To say that we’re fans of Albuquerque Journal editorial cartoonist John Trever may be a bit of an understatement. But the Sunday cartoon (below) is particularly genius because of its multiple meanings about the way New Mexico politics and policies work.

1. Private success vs. Public sector failure: While we have certainly criticized Bill Richardson’s decision to build a $200+ million Spaceport for Richard Branson, in the bigger picture both Bransons’ and Bezos’ successes are achievements for the private space industry. New Mexico’s schools are overwhelmingly government-run and funded. It would be nice if those who are rightly frustrated by the failures of this system would join us in focusing their efforts on bringing private sector competition and competence to bear on the difficult challenge of improving literacy in NM.
2. A SECOND interpretation of the cartoon is yet another common theme of New Mexico government. Rather than doing the basics (like education) well, elected officials prefer to pursue expensive, high profile projects that really aren’t appropriate functions of government. The Spaceport is one such example, but Mayor Keller’s plans to build a new soccer stadium (with a starting price tag of at least $65-$70 million just to build, let alone property acquisition and inevitable cost-overruns) is another. Again, crime and public safety are crises demanding resources and attention, but Keller would rather build a stadium instead.

Las Cruces state Senator Bill Soules paints himself as a radical supporter of the environment. In 2021 Soules introduced a proposal to eliminate ALL nuclear energy, coal- or gas-fired energy production within New Mexico. He also tried to force the State to purchase 75% electric vehicles. 

But Soules seems to set aside his environmental stance as long as the issue involves New Mexico’s Spaceport. Set aside the use of fossil fuels for Richard Branson to GET to space which involves the use of large quantities of CO2 emitting rocket fuel.

The folks attending Branson’s launch (and those likely to travel to isolated Upham, New Mexico for future launches) won’t travel by car, they’ll fly on private jets. According to a report from the UK, Private jets: can the super-rich supercharge zero emission aviation?  a four-hour private flight emits as much as the average person does in a year.

See Sen. Soules’ post-launch Twitter post (with “glowing” commentary on the number of private jets) below:

Are you wondering what is happening in the local real estate market and what State, local, and even federal policies are impacting home prices and availability? RGF board member and realtor Evan Jones discusses the situation in this informative podcast.

The good news is that Fox Business Channel (unlike many news outlets) actually gave a platform to critics of New Mexico’s film subsidy program to discuss the program’s financial shortcomings.

The bad news is that like nearly all media outlets they badly misunderstand the financial implications of New Mexico’s incredibly-generous film subsidy program. Check out the story below which includes a brief clip of RGF president Paul Gessing discussing Hollywood film subsidies. Below that is a page from a 2019 Legislative Finance Committee report on the cost of Hollywood subsidies which provides details on the direct subsidies (not additional LEDA funds which are yet another subsidy).

In 2019 changes were enacted to New Mexico’s film program that made New Mexico’s already-generous subsidies even MORE generous. Here’s the LFC’s take on the financial implications. 

The following appeared in the Albuquerque Journal on July 21, 2021. While the newspaper cannot include hyperlinks to the data used in the piece we have added those links here:

Natural gas is a clean and affordable fuel they use to cook, heat their water, and provide warmth in the winter. Millions of Americans appreciate its benefits, even if they don’t think about them.

Just because you don’t think about natural gas doesn’t mean radical environmentalists (including New Mexico’s senior US Senator Martin Heinrich) aren’t. Heinrich recently wrote in the New York Times that “working to electrify our vehicles, homes and businesses is a critical part of achieving economywide net-zero emissions.”

He’s pushing legislation in Congress and for funding in the “infrastructure” bill for “electrification” – which is really another way of saying phasing out or banning your natural gas stove, oven, and furnace and requiring you to use electric heat and stoves.

Sacramento recently became the 46^th US city to begin “phasing out natural gas in new buildings.” It’s not just happening in California. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Seattle, Denver and New York have all either enacted or proposed measures to ban or discourage the use of the fossil fuel in new homes and buildings.”

