As reported in the Albuquerque Journal (via the Washington Post) recently, retail giant Wal Mart unveiled a hologram version of (deceased) founder Sam Walton. The technology, called StoryFile, is the same as that released just one month ago with New Mexico Attorney General candidate Jeremy Gay.

The major difference is that you can physically go to a Wal Mart and see/interact with a hologram as opposed to interacting with the “virtual” representation of the interviewee online.

Regardless of the mechanics, this new technology is sure to become a popular way to give average people the ability to engage in a more realistic-feeling way with public figures (dead or alive).

The following article appeared in Las Cruces Sun-News on November 27, 2022.

This Election Day a majority of New Mexico voters seemingly ignored the State’s manifest failures of governance. Instead, voters prioritized abortion rights while penalizing anyone who could plausibly be painted as “election deniers.”

Thus, New Mexico, one of America’s “bluest” states for decades, became even more Democrat dominant. Democrats now control every office of significance in State government as well as all five seats in Congress.

Whether the results are a sign of satisfaction with the status quo or just animus towards Republicans, the fact is that New Mexico’s governing Democrats faces serious challenges. Here are some that need to be addressed in the next few months:

1. PNM (the State’s largest utility) has repeatedly expressed concerns about having enough electricity during the summer of 2022. The San Juan Generating Station coal plant was allowed to continue operating for an additional three months during this past summer due to fears of blackouts and brownouts. That will not be an option next summer. In fact, there has been little improvement in New Mexico’s electricity supply situation since then. What will the Gov., her new PRC, and the Legislature do to keep the lights on for New Mexicans? Waiting until the heat of next summer is not an option. Decisions need to be made right away.
2. Speaking of the PRC, the Gov. now has a chance to mold New Mexico’s powerful regulatory body into something of her choosing. Will she prioritize geographical and ideological diversity or make the body a rubber stamp for her California-style policies? And, will they push through the Avangrid/PNM merger (rejected by the elected PRC but supported by the Gov.) as one of their first acts?
3. New Mexico is one of just 11 states still in a COVID 19 emergency. It has been in a an “emergency” since March of 2020 (more than 2.5 years at this point). Will the new Legislature demand a “seat at the table” or continue to allow the Gov. to keep control until she sees fit? What does this mean for “democracy?”
4. Voters approved Amendment 1 which taps into New Mexico’s permanent fund to boost education spending. With an expected $2.5 billion surplus, education spending is likely to rise even further. The State’s recent NAEP scores placed New Mexico at the very bottom across all four grade levels and subjects tested. Will New Mexico simply continue increasing education spending or will needed reforms be enacted?
5. Speaking of that budget surplus, the Gov. and Legislature undertook a series of tax cuts in the 2022 session in anticipation of the election. Can New Mexico taxpayers expect further tax relief? If so, will those tax cuts be superficial, or will they address the State’s knotty economic challenges like “pyramiding” of the gross receipts tax?

Most of these questions are for New Mexico’s (even more) ascendent Democrat majority, but there is one question for the GOP: what can be done to boost voter turnout (and overall political engagement) in New Mexico’s most conservative areas? Overall voter turnout was 52 percent. In liberal Santa Fe County that number was over 63 percent. But, in conservative bastions like Lea, Eddy, Chaves, San Juan, Otero, Curry, and Roosevelt counties, turnout lagged the statewide average, sometimes by double-digit margins.

Many conservatives feel like their vote doesn’t make a difference either due to the State’s “blue” status or allegations of election fraud. Either way, New Mexico’s GOP must figure out how to engage its base through grassroots activism to become relevant.

No matter which side of the aisle you’re on, New Mexicans of all political stripes face more questions than answers.

Paul Gessing is president of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation. The Rio Grande Foundation is an independent, nonpartisan, tax-exempt research and educational organization dedicated to promoting prosperity for New Mexico based on principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility

KRQE’s Larry Barker has uncovered an example of corruption in both the City of Albuquerque and State of New Mexico governments. Ironically, while what happened is clearly illegal under current State law, voters’ (misguided) decision to pass Amendment 2 on Election Day seems to allow for future deals like this one.

The Duke City Gladiators may be named after Albuquerque, but they play in Rio Rancho. That didn’t stop the City of Albuquerque (seemingly just Mayor Keller) from using City and State capital outlay dollars meant for use in the City ($239,622) to fund a turf field for the team.

Using Albuquerque $$ for a Rio Rancho project is problematic enough, but the spending is clearly for private use (Gladiators) of public property (Gladiator’s field) without compensation which is a violation of the “Anti-Donation Clause” of the State Constitution.

