During times of strong economic growth, the politics of the minimum wage seem to tilt in the direction of “higher and faster.” After all, when unemployment is at historical lows and job growth is strong, we all feel like wages should be rising.
Now, as the economy weakens, we see the proverbial “chickens” of artificially-mandated wages coming home to roost. This is not a theoretical proposition. My 17 year old cousin who worked for an above-minimum-wage salary last summer, has been unable to find a job this summer. From the looks of recent news stories, he is not alone.
Investors Business Daily recently editorialized of the impact of the recent minimum wage increase on teenage unemployment and how these policies have helped spur teen joblessness to its highest level in 60 years. Rather than enacting additional government programs to deal with the “crisis,” Congress and the New Mexico Legislature need to repeal recently-passed (and economically-harmful) minimum wage hikes.

As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, health care mandates are a big problem with increasing health care costs. Rarely is this issue discussed in the media, but George Will recently brought up the point with Stephen Colbert on health care and mandates (click here and fast-forward 2/3rds of the way through).
According to data compiled by the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, New Mexico has the 9th-highest mandate total (51) in the nation. Obviously, forcing people to buy a “premium” health insurance product if they are to buy any insurance at all is a big factor in giving the state the 2nd-highest-in-the-nation uninsured rate.

Housing in Santa Fe could get even more expensive if voters in the City approve a new real estate transfer tax. With a majority of Councilors having expressed support for the plan, a special election Aug. 19 to decide the matter is inevitable.
The plan which would levy a 1 percent fee on homes that sell for more than $650,000 would generate about $1.8 million each year for the city to help the city subsidize housing for police officers, firefighters, nurses, teachers and other essential workers. While these workers are by and large a sympathetic group, the idea of further taxing certain real estate in order to subsidize the cost of owning a home for other people is rather absurd.
Rather than forcing real estate prices up in order to drive them down, Santa Feans should repeal some of the absurd regulations (toilets, zoning/housing restrictions, and property tax hikes that have driven costs higher and higher.
Rather than raising taxes, Santa Fe’s political leadership and voters should consider reducing some of the more costly restrictions on housing in Santa Fe. This will certainly be a point of discussion leading up to the August 19 election.

In case you missed the news, “cap and trade” legislation ostensibly to fight global warming, died in the US Senate late this week. Senator Domenici actively opposed the legislation (which would have resulted in a massive new hidden tax) and made an eloquent statement to that effect on the Senate floor.
In the meantime, a supposed “Republican” argued in the Albuquerque Journal that Sen. Bingaman should “stop trying to derail or weaken the climate bill.”
Robert Samuelson, also in the Journal, argued that “cap and trade” would:

Act as a tax, but it’s not described as a tax. It would regulate economic activity, but it’s promoted as a “free market” mechanism. Finally, it would trigger a tidal wave of influence-peddling, as lobbyists scrambled to exploit the system for different industries and localities. This would undermine whatever abstract advantages the system has.

As Samuelson points out, “cap and trade” is nothing but a tax. Worse, it lacks the simplicity and transparency of a tax on carbon (not that such a tax would be good policy) and opens the door to lobbying and political meddling. “Think of today’s farm programs — and multiply by 10,” argues Samuelson.
Unfortunately, both a prospective President McCain or President Obama would likely sign such legislation which would undermine New Mexico’s energy-based economy immediately and the entire US economy over time. Americans need to be educated about the very real problems of “cap and trade.”

Barack Obama’s now-former minister has made news recently for his inflammatory comments on a wide-variety of topics. While this has been a problem for Obama in his campaign for the presidency, as Fox News reports, the Chicago church, Trinity United Church of Christ, receives federal funding for a wide variety of programs and has done so for 15 years.
While many in the media have questioned remarks by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, it is hard to believe that the federal funding issue has not made bigger waves. After all, it is one thing to make inflammatory statements in a privately-funded church, but it is quite another thing for the rest of us taxpayers to subsidize childrens’ programs that are most likely teaching children many of the same ideas espoused by Wright and his cronies.
Since the programs have been subsidized for 15 years, it is hard to pin the blame for this on President Bush, but I wonder if this is the kind of program the President envisioned when he created his Faith-Based Initiatives. Surely, subsidizing these programs is not an appropriate role for the federal government (or any government for that matter).

