We don’t always see eye-to-eye with the ACLU, but it is hard to argue with their standing up for the concept of “innocent until proven guilty.” According to news reports, a truck driver was stopped at a weigh station on U.S. 54 in New Mexico north of El Paso, Texas. He gave police permission to search his truck to see if it contained “needles or cash in excess of $10,000.” While the driver had no needles, he did have $24,000 in cash.
Now, the DEA is holding the driver’s cash unless he can prove that the money was not related to drugs. Now, I’m not sure exactly how anyone can possibly be expected to affirmatively prove their innocence, but so are the inner workings of America’s bizarre asset forfeiture laws.

A state employee named Charles R. Ferguson had what may be the most courageous opinion piece I’ve ever seen in the Albuquerque Journal today.
The piece is fantastic, but the money quote is “Just think about this: if you walked into a business and demanded money from them, and told them to pay up or go out of business, the district attorney would have a field day charging you with extortion and racketeering. But stick a union label on that scenario and it’s called ‘fair share’ or ‘agency fee.’”
Obviously, a key component of economic freedom is for an employer and employee to agree to determine the terms of their relationship and not to have a third party (unions supported by the government) intervening. If New Mexico is ever to have such policies, known as “Right to Work,” the Rio Grande Foundation will be a key factor in that success. Unfortunately, despite Mr. Ferguson’s courageous words, we are a long way from achieving that freedom here in New Mexico.

Economic literacy is important. It is even more important when you cover one of the most controversial issues for the state’s leading newspaper. Winthrop Quigley covers health care for the Albuquerque Journal and while I don’t have a major problem with his reporting, a recent column (subscription required) of his stood out for its being based on a erroneous assumption.
Tthe headline — which Quigley probably did not write — provides a good summary of the article and my problem with it, “How we pay the doctor just coudn’t matter less.” This is simply absurd. How we pay doctors is actually the key to health care reform. If patients pay their doctors, then patients are viewed as the customer and will be treated as such. If it is insurance companies acting as the agent for employers or the government that has the relationship with doctors and ultimately pays them, then the doctors will respond to insurance companies or the government.
Quigley does point out in the article the problems associated with what he calls “health care’s 19th century business model” and he notes the very real problems posed by a single-payer system, but his argument that how we pay for health care is irrelevant does not hold water.
The fact is that government regulations and cost-shifting have contributed greatly to the inefficiencies and lack of responsiveness we see in today’s health care system. Giving individuals the same tax deduction now given to their employers would be a step in the right direction. So would allowing individuals to shop for health insurance across state lines as a means of avoiding state mandates that drive costs up significantly. Congressional action on market-based Medicaid and Medicare reforms would also help matters a great deal by limiting the problem of cost-shifting from Medicare and Medicaid users and on to paying customers.

Recently, the Rio Grande Foundation released its study of the “local” tax burdens (gross receipts and property) of New Mexico’s 10-largest cities. Carlsbad and Hobbs were found to have the lowest burdens as a percentage of income while Albuquerque and Las Cruces residents faced the heaviest burdens.
To calculate your own gross receipts and property tax burden (assuming a new purchase that is not impacted by the 3 percent property tax cap), go to our website and use the tax burden calculator.

The idea had been around for several months, but last night, Albuquerque’s brain-dead city council decided to impose a far-reaching, 31 page-long set of “big-box” regulations. Sally Mayer of all people stood up for reality by voting against the bill and saying, “The regulations are too detailed. Many developers are already building high-quality designs that match the bill’s goals.” She went on to point out that “the ordinance would make it much harder to redevelop property in older parts of Albuquerque… thus defeating what the council is always talking about, which is infill.”
Of course, the city already has a tremendous degree of control over the so-called “big-box” stores as we witnessed in the recent Wal Mart fiasco involving the proposed store near Vista del Norte. The public meetings and new approval procedures will only make it easier for small, vocal groups of NIMBYists to throw a wrench into store location proceedings. This will only drive costs up and reduce the positive economic impact of Wal Mart and others.
The legislation now moves on for signing or a veto from Mayor Marty.

I’ve discussed the dairy cartel in past blogs, but the Albuquerque Journal ran an excellent opinion piece from a farmer and critic of the House-passed farm bill now moving through Congress. This legislation, as the author points out, would continue Congress’s tradition of hurting family farms while professing to help them. That is nothing new considering that Ted Turner and Scottie PIppen (a former NBA star) have received massive subsidies in recent years.
Unfortunately, the simple fact is that agriculture policy in this nation is set by a handful of extremely wealthy and well-connected people. The rest of us must deal with the consequences of these absurd policies.

