Capitol Report New Mexico

Rural Jobs Grow 3.4% During 2010. Three Metros Lose.

2012-01-26T15:49:00.000-07:00

The number of wage jobs grew by 8,600 in New Mexico’s 26 rural counties during 2011, according to my arithmetic using figures released today by the Department of Workforce Services. The numbers are non-seasonally adjusted and therefore will be a bit different from those in Tuesday’s post, which were seasonally adjusted.

The rural counties hosted 250,100 jobs in December 2010. The 8,600-job increase is 3.4% growth, a very good rate by any standard. The rural growth offset a 1,200 job decline year-over-year in the four metro areas, bringing the state to a 7,400-job increase for 2010.

Santa Fe contributed 1,000 new jobs for the year. Albuquerque, Las Cruces and Farmington combined to lose 2,200 jobs, led by Albuquerque, down another 1,700 jobs. All four metros lost jobs between November and December. Together the four dropped 1,800 jobs.

Statewide, seven sectors gained wage jobs during the year. Five lost. Professional and business services stayed the same at 92,000 employees.

Education and health services led the gainers with 4,300 new jobs, followed by retail, up 3,700, and finance with a 2,800 job gain that is an extraordinary nine percent increase. Construction led the losers, down another 14% on 6,000 jobs. Other services lost 1,400 jobs, followed by government, down 1,300. State government gained 400 jobs over the year, even as state government education lost 2,100.

While it would be nice to have those construction workers busy constructing, construction depends on the primary sectors. Construction doesn’t happen alone.

Primary sectors adding jobs during 2010 were mining, manufacturing, and leisure and hospitality.

New Mexico’s wage job growth ranked 33rd among the states. All our neighbors beat us. Utah, 2nd with 3% growth; Oklahoma, 3rd with 2.7%; Texas, 6th with 2%; and Arizona, 10th with 1.6%.

Wage Jobs Show Two-Month Drop

2012-01-24T10:57:00.002-07:00

Wage employment dropped a little in New Mexico between October and December 2011, according to new seasonally adjusted numbers released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The two-month decline was1,700 jobs, or 0.2% (two-tenths of one percent), hardly significant.

This report uses only seasonally adjusted numbers. For the whole report see www.bls.gov/news.

With the recent decline, statewide wage employment was up 8,800 or 1.1% for the December 2010 to December 2011 year. That’s a small improvement, to be sure, but one can’t fuss after the past few years.

Other numbers aren’t so happy.

Year-over-year, the labor force, defined as people working or seeking work, has dropped 16,600, or 1.7%, to 939,900. In percentage terms, the number of unemployed has dropped much more—25.8%, or 21,300—to 61,300. But as one can easily see from the new job figure, most of these folks haven’t gotten jobs, they have just dropped out, creating a problem that will be with us a long time.

Year over year sector performance is summarized below:

Uppers: Trade, transportation and utilities; finance; education and health.
Samers: Manufacturing, professional and business services; leisure and hospitality, government.
Downers: Construction.

For Start Up Financing, Banks Count Little

2012-01-15T16:47:00.002-07:00

When it comes to financing new small businesses in that critical initial phase, bank loans don’t matter much. Home equity loans and credit cards do matter

In truth, banks shouldn’t be lending much to start ups. There is the detail of risk.

The observations come from the Dennis Lockhart, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

This financing situation means that the real estate mess of the past few years probably has provided a major contribution to the reduction in new business formations from 870,000 in 2006 to 720,000 in 2010. The number of credit card accounts and the borrowing limits are well below pre-recession levels, Lockhard says.

New businesses on the way to becoming medium and large firms “are the true drivers of job creation” with 40% of new jobs during a given year coming from the fastest growing one percent of businesses. Mom-and-pop firms—by definition small scale—are much less important in job-growth terms.

The businesses that count are the ones that are “scalable,” that grow quickly. Lockhart refers to one study that says 40% of new jobs each year come from the fastest growing one percent of firms and that 75% are younger than five years.

Lockhart’s comments are in the Fourth Quarter 2011 issue of EconSouth. Find it at frbatlanta.org.

December Abq Home Prices Flat From November, Down from 2010

2012-01-10T18:58:00.002-07:00

Albuquerque sales of single family detached homes closed 2011 with a monthly increase from November and steady prices for the month. The figures, from the Greater Albuquerque Association of Realtors, were released this week.

