New Mexico’s Transportation Future
All of the controversy over the Rail Runner and its negative impact on our transportation budget is just a sideshow to the very real problems and opportunities facing us when it comes to transportation. You read that right…as one of the leading critics of the Rail Runner, I’m telling you that it is not at the heart of our transportation problems. The problem is the government itself and, unless we reduce the government’s role in making infrastructure decisions, the roads in this state are bound to deteriorate and grow more congested over time.
That said, there are systemic solutions available. Pennsylvania, led by Democrat Ed Rendell, is currently working to lease the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Unfortunately, protectionist sentiment has reared its ugly head and is making things politically difficult. While leasing our infrastructure to “foreigners” may make the blood of some protectionists boil, it actually is a way for the US to allow investors to plow money back into American roads and bridges rather than letting it flee the country. Besides, with the government wasting money on transit and other boondoggles, isn’t it time the private sector made transportation profitable again?
For a more in-depth discussion of the need for public-private partnerships and market forces in transportation, check out a new study by Missouri’s free market think tank.
There are solutions to gridlock. While New Mexico has not been as negatively impacted as Pennsylvania and Missouri, the longer we let the government waste our gas tax revenue, the greater the likelihood of tax hikes in the not-too-distant future. We need to move towards market-based solutions and we need to start by passing legislation to enable public-private-partnerships now.
Ohio or Texas (or New Mexico)?
With the Democratic candidates for President campaigning in Texas and Ohio ahead of Tuesday’s primaries, both states have become the focus of attention. As the Wall Street Journal points out, the states have pursued very different economic paths and achieved opposite results.
On one hand, Texas has no state income tax and is a right to work state (no forced unionism). The result has been that Texas has gained 36,000 manufacturing jobs since 2004 and has ranked as the nation’s top exporting state for six years in a row. Its $168 billion of exports in 2007 translate into tens of thousands of jobs.
Ohio, on the other hand is not a Right to Work state and it imposes the third highest corporate income tax in the country (10.5%) and the sixth highest personal income tax (8.87%).
So which state is New Mexico more like? Well, New Mexico is not a Right to Work state and, while our taxes may not be quite as high as Ohio’s, our gross receipts tax places a special burden on businesses that is not found in other states. Unfortunately, until New Mexico reduces its tax and regulatory burdens, it will continue to be more like Ohio than Texas and from an economic perspective, that’s a shame.
Loss of Wind in Texas Causes Power Emergency
While the media are more than happy to talk about global warming and the joys of “renewable” energy sources, I bet you missed this story from last week.
What happened is that the utility’s grid frequency dropped suddenly when wind production fell from more than 1,700 megawatts, before the event, to 300 MW when an emergency had to be declared due to too little power being available. Some major businesses were forced to shut down operations in order to avoid a blackout.
The fact is that wind and solar combine for less than 1 percent of our nation’s energy consumption. While some argue that this is a result of government policies that favor fossil fuels, the reality is that no one wants to — and some like hospitals — can’t go without power when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Those who are pushing mandatory renewable requirements are simply making New Mexico’s energy supply less stable and more expensive than it should be.
Health Care Reform the Right Rx?
New Mexico State Senator Dede Feldman (D-ABQ), one of the state’s leaders on the health care issue, had an interesting opinion piece in the Albuquerque Journal on Thursday.
While her arguments don’t necessarily hold together individually, she ultimately decides that “Democrats (who control the Legislature) should trust one another enough to roll up their sleeves…and draw on a basic common value: affordable, quality health-care should be accessible to everyone.” Her arguments are worth analyzing.