Ironically, State voters JUST decided to weaken New Mexico Constitution’s anti-donation clause (which disallows the use of tax dollars for private benefit). The Rio Grande Foundation argued against the change in advance of the vote due to the very real potential for corruption as sign in this example.

In October the City of Albuquerque Council on a bipartisan 7-2 vote rejected an initiative that would have placed the City on record as supporting rent control. We applauded the move at the time.

But, in “progressive” and poorly governed New Mexico no bad idea is ever totally dead. So, pro-rent control activists seem to have convinced powerful Democrat State Senator Linda Lopez to introduce legislation that would eliminate the State’s ban on the practice.

Some supporters claim this is all about “local control,” but the reality is that the Legislature makes economic policies that cities must adhere to all the time, including 2019 legislation that was adopted to prevent local governments from adopting “Right to Work” laws.

The truth is rent control won’t solve the problem of rising rents. Only expanding the housing supply (with a side of reducing inflation) will bring housing/rent prices down. But, it’s easier for the economically-illiterate to simply demand a legislative “fix.”

The Rio Grande Foundation worked hard to make sure that City taxpayers didn’t have to foot the cost of a soccer-only stadium for the New Mexico United soccer team.

But, as KOAT Channel 7 notes in a recent story in which RGF’s president was interviewed, local taxpayers are STILL on the hook for expenses associated with the soccer team. In this case according to recent data requested by KOAT taxpayers have spent $960,000 since the United started playing games.

Is this better than building a brand new stadium? Yes. Has City Council ever voted on this? No. It would seem that at the very least our elected officials should be voting on this. Americans and New Mexicans are often asked to subsidize sports franchises, but that doesn’t make it right.

The 2022 edition of the Canada-based Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of North America 2022 is out and for yet another year New Mexico remains at the very bottom among US states in terms of economic freedom. Economic freedom is the ability of individuals to make their own economic decisions
about what to buy, where to work and whether to start a business.

Unsurprisingly, New Mexico performed particularly poorly in:

• Government spending as a percent of personal income (49th);
• Sales tax revenue as a percent of personal income (48th); and
• Government employees as a percent of overall employees (49th).

New Mexico DID get high marks for having relatively low property taxes (7th).

“When governments allow markets to decide what’s produced, how it’s produced and how much is produced, citizens enjoy greater levels of economic freedom,” said Fred McMahon, the Dr. Michael A. Walker Research Chair in Economic Freedom at the Fraser Institute and co-author of this year’s report, which measures government spending, taxation and labor market restrictions using data from 2020, the latest year of available comparable data. Florida was the top performing state in the index followed by New Hampshire. Rounding out the top five freest states are South Dakota (3rd), Texas and Tennessee (tied for 4th ).

The very worst performing states were New York at 50th followed by California.

On this week’s interview Paul talks to Fred Nathan the Founder and CEO of Think New Mexico which describes itself as a “results-oriented think tank whose mission is to serve all New Mexicans.” The organization recently published a detailed and ambitious plan to reform New Mexico schools. While Rio Grande Foundation and Think New Mexico don’t always agree on policy solutions for New Mexico, Paul and Fred both want very much to improve New Mexico’s dismal education system. This conversation really digs into the details of Think New Mexico’s education plan and its pluses and minuses from RGF’s perspective.

The Rio Grande Foundation would like to extend a big THANK YOU to everyone who called, wrote, emailed, and spoke in favor of parental rights in education alongside RGF at last night’s APS school board meeting.

We would also like to thank the five APS School Board members that voted to support parental involvement in the classroom.

In case you missed it, here’s a quick summary of what happened:

KB1, also known as the Parent Rights and Responsibilities policy, passed the APS School Board in a 5-2 vote.  KB1 consolidates education rules into a clear and concise format, making it easier for parents to see exactly what’s going on inside the classroom.

Opposition from special interest groups showed up in force, including numerous paid activists.

Regardless of the heckling and boos from the special interest groups, several brave parents stood up for Parental Rights and bravely took their turn at the mic to show the real local parent support for KB1.

We could not be more proud!

You can read the Albuquerque Journal’s highly biased coverage of the meeting here.

Parental Rights were up for a vote in Albuquerque today, and the clear winners are families.

Like everyone else RGF is interested in what happened in the recent election. Paul has some analysis here.

Paul and Wally aren’t the only ones waiting for something to happen at Spaceport America. A Chicago man recently asked for and received a refund from Virgin Galactic. 

