists can now start digging to find out where some of the billions of dollars that have been printed up in Washington under Obama’s stimulus plan are going. The website is recovery.gov and can be found here. Particularly interesting to me was the area of the site that tracked spending of stimulus money in New Mexico.

You are encouraged to go in and look at specific grants, loans, and contracts in your area. A few that I noticed in Albuquerque included a $480,000 loan to O’Neill’s Pub on Central. A Cold Stone Creamery ice cream shop got another $800,000 loan.

As I told Santa Fe New Mexican reporter Kate Nash, the website, while useful, raises more questions than answers. Hopefully average citizens will take a closer look at some of the businesses receiving this money and find out for themselves whether the federal government should really be involved in all of this.

South Valley-area Representative Miguel Garcia has a really entertaining column on the state’s budget crisis and steps that need to be taken to resolve it in today’s Albuquerque Journal. Garcia, who is apparently just to the left of Karl Marx, portrays Governor Richardson, who cut income and capital gains taxes during his term, as a radical free marketeer. That isn’t the end of Garcia’s confusion.

First and foremost, Garcia claims to wish to cut “wasteful spending” to solve the budget crisis, but he outlines nary a program that he wants to cut. Rather, in Garcia-land, all money apparently belongs to the government and he and his cronies in Santa Fe are in charge of giving us the scraps that aren’t spent on their noble causes. Where else could one get the line (referring to the supposed lack of multiplier associated with tax cuts “one New Mexico government dollar invested in personal income tax breaks for the wealthiest New Mexicans is a negative investment.”

Of course, when economists and politicians start talking about “multipliers,” I know that they are lying. If $1 invested in infrastructure really were “multiplied” 1.59 times, the only responsible thing for any politician to do would be to raise taxes to 100% and spend 100% of government revenue on infrastructure. Of course, in the real world, things don’t work out this way. Multipliers are simply another way for those who want to do something the want to do with your money, to convince you that they have your best interests in mind (particularly when they don’t).

While I could spend many pages critiquing Garcia’s arguments, there is one more that merits special attention: the idea that cutting income taxes would “bring more millionaires to New Mexico.” This is simply non-sensical. By definition, millionaires have already done rather well for themselves. Cutting income and capital gains taxes will encourage entrepreneurs to become millionaires by starting businesses, working hard, and making smart investments here in New Mexico. That is why cutting taxes is such a powerful tool for economic development and Garcia is so far off base. Regardless of tax cuts, New Mexico has a ways to go before it has the kind of tax and regulatory policies it needs to be an economic leader, but the tax cuts we’ve seen in recent years have gone a long way towards pushing us up from the very bottom. Hopefully Richardson, John Arthur Smith, Tim Jennings, and others in Santa Fe ignore Garcia’s advice and reduce spending instead of putting New Mexico back to pre-2003 tax rates (or worse).

Oh, and kudos to the Guv!

I have repeatedly cited the use of taxpayer money to lobby citizens for even more government spending as a serious problem. Now, enclosed in your most recent water bill from the government-controlled Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Authority, “customers” of the authority are receiving the following notices alerting them to the 1/4 cent transportation tax on the ballot with language that clearly endorses the tax. Check out both sides of the insert below:

Now, I understand that they don’t explicitly come out and say “vote for the tax,” but the intent is clear. I have two major problems with the mailing, first and foremost, opponents are not given equal time to explain why extending the tax is a bad idea (even if we don’t say “vote no.” Secondly, the water authority should be a private entity, not a government one. Were it privately-controlled, such favors would not be done or would not be done without a fight , but with City Councilors on the Wather Authority Board, it is no surprise that this was done.

Tell the governing board what you think via the previous link or email the Authority here: wainfo@abcwua.org

Did you know that the federal government owns nearly 50 percent of the land area in New Mexico? Check out the map below and you’ll be surprised to see just how much of the Land of Enchantment the Feds control

Why is that so important? Well, our Senators, Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall, have introduced legislation S. 1689 that would put another 259,000 acres of land under federal control, by designating the land as wilderness. The government would not “own” the land, but it would be virtually impossible to do anything economically-viable with the land.

Now, I’m not here to argue that the land in question that surrounds the Organ Mountains is not historically-significant or geologically-unique. But I will say that I find it hard to justify even further federal control over what is becoming ever more rare and limited land remaining under private control in New Mexico. Rather than simply giving the feds ever-greater power to regulate land use in New Mexico, perhaps we should set a cap, say 40%, over which the federal government cannot own or manage as wilderness. If they want to control more than that, then they have to sell off or return control over the land to local citizens.

At the very least, rather than having the federal government come in and take this action, why not put the decision in the hands of legislators and those who actually represent us in the Legislature in Santa Fe?

At last weekend’s New Mexico Turnaround Conference, I presented a wide variety of facts and figures on the state of the state of New Mexico as it compares to other states on a variety of economic and education measures. Check the presentation out here.

A few days ago, I read the following headline for an opinion piece in the ABQ Journal “Bill Needs States’ Flexibility.” The article, surprisingly enough, was not written by some free market advocate, but some folks from the Health Security for New Mexicans Campaign. While the group’s mission statement does not explicitly state it, the group’s goal is to promote government-run health care in New Mexico.