Just a decade or so ago the Sierra Club and other environmental groups supported natural gas as a cleaner-burning alternative to coal. Now, Senator Heinrich – counter to the economic interests of the state he represents (New Mexico is a major natural gas producer) and against the expressed preferences of consumers who use such appliances – is pushing to eliminate natural gas.

The push for a natural gas ban is premised on the idea that we should replace fossil fuels with wind and solar technologies that put us on a path to “net-zero emissions.” Of course, we’re not just talking about replacing all existing electricity generation; just 10% of current electricity production comes from wind, solar, and geothermal combined. Experts say “electrification” would increase US electricity consumption by 40 percent.

To say the least, Sen. Heinrich’s “electrification” scheme will require astonishing amounts of new electricity generation (at great economic cost) not to mention batteries to ensure reliability and new transmission lines to distribute it. We’ll be the ones paying for all that new redundant generation.

It’s an even bigger problem considering the reliability and demand issues already facing the Western United States this summer and utilities’ (including PNM’s) difficulty bringing new “renewables” online.  

And then there are consumer preferences for natural gas, which for some reason get casually ignored. You will have to search far and wide to find an electric stove in your favorite restaurant. That’s because natural gas is superior to electricity for cooking on both food quality and price.  Banning natural gas in restaurants means you would be waiting longer for your favorite meal while also paying more.

Any serious push for “electrification” of our economy will require massive government subsidies (thus Heinrich’s push in the current “infrastructure” bill), with electricity reliability already an issue the reliability of natural gas can be a literal lifesaver.

We all want clean, affordable, and reliable energy. Natural gas provides all three. And while the US has been steadily-reducing CO2 emissions for over a decade, China now emits more CO2 than the rest of the developed world combined (that includes the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia). Sen. Heinrich’s forced-shift to all-electric in the US will be costly and won’t achieve the environmental gains he seeks.

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.

Paul recently took another trip. He reports on mask mandates on airplanes & public transport among other things.

Jeff Bezo joins Richard Branson as a billionaire having been to space.

Pediatrics group wants ALL kids and staff to wear masks this fall. MLG still hasn’t announced a specific policy.

RGF settles w/ Keller Administration regarding open records. 

RGF has never been a fan of public financing of elections and we fought this w/ Democracy Dollars. Mayoral candidate Manny Gonzales recently received a reminder of how “public” financing can be politicized. 

New Mexico’s unemployment rate is tied for highest in USA. RGF also looks at the workforce participation rate.

For once ProgressNow DOES have a point about oil and gas.

More talk about reform of NM’s GRT. 

How do we address homelessness? An excellent Prager U video has some ideas.

People who follow the news in New Mexico are undoubtedly aware that the State’s unemployment rate at 7.9% is the highest in the nation.

But, unemployment rate is only one tool for measuring state economic policy. Workforce participation rate is another. We wanted to look at how New Mexico’s workforce participation rate had been impacted since COVID started, so we looked back to January 2020 and looked at data which is available through June of 2021. Here is the BLS workforce participation rate data.

As you can see below, New Mexico struggles with workforce participation and lagged the region before COVID. Of course, NM STILL lags the region, but more concerning is the fact that it seems like New Mexico’s recovery line has stalled.

On July 7th, Santa Fe New Mexican Government Reporter Daniel Chacón penned an article criticizing Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s staffers for using private messaging apps on their government-issued cellphones that use end-to-end encryption designed to keep conversations secret.

This is a good step in acknowledging the ongoing transparency debacle currently plaguing the Lujan Grisham administration. In response, Patrick Brenner wrote the following complement to Chacón’s column.

The following appeared on July 13, 2021 at the Santa Fe New Mexican:

In Daniel J. Chacón’s recent article (“Encrypted apps appear active on employees’ work phones,” July 8) he alleges that members of Gov. Michelle Luan Grisham’s administration have private messaging apps on their government-issued cellphones.

I’ll call your bet and raise you: It’s not just the staff of the executive branch; it’s dozens of state agencies. They are using encrypted messaging platforms, and they’re also enforcing the automatic deletion of messages after 24 hours.

