What is Government Costing You?
The truth is, you would probably be a millionaire right now if it weren’t for the government. Instead, all Americans are struggling under the ever-increasing burdens of taxes and government regulations. Our friends at the Independent Institute have put together a website that attempts to calculate for each person, based on detailed (but anonymous information) exactly how much government is costing you.
The site is interesting and informative. It can be found here.
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Diane Denish Wants Poor/Your Kids Trapped in Failing Schools
I happened to be watching the local news last night when a story ran about the ongoing scheduling debacle at Rio Grande High. It has been more than two weeks since the APS school year started and the school doesn’t even have student schedules worked out.
Heading into the first commercial break was this lovely ad from Diane Denish:
Apparently, the fact that hundreds of students have wasted more than two weeks of school due to an entirely avoidable blunder is a clear indicator to Denish that we should make sure that “no resources should be diverted” from these failing government-run schools. Heaven forbid that these kids receive a voucher or “opportunity scholarship” that gets them out of this failing school, but that might involve diverting some resources from the clearly-incompetent folks at Rio Grande High.
If we were talking about her kids, Denish would use her personal wealth to pull her own kids out of a failing school, but not everyone has her resources. So those kids remain trapped, waiting for the bureaucrats to get a schedule together.
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New Mexico Ranks High in Unemployment Fraud
An astonishing $7.1 billion was lost nationwide during 2009 in unemployment benefits fraud. Our Capitol Reporter, Rob Nikolewski found the story, followed up on it, and has found that New Mexico ranks third in the nation in terms of percentage of unemployment overpayments, with some 28.68 percent ($97.8 million) of the total benefits sent to New Mexico unemployment recipients should not have been delivered. Only Louisiana and Indiana had a worse percentage.
The full story from Capitol Report New Mexico can be found here.
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Albuquerque’s Bike Bridge to Wal-Mart Unveiled
Today saw the unveiling of Albuquerque’s $7 million stimulus-funded bike bridge over the Rio Grande. Being a West-Sider and something of a bike enthusiast myself (although I have been and remain a critic of the bridge), I decided to ride over to witness the ceremony.
Aside from the cost, one big problem with the bridge is that the trail to it ends in a Wal Mart parking lot: 
Of course, if you are riding the trail along the river and get hungry, there is also a Chili’s: 
Considering that those two establishments are the most likely to gain from the trail, I wonder if they put up any money? I doubt it.
As I said, I rode my bike over, but as the photos below illustrate, plenty of folks drove to the illustrious occasion: 
Some of them blatantly disregarded “No Parking” signage: 
Dignitaries in attendance included Rep. Heinrich who clearly did not ride his bike over, Mayor Berry, Councilors Dan Lewis, O’Malley, and Benton (he did ride his bike), and former Gov. and Stimulus “Czar” Toney Anaya. Most discussed the wonders of the new bridge and the quality of life aspects of it and how wonderful it is for the City. I don’t blame our Councilors for this as it is largely stimulus money that funded the project.
But, one thing did catch my eye and that was some of the run-down mobile homes at the bottom of the bridge like this one: 
I have to say that I think that folks like those living in this trailer could have used the $7 million dollars more than the wealthy yuppies who will benefit in some small way from this expensive new bridge (you can get to the Bosque Trail from the Montaño Bridge Bike Trail already). Oh well, such are the economics of our federal government’s failed “stimulus” policies.
Rio Grande Foundation Transparency Site Goes Live
With Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry having recently announced the City’s transparency site, ABQ View, transparency in government has taken center-stage. We at the Rio Grande Foundation share concerns about open government and transparency and are pleased to launch NewMexicoSpending.com. The site includes payroll data and vendor transactions from several of New Mexico’s school districts. Unfortunately, some school districts like APS, Santa Fe, and Las Cruces were less than cooperative.
More information on the site can be found here.
New Mexico Remains Low on Economic Freedom Measure
Like, the US-based Heritage Foundation does its annual Index of Economic Freedom (Canada ranks higher than the US nowadays), the Canada-based Fraser Institute — a free market think tank based north of the border — ranks economic freedom of the states and provinces of North America.
Not surprisingly, New Mexico performs rather poorly on this index being tied for 47th out of 60 jurisdictions studied (see the chart on page 2). This ranking leaves New Mexico economically freer than only the US states of Montana, Maine, Mississippi, and West Virginia and most Canadian provinces except for Alberta.
What nearby states perform very well? Not surprisingly, Colorado and Texas rank highly. Utah and Nevada also perform well, but all states in the region significantly outperform our own.
