Errors of Enchantment

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“Progressive legislator”: our critics are corrupt or just ignorant

08.17.2022

New Mexico’s Democratic Party, always liberal especially considering their incredibly long grip on power, has moved even further to the left in recent years. The 2022 election is in some ways a test of whether “moderate” Democrats in New Mexico are willing to continue down the “progressive” path no matter how far to the left they go. By our estimation (due in part to the governing obstacle presented by Gov. Susana Martinez), the government of New Mexico moved dramatically to the left starting in 2019 with the Lujan Grisham Administration.

Progressive Angeilica Rubio, one of those aforementioned “progressives,” took an interesting approach to defending “progressive” governance in the Albuquerque Journal recently. She cites some supposed accomplishments in the form of new government mandates and benefits: establishing statewide earned sick leave, raising the minimum wage, increasing the Working Families Tax Credit, increasing teacher salaries, and making our communities, land, water and air safer.

What she fails to mention is New Mexico’s failing education system, failing our kids, failing economy, and the fact that New Mexico is losing its young people to other states. Finally, to the extent New Mexico HAS expanded its social benefits, it has done so in part due to the largesse of an industry that she and the “progressives” would like to eliminate (oil and gas).

Finally, New Mexico has been controlled by Democrats (especially in the Legislature) for most of the last 100 years with the GOP having never had governing control since 1930. Voters need to ask progressives to answer for the failures of decades of Democrat policies before they send New Mexico even further to the left politically.

A win and and loss at Albuquerque City Council

08.16.2022

In what can only be called a big change of heart at Albuquerque’s City Council, a 6-3 majority changed directions and instituted a one year moratorium on “safe spaces” for the so-called homeless at Monday’s meeting. While the “safe spaces” concept has potential, it cannot be the only approach taken by the City of Albuquerque to address the issue. Enforcement of rules against camping in public parks, panhandling, and crime issues MUST be undertaken as part of any effort to create “safe spaces.”

Unfortunately and somewhat shockingly, the City Council failed to redirect $250,000 the Council “donated” to Planned Parenthood recently. The funds would have been redirected to Barrett House shelter, which aids women and children experiencing homelessness. Instead, Council kept the $250,000 in place while also handing an additional $100,000 to Barrett House and $100,000 to a community energy efficiency project.

City officials claim the City’s “contract” with Planned Parenthood covers only certain health care services, such as breast exams, cancer screening and testing for sexually transmitted diseases. The Planned Parenthood funding and additional funding was supported by a 5-4 majority that included Trudy Jones.

ABQ Journal/cartoonist further elaborate on NM’s workforce participation problem

08.15.2022

The ABQ Journal (presumably) capped off its series of reports on New Mexico’s poor workforce participation rate with an excellent editorial and appropriate cartoon by Trever.

Unlike the articles by the various reporters who relied on comments from politicians, the editorial board provided much more robust discussion of reforming welfare programs, improved vocational education, and broadly incentivizing work.

We welcome the Journal’s coverage of the issue and hope that New Mexico’s elected officials will do something productive to address the issue.

Lujan Grisham extends public health order to August 26

08.15.2022

Surprising absolutely no one, Gov. Lujan Grisham has (yet again) extended her public health order relating to COVID 19 for another few weeks, this time until August 26.

There are some changes in the latest order to limit the amount of reporting necessary by businesses and other entities, but the fact remains that Lujan Grisham shows no signs of abandoning her “emergency” powers.

An interesting quote from David Scrase as the Gov.’s COVID advisor attempts to justify what can only be described as a failed response to COVID by the Lujan Grisham Administration, “Over the past eight months we have excelled in implementing the tools to minimize the spread of COVID-19 such as: vaccines, boosters, home testing and oral treatments that have helped reduce hospitalizations and deaths.”

Sadly, New Mexico ranks 6th highest in deaths per capita due to COVID and New Mexico was ranked 3rd-worst among US states by the definitive study of state COVID responses:

 

NM Policymakers ignore rankings at their (and our) peril

08.15.2022

Recently, a group of New Mexico legislators heard numerous negative comments regarding the State’s business climate from national organizations like Tax Foundation and the Council on State Taxation.

As Dan Boyd at the Albuquerque Journal noted, New Mexico achieves poor marks in several categories relating to business taxation. Here are a few choice quotes, “I think we have to take a lot of those so-called rankings with a grain of salt,” Rep. Christine Chandler, D-Los Alamos. Furthermore, Sen. Liz Stefanics, D-Cerrillos, said factors like a state’s population and average income levels should be factored into tax rankings, but frequently are not.