I grew suspicious in the aftermath of the Searchlight New Mexico report on the Children, Youth and Families Department. The report was solid, but left some loose ends that needed tidying up. Specifically, I had questions about the official document retention guidance and how it was developed.

The document itself is disturbing. The bottom line is that the administration allows any employee to “delete any text message that is a routine communication and is not ‘required to control, support or to document the operations of government.’ ”

This record deletion allowance is antithetical to the principles of transparent and open government. Aren’t all routine communications necessary to document the operations of government?

Several official public records requests were submitted to a number of state agencies to ascertain the origins of this document. Eventually, we came across another interesting piece of documentation, from New Mexico’s Department of Information Technology. This is the agency responsible for deployment of resources like Microsoft Office and the corresponding productivity suite.

This email was a directive coming from the executive branch. Certain configuration changes were being implemented that would affect the Teams chat functionality. Microsoft Teams is a business communication platform that allows employees to instant message each other. Teams is currently utilized by over a dozen state agencies, including CYFD and the Department of Information Technology.

New configuration changes included a policy that all Teams chat messages would be deleted after 24 hours.

Chacón reports that Nora Meyers Sackett said “only one of the staffers has sent a message on such an app.” I can’t contest the validity of this statement, pertaining explicitly to Signal and WhatsApp. However, I can say that numerous state agencies are using Microsoft Teams, which is essentially just another messaging app by a different name.

Sackett and others routinely delete text messages. I requested all the text messages that Sackett sent or received during the month of April. The official response, from an attorney with the Governor’s Office: “We have conducted a search of records maintained or held by the Office of the Governor and we have located no records responsive to your request.”

By the time I submitted my public records request, the records were already deleted. Since then, I have been submitting new records requests daily, requesting all the text messages sent by Sackett for the previous 24-hour period.

Daniel, it’s worse than either of us could have imagined. State agencies are still using encrypted messaging platforms, and the administration is encouraging periodic destruction of documents by redefining records classifications and subjecting these newly classified records to document retention periods that facilitate their automated deletion with alacrity.

Santa Fe New Mexican: State Secrecy Goes Beyond Executive Team

For Immediate Release: July 19, 2021

For further information, contact: Patrick Brenner (505) 377-6273

After eighteen months of litigation and negotiation, the Rio Grande Foundation is pleased to announce the settlement of the lawsuit related to the City of Albuquerque’s lack of transparency and openness. The actions of Mayor Tim Keller’s administration and City Clerk Ethan Watson have proven to be antithetical to the principles of open government.

The voters of Albuquerque defeated Democracy Dollars in November of 2019, and the Rio Grande Foundation’s exposure of numerous flaws in the proposal played a pivotal role in the downfall of the ballot measure. Furthermore, the Foundation filed an ethics complaint against Mayor Tim Keller for his use of the City’s website (CABQ.gov) in which he specifically called for voters to approve Democracy Dollars. Mayor Keller’s actions were found to be in violation of city ordinance by the Board of Ethics and Campaign Practices.

Following the ethics complaint, the Rio Grande Foundation requested a reasonable collection of text messages and emails sent to and from specific city employees leading up to the posting of Mayor Keller’s pleas on the city’s website to vote “YES”.

The public records request was filed under New Mexico’s Inspection of Public Records Act and was accepted by the City in December of 2019. After dutifully paying the invoice to receive these records, the City of Albuquerque failed to provide all responsive records for over ten months. Patrick Brenner, the Foundation’s policy analyst, filed the original request.

On May 12, 2020, after exhausting all other avenues to obtain these public records, which included assistance from the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government when Director Melanie Majors sent a letter of complaint to no avail, the Rio Grande Foundation filed a legal complaint in District Court against the city.

Repeated requests from the Foundation to confirm that these records were not being deleted had been continually ignored by Ethan Watson, City Clerk, and the Custodian of Records, Yvette Gurule.

During mediation, the Foundation also tried to address the city’s responsiveness to open government requests. After being presented with specific policy recommendations, the city refused to improve the process, leaving in place the glaring problems that resulted in the months-long delays. Rather, the city offered a sizable settlement that the Rio Grande Foundation will use to further its open government advocacy and transparency efforts.