1) Mandating that individuals purchase health care is key. While there will be “winners and losers in the short term, costs will ultimately be lowered for everyone.” Unfortunately, the Senator is engaging in some wishful thinking here. Mitt Romney’s reform in Massachusetts relied on an individual mandate that has failed to lower costs. Rather than winners and losers as Feldman hopes, we’ll all lose with an individual mandate;
2) Regarding the concerns of other Democrats and their concerns about the ability of low-income New Mexicans to purchase insurance under an individual mandate, Feldman calls such questions “wonkish” and calls the loss of this mandate “regrettable.” No solutions for this very real problem are offered;
3) Feldman’s last important point is that there is “broad agreement among Democrats, but not Republicans” that health insurance companies should be forced to insure everyone and that 85 percent of insurance companies’ revenues must be allocated to purchasing health care.
She credits the Richardson Administration for “getting the insurance companies to agree, at least partially,” but she doesn’t explain that the only reason the insurance companies are willing to go along with this in the first place is that since we’ll all be forced to buy health insurance, those companies will have a captive market and will be able to charge whatever they wish. Since the insurance companies are “playing nice,” they are assuming that they’ll get favored treatment when it comes time for rate increases which will inevitably be subsidized heavily by taxpayers.
Feldman asks or at least mentions some of the key questions in the health care debate. Unfortunately, she seems to dismiss these concerns in an almost single-minded effort to obtain “universal coverage” for New Mexicans. If she gets her way, we’ll not only be poorer, but we’ll have fewer doctors in the state to treat us. We can’t afford this “reform.”
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Report on Richardson’s Health Care Debacle in National Review Online
I recapped the results of Governor Richardson’s efforts to impose a highly bureaucratized — albeit not explicitly socialist — health care proposal on New Mexico in National Review Online. While the story of the 2008 legislative session and the failure, at least to this point, of the Governor’s proposal, is something that many New Mexicans are undoubtedly aware of, Richardson is still hoping to reappear on the national stage as a potential Vice Presidential candidate. The American (and New Mexicans who haven’t been paying attention) people should at least be aware of what he’s been up to recently.
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Energy Efficient Light Bulbs May Leak Toxic Mercury: Still Safe?
Tucked away in the last Energy Bill passed by Congress and signed by the President was a little-discussed provision that banned incandescent light bulbs by 2014. Now, as it turns out, if the new bulbs break (the curled bulbs are on sale in many stores now) the mercury contained in them will leak out.
In one study from Maine, it was discovered that “immediately after the bulb was broken – and sometimes even after a cleanup was attempted – levels of mercury vapor exceeded federal guidelines for chronic exposure by as much as 100 times.” While there are no guidelines for dealing with such a toxic spill in the home, researchers suggested “If there are young children or pregnant woman in the house, consider cutting out the piece of carpet where the lamp broke as a precaution.”
I love it! if these bulbs were toys made in China, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and most of the dopes in Congress that voted for this bill in the first place would have been all over this clamoring for “safe light bulbs” and decrying GE for “unsafe lighting” and “pursuit of profit at the expense of safety.” Of course, since these newfangled toxic bulbs were foisted upon us by Congress and the greens, there’s nary a peep about safety.
Seriously, though, who wants to cut a hole in their carpet every time a light bulb breaks? You better have a lot of furniture to cover those holes.
Hat Tip – The Westerner
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National Industrial Policy: The Cure for What Ails Us?
Harold Meyerson is the resident left-wing “economist” at the Washington Post. Since the Post’s columnists often run in the Albuquerque Journal, New Mexico readers often have the pleasure — or displeasure — of reading columns from writers including Meyerson, E.J. Dionne, Robert Samuelson, and George Will to name just a few.
Meyerson’s most recent piece which appeared in our papers on Monday of this week discusses the “fact” that the American economy no longer produces anything, rather, Americans simply consume goods produced in other countries. He blames both Wal Mart and our nation’s lack of a labor-driven “industrial policy” for these supposed problems.
The fact is, contrary to Meyerson’s assertions, that industrial production in the United States does continue to grow. Employment in the sector has shrunk over the years, but largely as a result of productivity gains. Can Meyerson really show that it is economically unhealthy for Americans to consume more of their domestic production than other nations? It would seem that our low unemployment and high personal incomes would be good things, not bad.