November sales were 523 homes, a 31-unit, or 6%, increase from November and an 18-unit increase from December 2010. Sales were down from 566 in October.

The median sales price for single family detached homes held at $160,000 during December. The median was down $18,000 or about 10% from the 2011 peak in July of $178,000.

The average sales price, $195,861 for December, dropped $14,917, or 7%, from the 2011 actual peak of $210,778 in July. There was a sort of a fake peak of $220,000 in February, but the price jumped back down to the $210,000 vicinity for March.

Sales activity slowed cross the market during the third quarter of 2011. New listings went from 961 in October to 909 in November and 682 in December. The December new listings figure was a 33% drop from November.

Pending sales were 785 in October and 602 in December.

The 523 detached homes sold during December represented 70% of the November pending sales of 746 homes. The December pending sales figure was 602 homes. If 70% of those deals turn into closed sales during January, that would mean 421 closed sales. We’ll see.

During November and December, the average home sold in 87 days. That was the second slowest time for a home to sell during 2011. Only February, when the average home was on the market for 89 days, was slower. The year’s fastest sales period was 76 days during August.

For townhouses and condominiums, the December picture was different. More homes sold—52, up 33% from 40 in November—for a higher average price ($140,594) and a lower median price ($131,000). The average price appears to have been pushed up by sales of ten homes in the $200,000 to $249,000 price group. December also ha two condo sales in the $250,000 to $299,000 price group as compared to zero during December 2010.

Column Sources Listed

2012-01-10T16:47:00.000-07:00

My current newspaper column refers readers to several documents used as sources for the column. Here they are:

Two reports from the University of Texas at El Paso’s Border Region Econometric Modeling Project are available for $10 each. They are the Borderplex Economic Outlook: 2011 – 2013, Business Report SR11-1,” referenced in my column, and “Borderplex Long-Term Economic Trends to 2029.”
Send checks made out to University of Texas at El Paso for $10 to:
Border Region Modeling Project - CBA 236,
UTEP Department of Economics & Finance,
500 West University Avenue,
El Paso, TX 79968-0543.

For additional information, contact Thomas M. Fullerton, Jr. and Adam G. Walke,
Department of Economics & Finance,
University of Texas at El Paso,
El Paso, TX 79968-0543.
Telephone 915-747-7747,
Facsimile 915-747-6282,
Email tomf@utep.edu.

The Kaufman Institute New Economy Index is found at: www.kauffman.org/uploadedfiles/snei_2010_report.pdf

(See http://bestcities.milkeninstitute.org. Registration is required.)

City Journal www.city-journal.org/2011/21_4_urban-development.html

Abq Starbucks Prices Up

2012-01-04T09:31:00.001-07:00

That's the report through the Wall Street Journal today.

Starbucks prices will increase an average of one percent in the Sunbelt and the northeast. Markets specifically mentioned include Albuquerque, Boston, New York and Dallas.

The only example of an increase the story provided was that a "tall" (12 oz.) coffee in New York will cost $1.85, a ten cent increase.

NM New Unemployment Claims Increase

2011-12-29T14:52:00.000-07:00

For New Mexico the number of new claims for unemployment compensation are still increasing.

The good news is that the increase is smaller than before. The week ending December 17 is the latest for which figures are available. Claims increased 87 from the same week a year earlier.

For the seven weeks between November 5 and December 17, claims increased for three weeks and dropped for four. For the period, new claims grew by 510 over the previous year.

By contrast, for the week of December 19, 2009, new claims increased 215 over the same week in 2008. For the week of November 7, 2009, claims jumped by 691 from the 2008 week.

The number of new claims compared to a year earlier is considered a good proxy for labor market behavior.

Clovis' Only Two Bars Close

2011-12-28T15:21:00.002-07:00

The only two bars in Clovis closed this summer. No idea what that means, if anything, beyond that they closed. The December 27 year-end wrap story from the Clovis New Journal notes that Clovis City Limits and Webb's Watering Hole "were the city’s only businesses dedicated solely to serving alcohol, though multiple other establishments offer a mix of dining and alcohol services."

See: www.cnjonline.com/news/beauty-46184-clovis-jobs.html.

Abq / Oklahoma City Analogy Doesn't Work

2011-12-23T18:16:00.004-07:00

Albuquerque’s downtown advocates and Mayor Richard Berry have come in thrall of the perceived analogy with the perceived success of downtown Oklahoma City’s redevelopment, says Megan Kamerick, New Mexico Business Weekly senior reporter says in a December 20 post. Kamerick reported a December 14 speech by OKC Mayor Mick Cornett to the Downtown Action Team.