In the interest of transparency, the Rio Grande Foundation is making the settlement agreement available here.

On this week’s podcast, Paul discusses the PNM/Avangrid merger with RGF energy and utility analyst Kenneth Costello. While RGF doesn’t have a position one way or the other on the merger, it does care deeply about New Mexico utility customers and the potential for power disruptions and rate increases. This is one of the most pressing issues facing New Mexico policymakers this summer.

On this week’s discussion: Richard Branson makes it to “space.” Does this mean the Spaceport was a good idea? What’s next for Spaceport America?

New COVID rules for school children have been handed down by the CDC. What do they mean for kids who will be starting school in a month?

Sen. Heinrich is coming for your gas stove/heater/water heater/ and gasoline car.

RGF in National Review Online.

Socialism is rising among NM’s leadership.

The Kids County Report is reasonable. The partisan spin is not.

Talk is again heating up in Santa Fe over potential reform of New Mexico’s broken gross receipts tax. The Albuquerque Journal has a write-up in today’s paper. For it’s entire history, the RGF has focused attention on what we’ve called “the original sin” of New Mexico tax policy. Here is one of many reports we’ve written on the issue.

As the Journal correctly notes, over the years GRT rates have risen while in some ways the “base” has been narrowed (with fewer items being taxed).

Unfortunately, with “progressives” in charge, the main focus of “reform” (if indeed Democrats finally decide to address the GRT) will likely be on pushing more of the burden onto high income New Mexicans rather than addressing the actual harm of the tax.

Here are a few basic principles to consider in the GRT reform discussion:

1. Any reform must address the harm done by taxing business inputs and services (bookkeeping, accounting, web management, doctors, and many more). Any “reform” that doesn’t address most or all of these isn’t really reform (See HB 6 in 2019). The “base” was also broadened in 2019 with taxes on Los Alamos National Lab and certain health care items imposed as well as taxes on certain online sales;
2. New Mexico is swimming in tax revenues and has raised taxes multiple times in recent years (also SB 317). The bill should be revenue-neutral or even a tax cut regardless of whether the GRT’s “regressive” nature is addressed or not;
3. Ideally the Legislature would put some kind of protections into the Tax Code to both make it more difficult for local governments to raise rates AND for the Legislature to provide one-off tax breaks for special industries. That may be a challenge, but it is worth considering so we don’t wind up in this situation again.

via GIPHY

The folks at PragerU make all kinds of informational videos on a variety of policy topics.

The video below caught our attention because at the Rio Grande Foundation we have seen the explosion of homelessness in Albuquerque, especially near our downtown offices. We have our thoughts on what to do about the problem and this short video not only reflects many of those thoughts, it adds data and experience to the mix to make a convincing case for what Albuquerque’s current or future mayor could do to address the issue.

One thing that MUST be part of any discussion of homelessness is property rights, not only for private owners, but also for the public’s use of taxpayer-owned properties.

Most New Mexicans are well aware that oil and gas generates close to 40% of the New Mexico budget in any given year. Of course, the industry is highly competitive and thrives on the types of efficiency and cost-cutting inherent in any free market enterprise.

Among other things that means replacing workers with new technologies. This is good economics as the remaining workers tend to be better-trained and higher paid. It also means less “grunt” work and improved safety as well as lower costs.

But good economics is not good politics as oil and gas regions of New Mexico are badly-outnumbered politically in New Mexico. And, we know that once that oil and gas money hits government it is not only misused, but the beneficiaries tend to forget its provenance.

I agree with you although not for the same reasons. O&G does generate 40% of NM’s budget, but the politicians in NM do an awful job w/ that money. NM’s O&G industry WOULD do itself a favor if it hired more people b/c they could compete electorally w/ big “blue” cities.

— Paul Gessing (@pgessing) July 9, 2021

The following appeared on July 9, 2021 at National Review’s Capital Matters:

On June 15, 2021, U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty issued a preliminary injunction halting the Biden administration’s moratorium on new oil and gas permits on federal lands and in federally controlled offshore areas in the Gulf of Mexico. The lawsuit was filed by 14 states that were set to lose out on significant oil and gas development if the moratorium remained in place indefinitely.