These comments reflect nothing more than a case of denial. There are two kinds of data: anecdotes and hard data and if New Mexico was one of the fastest growing, most economically successful states (independent of the oil and gas industry), that would be one thing, but very few people believe that New Mexico has a thriving, diversified economy that could survive a major hit to the oil and gas industry on which it relies.

And it’s not JUST economic policy on which New Mexico fails, our policymakers are also failing our kids as the recent “Kids Count” report highlights. These people have no plan to improve New Mexico so they simply deny that a problem exists.

Florida vs. New Mexico? Really?

08.12.2022

With GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis coming to Southeast NM over the weekend in support of Mark Ronchetti’s campaign to unseat Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham, some current and former Democrat politicos in New Mexico have attempted to throw “shade” at DeSantis.

Rep. Liz Thomson also had these “kind” words to say about DeSantis regarding his more open COVID policies.

But whatever you think of DeSantis, it is hard to find ANY significant policy area where Democrat-dominated New Mexico performs better than DeSantis’ state of Florida (which has been much more politically-competitive but overall more conservative).

Despite Rep. Thomson’s statement above, Florida has performed better on COVID;

On the recently-released “Kids Count” report (by a left wing think tank), Florida ranked 35th while New Mexico came in dead-last.

According to Wallethub, New Mexico spends the 28th most on K-12 while our results are 51st while Florida spends 44th most but performs 14th-best.

RGF put the following together awhile back on a variety of data points which all point towards Florida.

If you can find a legitimate measure of governance in which New Mexico outperforms Florida, please email it to us: info@riograndefoundation.org

Europe’s anti-energy policies are harming citizens, will Americans follow the same bad policies?

08.11.2022

The problems faced in many European countries that have abandoned traditional energy sources has been exposed due to Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. European nations will either adopt better policies or continue to suffer. And by suffer it isn’t just prices, in Germany they are rationing hot water now and telling people to prepare for home heating to be limited this winter.

It is not widely known by Americans that the UK banned “fracking” in 2019. The UK actually has decent prospects for oil and gas, but the anti-fracking policy makes it impossible to get them. What does this mean in practice? It means massive increases in utility bills in the UK which also means that businesses and energy-intensive industries will be unable to compete.

If US and New Mexico policymakers from Joe Biden to Martin Heinrich and Michelle Lujan Grisham have their way, we’ll be energy poor like Europe soon.

Lujan Grisham announces broadband plan: will it benefit Democrat legislator?

08.11.2022

Gov. Lujan Grisham has announced a new $123 million grant program to expand broadband access in New Mexico. The effort, financed in part through legislation passed in the Legislature in the 2021 special session  will award grants to cover up to 75 percent of total project costs for network expansion in unserved and underserved areas of the state. See graphic below:

Interestingly, one of the prime beneficiaries of this spending is Sceye with operations in New Mexico which is supposed to launch dirigibles to provide broadband service to areas lacking traditional broadband. Sceye’s general council is none other than Rep. Dayan Hochman-Vigil. Of course Hochman-Vigil was present in the Legislature to vote on HB 2 in the affirmative.

 

Tipping Point Episode 428: Jeremy Gay – Candidate for New Mexico Attorney General

08.11.2022

On this week’s interview Paul sits down with Republican Attorney General candidate Jeremy Gay. Paul and Jeremy discuss the role of Attorney General in New Mexico. What can he do to fight out-of-control crime? What are some limits of the office? What is the role of the AG in the economy? Will Jeremy allow billionaires like Michael Bloomberg pay the salaries of employees in the AG’s office as current AG Hector Balderas has done? Gessing and Gay discuss this and numerous other issues.

PNM believes Avangrid merger is a “done deal”

08.10.2022

Whatever you may think of the PNM/Avangrid merger that had been rejected by all five members of New Mexico’s Public Regulation Commission, the folks at Seeking Alpha seem to be on-target in their view that the merger is a “likely to close.”

Based on conversations and marketing materials like that below, it appears that once Gov.  Lujan Grisham names the new Commission to their seats on January 1 (under New Mexico’s new constitutional amendment), they will approve the merger.  After all, you don’t get the kind of branded marketing materials like for this upcoming balloon glow in Corrales without some level of confidence that the merger is indeed happening.

Tipping Point NM Episode 427: Kids Count Report, Spaceport Delay, Electric Vehicles, Workforce Participation and more

08.09.2022

During this week’s conversation Paul and Wally discuss the recently-passed and poorly-named “Inflation Reduction Act.” What’s in the bill and why is it so bad?