The trouble is the analogy doesn’t work. I can say this. I was born in Oklahoma City and lived there until age 13 when my parents had the good sense to come to Albuquerque. My dad worked in the Kerr McGee building downtown.

For, though, the good news about downtown OKC.

The renovated Skirvin Hotel, OKC’s oldest hotel and properly the Skirvin Hilton Oklahoma City, is wonderful. Reopened in 2007 after a multi-tens of millions renovation that included evicting bats, it offers 224 rooms amid art deco elegance. The rates, while not cheap, aren’t bad at $125 for a regular room using a AAA discount.

We checked out the Skirvin a couple of years ago on a whim. We were avoiding snow to the north. My one compliant was that the Internet connection was an extra charge, a petty approach given the overall class of the place.

As a sort of cultural bonus, when I explored the lobby after checking in, I found a group of tall black guys hanging out and wearing warmups. Finally a t-shirt provided a clue. Worn by a white guy, it said, “Phoenix Suns.”

For Albuquerque the analogy doesn’t work because Albuquerque’s downtown has not been the central focus for the city since World War II, in other words, since Albuquerque became large. Albuquerque is a series of urban nodes. Downtown is a much better place than 30 years ago. But Albuquerque downtown is not, nor will it be the central focus of the metro area.

OKC’s downtown was created as the central focus of the city, remained so a long time and now has been somewhat restored. Downtown OKC has some other neat stuff. But the real world intrudes. When we visited, the old 1930s First National Bank building offered an emptiness in the former banking floor with its marble and art deco metal work.

With oil and other locally based firms, OKC has a driving entrepreneurial culture that doesn’t exist in Albuquerque. What that means is OKC has a kind of corporate oligarchy not found here. If I remember correctly, the firm driving the North Dakota gas boom is based in Oklahoma City.

In 1995 the Murrah Building bombing brought OKC an emotional focus that I hope Albuquerque can avoid.

With big time football Oklahoma City has a cultural focus that happily doesn’t exist in New Mexico. (Boomer Sooner.)

OKC has other huge socio-economic differences with Albuquerque, a comparison we win. Then there is the lousy weather, which I don’t think counts for the purposes here.

OKC has raised something over $1 billion from tax hikes to pay for all this.

While in OKC on our Skirvin whim, we drove the well-publicized Brickyard area. Vacant land was the dominant sight.

One other cool thing. The area around 23rd Street and Classen Blvd., about two miles from downtown and my family’s stomping ground through the 1970s, has become the Asian center, marked by a median sign on Classen Blvd. The ultra-establishment Gothic-design First Presbyterian Church is two blocks from an Asian big box store.

A couple of miles from the Asian center and also a couple of miles from downtown lies the neighborhood where my mom lived in the 1920s. It’s a borderline slum.

If you are driving I-40 through Oklahoma, stay at the Skirvin. Take a little time to visit the Murrah Building monument, called the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum. (www.oklahomacitynationalmemorial.org).

Otherwise, be very careful with any claimed Albuquerque analogy.

Private Sector Wage Jobs Increase in Abq

2011-12-22T18:10:00.000-07:00

The Department of Workforce Services released metro area job totals this afternoon. Before getting to those numbers, a correction. In the report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics posted Tuesday, I messed up the trade sector performance. Trade employment increased 3,100 instead of dropping 3,100 as I wrote. Sorry.

The DWS analysis has a new and useful emphasis on the private sector performance as compared to the government.

New Mexico had added jobs for six months, DWS says, not many each month but the trend is nice.

Albuquerque continues to look a little less bad, if not quite up to being “better.” Though the wage job total dropped yet again from year ago, private sector wage jobs increased on a year over year basis for the first time since January 2008. The 1,200 disappeared government jobs offset the increase.

Leisure and hospitality wage employment in Albuquerque grew 1,600 from November 2010 to November 2011. With 39,300 jobs, the sector is Albuquerque fourth largest private sector. Outside Albuquerque the sector lost 100 jobs, dropping the statewide gain to 1,500.

While restaurants and bars provide most leisure and hospitality jobs, DWS says the sector includes hotels, performing arts and spectator sports; museums, parks, and historical sites; and amusement, gambling, and recreation. These businesses attract discretionary spending. People don’t have to go to restaurants, museum or casinos. Something good is happening here, even if metro job totals don’t suggest a source of the money.