Ironically, of all the states impacted by Biden’s moratorium, increasingly deep blue New Mexico had the most to lose. According to an analysis from the American Petroleum Institute, New Mexico would be expected to lose over 62,000 jobs and $1.1 billion in revenue from the moratorium. Ranking third among all states in oil production and a leader in natural-gas production as well, New Mexico would have lost nearly half of total production in both had the moratorium stuck.

Wyoming, the next-most-affected  state would have lost just a bit over half as much revenue ($641 million) as New Mexico. And, with an annual General Fund budget of $7.4 billion, that is a lot of revenue to make up. Unfortunately, in this world of “red” and “blue” states, self-interest was not enough to get New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas to join the lawsuit.

So, no thanks to any of our own elected officials (or former New Mexico Congresswoman, now Interior Secretary, Deb Haaland), New Mexico likely just dodged a dagger aimed straight at the heart of the state’s economy. Better still, a combination of market forces and geological discoveries means that New Mexico’s oil and gas industries (like America’s) could be heading into an era of unprecedented prosperity, if  the political forces arrayed against them can be held at bay.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, oil production in New Mexico’s Permian Basin (which it shares with Texas) had been growing rapidly. As recently as 2010 New Mexico was the 7th-leading oil-producing state in the nation with 65 million barrels a year. By 2020 (despite the pandemic), annual production had risen to 379 million barrels.  

Now, it appears that New Mexico is on the verge of surpassing North Dakota to become the nation’s 2nd-largest crude-oil producer. March 2021 data (the most recently available) from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) show New Mexico producing 1.16 million barrels of oil per day compared to 1.11 million in North Dakota.

Like most of New Mexico’s post-2010 surge, the state’s continued growth is being driven by new discoveries that are accessible through new technologies; notably, “fracking.” Furthermore, as the Permian Basin  has already been producing large quantities of oil and natural gas for decades, the infrastructure to access and move the product is already in place.

As if all of these convergent factors acting in support of New Mexico’s oil and gas industry weren’t enough, while motorists may not be thrilled, prices at the pump clearly show that the industry is doing quite well in the wake of COVID-19. If analysts from Bank of America are right, the boom is just getting started. They predict that by 2022 crude-oil prices could hit $100 per barrel. This means even more jobs and tax revenues flowing into New Mexico and it means reliable (if not necessarily cheap) energy for Americans.

Ironically, despite all of this good economic news for the state, New Mexico’s history of rule by left-wing Democrats has left it in pretty bad shape, thanks in no small part to the intense lockdowns during the pandemic. Oil and gas and the money it brings may help, but if the state’s political leadership doesn’t do a better job managing the boom, the next bust could be harder to manage.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data for May, New Mexico’s unemployment rate is 2nd-highest in the nation at 8 percent. Worse, due to the state’s poor performance on a variety of education, economic, and crime rankings, New Mexico was recently ranked as the worst state in the U.S. in which to live. Agree with the data or not, the Land of Enchantment has some deep-seated and serious issues to deal with.

And, while most problems are made easier with money as opposed to without it, a system where politicians have plenty of resources to spend regardless of the success or failure of their economic policies is not a great system. In fact, it is a system that has fueled awful government in places like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela (to name just two poorly governed petro-states).

Will things be different this time for poor New Mexico? The political and economic situation are extremely volatile and it is hard to tell. With energy largesse flowing in, the Land of Enchantment  could finally add a strong economy  to its name. Political will has always been the missing ingredient.

PAUL GESSING is president of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation.

It used to be (a decade ago) that if you called an American politician a “socialist” you’d get pushback. That is changing with the rise of self-avowed socialists AOC and Bernie Sanders in Congress, but in general, the left wing in is far more willing to embrace the term than it was just a short time ago.