Of course, with some people, regardless of the problem, the solution must be bigger government. So it is with Meyerson who believes it is time to institute a National Industrial Policy. He seems to think that Obama and Hillary will do this, but I doubt these savvy politicians will fall prey to that siren song. National Industrial Policy didn’t work for the Soviet Union and it won’t work here.
Perhaps the Journal should more carefully screen what it accepts from the Washington Post?
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The Laffer Curve Explained
To those who don’t take a great deal of interest in economics, the concept of the Laffer Curve may make their eyes glaze over. That said, the concept is really quite simple and has a huge impact on our daily lives. A group called the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation is working to educate Americans on the Laffer Curve and other important concepts by producing short videos to educate Americans on basic economic concepts.
Laffer’s Curve is essentially a theory of how individuals acting in a free market react to the incentives created by tax policies provides the basic underpinnings of today’s tax system. It provides a partial explanation as to why certain Eastern European nations are adopting flat taxes and becoming economically prosperous almost overnight.
Check out the two short videos on the Laffer curve Part I here and Part II here.
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Farewell ABQ Trib
Today, the last issue of the found a buyer and thus been able to continue.
From a purely greedy perspective, the loss of Albuquerque’s second newspaper is the loss of another media outlet that was willing to help spread the Foundation’s message. As I point out in today’s final issue of the paper, the Rio Grande Foundation is able to produce more work than the newspapers are able to run. Another voice lost is another tool taken from our arsenal.
For a number of reasons, some selfish and others altruistic, we will miss the Tribune.
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Bickering Between NM Secretaries of State an Ugly Circus: Open Government requires Open Elections
Current Secretary of State Mary Herrera has disclosed information from a federal investigation being conducted by the Elections Assistance Commission accusing the former holder of her office, Rebecca Vigil-Giron, of using $6.4 million of federal money for her own publicity. The federal funds, provided under mandates of the Help America Vote Act of 2002, were supposed to be used to plan and run the 2004 and 2006 federal elections, but according to Trip Jennings of the Albuquerque Journal (Former Official Faulted for Ads, Feb. 19, 2008), Herrera has suggested that Vigil-Giron used the funds for public service announcements “often featuring herself.” Vigil-Giron is now running to represent the Albuquerque district in Congress.
The fact of the matter is neither Secretary of State has a very positive record when it comes to running elections. During the state’s recent democratic caucus, scores of hopeful voters were incorrectly told that they were not registered and were forced to fill out provisional ballots so their registration status could be confirmed before their votes were counted. Mary Herrera’s spokesperson “defended the [voter] database prepared by [Election Systems and Software], one of the nation’s large private election vendors,” even though it was apparent that the list was rife with mistakes.
After the 2004 presidential elections, representatives from all eight political parties united to file a lawsuit against Rebecca Vigil-Giron and the State of New Mexico (Lopategui et al versus the State of New Mexico), alleging that thousands of votes were miscounted by electronic voting machines statewide and hoping to provide measures that would prevent similar failures of democracy in the future. Among stories of voting machine malfunctions, “One poll worker described watching 141 voters come to the precinct, enter the polling booth where a voting machine awaited, stay for a short period, and leave. At the end of the day, there was only one vote counted for president.” While plaintiffs and defendants collected evidence for the lawsuit, Ms. Vigil-Giron motioned to dismiss the case, which was denied by Judge Eugenio Mathis.
It is obviously inappropriate for officials to use public money to boost their name recognition. Even though Ms. Vigil-Giron did appear in the public service announcements, they did their job of educating potential voters on the registration process. On the other hand, Ms. Herrera’s office was responsible for the voter list that butchered the democratic caucus. Public concerns like voter registration lists are one of a handful of public services that should be the responsibility of public officials, not private companies. New Mexicans apparently need to work harder to find competent officials to serve in the Secretary of State’s office.