In Las Cruces wage jobs declined by 500 year over year. Private sector employment grew by 400 and government lost 900.

Santa Fe added 300 wage jobs from November 2010 to November 2011.

Farmington added 900 jobs over the year.

Families Avoid NM

2011-12-22T17:43:00.001-07:00

Families see little opportunity in New Mexico, American families anyway. That’s my conclusion from state population figures for July 1, 2011, released yesterday by the Bureau of the Census (Census.gov). The New Mexico population is 2,082,224, up 23,044, or 1.1% from the April 2011 census.

The family opportunity problem for New Mexico, as I see it, stems from the small numbers for “domestic migration” in the census estimates. Migration refers to people moving to the state instead of being born here. They can come from within the U.S. (domestic) or from without (international).

Just over 70% of New Mexico’s population increase since the census came from “natural increase,” the excess of births over deaths. Of the rest, the migration, 2,202, or 9.6% of the total increase, came from domestic migration. There were 4,559 international migrants.

With positive domestic migration, New Mexico as in the good minority along with 22 other states, but barely. Only Alaska had fewer domestic migrants. Alaska’s population is a third of New Mexico’s. Delaware, with less than half of New Mexico’s population, attracted more domestic migrants.

New Mexico's population ranked 36th nationally. The percentage growth was 16th and the number growth was 36th. All very nice until one considers all those new babies, the source of our growth.

Wage Jobs Increase a Little

2011-12-20T10:02:00.002-07:00

On a seasonally adjusted basis, New Mexico’s decline in unemployment rate—2.1 percentage points—led the nation for the year from November 2010 to November 2011, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.bls.gov) figures released today. Florida was second with a 1.9 point drop.

Wage job totals are up in New Mexico over the past year, not enough to be statistically, but less statistically insignificant than a few months ago.

Statistically significant seasonally adjusted changes in employment, all of them increases, came in 25 states. New Mexico was not in the group. Nor did New Mexico make the group of 13 with statistically significant employment changes from October to November.

The labor force in New Mexico has increased by 5,000 since September. As of November, the labor force showed a 19,900 drop to 935,900. Unemployment in the state, steady at just over 61,000 the past three months, is down 21,100 since November 2010.

The seasonally adjusted statewide wage job total was 804,600 for November, flat since September, and up 6,600 year over year. The increase since November 2010 is 0.83%.

Sector performance for the past November, October and September 2011 and since November 2010 includes:

Construction: 3 months, flat at around 39,500. One year, down 5,900, or 13%.
Manufacturing: Flat since November 2010 at just over 29,000.
Trade, Transportation and Utilities: 3 months, flat at just over 137,000. One year, up 3,100. (12/22: The trade performance was originally reported as a drop of 3,100. Oops.)
Professional and Business Services: 1 year, flat at about 92,500.
Education and health services: 3 months, flat at about 127,000. One year, up 6,100 or 5.1%.
Leisure and hospitality: One year, flat at about 85,000.
Government: One year, down 3,600, or 1.8%. 3 months, steady at about 196,500.

Media Mentions: Spaceport and Gov. Martinez

2011-12-18T15:39:00.000-07:00

New Mexico got a couple of nice national media mentions yesterday, one in passing, one a full page.

The passing mention came from Richard Branson, English billionaire entrepreneur and leader of all things Virgin, airlines, music operations and, for New Mexico’s purpose, Virgin Galatic, prime tenant at Spaceport America, located on the mesa between Las Cruces and Truth or Consequences.

The interview with the Wall Street Journal went to space travel as a topic. The mention was brief, just a linkage of Virgin Galactic and the Spaceport.

Branson predicts the first commercial space flight from Spaceport America will happen in about a year. He fudged a bit, though, but consider the fudge in light of his record.

The full page was an article in the December 17 “The Economist.” (www.economist.com) The headline says, “Susana Martinez shows how Republicans might one day woo Latinos.”

The premise of the article is this. “Her Democratic predecessor, Bill Richardson, is of Mexican descent on his mother’s side. And Brian Sandoval in Nevada is both Latino and Republican. But Ms Martinez is the only governor who is simultaneously Hispanic, female and Republican. As such, she seems well on the way to embodying the party’s hoped-for future as a conservative movement that can appeal to, rather than repel, Latinos, America’s fastest-growing main ethnic group.”