Think New Mexico proposes education reform, we analyze their plan. 

RGF will be in federal court on Wednesday against NM Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver.

Environmental consults presented to the Legislature recently. They claim to have put a price of $5.3 billion on New Mexico environmental disasters due to climate change, but make no specific arguments that climate change caused the disasters.

According to a new report from the Legislative Finance Committee the State of New Mexico is wasting $18 million a year on unused office space. The LFC report found telework and 21% of staff vacancies are accounting for unused offices.

Telework COULD be a cost-saving measure in some circumstances, but the State needs to produce coherent rules for government employees and whether those jobs are able to be done remotely or not. Sadly, the Lujan Grisham Administration has not managed to do this 2.5 years after COVID began and created the push for remote work. Watch the story here.

The following is directly from the Secretary of State website. You can look for yourself at the Secretary of State website.

In the 2022 general election there was 52% voter turnout statewide

In Lea County (Hobbs) there was 38% turnout.

In Eddy County (Carlsbad and Artesia) there was 49% turnout.

In Chaves County (Roswell) there was 46% turnout

In San Juan (Farmington) there was 51% turnout

On the other hand the big liberal counties of Santa Fe saw 63% turnout and in Bernalillo County there was 54.6% turnout.

None of the biggest conservative counties in New Mexico turned out at the State average and Lea County lagged badly.

Why did this happen? That is a good question. Certainly election denial raised its ugly head in this election. Southeast New Mexico was also split in redistricting which may have impacted things.

Regardless of why it happened, we know that New Mexico’s Southeastern oil patch funds the rest of the State. They are arguably impacted by what happens with “green” policies in Washington and Santa Fe more than any other part of the state. It would seem that getting the conservative Southeast portion of New Mexico engaged would be a critical factor in winning future elections.

In October of 2022, New Mexico’s Spaceport America hit its 11th anniversary of being open. Alas, it’s prime tenant Virgin Galactic has failed to launch a single paying customer during that time.

One customer finally said “enough.” He asked for and received a refund of his $175,000 back from the company. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, a Mr. Shefket Chapadjiev paid Virgin $175,000 back in 2007 for a ticket to space. He’s now 84 years old and in poor health.

Echoing the comments of the Rio Grande Foundation, Chapadjiev, a native of Bulgaria, told the paper, “This has been for 15 years, and always we’re supposed to be flying next year, next year, people from Bulgaria keep asking me, ‘What happened?”

Chapadjiev says his refund from Virgin Galactic came minus 10% of the amount he paid.

The Rio Grande Foundation will be in federal court this Wednesday arguing in favor of free speech against New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver. You can see the court notice below and read up on the case itself here.

While elections come and go, the fight for liberty continues!

The Rio Grande Foundation often works with Think New Mexico. From RGF’s perspective Think New Mexico is a politically-centrist think tank working here in New Mexico. Sometimes we agree with them and sometimes we don’t, but their latest report is on K-12 education policy (an issue we work on) and, since New Mexico will be a “blue” state for at least another two years, it is more likely that centrist ideas rather than conservative ones will get traction in the Legislature.

There are 10 proposals, all of them are thoughtful and open to consideration. A few are questionable from RGF’s perspective such as adding time to the school year. It seems like a lot of schools waste a lot of time they already have in the classroom. We’d like to see evidence that more time will be used effectively. Going to a “balanced” school year also has merit, but for young people working summer jobs, it MAY not make sense. It would seem there should be options.

Improving teacher and principal training including residencies sounds like a great ideas, but again, we want to see data that this has been effective elsewhere and it needs to be tracked, if implemented in NM, in some ongoing way.

Small schools and districts make sense, but we’re not sure about smaller class sizes. Making it easier for charter schools to be organized and operate is also a good thing as would a more rigorous curriculum. We question whether student assessments can be depoliticized though. Same for revamping colleges of education.

Finally, improving school board quality seems like a good idea, but the additional training, disclosures, and transparency may make it even more difficult to find people willing to serve in some rural communities.

So, since RGF supports many of the recommendations in this report, why isn’t it OUR report? For starters, the report mentions Mississippi’s success in turning their education results around. We have what they did and see that as a simpler starting point. It is ALSO largely the same plan as what Susana Martinez TRIED to implement in New Mexico, but failed due to legislative opposition.