Right here in New Mexico, Sen. Jerry Ortiz y Pino has long been the standard bearer for the far left in New Mexico’s Legislature having taken office in 2005. And, while we disagree on most major issues, he’s personally friendlier than most newly-elected politicians of the left and he’s actually sponsored solid “school choice” legislation in the distant past (of course the unions put a stop to that).

While not ALL New Mexico “progressives” embrace the label, there is NO doubt that the “socialist” wing of the party is growing in strength and is willing to publicly embrace the moniker as does Sen. Ortiz y Pino below. And, if you click the link and read the article referenced below it says nothing new. It tacitly and dishonestly embraces Western European capitalist nations such as Sweden with its reasonably high level of economic freedom while disavowing the USSR, Venezuela, and other socialist/communist totalitarian disasters.

On this week’s podcast interview Paul sits down with Carri Phillis.

Carri is a local nightclub owner and entrepreneur. She has been involved in libertarian-leaning politics in New Mexico for over a decade, but the primary topic of conversation is the last 15 months of Gov. Lujan Grisham’s COVID policies and Carri’s involvement with the Gov.’s Economic Recovery Council.

Carri shares her own experience as a business owner, her personal experiences as a mother, and the work of the Council. You don’t want to miss this discussion!

In Daniel Chacón’s recent article in the Santa Fe New Mexian, he alleges that members of Governor Michelle Luan Grisham’s administration have private messaging apps on their government-issued cellphones.

I’ll call your bet, and raise you: it’s not just the staff of the executive branch, it’s dozens of state agencies. They are using encrypted messaging platforms: and they’re also enforcing the automatic deletion of messages after 24 hours.

I grew suspicious in the aftermath of the Searchlight New Mexico report on the Children Youth and Families Department (CYFD). The report was solid, but left some loose ends that needed tidying up. Specifically, I had questions about the official Document Retention Guidance and how it was developed.

The document itself is disturbing. The bottom line is that the administration allows any employee to “delete any text message that is a routine communication and is not ‘required to control, support or to document the operations of government.’”

This record deletion allowance is antithetical to the principles of transparent and open government. Aren’t all routine communications necessary to document the operations of government?

Several official public records requests were submitted to a number of state agencies to ascertain the origins of this document. Eventually, we came across another interesting piece of documentation, from New Mexico’s Department of Information Technology (DoIT). This is the agency responsible for deployment of resources like Microsoft Office and the corresponding productivity suite.

This email was a directive coming from the executive branch. Certain configuration changes were being implemented that would affect the Teams chat functionality. Microsoft Teams is a business communication platform that allows employees to instant message each other. Teams is currently utilized by over a dozen state agencies, including CYFD and DoIT.

New configuration changes included a policy that all Teams chat messages would be deleted after 24 hours.

Chacón reports that Nora Meyers Sackett said “only one of the staffers has sent a message on such an app”. I can’t contest the validity of this statement, pertaining explicitly to Signal and Whatsapp. However, I can say that numerous state agencies are using Microsoft Teams, which is essentially just another messaging app by a different name.

Sackett and others routinely delete text messages. I requested all the text messages that Sackett sent or received during the month of April 2021. The official response, from an attorney with the governor’s office: “We have conducted a search of records maintained or held by the Office of the Governor and we have located no records responsive to your request.”

By the time I submitted my public records request the records were already deleted. Since then, I have been submitting new records requests daily, requesting all the text messages sent by Sackett for the previous 24 hour period.

Daniel, it’s worse than either of us could have imagined. State agencies are still using encrypted messaging platforms and the administration is encouraging periodic destruction of documents by redefining records classifications and subjecting these newly classified records to document retention periods that facilitate their automated deletion with alacrity.

The chart below is directly from the Voices for Children website. New Mexico’s overall performance has been remarkably consistent over the past decade with NM bouncing from an overall ranking of 49th and 50th. In 2020 New Mexico remained stuck at 50th and in 2021 “rallied” to 49th. 

Here’s the thing. In 2019 during the last year of the Martinez Administration James Jimenez of Voices said, “Fundamentally, the story the data tells is there was a real failure by the Martinez administration to invest in youth, children and families in a way that made much of a difference in terms of these kinds of rankings.”