Martinez is described as “tough and wonkish.” Well, one of two ain’t bad.

The article doesn’t quite say Martinez has no overall philosophy beyond being roughly conservative. But the suggestion is there.

The correspondent, as The Economist calls it’s reporters, missed a couple of things. Our “remarkably informal” capitol “is nicknamed (the Roundhouse) in homage to old Navajo hogans,” the article said.

I didn’t check that assertion, which is new to me. I think the Roundhouse, built roughly in the shape of the Zia sun, is called “the Roundhouse” because it is round. I have never heard a hogan connection, old hogan or new hogan.

Also, the correspondent claimed the legislature “still tilts Democratic.” Tilts?

$90,000 & 5% Purchasing Preference

2011-12-15T18:10:00.001-07:00

That how much was saved by not binding the gross receipts tax forms package mailed recently. "Little things add up," said Taxation and Revenue Department Secretary Demesia Padilla when I spoke to her today at the annual legislative outlook conference of the New Mexico Tax Research Institute.

Padilla was at the TRI meeting to provide a briefing on the progress of state businesses applying (or reapplying) for the 5% preference given to New Mexico-based firms doing business with the state.

The deadline is December 31. As of today, all of 90 businesses have applied out of an expected 10,000.

Probably it would be best to call 827-0951 to check out this new deal. Or call your CPA.

Padilla said to go to the department's website, www.tax.newmexico.gov, and search for in-state preference. I did and with some further detective work got to "APPLICATION FOR PREFERENCE" to "qualify as a Resident Business or Resident Contractor."

I was good. I didn't argue the inefficiencies of the 5% subsidy, er, preference. That's for another day.

November Home Prices Hit 2011 Low

2011-12-13T18:30:00.001-07:00

Prices hit the lowest level of the year during November for single family detached homes in metro Albuquerque. The 492 sales closed during the month represented a 74 unit, or 13% drop from October. Pending sales for the month, 746, showed a 5%, or 39 units, drop from October. Of the 785 sales pending during October, 63% turned into closed sales.

November sales fared better when compared to November 2010. Closed sales grew 5%. Pending sales jumped 27%.

None of the price comparisons are happy.

For the median price, $160,000 for November, the next lowest 2011 price was $162,000 during March. The November median price was 4.2% lower than October and down 10% from November 2011.

The next lowest average price was $196,321 in April. The November average, $194,830, was down 3.5%, or $7,044, from October and dropped 11.6% from the November 2010 average of $220,453. The November average price was pushed up by the sale of three homes for $1 million or more during the month. No million dollar homes sold during November 2010.

The detached homes sold during November spread fairly evenly across the six price groups between $100,000 and $249,000. Five of the six groups showed sales between 53 and 65 units. The exception, homes priced between $180,000 and $199,000 has 36 sales.

The Greater Albuquerque Association of Realtors released the November sales report this week.

Business Weekly Words Trash Union Pacific

2011-12-12T15:51:00.002-07:00

The headline and first paragraph of a "news" story follow.

Headline: Union Pacific carves up the desert
First Paragraph of Story: More than four dozen tractors, bulldozers and other heavy machinery are ripping up desert shrub just west of the Santa Teresa Airport in southern New Mexico.

No, this isn’t some Sierra Club publication. The headline and paragraph come from a story in the current New Mexico Business Weekly. I found the story, part of it, online in the current edition. (www.bizjournals.com/albuquerque).

The story is about the site work being done on the new Union Pacific multi-modal facility near Santa Teresa. I think that is the topic. The story appears in the Premium Content section. Being unwilling to pay, I only saw the beginning.

“Carves up the desert?” Well, that’s bad, of course. For a business to “carve up the desert,” that’s bad, too. So business is bad. See where this goes... All in the choice of words.

With the words chosen, media people point the story. In this case, a business publication pointed the story in a manner that is anti-business. That's a sin.

How about: “Massive site preparation underway for Union Pacific project.”

You know, some words not laden with “business is bad” values.

Sandia Technical Talent Misused In Ethanol Push

2011-12-08T15:44:00.001-07:00

Engineers are practical. That’s the indication from Dawn Manley, an engineer and “transportation fuels expert,” according to a Sandia National Laboratories new release issued today.