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Convention Center: I couldn’t have said it better myself
It seems that other Albuquerque leaders are finally speaking out in opposition to the idiotic idea of wasting $400 million tax dollars (or more once cost overruns are factored in) on a convention center expansion. I’ve written about it before here and more recently here, but this week saw hotelier Jim Long call the project “an economic albatross” among other unkind things.
Then there was this excellent opinion piece in today’s paper by former Councilman Pete Dinelli. Dinelli recounted from firsthand experience how proponents over-promise and under-deliver with these projects. They’ve done it in Albuquerque and I didn’t even know taxpayers had a stake in a downtown hotel already. Also, it is interesting that Dinelli points to past “urban renewal” projects as having destroyed downtown’s character, thus putting us in the spot we are in today. No surprise there as this has been a recurring theme across the nation: high-minded politicians and politically-connected businesses guide development to conform to some plan and things flop on a magnificent scale.
I do have one quibble with Dinelli’s proposed solutions. While Albuquerque has great amenities for a city of its size, what truly needs to happen to make downtown Albuquerque a destination is for those office buildings to be filled with workers (private sector ones ideally). That is what fuels everything else when it comes to downtown development. I realize the national economy is down right now, but the fact is that downtown wasn’t destroyed overnight and it won’t be rebuilt overnight. We need economic and regulatory policies that will bring thriving businesses (and their financial and human resources) to Albuquerque. Until then, forget being a national or international destination.
Update: New Mexico Republican Congressional Candidates Support ObamaCare Repeal
Yesterday, I urged voters to get Congressional candidates on the record in favor of appealing ObamaCare. Well (thanks to the Mullins campaign for this), it turns out that the good folks at the Club for Growth have already been doing this.
They have a website set up which displays the names of candidates for Congress that have pledged to vote to repeal ObamaCare. First and foremost, kudos to the Club for Growth for doing this important work. Secondly, I was very pleased to see that all three Republicans running for the House in November have signed on with the Club in support of repeal. This is great news and an indicator that this crop of Republican House candidates is serious about limited government.
Now, how about it Rep. Teague? You voted against ObamaCare twice. Were those just political votes or do you actually oppose the federal health care takeover? If so, how about signing the repeal pledge?
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Before you vote for that congressional candidate, get them on the record
Repeal of ObamaCare won’t happen as long as Obama is President, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be repealed when he’s gone and that opponents shouldn’t actively push repeal while Obama is still in office.
Currently, the legislative vehicle for repeal is H.R. 4972: Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is gathering signatures on a discharge petition that would force a vote on his bill, HR 4972.
H.R. 4972 currently offers the most practical solution to repeal Obamacare. At only 40 words, the language is simple:
“Effective as of the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, such Act is repealed, and the provisions of law amended or repealed by such Act are restored or revived as if such Act had not been enacted.”
The discharge petition: 170 signatures and counting
As Rep. King notes on his website:
“Efforts to repeal the deeply unpopular Obamacare bill continue to gather momentum. We now have 170 members of the House of Representatives on record calling for full repeal of Obamacare, including Republican Leader Boehner, Republican Whip Cantor and GOP Conference Chairman Pence. I expect these numbers to continue to swell.”
Repealing Obamacare and replacing it with common-sense health reforms that improve health and healthcare delivery, increase access through lowering costs, protect life-saving medical innovations, dramatically reduce healthcare fraud and making effective use of health information technology is the real reform we need.
So, the question is: “Will Tom Mullins, Jon Barela, Steve Pearce, and Rep. Teague who voted against the bill twice in the House, pledge to vote to repeal ObamaCare? Conservatives and other opponents of the federal health care takeover have the most power they are going to have right now. Once candidates turn to Representatives, the pressure will be on from lobbyists to keep the status quo.
If I hear directly from the candidates on this issue, I will post the results here.
Kudos to Mayor Berry for new transparency website
Mayor Berry’s Administration has released the city’s new transparency website. This is a great step forward for Albuquerque and Berry deserves praise for getting it done (I know it has been a long push). We have worked with the Mayor’s office and made suggestions and we are pleased to see so many good ideas implemented into the City’s site. But don’t take our word for it, take the word of the transparency experts over at Sunshine Review.
According to the folks at Sunshine Review:
This city website is out-performing most government websites in the US for proactive disclosure of information. In fact, very few local governments have made the effort to be that transparent, and in such detail.
You want it, this site has it. Credit card receipts, lobbying expenditures, campaign contributions, audits, contracts, employee salaries—everything. This website literally achieved not just every mark on Sunshine Review’s transparency checklist, but also nailed all our suggested data as well. Data is even downloadable in different formats.
Again, great job Mr. Mayor. I wish all government entities were as willing to open up to public scrutiny.
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