I wrote an article recently in the Albuquerque Journal about some important health care reforms taking place in Georgia. I love it when people respond to articles written by the Foundation because it shows we are having an impact and making people think.
Unfortunately, the response to my article came from Dan Davis of Los Lunas, a regular, left-wing letter-writer to the Journal. His response focuses on two points: 1) Georgia’s law was passed by a Republican Legislature and signed by a Republican Governor 2) The American Cancer Society worries that high-deductible health plans make preventative treatment cost-prohibitive.
My response to Davis is two-fold: whether the law was passed by Republicans or Democrats is irrelevant. Political leaders of all stripes must be concerned with the state of American health care. Moving to a system under which costs are directly related to benefits is the only proven way to improve quality and cut costs simultaneously. Regarding the concerns expressed by the Cancer Society, consumer-driven health care plans have been on the cutting edge of efforts to improve patient quality. After all, it is much easier to convince the average person of the importance of their own health if you can attach dollar signs to healthier lifestyles.
Davis is a hard-core lefty and I don’t expect to convince him, but hopefully other readers cut through his rhetoric.

This article appeared recently (May 28) in the Albuquerque Journal. The author’s basic point is that Native Americans were promised health care paid for by the federal government and that the government has fallen short of its obligations. Of course, more money is essential (in the author’s mind) to rectify this injustice.
This promise of a “right” to health care is strikingly similar to politicians’ promise to “universal” health care and other plans to dramatically alter America’s health care system. While more money may indeed be necessary to “fully” fund the Indian Health Care system, history has shown that government-run health services are very expensive and thus, by their nature, are ultimately “underfunded.”
While the Indians undoubtedly had little choice in the wording of the “treaties” they signed with the US Government, their costly and ultimately sad experience with “free” health care should give so-called progressives pause when promoting the idea as a panacea for current problems.

Recently, I discussed our new study on eliminating New Mexico’s personal income tax with Alan Riehl on Las Cruces radio station KSNM 570AM. You can listen to the show here.
If you’d rather read a short, 700 or so word article about eliminating the personal income tax, you can read that here.

A few weeks ago I blogged about the importance of candidate surveys from Project Vote Smart. With the primary election on Tuesday, the Rio Grande Foundation and several other New Mexico-based non-profits surveyed candidates on several issues of interest to each group.
The results of the House Candidate surveys can be found here and the Senate surveys can be found here. The questions that we chose were number 3 and number 9, but each of the questions is relevant in its own way to voters hoping to make an informed decision. If candidates in your area chose not to fill their survey out, make sure to tell them that voters need to make an informed decision and they can only do so if candidates are willing to take firm positions on the issues.

A few weeks ago, I blogged on this page about the reforms Georgia has recently made to health care policies within its borders. Today, I wrote about these changes and urged New Mexico policymakers to follow suit, in the Business Journal section of the Albuquerque Journal. Check out the article here (no subscription required).

I have often heard that one of the keys to improving our failing education system (both here in New Mexico and nationwide) is to get business leaders and the business community more involved in education. While forcing schools to adhere to the principles that businesses must adhere to in a competitive economy is the centerpiece of the Rio Grande Foundation’s education reform agenda, I’ve long been skeptical that businesspeople taken as a whole have any particular insight into making the fundamental reforms necessary to improve American education.
That reality was made clear to me this morning as I sat through a presentation by a manager of Intel Corporation’s education experts. While he had a lot of great information on how to help bring technology to the schools, his company’s solutions are designed to work exclusively within the context of the current government school monopoly. Like Bill Gates’ efforts to improve K-12 education by throwing money at government-run schools, Intel’s efforts are destined to fail to have any long-standing or widespread impact.
You’d think that corporate guys would figure it out. The key to their success is the fact that they have to compete to make a better product or some other company will take their market share and they’ll lose money. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that many business types actually understand how the market system actually works. Thus, when it comes to reforming something like education, they don’t see the big-picture problems and incentives as necessary to their success.
This is the stuff of college theses and grand intellectual inquiries, but what we ultimately need is education reform that demands schools compete as if they were the next Intel or Microsoft. After all, even a flawed Vista operating system is forced to compete with Apple. Our schools face no real competition.