Manley works at Sandia’s Livermore, California, branch. In October she spoke to California’s Senate Transportation and Housing Committee about what the news release headline called “practical ways to reach new energy goals,” in particular use of ethanol. My objective here is neither to criticize Ms. Manley, or to make fun of her. Rather, the issue is the yoking of Sandia’s world-class technical staff to discredited policy goals such as using ethanol as a fuel.

A higher truth or, perhaps, practicality exists regarding ethanol as a fuel. Ethanol is a terrible fuel because it is short on carbon atoms. That means it is inefficient. Expanding ethanol production, which is made from corn, brings collateral effects. Two are displacement of forest land for new corn fields and higher tortilla prices in Mexico.

In allowing the presentation, Ms Manley’s bosses may have been being practical. Sandia gets lots money research various energy topics. Another player worth consideration as a practical matter is Sandia’s ultimate boss, Secretary of Energy Dr. Steven Chu, former director of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab which is general neighborhood of Livermore.

A proper, practical use of Sandia’s technical prowess would be to stop consideration of ethanol as a fuel.

Qwest Ended. (Century) Link Severed

2011-12-05T14:30:00.001-07:00

In mid-October we finally got around to completely cutting the cord with Qwest/Century Link.

We dumped the dial-out part of the landline service a couple of years ago. But we kept the telephone company relationship because of our Internet needs and partly to keep the fax, which Susan still needed for business.

Then our ISP, Southwest Cyberport of Albuquerque (SWCP.com) added a service where SWCP could supply the DSL service. Our Internet service on the hardware end, the phone company end, that is, was getting continually worse. All SWCP needed was to install the connection and have Century Link to install the line. We got that done.

The next step was to unlink. Susan called Century Link about 6 P.M. October 18. No one was home, a spooky prospect for someone needing customer service. Folks were home the next day and our ever increasing land line bill was ended.

We are happy. SWCP’s service is wonderful.

Lacking Right to Work Costs NM

2011-12-01T16:12:00.001-07:00

Any national right to work law mapping of states fits New Mexico and Colorado with a horse collar.
Right to work laws allow employees of unionized companies to choose to not join the union and, therefore, to not pay union dues.
Wyoming has right to work. So do the states stacked on Arizona and Texas to the Canadian border.
Unions are useful, I believe. But I favor right to work because anyone with a monopoly gets lazy and fails to serve the customers, in this case union members.
I haven’t paid much attention to New Mexico not having right to work because private sector unions don’t matter much here. Pushing right to work in New Mexico has always seemed the cause of far right fanatics devoted to lost causes.
However, there is a change in the big world. Site selectors, the consultants who help companies locate new and branch plants and offices are using lack of right to work as an initial criterion for eliminating states from location consideration. Lacking right to work immediately zaps New Mexico from consideration by about a quarter of companies.
That matters.

New Mexico, Three Metros Add Jobs. Really!

2011-11-26T17:16:00.001-07:00

Wage jobs grew in 39 states between September and October. New Mexico was one of the 39 with 2,100 new wage jobs appearing (on a not seasonally adjusted basis) over the month. That makes for one of the state’s best performances in a long time.

Our wage job total went to 811,800 in October, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday, November 22. The increase from October 2010 was even better—5,000 new jobs, a 0.62% improvement well under one percent, but still the best in a while.

New Mexico scored the nation’s largest drop in unemployment rate, year over year with a two percentage point decline, the BLS said. As noted before, this comes from people leaving the labor force, not from people getting new jobs. The national unemployment rate is 9%. New Mexico is at 6.6%.

Construction, though down 9% over the year, posted a 1,000 job, or 2%, one month increase, again the first in months and month. Construction employed 41,400 across the state in October.

Mining, which includes oil and gas, added 1,800 jobs year over year for 10% (wow, double digits!) growth to 20,700. The sector is small, but it pays well and sends major dollars to the state.

The 6,000 or 7,000 jobs that disappeared a year ago from the professional and business services sector remain gone, statistically anyway. The sector reported 100,500 wage jobs in September 2010 and 94,200 in October 2010. Sector employment has been flat since October 2010 with 93,200 jobs reported in October 2011.

Education and health services continued to add jobs (what else?) with 6,900 new jobs year over year, a 6% increase.

For the metro areas, Albuquerque led with a year over year loss of 1,500 jobs, or 0.4%, the Department of Workforce Services reports. In Albuquerque leisure and hospitality and education and health services each added 1,400 jobs.