Next, the latest “Kids Count” report put out by Annie E. Casey Foundation and Voices for Children is out and New Mexico is back to 50th. What does it mean and why does “Voices” wish to undermine the findings of their own report?

Virgin Galactic announced that it has again moved back its launch date from New Mexico’s Spaceport America. News articles indicate even more serious issues with the company’s spacecraft.

The City of ABQ has offered “free” bus service in recent months. While there is little evidence of success, “free” bus ridership could prove very expensive.

A few months ago ABQ City Council gave $250,000 to Planned Parenthood. They will be voting on August 15 to potentially redirect that money.

A new report by Axios includes some interesting data on electric vehicles and their lack of market penetration.

The ABQ Journal has additional reporting on workforce participation.

No electric vehicles on the market today qualify for the new EV tax credit

08.09.2022

The headline of this blog post is the same as that of a recent article from The Verge. The new EV tax credit is contained in the wasteful and misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act.” The legislation includes a $7,500 tax break for the purchase of electric vehicles.

But, the rules are written in such a way as to effectively disqualify every EV that’s currently on the market today because the rules adopted in the legislation mandate that  eligible vehicles use batteries that are made in North America.

China currently produces 76 percent of the world’s lithium-ion batteries, while the U.S. produces only 8 percent.

Automakers could ask for waivers from the requirements, given the precedent that allowed many manufacturers to avoid “Buy America” rules that were enacted as part of last year’s bipartisan infrastructure law, according to Politico.

The obvious solution is for the US to increase domestic mining for lithium and other components of EV’s, but the very same “environmental” groups pushing EV’s tend to be the loudest in shutting down proposed mining operations. 

New Mexico drops back to 50th in “Kids Count” report

08.08.2022

The latest “Kids Count” report has just been published by the Annie E. Casey Foundation with the assistance of the left-wing New Mexico Voices for Children. Sadly, New Mexico again comes in 50th, dead last in the report for overall child well-being.

At the Rio Grande Foundation, we have long held that the “Kids Count” report, while imperfect, is  a useful and largely accurate reflection of where New Mexico stands (it is a national report), but Voices for Children consistently tries to use the report to boost Democrats’ big-spending, economically-destructive, and failed policies regardless of their actual impact on children.

So, despite sliding back to 50th we get a defense of Gov. Lujan Grisham’s policies with Amber Wallin of Voices undermining her organization’s own report saying, “What’s not reflected in the data book is ‘great policy progress in the past few years that put kids first,’ she said, noting a number of legislative changes made from 2019 forward (when MLG took office).”

Attempts to defend failed policies of New Mexico’s Democrat politicians are nothing new from Voices as we noted last year. And, while RGF may not buy into pre-K as a driver of improved educational outcomes, Voices certainly does, yet they gave former Gov. Susana Martinez zero credit for her massive spending in that area. You can check out the results for yourself below:

Yet another delay for Virgin Galactic

08.08.2022

In yet another sign that Virgin Galactic may simply never make it to its goal of manned space tourism launches out of taxpayer-financed Spaceport America, the company has once again pushed back its planned launch schedule. While the company claims the latest delay will ‘only’ push space tourism flights back to the 2nd quarter of 2023, according to Michael Colglazier, CEO of Virgin Galactic, “the company now expects those flights (on its Imagine craft) to begin no earlier than the fourth quarter of 2023.”

The reason for the latest delay is even more troubling with Colglaziier saying, The “most acute” issue was work on the central wing section of the plane, where workers were replacing the pylon to which SpaceShipTwo is attached. There are differences between the designs for the plane and what was actually built.

If this doesn’t sound like the kind of problem that can be easily resolved or the kind of issue that should be happening more than a decade into the Spaceport’s existence, you likely see why this latest delay should be of concern.

Spaceport America confirms new tenant without further information

ABQ “Free” bus fare could turn into another budgetary black hole

08.07.2022

The City of Albuquerque’s foolish “free” bus program will, unless City Council puts a stop to the situation, result in good money following bad. The Albuquerque Journal editorialized recently in tepid support of the program, but also argued that in order to address increased security issues on City buses due to the program that it might have to raise pay for bus drivers AND increase security on buses due to increased incidents and problems with homeless etc.

While the Journal touts ridership growth of 36 percent over the first 6 months of 2022, the reality is that ridership is WAY down (40%) since 2019. And, there has been a sustained nationwide decline in transit ridership in the wake of COVID 19.

 

 

 

A closer look at electric vehicles

08.05.2022

With the Biden Administration and Gov. Lujan Grisham constantly touting (and subsidizing) electric vehicles, the following discussion of electric vehicles from the news site Axios is worth considering.