In 2021 as the State moved up a single spot (but with Gov. Lujan Grisham in charge), Emily Wildau of Voices wrote, “Pre-pandemic improvement in child well-being a glimpse at what investments can do.”

Clearly, New Mexico’s actual performance on Kids Count is quite poor (and the Gov.’s pandemic policies will likely have significant negative impacts on our children). That transcends who is in the Governor’s office. As the Rio Grande Foundation has noted the Legislature is the body that actually makes the laws. Perhaps more attention should be focused on THEM when New Mexico’s poor results are considered.

In a recent post at Errors of Enchantment Paul notes that several data and recent polling highlight and explain New Mexico’s poor governance.

NM is among states w/ largest outflow from gov’t schools/to home school. Other states are racing ahead on school reform which NM generally stands pat.

SCOTUS rules on donor privacy. 

Can ABQ be a job leader?

NM/federal stimulus funding both sides of the jobs equation.

Donald Rumsfeld was a statesman with a wide and varied career and he was a supporter of the Foundation. Paul acknowledges his passing in Taos, NM.

Paul interviews Doug Messier of the blog Parabolic Arc (which tracks the private space industry) about Richard Branson’s plans to head to “space” out of Spaceport New Mexico on July 11th.

It is well-known that a Republican governed states have by and large canceled the $300 “bonus” unemployment benefit being offered by the Biden Administration. Better still for those states, data shows that they are seeing workers return faster than those “blue” states like New Mexico which have kept the $300 payments in place and thus are incentivizing workers to stay home.

Now, Gov. Lujan Grisham has announced a NEW program using federal “stimulus” funds to incentivize people (to the tune of $1,000) to get back into the workforce. It’s a classic example of inherently conflicting policies, both of which are being funded by your taxes and/or debt.

It all reminds me of my reading of the New Deal. Historian and prior RGF speaker Amity Shlaes has pointed out in her writing how FDR’s (often conflicting) policies prolonged the Great Depression.  

The Rio Grande Foundation takes donor privacy VERY seriously. We fought tooth and nail against Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver’s push to publicize donations to 501c3 organizations like RGF open to the public. We also litigated against the City of Santa Fe over donor privacy issues regarding work we did to defeat the soda tax a few years ago.

And, we filed an ‘amicus’ or friend of the court brief in support of donor privacy(read it here) in the Americans for Prosperity v. California case just decided by the Supreme Court. The 6-3 decision strikes a blow for privacy and free speech for the Rio Grande Foundation, our supporters, and millions of Americans.

The following chart recently ran in the Albuquerque Journal. Click to read the article. The article detailed Albuquerque Economic Development (AED)’s latest plans to improve the local economy. At the Rio Grande Foundation, we have been at it for 15 years and say with experience that New Mexico’s political leadership and that of many in the State (elected and unelected) towards economic growth are going to be serious obstacles.

Here’s our “hot takes.”:

1. Locally, crime MUST be addressed head-on. This is primarily the job of the Mayor. The current Mayor is failing.
2. Albuquerque (like the rest of the State) needs a Legislature that is willing to embrace a pro-business, pro-economic freedom mindset. We can’t wait for the next check from Washington. Until change happens in Santa Fe, there is not much the City or AED can do (outside of reducing crime) to change the City’s trajectory.
3. The group is definitely right to focus on education reform and the Rio Grande Foundation has done this recently. But, more money isn’t the solution. And, again, Santa Fe MUST be part of the solution.

On this week’s episode, Paul discusses Mississippi’s recent educational successes with Dr. Jameson Taylor of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, a free-market think tank based there.

Mississippi and New Mexico so often struggle at the very bottom of the “good” lists and rise to the top of the bad lists, but as Paul noted recently, Mississippi has seen some recent improvements in the area of 4th grade reading on the “gold standard” NAEP test.

So, what did Mississippi do to improve educational outcomes? Ironically, for many New Mexicans, this will be a case of “Back to the Future” as Mississippi’s playbook looks a lot like that of former Gov. Susana Martinez.   

You don’t want to miss this conversation!