Las Cruces showed no change in wage jobs over the October to October year. The private sector gained 800 jobs and government lost 800, DWS said.

Santa Fe added 400 jobs over the year even as government 400 in the state capitol.

For the year Farmington added 1,000 jobs for a nice 2.1% growth. The private sector produced 800 of those jobs.

Texans to the Bosque. Mannnie's and the Owl Closed On Sunday

2011-11-21T10:26:00.001-07:00

The sunny Sunday yesterday drew us to the Bosque del Apache. Coincidentally it was the final day of the Festival of the Cranes. Artists who did bird stuff were in a big tent on the Bosque headquarters grounds. There were animal exhibits.

Our entirely informal survey indicated that out of state visitors outnumbered New Mexicans. Texas seemed the biggest source of visitors, followed by Arizona and Colorado. We also saw license plates from Oklahoma, Indiana and Michigan. The New Mexico Department of Tourism RV cruised the loop roads. (Maybe it wasn't from tourism, but it was a state vehicle.)

A young Prius-driving couple from Oklahoma had created a changing table for the baby on the back deck of the car.

Lunch was at Frank and Lupe’s El Sombrero in Socorro. The food was up to the usual high standard. The restaurant business card brought the news that there is a Frank’s and Lupe’s in Scottsdale.

Maybe 20 years ago public broadcasting did a show on radio telescopes and the astronomers around the world. The Very Large Array was a featured site, obviously. One segment showed the astronomers at El Sombrero doing post-dinner cosmic mapping using their beer bottles.

We were glad we chose to eat in Socorro. To our surprise both the Owl Café and Mannie’s in San Antonio were closed.

NM Has Same Proportion of Artists as Does Nation

2011-11-17T15:30:00.001-07:00

New Mexico has 12,481 “artists,” plus or minus 1,173, says the National Endowment for the Arts in “Artists and Arts Workers in the United States,” a report released in October. That’s 1.3% of the state’s labor force, just behind the national percentage of 1.3. We are ahead of Arizona, which has 37,403 artists, but only 1.2% of the labor force.
New Mexico is one of five states ranking at the national level for share of artists in the workforce. That puts us behind 13 other states.
Among metro areas, Santa Fe doesn’t stand out.
As compared to national averages called “location quotients,” New Mexico is big on art dealers, custom architectural woodwork and millwork, nature parks, architects, motion picture and video industries and sound recording industries.
The report is also called, “NEA Research Note #105.” It used American Community Survey (ACS) data for 2005-2009 from the Census Bureau. Another source is the Current Population Survey from the BLS. See http://www.nea.gov/research/Notes/105.pdf.
The report takes an expansive view of artist, which is why the quotes were used above. Florists are “artists,” for example. I suppose so, but including florists would not have crossed my mind. Industrial designers are artists, too, which may explain Michigan having many artists.
These are the artists profiled:
Actors—stage, television, radio, video, or motion picture
Announcers—radio, television, public address systems, events
Architects—private residencies, commercial buildings, landscape architecture
Fine artists, art directors, and animators—art directors; craft artists; fine artists include: painters, sculptors, and illustrators; multimedia artists; animators
Dancers and choreographers—dancers, choreographers, and dance teachers Designers—commercial and industrial designers; fashion designers; floral designers; graphic designers; interior designers; merchandise displayers; and set and exhibit designers
Other entertainers—circus performers; comics; jugglers; magicians; puppeteers; rodeo performers; show girls; ventriloquists, and other entertainers
Musicians—music directors, composers, musicians, and singers
Photographers—includes scientific photographers, aerial photographers, and photojournalists Producers and directors—stage, television, radio, video, or motion picture production
Writers and authors—advertising writers; authors; biographers; copy writers; crossword-puzzle creators; film writers; magazine writers; novelists; playwrights; sports writers; and lyricists

Sandia, Los Alamos Remain in the Supercomputer Game

2011-11-16T10:13:00.001-07:00

New Mexico has always been big in the business of doing research with computers because building nuclear weapons required large calculations. Now supercomputers have moved beyond the requirement of doing lots of arithmetic to dealing with what are called “big data problems.”

A competition called Graph 500 (www.graph500.org) started a year ago to rank machine or platform capability in this area. Sandia National Laboratories and Los Alamos National Laboratory are very much in the game. Los Alamos has one person on the Graph 500 steering committee. Sandia has five (if I read the list correctly), including Richard Murphy, the chair.