The Navajo Nation is planning on building a coal-fired power plant near Burnham, NM. It applied for an air permit from the Environmental Protection Agency in early 2004, but still hasn’t received permission to begin construction. The Diné Power Authority, a Navajo enterprise, filed a lawsuit against the EPA on March 18 attempting to force the federal agency to make a decision on the permit, according to the Albuquerque Journal (Navajo Enterprise Sues EPA Over Proposed Power Plant, Mar. 19, 2008). “The lawsuit claims the tribe is losing $5 million in… revenue for every month the permit is delayed.”
“The EPA says it was initially delayed by climate-modeling uncertainties… and then by nearly 1,000 mostly negative comments posted on the agency’s Web site,” according to the Santa Fe New Mexican (‘We want the smoke to stop’, May 21, 2008). The Feds say they have to respond to every comment before issuing a permit.
With improved emissions technology, the new Desert Rock Energy Facility will be able to crank out ¾ of the electricity with only 1/5 of the emissions currently being produced by the Four Corners Power Plant in Fruitland, NM (The New Mexican). On top of that, the operators of the new facility are “exploring options that may prepare the project to capture and sequester CO2 emissions from the plant in the future when technology exists that makes this process technically and economically feasible.”
On March 19, New Mexico Environment Secretary Ron Curry, who has a hand in delaying the permit along with the EPA, issued a statement that said, “We respect the sovereignty of the Navajo Nation and the rights of tribal governments to determine their economic futures and to pursue positive change within their communities. However, the responsibility of taking strong action to combat global climate change is one we must all share.”
Curry is operating in quite a paradox. If the government recognizes the sovereignty of the Navajo Nation, then why is it being prohibited from starting a project that will “bring $52 million a year in revenues to the tribal government and provide up to 400 jobs on a reservation where unemployment hovers around 50 percent” (The New Mexican)?
This anti-development mentality on the part of outsiders, mostly wealthy outsiders, was the point of the Rio Grande Foundation’s recent showings of the film Mine Your Own Business. In fact, the film drew a crowd of nearly 100 to Farmington for a showing of the film.

Last week, the Rio Grande Foundation and CARE (the Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy) held a series of showings of the film Mine Your Own Business in Albuquerque, Farmington, and Roswell. As this article from the Farmington Daily Times discusses, the film drew a crowd (80 people) in Farmington. This included some hostile opponents from San Juan Citizens Alliance and the Diné Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment.
While we certainly wish that more people shared our belief that responsible mining and access to dependable energy sources are compatible with and integral to our modern way of life, increasing numbers of environmentalists are anti-progress. Our hope is, by showing this film, to expose New Mexicans to the dark side of the environmental movement and point out that we should not blindly attribute altruistic motives to those who say “save the earth.” After all, it was Jacques Cousteau who once said, “In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 per day.”

In 2006, Santa Fe County voters agreed to a tax increase to fund improved emergency medical services to outlying communities around the city of Santa Fe and throughout the county, according to Julie Ann Grimm of The Santa Fe New Mexican (911 Stretched Thin, May 20, 2008). So far, $6 million has been levied from county taxpayers and given to the county government for this purpose, but the county’s emergency needs still haven’t been met.
The county’s been having a problem with recruiting and retaining enough paramedics. If a county resident calls 911 because of a heart attack, there may not be enough county paramedics to respond. Odds are the city of Santa Fe, which has its own fire department and adequately staffed emergency response team, will have to send its own paramedic team to far off county lands, leaving the city more vulnerable to a shortage. The city and county medical employees try to work together to meet the needs of citizens.
Unfortunately, the city and county governments don’t cooperate in the same way. Santa Fe city residents (who are Santa Fe county residents as well) are helping to pay for services outside of the city, but their city government is actually contributing to the county shortage by offering more competitive wages to paramedics, leaving the county fire departments in need.
While this competition drives paramedic wages up, it almost seems that the County and City should combine rescue efforts so services do not overlay. Even better, the City and County would likely save even more up to 2/3rds of the money it spends now by privatizing some emergency medical services.

Ned Farquhar, a regular columnist for the Albuquerque Journal, is one of my favorite punching bags. His stances on most issues are predictably left-wing and rely on the coercive power of big-government.
A recent column of his, “Four Options with More Mileage than ANWR,” remains stuck in my crawl. In his article, Farquhar expresses his opposition to drilling in ANWR on the grounds that the area would produce “only” a million barrels a day and “only” reduce our reliance on foreign oil from 65 percent to 60 percent. Considering that the US uses approximately 20 million barrels daily, I’d say that it is well-worth drilling on 20,000 acres of frozen tundra (half the size of the District of Columbia) in a wildlife refuge the size of South Carolina.
Obviously, drilling in ANWR alone is not the answer to all our energy needs and “energy independence” is not a reasonable or relevant goal, but we are reliant on oil (not addicted as Farquhar would assert) and we have to drill for it somewhere.
But, Farquhar believes otherwise. His preference is for (1) electric cars which are not on the market yet (and rely on some other energy source like nuclear) and hybrids which still use gasoline. Clearly, this is at best a partial option for the future. (2) Farquhar predictably pushes renewables which he admits generate less than 2 percent of our energy. He claims, apparently using a magic wand, that we can up that to 25 percent by 2020. (3) Use bio-fuels. Again, it sounds nice on paper, but can we really ramp up production to necessary levels? (4) More efficient vehicles (using government mandates). Again, no details are necessary and individual preferences are ignored.
The ironic thing is that with oil at $130/barrel, the market, not government bureaucrats, is the most powerful force acting on behalf of efficiency. Demand for fuel efficient cars and hybrids has skyrocketed. Now, most Americans are unhappy with current fuel prices, but if Farquhar and his friends in the environmental movement have their way, fuel prices will go up and freedom will drop. It couldn’t be any simpler than that.

When discussing the federal budget, the size of the numbers being dealt with and their different meanings and calculations becomes overwhelming and even irrelevant. The federal deficit is an example of this. While President Bush and federal bureaucrats like to cite our supposedly reduced deficit as a result of their successful policies, when future obligations are accounted for, the picture is much worse. In fact, according to a recent article in the USA Today, “the federal government’s long-term financial obligations grew by $2.5 trillion last year, a reflection of the mushrooming cost of Medicare and Social Security benefits.”
As the article goes on to explain:

Taxpayers are on the hook for a record $57.3 trillion in federal liabilities to cover the lifetime benefits of everyone eligible for Medicare, Social Security and other government programs, a USA TODAY analysis found. That’s nearly $500,000 per household.
When obligations of state and local governments are added, the total rises to $61.7 trillion, or $531,472 per household. That is more than four times what Americans owe in personal debt such as mortgages.
The $2.5 trillion in federal liabilities dwarfs the $162 billion the government officially announced as last year’s deficit, down from $248 billion a year earlier.

Clearly, entitlement reform should be a top priority of politicians in both parties, but it doesn’t look like any of the current crop are making it a top priority…instead, it seems that our children will be inheriting our debts.

Yesterday’s Albuquerque Journal featured an article titled APS Will Cover $20M Funding Hit. Apparently, the state did an audit in 2007 that found that the Albuquerque Public Schools district was over-reporting teacher experience and special education staff. The state determined that it had given APS $20 million too much because of these errors.
Part of the problem was that from at least 1991 to 2001, APS was calculating teacher training and experience against state rules. APS’ criteria for “teacher training” were more lax than the state rules allowed. Even after the state warned APS in 1991 and forgave the errors, the district continued to miscalculate for another decade.
APS also used a “computer program that accidentally doubled its number of special education staff.” Who knows how much that computer program cost the city? My little cousin could’ve designed a program that can count numbers. He probably would have done it for free too.
APS will not have $20 million of state money in ‘08-’09 that it’s used to receiving. APS says it can “cover the loss with its cash reserves next year.” But, unless APS suddenly hires teachers that actually meet its over-reported levels of training and experience, and unless it doubles the size of its special education staff, it will be $20 million ‘short’ every year.
The district’s chief business officer, Gina Hickman, said that we were giving APS $13 million too much for teacher training and experience, and $7 million too much for special education staff. I can understand that APS may have different guidelines for calculating teacher training and experience than the state does. I would assume APS was giving this $13 million to teachers with more training and experience. But, if the faulty computer program was doubling the numbers of special education staff, what was APS spending our $7 million on?

In case you are not aware, the Rio Grande Foundation and the Citizens Alliance for Responsible Energy (CARE) are hosting free film events around the New Mexico. We are showing the film Mine Your Own Business in an effort to expose the real agenda of all-too-many in the environmental movement.
The Farmington Daily-Times had an excellent article in which both Paul Driessen, who is speaking after each of the film showings, and I were interviewed about the film and its message. See you in Albuquerque this Tuesday, Roswell on Wednesday, and in Farmington on Thursday.

Whether or not the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) should even exist is, in my opinion, an open question. After all, the Constitution makes no provision for a federal role in addressing emergencies. If any government was to respond, it is state and local governments that are in the best position and are the most capable. This was clearly the belief held by those who founded this country and lived in the early years of the Republic.
Now, private actors are organizing and getting directly involved in assisting with natural disasters. Engineers Without Borders, a coalition of local engineer organizations around the world, is looking to fill the competency void left by government bureaucrats and assist when disasters happen all over the globe.
Clearly, despite the crowd-out effects associated with government, the rise of private, voluntary organizations like Engineers Without Borders (and volunteer efforts by companies like Wal Mart) are our best chance to avoid future disasters like Hurricane Katrina.

As readers of this site are undoubtedly aware, the Rio Grande Foundation is one of New Mexico’s leading voices on behalf of tax reform and reducing the burden of taxation on New Mexico citizens and businesses. While the Foundation does not involve itself in political campaigns, one useful tool in analyzing where candidates stand on taxes and a wide variety of other issues is the Project Vote Smart website.
Project Vote Smart surveys all candidates and publishes the information online in order to give voters the knowledge needed when they go to vote. Information on races taking place in New Mexico can be found here (find the candidate you want and click on the Issue Positions/Political Courage Test button).
Because few incumbents actually fill out the survey, direct comparisons between candidates can be difficult. The primary battle between challenger Dennis Kintigh and incumbent Dan Foley in the 57th House district is one interesting example. While making it clear that he favors limited government, Kintigh’s survey indicates that he’d like to slightly decrease corporate and personal income taxes (with other taxes remaining the same) and “slightly increase” K-12 education spending. Why would a supposedly conservative Republican state publicly that they don’t see any problems with current property and sales (actually gross receipts) tax rates? After all, the Rio Grande Foundation has called the gross receipts tax “New Mexico’s most economically-harmful tax.” Likewise, why would he increase spending on a K-12 system that is clearly broken (for example, the Quality Counts 2007 study by Education Week ranked the state 51st in the nation for giving children a chance at success)?
Kintigh’s opponent, incumbent Representative Foley, while he didn’t fill out his survey, has certainly been a leader in reducing New Mexico’s onerous tax burden. He’s also consistently worked to reduce out-of-control spending like the 11 percent increase of two years ago.
These surveys are a rich source of information. If candidates in your area have not filled theirs out, contact them and ask that they do so.

The state of Georgia is on a roll. Over the weekend I blogged about an important piece of health care legislation that was recently signed into law by Gov. Sonny Perdue and expressed my hope that New Mexico would follow suit. Now, we receive word that the Georgia Legislature has passed and the Governor has signed legislation that will allow individuals and businesses to take a dollar-for-dollar credit on state taxes for contributions to non-profit groups that fund tuition scholarships for children in K-12. More than 10,000 children will benefit from the new law.
As regular readers may know, the Rio Grande Foundation has been promoting tax credits for education in a loose coalition with Educate New Mexico and other proponents of educational choice in New Mexico. Georgia has set the standard in health care and education. Hopefully New Mexico follows their lead.

David Freddoso, a columnist with National Review Online, wrote a column recently on the Wilson v. Pearce race for the Republican nomination for the open New Mexico Senate seat. Freddoso did his research, talking to several free market or Republican activists around the state. I offered my two-cents, arguing that Pearce is the better candidate from the perspective of taxpayers.
By way of backing that statement up, I encourage readers to take a look at annual ratings of Congress put out by the Washington-based National Taxpayers Union. Pearce’s rating data can be found here. Wilson’s rating data can be found here.
I’m certainly not alone in my analysis that Pearce is the more fiscally-conservative candidate. Check out this hard-hitting ad from the Club for Growth.

You may have missed it unless you work in health care…in fact, I can almost guarantee it, but the State of New Mexico held a “Input Meeting” on New Mexico’s Comprehensive Strategic Health Plan. Now, as an advocate of free markets and individual choice, the very concept of the government having a “comprehensive” plan for my health is distasteful and the idea that governments can even make decisions in a “strategic” fashion is a bad joke.
But, the meeting was held and I attended one of the panels on financing health care in Albuquerque. Not surprisingly, for a day-long meeting, nearly all of the attendees were either employed by government or work directly for a particular interest group. Average New Mexicans simply did not attend. More importantly — and perhaps as a result of the self-interested attendees — the primary topic of discussion was “what can government do for me?” Unfortunately, as long as the focus of health care reform is on government doing more rather than less, the problems in our health care “system” will worsen.
For a look at the framework on which discussion of the State’s so-called strategic plan was based, check out the word document found here.

According to a new study, New Mexico ranks number one (worst in the nation) in deaths from falls for seniors. New Mexico ranked highest with 99.26 deaths per 100,000 people over the age of 65. Wisconsin was second at 87.35 deaths per 100,000 people over age 65 and Vermont came in third with 81.46. Alaska ranked the lowest, with 15.95 deaths. Medical treatment costs for falls involving people over age 65 were more than $19 billion in 2000, and that figure is projected to increase to more than $40 billion by 2020.
While the problem of seniors falling is certainly real and obviously expensive, the ability to prevent it and potential preventative measures are unclear. Certainly, it would seem that seniors should be aware of the problem and take steps to prevent or prepare for it.