Finally, WE believe that this Legislature (and Gov.) are too beholden to the status quo unions to do anything substantial to improve K-12 education in NM. Sadly, that will require a sea change especially in the Legislature. Our view is that IF/WHEN that sea change comes, we’d rather just do what Arizona and West Virginia have done and allow education $$ to follow the child. Parental accountability is the best accountability.

That being said, Think New Mexico’s report is a solid and worthwhile contribution to the education reform conversation in New Mexico.

Rarely have their been more compelling differences between the two major political parties in the United States in an election than there were in 2022. While the national GOP seems poised to take the House, it is likely that control of the US Senate will head to a runoff. In New Mexico Democrats held their big majority in the House while MLG held off a strong challenge by Mark Ronchetti and won all of the relevant statewide races.

What happened?

Was it abortion? Was it Trump’s election denials (nationally) and the candidates he backed in certain races? Was it just the fact that the nation is evenly split and New Mexico is a blue state and has been for decades and thus, in what proved to be a non-wave election, Democrats won big (again)?

It seems like all of the above are true.

For starters, it is worth noting that New Mexico is a BLUE state and has been for many years. In a “red wave” election Ronchetti and Republicans had a chance, but 2022 turned out to be a mediocre year nationally for GOP candidates and just the latest tough year here in NM.

What’s next?

We have a 60 day session in January. A new Democrat will take over as Speaker of the House. It is not going to be easy. If the GOP has a solid presidential nominee in 2024 there could be some good changes to the New Mexico Legislature. All of them are up for election then.

In the meantime, the Rio Grande Foundation will both continue and expand upon its efforts to do much needed education of the citizens of New Mexico on economic and education policy issues and what New Mexico needs to do to thrive.

A new report attempts to tally the supposed cost of climate change in New Mexico and around the nation. Here’s the full report and here’s an article about the report. The author recently presented to the Legislature’s Revenue Stabilization and Tax Policy Committee.

If readers are hoping for some fancy, detailed, and halfway convincing analysis of various disasters and whether all or part of them were the result of global warming/climate change, you’ll be sadly mistaken.

The report simply claims that “Weather-based disasters and duress have cost New Mexico $5.3 billion in the past 42 years while nationally, extreme weather events caused $150 billion in damage in the past year alone.”

How much of this is driven by “climate change” as opposed to natural deviations in the weather? Who knows? What are the costs and tradeoffs of the “energy transition” our Gov. has planned for us? Again, no information is provided. How about the fact that over the years more people live and build businesses along coastlines and into the mountains, thus making them vulnerable to floods and other disasters.

What is left unsaid is how greater economic prosperity has allowed humans to deal with climate issues, thus preventing deaths.

Candid analysis of the costs and tradeoffs of various environmental policies and what impacts foreign countries and their public policies are having are all worth study, but this isn’t the report for that.

At Rio Grande Foundation we have closely followed Mississippi’s recent education success.  As we noted we discuss in a blog post AND our podcast (to name two) Mississippi largely followed the plan put forth by former Gov. Susana Martinez which was NEVER implemented by New Mexico’s Democrat-controlled Legislature.

We’re not the only New Mexico think tank to find Mississippi intriguing, Think New Mexico’s latest report also takes on New Mexico’s broken K-12 education system and cites positive results in Mississippi as a model to consider. With the horrendous recent NAEP scores in which New Mexico was dead last in all categories, it certainly seems worth considering.

The latest NAEP 4th grade reading scores further highlight the stark contrast between Mississippi’s success and New Mexico’s failure.

Across the country homeless issues are critical. At a recent national conference Paul met Judge Glock, Senior Director of Policy Research at the Austin, TX – based Cicero Institute, a think tank that among other issues focuses on solutions to homelessness. Paul and Judge discuss the challenge we face and real-world solutions for the problem. You don’t want to miss this conversation!

A new report from Greenpeace released this week calls plastic “recycling” a myth and finds that of 51 million tons of plastic waste US households generated in 2021, just 5 percent was recycled.

How does this affect YOU? For starters, Albuquerque’s Solid Waste Department spends considerable resources collecting “recyclables” including plastic. According to the Department the cost of the recycling program rose 900% in two years. That has resulted in higher fees on Albuquerque residents.

With such low recycling rates for plastic it would seem there is little point to the effort. This is especially true since aluminum is worth actual money. Why waste time and effort working to recycle something that is basically un-recyclable when aluminum is easily recycled and can generate 44 cents/lb?

It’s time for the City of Albuquerque to follow price signals by abandoning plastic recycling.