The article is chock full of data which, if considered by policymakers, should throw cold water on the headlong push for EV’s, but as we know, that push is agenda-driven, not policy driven.

“EVs account for only about 0.6% of all registered vehicles in the U.S.”

And, “while California leads the U.S. in electric vehicle ownership accounting for 39% of all EVs registered nationwide…EVs represent less than 2% of all vehicles on the road in the Golden State.”

“As of April 1, Florida has the second-highest share of the country’s EVs, at 6.7%. Then comes Texas (5.4%), Washington (4.4%), and New York (3.6%). Yet, EVs account for only 1% or less of all vehicles within each of these states.”

Finally, New Mexico which has .6% of the US population has just .3% of all electric vehicles (according to the article). Under a new rule put in place by Gov. Lujan Grisham recently 7% of all vehicles sold in New Mexico will have to be electric as of 2025.

 

 

Tipping Point NM Episode 426 Carol Wight – Challenges for New Mexico’s Restaurant Industry

08.05.2022

According to Carol Wight of the New Mexico Restaurant Association, more than 1,000 New Mexico restaurants shut down thanks to Gov. Lujan Grisham’s COVID lockdowns.

Paul talks with Carol Wight of the New Mexico Restaurant Association about the current state of the restaurant industry.  They discuss how the industry fared through the challenges of COVID-19 as well as the post pandemic challenges of inflation, difficulty in finding workers, the impact of new regulation and more. They also discuss federal and state programs that restaurants were able to use to help survive in tough times as well as future policy changes that could benefit the industry including expanding the elimination of New Mexico gross receipts tax on food to include restaurants.

Education poll shows support in New Mexico for school choice, concern for education system

08.04.2022

The group EdChoice does polling on various education issues on an ongoing basis. You can find details on their New Mexico and national polling here.

Here are two particularly interesting items. Simply put, anywhere between 2/3rd and 3/4ths of New Mexico adults/parents support money following the children. And, vast majorities of people feel the education system is headed in the wrong direction.

New Mexico’s pitiful workforce participation rate…updated

08.02.2022

The Albuquerque Journal is one of the few media outlets to have caught on to the fact which we’ve been discussing for years, that New Mexico’s workforce participation rate is terrible…and, it got much worse during COVID. The Journal and its sources cited an increase in New Mexicans on SSDI or “disability.”

Here’s the raw data from Bureau of Labor Statistics.

As you can see from the chart below, since January of 2020, shortly before the onset of the COVID 19 pandemic, Colorado has actually increased its workforce participation rate from 66.7% to 67.1%; Utah’s rate has stayed the same at 66.7%; Texas’ rate dropped slightly from 61.4% to 61.2%; Arizona’s rate also dropped slightly from 59.1% to 58.9%; and Oklahoma’s rose from 58.9% to 59%.

New Mexico not only went into the Pandemic with the lowest workforce participation rate (by far) at 55.6%, but that rate dropped rather significantly down to 54.2%

This cartoon highlights the fundamental problem facing New Mexico. We need more New Mexicans pulling the cart and fewer people in the cart. Alas, we have moved in the opposite direction under Gov. Lujan Grisham.

Opinion piece: Government boondoggles shouldn’t be New Mexico way

08.01.2022

This article first appeared in the Las Cruces Sun News on Sunday, July 31, 2022.

New Mexico is always ranked among the “poor” states in the United States. But, as anyone who lives here or has taken stock of New Mexico’s abundant natural and cultural resources can tell you, we have no business being “poor.”

Sadly, much of our poverty is self-inflicted. It is the obvious result of bad public policy. While there are all manner of bad tax and regulatory policies that often wind up being “in the weeds,” one of New Mexico’s fundamental problems is the result of politicians’ misguided belief that the path to success involves more government spending or another big government project.

The Rio Grande Foundation has long had its concerns about two Bill Richardson-era projects of this kind: the Rail Runner and Spaceport America. Starting with the Rail Runner, the latest ridership data just came out and, over the past year the train saw 319,635 riders board the train. The train was fully operational throughout the last 12 months which included a few months of fares having been discounted to $2.50 a day.

One might think that with gas prices these days the Rail Runner would be a cost-effective alternative. Sadly, the train’s current ridership is about 25% of peak years of 2010 and 2011 when more than 1.2 million people boarded the train. Sadder still is the fact that taxpayers continue to pay tens of millions of dollars in debt service on construction of the train and nearly $20 million annually to operate it.

Shockingly, Las Cruces Sen. Bill Soules recently pledged to reintroduce legislation in the 2023 session that would theoretically create “high speed rail” from Denver to Chihuahua. The fact is that population density numbers don’t justify commuter rail between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Now Soules wants to spend tens of billions on “high speed” passenger service spanning more than 850 miles, three states, and two countries?

Sadly, Spaceport America has proven itself to be another Richardson-era boondoggle that hasn’t lived up to its promise. Spaceport America has been open for business for more than a decade and it has yet to fulfill its mission of hosting commercial space flights.

Last July Richard Branson and a team of Virgin Galactic employees did make it to weightlessness, but the company’s stock has tanked in the meantime and their latest prediction is for flights to begin the first quarter of 2023.

Plans for those manned commercial space flights have been delayed time and again. We’re not holding our breath for flights to begin in earnest early next year.

Worse, Virgin Galactic recently announced plans to build its future fleet of spacecraft in Mesa, Arizona. Sadly, spending hundreds of millions of our tax dollars to provide a spaceport for Virgin Galactic was not enough for them to build ships here.

With massive oil and gas surpluses flowing into the state’s coffers, politicians like Soules will again be looking for new “opportunities” to waste money. But big government spending schemes have repeatedly failed to truly diversify our economy or bring sustainable growth to our state.

Instead, the governor and Legislature would better serve our state by considering why companies with a New Mexico presence (like Virgin Galactic and Intel to name two) continue to choose neighboring Arizona over us.

It might be Arizona’s school choice which has improved educational results and workforce preparedness, not to mention a willingness for families to locate there.

Or, perhaps it is Arizona’s lower taxes which has dropped to 2.5% for nearly all Arizonans under a new tax cut law.

Finally, it could be that Arizona has a “right to work” law which gives private sector workers the right to opt out of membership or the payment of dues and fees in labor unions.

No matter, it is high time for New Mexico to abandon our government-driven model and consider what states like Arizona and others do that has worked so much better.

Paul Gessing is president of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation.

New Mexico pension plans among most underfunded

08.01.2022

According to a newly-published report from Pew Center on the States New Mexico’s pension systems are among the worst funded in the US.

You can find the full report here. RGF president Paul Gessing offered comments on the issue for The Center Square here. You can see how New Mexico’s pension obligations stack up below:

One quick note, in 2020 Rio Grande Foundation worked with a bipartisan coalition in support of GOOD PERA reforms. In 2021 the Legislature decided to prop up ERB with more tax dollars. Regardless, it would seem that with record levels of oil and gas revenues putting our pension systems on firm footing and making them work for taxpayers and educators/public employees who might want to manage their own retirement $$ would be a wise thing to do.

Why Americans and New Mexicans shifted to private K-12 options during COVID

08.01.2022

It has been widely reported that Albuquerque Public Schools is one school district that is losing large numbers of students. We don’t know how many students other districts throughout New Mexico lost during COVID, but have heard similar numbers.

The following chart is from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. It highlights that in 2021 Catholic and other private schools remained in-person more than 90% of the time while government-run schools hovered anywhere from 50% in-person to 62%.

Further below that we re-post the Burbio report which highlights the fact that under Gov. Lujan Grisham New Mexico students were out of their classrooms more than students in all but 5 other states. It’s pretty easy to see why New Mexico families accelerated their move to schools of choice.

Tipping Point NM episode 424: Audrey Trujillo – Candidate for New Mexico Secretary of State

07.29.2022

On this week’s Tipping Point conversation Paul talks to GOP Secretary of State candidate Audrey Trujillo.

Paul and Audrey discuss the role of Secretary of State in New Mexico and what the occupant of that position can/should do with and without the Legislature. They discuss the Secretary’s role in elections and preventing election fraud, address recent elections in 2020 and the primary election in 2020, and her plans to improve election integrity.

Finally, Audrey and Paul talk about other parts of the Secretary’s job and how it can make New Mexico more attractive as a place to do business.

American “renewables” won’t fuel our world OR stop climate change

07.29.2022

American politicians from President Biden on down to Sen. Martin Heinrich and Gov. Lujan Grisham and many in the New Mexico Legislature are positively obsessed with “renewable” energy. They all pledge massive subsidies, mandates, and all manner of policies for the “transition” regardless of economic impact or the futility of actually moving the needle on CO2 emissions.

The following chart highlights just how small wind and solar are on a global energy use basis. You can see them on the chart which is better than prior to 2010, but to claim that wind and solar will result in the end of traditional energy sources is simply ridiculous and there is nothing that we can do about it barring total economic destruction. Even a crash shift to nuclear power would take decades to pull off.

And then there is China. China is already (far and away) the global leader in CO2 emissions, but China continues to expand its coal powered energy production as the July 20, 2022 article describes.