It is widely known and understood that Governor Richardson is running for the presidency on his experience as an executive. After all, his leading opponents, Clinton, Edwards, and Obama are Senators with limited experience even in that role. Good strategy for Bill.
Something that makes quite a bit less sense is his emphasis on the various tax credits he has pushed as an economic development tool in his recent television advertisements. Richardson has received ample praise from conservatives and free market advocates, but not because of his economically-dubious narrowly-targeted tax credits. Indeed, Richardson has made waves by cutting New Mexico’s top income tax rate from 8.2 percent to 4.9 percent and dropping the state’s capital gains tax from 8.2 percent to 2.45 percent. Despite having raised other taxes in ways that have offset the net effect of these tax cuts, it is this record that Richardson should be running on.
So, what does this mean? Why is Richardson talking about meaningless, targeted tax policies when the key to New Mexico’s recent economic success — aside from oil and gas prices — has been pro-growth tax cuts? One strong possibility is that running in a primary and attempting to please the Democratic Party base, he doesn’t want to talk about being a tax-cutter. This may be indirectly a result of Bush’s lack of popularity. I’d be interested in others’ thoughts on why Richardson’s campaign is missing the forest for the trees….is it economic ignorance or sheer strategy to attract a left-wing Democratic Party base?

Rio Grande Foundation scholar David Hogberg recently talked to Investors Business Daily about Rudy Giuliani’s health care plan. In summary, it contains some nice reforms and it doesn’t go down the dangerous road to “universal coverage,” but “does nothing to cut down on burdensome regulations.”
There is no doubt that health care will continue be a hot topic in legislatures and campaigns nationwide. Unfortunately, too many politicians — including our own Bill Richardson — see “universal care” as the be-all end-all for health care while the quality of Americans’ health care is too often ignored.

It’s summer and nowadays that not only means hot weather but feverish speculation about global warming. Robert Samuelson throws some cold water on those who believe that warming is the most important problem facing humanity and that taxing and regulating energy usage are the best solutions.
For more facts on the purported global warming “crisis,” check this site. Also, a free booklet on the warming issue is available from the Rio Grande Foundation. It details what is and is not a “consensus” in the scientific community on the issue of warming. Please contact us at 505-264-6090 for a copy. It is also available online here.
Oh, and speaking of global warming, 1998 is no longer the warmest year on record…that would be 1934.

One of the most prominent features of the Rio Grande Foundation website is the spend-o-meter which tallies New Mexico spending in real time. I had an article in the Los Alamos Monitor that discussed the meter and what it means for New Mexico taxpayers. This elicited a response from a John Lilley who felt the article was “biased.”
Without dwelling on my disagreements with his article, it would seem to me that there may just be some waste in New Mexico’s budget. Apparently he doesn’t think so.

I have been remiss in not saying anything about the tragic bridge collapse in Minnesota. If you have been living under a rock, on August 1 the I-35W highway bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed during evening rush hour killing several people.
Naturally, some politicians are using the opportunity to call for higher taxes, ostensibly to fund bridge inspection and maintenance. Of course, if politicians are serious about preventing future events like this, they should consider their own practices of earmarking and diverting gas tax revenues to transit. The earmarking problem has become especially prevalent in recent years which led directly to the “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska. Perhaps funds from that wasteful project could have been used to maintain existing infrastructure?
The other major problem is the practice of using highway funds to pay for transit boondoggles. While New Mexico has a relatively good system of highways, Minnesota, at least according to this study, was not that bad either. Of course, investing $400 million in a commuter rail project won’t help New Mexico maintain its roads and bridges.

A few weeks ago I blogged on the topic of the proposed Desert Rock energy plant, a proposed coal-burning facility on Navajo land near Farmington that Governor Richardson now opposes.
Okay, so the environmentalists oppose a coal plant. Nothing new there, right?
How about biomass? Environmentalists LOVE biomass, right? And Richardson has made “renewable” energy a top priority of his administration.
Unfortunately, now, with a company in the midst of running the bureaucratic gauntlet necessary to construct a biomass plant in New Mexico, Richardson’s Environmental Secretary Ron Curry has taken the side of radical environmentalists who oppose using dead trees for fuel.
Certainly, biomass is not the “silver bullet” that will solve all of our energy needs — unfortunately for the enviros, those are still coal, oil, gas, and maybe nuclear — but it seems pretty unlikely that one plant will strip all of New Mexico’s forest’s bare. If Richardson is serious about renewable energy (not to mention attracting business to New Mexico) he might want to change course on this one.

The headline in today’s Albuquerque Journal (subscription required) says it all: “Union to State Workers: Pay Up.”
According to the story, “last month, the State Employee Alliance-Communications Workers of America sent letters to nearly 500 employees saying they faced termination proceedings unless they began paying dues.” The story went on to note that “employees covered by the union’s collective bargaining agreement with the state are required to pay dues, even if they’re not union members.”
There are so many angles to this story that I could easily turn this posting into a lengthy essay, but I will refrain, so here are some points to consider: 1) While the role of private-sector labor unions is certainly open for debate, at least they benefit when the private-sector economy grows. Government labor unions on the other hand could care less about the private sector and only want to make government bigger. 2) Competition in the private sector forces labor to compete as well (look at the airline industry as an example). Governments don’t compete and there is no check whatsoever on government labor unions. 3) It is simply wrong to force a person to join a labor union in order to obtain employment, especially government employment as we are all taxpayers. 4) Adoption of Right to Work laws would allow individuals to join unions if they choose and to not join them if they don’t want to. 5) New Mexico is not a Right to Work State, but it should be in order to prevent labor unions (as opposed to actual managers) from having the ability to hire and fire government workers.

Readers of this blog and followers of the Foundation may have already read my recent Wall Street Journal column, but if you have not, you can listen to it as a commentary that recently aired on Albuquerque’s public radio station, KUNM.

Governor Richardson claims to be a “market Democrat,” but the “universal” health care proposal that his campaign announced today can only be called a disappointment to believers in the free market.
Details of his plan are as follows:

* Coverage – Guaranteed Coverage for All Americans with Real Choices: Bill Richardson believes that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to providing affordable health coverage for all Americans.Nor does he believe in creating new bureaucracies. Under a Richardson administration all Americans will have affordable coverage choices through 1) the same plan as members of Congress; 2) Medicare for those 55-64; 3) Medicaid and SCHIP for lower income families; 4) existing family coverage for young adults up to age 25; and 5) a Heroes Health Card and stronger Veterans Administration for veterans;
* Costs – Making Health Care Affordable for All: Bill Richardson believes that everyone must share responsibility for making the system work. He believes that 1) All Americans should be required to have coverage; 2) Employers should be required to do their fair share to contribute to a healthy and covered work force; 3) A sliding-scale tax credit should be available for Americans who need help affording coverage; 4) American families should get immediate relief from high interest rates for medical debt placed on credit cards. As President, Richardson will save the government up to $110 billion per year to invest in quality, affordable health coverage for all Americans, by streamlining health care administration and investing in prevention;
* Care – Improving Quality of Care for All Americans: Bill Richardson believes that all Americans deserve access to affordable, high-quality health care. Richardson will work to improve quality of care for all Americans by: 1) Promoting evidence-based care and comparative effectiveness research; 2) Promoting transparency on price and quality of health care; 3) Restructuring incentives for high-quality care; 4) Improving patient safety; 5) Ensuring an adequate health care workforce; and 6) Reducing health disparities.

For starters, Richardson may not believe in “creating new bureaucracies,” but that doesn’t mean he won’t dramatically-expand the current, broken bureaucracies. Medicaid, Medicare, SCHIP, and the Veterans Administration all face significant issues. I hardly think that expanding these programs/agencies is the answer to our health care problems.
Of course, Richardson is not the only Democrat heading down the misguided path to “universal coverage.” The problem is that so-called universal coverage is likely to be a disaster no matter which party ultimately passes it.

Setting long-term goals is fun for politicians. No other group of people has as much fun and power in planning the lives of others. Nowhere else is this proclivity more often displayed than in the intertwined areas of energy and environmental policy.
Our own Bill Richardson, for example, set ambitious goals in the 2007 legislative session to force utilities to produce 20% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. He’ll be out of office by 2011 at the latest, so it is his successor or even the next governor after that who will have to make the tough decisions if the law is to be implemented.
The same thing is happening now in Congress but to an even more ridiculous extent. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) are pushing a bill (HR 2635), the “Carbon-Neutral Government Act of 2007” that is designed to stop the federal government from being such a big polluter. Sadly enough (because it shows that government is way too big), the federal government is the largest single consumer of energy in the United States.
Among other things, the legislation would require that federal agencies reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 2 per cent per year beginning in 2010 and reach ZERO EMISSIONS by 2050. Of course, Waxman and Pelosi will be long gone from Washington by that time.
On second though, while a zero-emissions government may be ridiculous in reality, this may be our best bet to shrink the size of the federal government. Better still, since CO2 is a “pollutant” according to the global warming crowd and no single group produces more CO2 in the form of hot air than Congress, what does this legislation mean for Congress by 2050.
For more on global warming and CO2 emissions, check out this excellent video from our friends at the Heartland Institute.

Maryland has already made headlines this year by passing the nation’s first “living wage” bill. Fortunately, the bill only forced government employers (and not your average business) to pay the absurd cost of $11.30 per hour.
Unfortunately, Howard County wants to pass an even higher living wage bill. One of the prime arguments is that such an increase benefits low income families. Yet, as Santa Fe has shown us, all it does is increase part-time employment (primarily low income workers) and force those with the least education (also primarily low income workers) out of their jobs.
We can all rest assured that when the continued plight of low income families comes to light, regulations will once again target “unfair business practices” instead of dealing with the real issue. After all, there’s always something to blame on them.

http://www.livingwagecampaign.org/

The Pacific Research Institute recently released a new study that discusses the importance of owning one’s own health care and then ranks all 50 states on various matrices dealing with health care ownership.
Ownership is important because absent individual ownership, politicians interfere with our freedom to use our own money to make our own choices about the health care we need. Government mandates increase costs and, more important, lower the quality of care. The choice about health care should be in the hands of the patient and his doctor.
Surprisingly enough, especially given our high rate of uninsured and the prevalance of government health care in the state, New Mexico actually fares pretty well in the study with an overall ranking of 22nd.
Categories included: government health care in which Newe Mexico came in at 48th because it seriously underinvests in prescription drugs, is much too dependent on federal matching payments, and has overexpanded Medicaid eligibility; private health insurance (NM is 16th); medical tort (NM is 45th due to an unpredictable and often unfair system); and lastly, New Mexico is actually best in the nation in burden of regulation (the authors state that this is because of few restrictions on nurse practitioners’ scope of practice and the corporate practice of medicine).
New Mexico can do better by reforming Medicaid, but adopting “universal” coverage as Massachusetts (ranked 45th) has done will not help matters.

We haven’t worked directly on the issue, nor do we have a relationship with the company behind the proposed coal-fired power plant known as Desert Rock that is now being debated for construction on the Navajo Reservation near Farmington. That said, this nation and the west especially are growing rapidly and no matter what the environmental community may say, fossil fuels are still the only large-scale source of energy available in the United States. Solar has a niche as do wind and hydroelectric, but the bulk of our power comes from and will continue to come from coal, oil, and natural gas (with nuclear making a comeback).
Of course, as with any energy project that is not 100% politically-correct, opponents are coming out of the woodwork to oppose it. Their arguments seem less-than-convincing, however. In fact, while “environmental injustice” towards the Navajo is at the top of the complaint list, the duly elected representatives of the Navajo Nation support the project knowing that it will create jobs and alleviate some of the poverty on the reservation.
Comments are now being collected from concerned parties. You can comment on the project here.

On occasion, we at the Rio Grande Foundation are asked by our friends in Washington (yes, we have some!) to weigh in on issues of national importance. Two issues that I’d like to share are a proposed tax hike in the 15 percent tax rate on capital gains for individuals or for partnerships. We joined dozens of other groups that believe in limited government to send letters to both the House and Senate outlining just how harmful a capital gains tax hike could be.
Also, given the lack of transparency in Washington these days, there is broad, bi-partisan concern that future administrations pledge to be more open with those who pay their salaries (taxpayers). A second letter from the Rio Grande Foundation and dozens of other organizations expressed our desire for greater transparency in the federal government.

Despite the tax to support it having been repealed by Albuquerque’s City Council, the Mayor’s trolley plans refuse to die and it is widely expected that he will bring the issue up in the not-too-distant future.
Of course, followers of the issue know very well that supporters of the propsed system believe that Portland is a model that Albuquerque should follow.
Before the issue does come up again, I hope our Councilors will take a few minutes to read transportation analyst Randal O’Toole’s excellent study which studies the impact of massive rail spending on cities and clearly illustrates that if Albuquerque adopts a similar, pro-rail policy, we can expect higher taxes, less government services, more expensive housing, and gridlock on the roads like we’ve never seen before.
Since so few in this state seem to care or understand the very real fiscal impact of wasting taxpayer dollars on transportation boondoggles (see the Rail Runner as an example), I will focus on O’Toole’s points on congestion. For starters, O’Toole points out, in its 2020 regional transportation plan (published in 2002), Metro (the regional government body that runs Portland and surrounding areas, picture MRCOG on massive doses of steroids) predicted that its plans would increase the amount of time Portlanders waste sitting in traffic more than 6.6 times. Congestion would increase despite all of the region’s land-use and transit plans because those programs, predicted planners, would attract no more than about 4 percent of auto drivers to other modes of travel.
In 2007, the Federal Highway Administration chastised Metro for its anti-auto transportation plans. “It is difficult to find the transportation focus” in Metro’s regional transportation plan. Metro “should acknowledge that automobiles are the preferred mode of transport by the citizens of Portland,” added the agency. “They vote with their cars every day.” Based on that “vote,” “The transportation solution for a large and vibrant metropolitan region like metropolitan Portland should include additional highway capacity options.”
These problems are just the tip of the iceberg. For more horror stories on what could happen in Albuquerque if we follow Portland down this one-way track, you’ll have to read the study.

The libertarian Reason Magazine contained an article in its August/September print edition (available here online), that questions presidential candidate Bill Richardson’s “libertarian” bona-fides.
Richardson calls himself “a market-oriented Democrat” and, as the anti-tax Club for Growth said recently of Richardson, he’s “A different kind of Democrat, hopefully.” Even David Boaz of the libertarian Cato Institute says of Richardson, “He really might appeal to the libertarian vote. I’ve heard a number of governors pegged as ‘libertarian Democrat,’ and usually when I look into their records, it doesn’t hold up. But Richardson comes close.”
But not all are convinced of Richardson’s “libertarian-ness. Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, for one, when asked about Richardson said, “I don’t think Bill Richardson has got much to offer libertarians. He plays up the fact that he cuts taxes when, if you add up all the fees he’s approved, there’s been a net tax increase. It’s an indictment of Cato and the Club for Growth that they’d consider him a tax cutter.” How much of an indictment? “It makes me a little less impressed by the good grades Cato gave me.”
With all of the back and forth on tax cuts, the Reason piece fails to mention spending, but I recently aired that issue in a Wall Street Journal article.
I think my last line sums it up best whether the topic is the relative libertarian-ness of Richardson or their fiscal conservativism Richardson is certainly better than Obama, Clinton, and Edwards, but that doesn’t mean he’s actively “good,” just less “bad.” Unfortunately, in presidential politics these days, it seems like small government types are too often left with voting for the lesser of evils (with the exception of Ron Paul, of course).

Rio Grande Foundation policy analyst Stephen Ford discusses the results (or lack thereof) of Arizona’s Pre-K program and how they may be relevant for New Mexico policymakers in the Rio Rancho Observer. Unfortunately, albeit not surprisingly, Governor Richardson is not concerned with results and is moving ahead with even greater funding for pre K, having sent out a press release to that effect earlier this month.
Among other things, the Governor allocated “an additional $14 million toward the expansion of PreK programs in New Mexico, boosting the number of students served by 63 percent.” According to the release, “the $14 million will pay for nineteen new programs. The pre K program expansion makes 58 programs available in 43 communities across the state and will increase access to early childhood education for approximately 3,568 four-year olds.”
With less-than-promising results in Arizona, it is unlikely that New Mexico’s abysmal education system will be improved by giving them another year to do a bad job of teaching our children. Only time will tell.

The passage of legislation during the legislative session earlier this year that will offer protections for New Mexico property owners from eminent domain abuse was positive, but property rights are by no means secured.
Unfortunately, un-accountable, rogue bureaucracies like the Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Water Authority can get judges to strip private companies (subscription required) like New Mexico Utilities Inc. of their property rights for no good reason.
Sure, the unaccountable thugs at the water authority will claim that only they can ensure that water is used efficiently and, since it is such a “scarce” resource, it is too precious to be left in private hands. What they won’t tell you is that there is no “water crisis” here in New Mexico, but there is a water distribution crisis. That is, upwards of 80% of the water in this state is used for agriculture, an industry that plays a relatively small role in the state’s economy.
Rather than using a supposed crisis as an excuse to weaken property rights, New Mexicans and the state’s legal system should use property rights to solve the state’s water distribution problems.