With a week to go before the 2022 election the ABQ Journal released their poll which has MLG up 8. There is another poll from Emerson that finds a much narrower race. The latest Emerson poll puts Herrell in the lead. The Journal has a fairly tight race between Michelle Garcia Holmes and Melanie Stansbury. Interestingly the Journal has Herrell losing. Paul and Wally discuss the challenges of polling and how this election is going to impact the credibility of certain pollsters.

Paul and Wally make their own predictions regarding some top New Mexico and national races.

Paul recently undertook an in depth analysis of the recent NAEP scores to figure out if lockdowns impacted learning. There is certainly some correlation there: (Math analysis & Reading Analysis)

RGF has released a new tool to allow the public to engage with candidates.

There is an environmental success story that has received little attention and environmentalists don’t seem to care about.

According to a new audit Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller has massively padded the City of Albuquerque’s payroll, specifically political or “unclassified” positions.

One of the most frustrating aspects of New Mexico public policy is politicians  and their sycophants who claim success for some government program or another without evidence.

Elizabeth Groginsky, MLG’s Secretary of Early Childhood Education and Care is the latest New Mexico bureaucrat to do this with her new opinion piece in the Albuquerque Journal. The Secretary makes all manner of arguments for “bold investments” in early childhood education. The problem is that New Mexico has been making such “bold” investments for a decade (see chart below).

Rather than relying on a bunch of studies that purport to show this spending has been a success, it would seem that after a decade we’d have some positive REAL academic outcomes from those 0-5 year olds who are now students in New Mexico’s K-12 system (there should be plenty of current 4th graders who went through New Mexico’s pre-K program).

Unfortunately, as we discussed recently, the NAEP scores that just came out (which tested both 4th graders and 8th graders) were disastrous. It’s easy to spend more money on government programs. It’s considerably more difficult to achieve results.

With Election Day just over one week away, the Rio Grande Foundation is as busy as ever. Here are some upcoming media and in-person appearances:

Wednesday, November 2nd, Portales, NM Rotary.

Thursday, November 3rd, Tucumcari Rotary.

If you are in Eastern New Mexico and would like to hear more about the Rio Grande Foundation and its work, please reach out to one of these Rotary clubs at the links above.

Friday, November 4th, 9 – 10am on KKOB radio with Bob Clark. Tune in live or stream the discussion at the link.

Election Day November 8th, 7pm – 11pm on KSFR 101.1FM.  Rather than watching the networks, sit back and listen to Fred Nathan and RGF’s Paul Gessing discuss the election results on the radio in Santa Fe or streaming worldwide!

Statewide bond question 3 on New Mexicans’ ballots will, if adopted, pour $216 million into higher education. RGF was quoted in this article. It is by far the largest statewide bond on the ballot and, if adopted, would mark the sixth consecutive statewide election that voters signed off on tens of millions of dollars for projects at public colleges and universities.

How much is enough? The only way we’ll ever know is if voters say “no.”

Ironically, UNM’s former president Chaouki Abdallah back in 2017 made it clear (even before MLG’s “free” college plan that, “Our higher ed spending is more than most other states; the trouble is we don’t spend it wisely and (we) spread it across so many entities. We do need a plan.”

Abdallah went on to say, “UNM has these spires of excellence, best in the world or top five, but like everything else around this state, the average is bad because you have to make sure everyone is taken care of.”

Even prior to free college, New Mexico was among the biggest-spending states on higher education with little to show for it.

Government at all levels in New Mexico has seen unprecedented money flow in (thanks to both the oil and gas industry’s largesse and federal stimulus and bailout $$). Simultaneously, employers face real challenges filling jobs to perform essential services including right here in Albuquerque where the City’s police department remains woefully understaffed while the City continues to break crime records.  

A new audit of the City of Albuquerque (find the ABQ Journal story here) found that one place that is not struggling to find workers is the bloated city government which has seen an explosion in hiring of “unclassified,” or appointed jobs. Among other things the audit found over half of the jobs it reviewed lacked job descriptions and that some high-level workers have been getting raises without documented justification or changed job responsibilities.

The audit also found that the number of unclassified positions had nearly doubled in the time between FY15 to FY22 going from 314 to 620. During the period, 83 employees moved from classified to unclassified positions, receiving salary increases between 22 and 368 percent!

Of the “unclassified” hires studied in the audit “only 21 percent of positions tested had an application and/or a resume on file related to the position, and only 13 percent had evidence demonstrating verification that the applicant met the minimum requirements.”

The following chart is taken directly from the audit. Clearly, the Keller Administration needs to be held accountable for this by City Council, the media, and the public.