Thus, the point of the op-ed was to encourage Congress and President Obama to include language in any health care legislation that “gives states the flexibility to develop their own approaches to solving the problems of growing numbers of uninsured and rising health care costs.” Now, there is no doubt that these folks want a government option and we at the Rio Grande Foundation want less government intervention in the health care marketplace, we can agree that federalism is superior to a top-down “reform” undertaken in Washington.

It would be great if all states had the freedom to opt in and out of various government programs and, more importantly, if each state had to foot the bill for those programs. After all, a program is hardly optional if the federal government is offering a 3 for 1 match for states to expand those programs (as is offered for Medicaid in New Mexico).

Also, I hope that the federal government will respect the wishes of states (Arizona voters will be voting on just such a ballot measure in 2010) to opt out of any government-run health care system.

New Mexico’s free market think tank, the Rio Grande Foundation, and CARE, the Citizens Alliance for Responsible Energy, are teaming up – along with dozens of organizations nationwide – for a simultaneous, world premier film event.

What: World premier of the film “Not Evil, Just Wrong,” which takes on the conventional wisdom on global warming. We are coordinating with the filmmakers and hundreds of other groups nationwide to qualify this event for the Guinness Book of World Records.
When: On October 18, 2009, at 6pm,
Where: The Las Cruces Allen Theatres Cineport 10 which is located at 700 S. Telshor,
Who: The Rio Grande Foundation and CARE.
Cost: Price of this full-length feature-film event is $8.00.

Global warming remains one of the most controversial issues of our times. Some, like Al Gore, President Obama, and many environmentalists, believe that radical action to curtail emissions must be undertaken immediately; regardless of the impact such actions will have on our economy and way of life.

Others like the makers of “Not Evil, Just Wrong” and the leaders of the Rio Grande Foundation and CARE, question the science behind human-caused global warming, but even more importantly question whether solutions to other, more immediate challenges must be sacrificed in order to minimally impact a supposed problem that has not been directly linked to the death of a single person.

“Not Evil, Just Wrong,” explores the science of global warming with a skeptic’s eye, but it also links the current “crisis” of global warming to other supposed crises that mankind has faced in recent memory. Some like “Y2K” and Africanized honey bees making their way over the Mexican border created temporary panics, but did not really damage our society. Others, like the banning of the pesticide DDT without ample scientific evidence have resulted in millions of unnecessary deaths among the most impoverished peoples on the planet.

The draconian measures that must be undertaken not only here in America, but around the world in order to have a measurable impact on CO2 emissions, like the banning of DDT, will have harmful impacts on all of us, but will disproportionately affect those who can least afford it, the world’s poor.

More information about the film is available at: www.noteviljustwrong.com Come out and enjoy the film, but more importantly, take the film to heart and take action!

For further information contact: Paul Gessing at 505-264-6090 or Marita Noon at 505-239-8998.

I am a Catholic. I’m also an economic conservative. Apparently this makes me a bad Catholic. At least that is the impression I get from an opinion piece that appeared in today’s Albuquerque Journal by Allen Sanchez of the New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The basic point Sanchez makes in his article, “Don’t Balance Budget on Backs of the Poor,” is that we should not cut spending AT ALL to close the $433 million budget deficit we now face. Instead, we need to repeal the 2003 income tax hikes, raise corporate taxes, and close other “tax loopholes.” In other words, your typical left-wing claptrap. This view is not only inconsistent, it is a prescription for economic stagnation.

First and foremost, most government spending is not for the benefit of the poor. The RailRunner, Spaceport, and film subsidies are just three major wasteful projects that, if they benefit anyone, benefit the wealthy to a far greater extent than they do the poor. Where was the Catholic Church questioning this wasteful spending?

Also, there are other cuts that can be made that will not hurt the poor, but will help them. As I wrote in this recent opinion piece, certain Medicaid reforms can remove wealthy recipients who don’t need it from the system. Other reforms to the same system will actually empower the poor rather than keeping them trapped in a well-intentioned albeit misguided Medicaid system.

The fact is that there are still cuts to be made in New Mexico’s budget. On the other hand, many of the programs supposedly designed to benefit the poor actually do more harm than good. Lastly, while Sanchez fails to acknowledge this fact, making it more difficult to do business in New Mexico through higher taxes will inevitably harm the poor by cutting off job opportunities and stifling economic growth.

Recently, a story about Santa Fe County lending $6 million for a movie study was covered in the local media, but did not receive much attention. In the past, the Rio Grande Foundation (using data produced by the state’s own Legislative Finance Council) has been critical of efforts to subsidize the film industry in New Mexico.

Now, as if the fact that their clients are subsidized through a 25% rebate on production costs and millions in interest-free loans, according to this story from the Associated Press, one group of studio “investors” is receiving $6 million in handouts from the County of Santa Fe and 10 million taxpayer dollars from Governor Richardson to build a studio near Santa Fe.

Where does it end? New Mexico already has the privately-built Albuquerque Studios (no direct government investment was made in the project). Now, when cuts are being made to all aspects of New Mexico’s budget, taxpayers are being forced to throw money at a competing studio, the clients of which are already receiving a generous and unlimited subsidy.

In cae you missed it, the New Mexico Turnaround Conference which took place in Albuquerque on September 18 and 19 was an amazing and useful event. Some incredible speakers came to offer their thoughts on the issues of the day and how to move New Mexico (and the nation) forward.

John Fund of the Wall Street Journal was one of the prominent speakers. His talk can be found below: