Rarely do we at the Rio Grande Foundation discuss the 2nd Amendment or gun rights, but the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller is a very big deal because it is a clear sign that the Court hasn’t completely abandoned attempts to read the document as it is written.
While it is impossible to underestimate the restoration of the right to carry guns in Washington, DC and other jurisdictions that have attempted to write their own laws in defiance of the Constitution, it would be really great if this trend towards Constitutional adherence were applied by the Court to the 9th and 10th amendments.

Jonah Goldberg, writing in National Review (also printed recently in the Albuquerque Journal, made an excellent point recently in calling certain politicians on “failed policies of the past.” As Goldberg points out, at least when it comes to offshore drilling, “how does anybody know (if past policies like offshore drilling have failed) when we haven’t even tried?
Of course, the outer continental shelf is by no means the only place environmentalists want to stop drilling (they’re against it just about anywhere it is proposed), right here in New Mexico, they are protesting 43 leases made by the Bureau of Land Management.
Said John Byrom, president and chief executive officer of D.J. Simmons, Inc., of the concerted efforts of environmentalists to bog down the approvals process, “It doesn’t affect us immediately, but my information is that the challenge is part of a concerted Western states tactic.”
“They’re pulling out all the stops and they know how to play the legal game,” Byrom said. “It’s not surprising, but it is frustrating because they’re trying more and more to halt drilling in the United States.”
Unfortunately, unless there is a massive anti-extreme environmentalist backlash both in New Mexico and around the country, politicians will continue to feel like $4.00/gallon gas is okay.

Truancy has been a topic of discussion of late here in New Mexico. Unfortunately, most energy and political effort has been expended on the enforcement end.
Unfortunately, as I argue in the Farmington Daily-Times truancy is a clear indicator that students (and to an extent their parents) don’t value education. The problem is, of course, that a government-run monopoly is not designed to serve students and even those who remain in the system are often poorly served.
As I argue in the article:

We must dispense once and for all with the notion that “schools” should be funded. Instead of funding schools themselves, we must fund students and their needs. This means that money should flow through the students instead of bureaucracies.
The idea of funding education through students as opposed to schools may sound like a radical one, but until schools are required to treat children and their parents as customers and compete for their business, children who don’t feel served by the system will resort to the radical and harmful steps of truancy and dropping out.

Truancy will no longer be a problem if the schools are forced to serve their customers by providing an educational experience that is tailored to student needs and is relevant to their employment futures.

The national economy may be in bad shape and both gas and food prices may be rising at a rapid pace, but if you look at our current situation through the longer lens of history, things don’t look so bad at all. This is the perspective former Congressman Pat Toomey, the current President of the Club for Growth, brings to bear in a recent article, “The Greatest Story Never Told.”
Take a look at the article here. Undoubtedly, there is much we need to do both here in New Mexico and nationally, judged against history, there is no need to panic about the current state of affairs.

The Rio Grande Foundation recently made the case for eliminating New Mexico’s personal income tax. While the study received a great deal of attention throughout New Mexico, recently the study has received attention around the nation.
The Georgia Public Policy Foundation included a link to our study in that organization’s “Friday Facts” memo. Also, the Tax Foundation, one of the oldest think tanks in Washington, recently cited the RGF study on its Tax Policy blog.
Glad to see that people in other states recognize a good idea (eliminating the income tax) when they see one. Hopefully, New Mexico policymakers understand the need to stimulate the economy in a more substantial way than Congress’s “stimulus” effort.

Recently I blogged about the negative impact recent minimum wage increases are having on teenagers and others on the fringe of the job market. I expanded and elaborated a bit on the argument in a full-length article in The New Mexico Business Weekly.

Last year, my friend Drew Johnson at the Tennessee Center for Policy Research (a fellow member of the State Policy Network) made national news with a story that Al Gore’s home in Nashville used more than 20 times the electricity of the average American home. Gore’s extravagant energy use did not stop at his electric bill. Natural gas bills for Gore’s mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month in 2006.
After the Tennessee Center for Policy Research exposed Gore’s massive home energy use, the former Vice President supposedly tried to make his home more energy-efficient. Despite adding solar panels, installing a geothermal system, replacing existing light bulbs with more efficient models, and overhauling the home’s windows and ductwork, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research’s recent look at Gore’s energy bills found that Gore’s home now consumes more electricity than before the “green” overhaul.
Since taking steps to make his home more environmentally-friendly last June, Gore devours an average of 17,768 kWh per month –1,638 kWh more energy per month than before the renovations – at a cost of $16,533. By comparison, the average American household consumes 11,040 kWh in an entire year, according to the Energy Information Administration. When it comes to living up to efforts to “save the planet,” it looks like Al Gore is a big fat hypocrite.

New Mexicans, especially Albuquerque residents, have dealt with the radical leftist group ACORN on multiple occasions in the past. ACORN led the charge in imposing a higher minimum wage in Albuquerque (before the Legislature and Congress imposed their own wage laws). This wage law is now an important factor in making it difficult for teenagers and minorities to get jobs. Also, ACORN was found to have engaged in massive fraud in its campaign on behalf of the so-called “living wage” in Albuquerque (a practice ACORN has engaged in nationwide).
So, how does all of this fit in with the housing crisis? According to a new study by the Consumer Rights League, ACORN, among other things, played a lead role in forcing lenders to lower their standards, thus encouraging millions of Americans who could not really afford a home to purchase one while demanding that lenders give loans to people who were likely not to be able to pay them back.
If they did not financially support ACORN and cow-tow to their radical agenda, lenders faced the wrath of one of the most political grassroots organizations operating today. Full text of the study can be found here.

The Rio Grande Foundation has long been critical of our system of government-run schools. There are many reasons for this, but one important reason is that the institutional design of the schools themselves and the government’s management of them makes it very difficult to serve the diverse needs of our children. Nowhere is this dynamic so clear as with the Albuquerque Public Schools’ inability to serve autistic children.
Corey Davis, a policy analyst with the Foundation responded to a recent article in the Albuquerque Journal (subscription needed) which explained that parents of autistic children have filed a lawsuit against APS. Corey’s letter to the editor, which appeared in the paper on June 17, follows:
School Vouchers Give Parents Choice Instead of Frustration

THE RECENT report that 10 families of autistic students throughout the district are seeking a class-action lawsuit against the Albuquerque Public Schools for failing to meet their educational needs once again makes it clear that tax-funded, government-run schools are not necessarily the best option for all children.
The lawsuit claims that special-needs educators aren’t properly trained to educate these students. These children are frequently sent home early for behavior issues instead of receiving a full day of education because the teachers haven’t received the training necessary to understand autism and how it affects the students.
The problem is not the teachers, but the one-size-fits-all education system.
Our state spends about $7,000 on each student’s education every year. If parents of special-needs children were given a school voucher so they could choose where they wanted to send their children, many more students would have the chance to receive an education from a school that addresses their needs instead of trying to drive a square peg through a round hole.
The state of Ohio has a publicly funded scholarship program specifically for autistic students. In that state, parents are given money to help pay for tuition at the school of their choice.
Rather than failing children with unique educational needs, New Mexico should consider adopting a program like Ohio’s that puts parents in charge and relieves school districts from the burden of educating students with whom it is ill-equipped to cope. This is certainly a better option than a costly legal battle with justifiably frustrated parents.
COREY DAVIS
Policy analyst, Rio Grande Foundation, Albuquerque

Japan has a single-payer health care system. While the Japanese people may be a healthy lot, they also must put up with some pretty absurd government rules and regulations. According to recent reports the Japanese government will now demand that people of that nation have their waists measured (the new state-prescribed limit for male waistlines is a strict 33 1/2 inches). If they are considered to be “too fat,” the government will impose financial penalties on companies and local governments (and presumably people) that fail to meet specific targets.
As health care expert Paul Hsieh points out, such freedom-destroying regulations are the result of government payment for health care. After all:

Once a government starts violating individual rights by creating a “universal” health care system, this inevitably leads to further infringements of individual rights. This is not unique to Japan.
For instance, universal health care in Great Britain has led to infringements on the right to free speech. In 2007, the British government banned television stations from playing classic 1950’s-era humorous advertisements encouraging people to have an egg for breakfast, on the grounds that “the ads do not encourage healthy eating”.
When a government has to pay for everyone’s health care, it will naturally demand a say in whether people are leading a “sufficiently healthy” lifestyle, as defined by the government.

If we allow the state of New Mexico or the federal government to control our health care, we will inevitably face similar intrusions on individual liberty. Bill Richardson of all people should be sensitive to this issue.

Bad ideas never die. Thus, Albuquerque taxpayers were greeted with the headline “Downtown Arena Revisited,” this morning. While the article explains much of the story, you can only read it if you subscribe to the Journal. Thankfully, the story was covered elsewhere including KOB TV.
Certainly I knew that even though I’d debunked the need for a taxpayer-financed arena in Albuquerque a year and a half ago, Council will tonight vote on whether to spend $700,000 taxpayer dollars to study the issue. Obviously, since the arena and hotel complex are projected to cost at least $330,000, an expenditure of “only” $700,000 is a relative bargain. But we need to nip this rip-off in the bud.
The existing arena in Rio Rancho is struggling and, while that is far away from downtown, it certainly does not bode well for a competing arena in Albuquerque. Tingley Coliseum is also experiencing problems. Another arena is simply not necessary. Worse, the plan is to “double-down” a possible arena mistake by forcing taxpayer to subsidize hotel construction downtown. Why should taxpayers subsidize another hotel downtown when a vast majority of the hotels in this city (if not all) receive no such support?
Downtown is not just surviving; it is thriving. If a private entity wishes to build an arena or hotel anywhere in the city, Council should work with them, but demanding taxpayer support for this project is simply wrong and a waste of money.

According to a story in this week’s Albuquerque Alibi, UNM’s Health Sciences Center which includes UNM Hospital and the medical school, has adopted new restrictions to eliminate drug advertising in the University’s medical buildings. While those who see drug companies as evil subversives working to snooker doctors and their patients into purchasing their latest and greatest drug, it would seem that this is yet another effort by a University to stifle free speech.
After all, who is going to tell doctors what new drugs and treatment possibilities are out there? Are they supposed to hunt these treatments down on the internet? How about patients? Are drug companies’ advertisements (also under attack by those who dislike the pharmaceuticals industry) now the only way they can find out about new treatments?
The fact is that if we had a health care system that functioned more like a market with consumers able to price various options (using a consumer-directed mechanism like an HSA) rather than being shielded from them by health insurance or government programs, the so-called “problem” with drug advertising would largely disappear. After all, if it is patients who decide whether to use a generic drug or the latest name brand drug, they should be able to use it since they are paying for it. In fact, opponents of drug advertising justify their position due to the higher cost associated with name-brand drugs.

By and large, left-wing Democrats dislike privatization. After all, nothing illustrates the superiority of free markets and limited government like comparing the ability of free markets and the government to provide particular services. Government is so incompetent, however, that sometimes even those who are philosophically opposed to letting the free market work are forced to do so.
Consider the case of the US Senate’s dining services. According to the Washington Post, “the U.S. Senate’s network of restaurants has lost staggering amounts of money — more than $18 million since 1993…Come lunchtime, many Senate staffers trudge across the Capitol and down into the basement cafeteria on the House side,” (a 15 minute walk, yet, “House staffers almost never cross the Capitol to eat in the Senate cafeterias.” (The House cafeterias have been privatized for many years)
Because the situation had gotten so bad, the Senate recently voted to let a private company manage its food services. While a majority of both parties supported the decision (albeit quietly), some on the hard left dissented. In typical left-wing fashion, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), speaking for the group of senators who opposed privatizing the restaurants, said that “you cannot stand on the Senate floor and condemn the privatization of workers, and then turn around and privatize the workers here in the Senate and leave them out on their own.”
Jonah Goldberg, writing in National Review Online, who will be speaking at Rio Grande Foundation events in Albuquerque and Santa Fe on September 19, covered the story recently as well.

With oil prices over $4 a gallon and Congress doing nothing except make it more difficult to access the resources we need to keep our society moving forward, the average motorist may be frustrated. While ranting and raving about the oil industry and its supposed “windfall profits” is the preferred reaction of the political left, when compared to other major industries, the profits associated with the industry are actually low.
Currently, there is an online petition being circulated that any American can sign to express their support for increased oil and gas drilling. While increasing oil and gas supplies may take some time, we don’t want to be paying $10 for a gallon of gas in ten years. We can avoid that problem by accessing energy sources here at home. Nowhere is that more true than here in New Mexico where the NIMBY impulse is especially strong.

Americans are increasingly being asked to decide whether or not to allow or disallow resources to be accessed on both public and private lands. Unfortunately, the attitude that somehow certain people are “above” having resource exploited on or near their lands has become more prevalent in recent years and is to a large extent responsible for today’s rising commodity prices. Nowhere are these battles and this anti-resource attitude more prevalent than here in New Mexico.
As Marita Noon of the Coalition for Responsible Energy reports, yet another confrontation over resource usages will take place this weekend at a public meeting in Grants over whether all of Mt Taylor and many surrounding areas should be declared “off limits” to the public.
More background information on the battle over Mt. Taylor is available on the website of the New Mexico Historic Preservation Division. A big crowd is expected, so if you plan to go due to the highly-charged nature of the issue, so show up early!

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.