Sandia scored four places on the newest rankings, announced yesterday in a Sandia release. Los Alamos had two.

The Graph 500 website explains things this way, “Data intensive supercomputer applications are increasingly important for HPC (high performance computing) workloads, but are ill-suited for platforms designed for 3D physics simulations. Current benchmarks and performance metrics do not provide useful information on the suitability of supercomputing systems for data intensive applications. A new set of benchmarks is needed…
“Backed by a steering committee of over 50 international HPC experts from academia, industry, and national laboratories, Graph 500 will establish a set of large-scale benchmarks for these applications. The… committee is in the process of developing comprehensive benchmarks to address three application kernels: concurrent search, optimization (single source shortest path), and edge-oriented (maximal independent set). Further, we are in the process of addressing five graph-related business areas: Cybersecurity, Medical Informatics, Data Enrichment, Social Networks, and Symbolic Networks.”

Got that? Kernels? Mostly we lay people need to remember this stuff exists here, that it is world-class, that very smart people are employed doing the work and paid lots of money.

Sandia’s release says, “Big-data problems are solved by creating large, complex graphs with vertices that represent the data points — say, people on Facebook — and edges that represent relations between the data points — say, friends on Facebook. These problems stress the ability of computing systems to store and communicate large amounts of data in irregular, fast-changing communication patterns, rather than the ability to perform many arithmetic operations in succession. The Graph500 benchmarks indicate how well supercomputers handle such complex problems.”

Metro Homes Sales Defy Seasonal Pattern, Increase During October

2011-11-11T12:00:00.001-07:00

During October sales of single family detached homes in metro Albuquerque increased from September. So much for the seasonal trend of sales dropping as the weather gets colder.

Townhouse/condo sales followed trend, however, with 46 October sales, down three of seven percent from 49 in September.

The 566 single family detached home sales were nine percent or 49 more than the 517 sales during September.

Detached home sales were up 24% from October 2010 while townhouse/condo sales dropped 19% from October 2010.

One possible factor in the October sales jump is that 70% of the September pending sales turning into sales closed during October. By contrast, September closed sales were 59% of August pending sales. There were 785 sales pending for October, just three percent fewer than September.

Another possible factor might be the metro economy getting a little better, as I have noticed recently.

Prices for all homes continued down. Average and median prices dropped both from September 2011 and October 2010.

During October, one metro home sold for $1 million (or more). A rough guess is that a million dollar sale raises the average price by $1,450 for the month. During October 2010, four metro homes sold for $1 million, perhaps explaining around $5,000 of the $23,792 year-over-year average price drop.

Winery Closed, Gate Gorgeous

2011-11-10T20:34:00.001-07:00

We learned about the Guadalupe Vineyards (guadalupevineyards.com) today at La Ventana in Grants where we lunched. Guadalupe bottles were tucked into nichos at La Ventana.

La Ventana served us a very nice rolled chicken enchilada with tomatillo sauce and a turkey sandwich with avocado and jalapenos.

Returning to Albuquerque, we opted for a part of the scenic route and exited I-40 where the sign said, “San Fidel.” Just east of downtown San Fidel, a sign pointed us to Guadalupe winery. The road was San Jose Loop, a well maintained one-lane gravel road. San Jose (St. Joseph), it seems, is big in San Fidel with a school and a church.

We looped. The winery was closed. Not surprising given it was 4 P.M. on a November Thursday. However, the website claims, “Our tasting room hours are Wednesday thru Sunday, 12 noon to 5:00 pm.” But the gate was gorgeous. Note the small photovoltaic collector providing gate power.

NM Delegation Sticks With Fairy Tales

2011-11-08T11:17:00.001-07:00

One of those occasional high-contrast offsets appeared in today’s Albuquerque Journal.

One side came from Washington Post columnist Robert J. Samuelson. The other side from New Mexico’s three hard-core liberals in Washington: Jeff Bingaman, Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich.

Find Samuelson’s columns at www.washingtonpost.com/robert-j-samuelson/2011/02/24/ABSZV8O_page.html. I have always liked Samuelson, partly of course because I agreed with most of his arguments but also because he brings clarity and brevity to complex issues.

Samuelson outlined “the budget fictions of the right and left.”

The fictions, the fairy tales, are:

Conservatives: “We can reduce deficits and cut taxes by eliminating ‘wasteful spending.’”
Liberals: “We can subdue deficits and raise social spending by taxing ‘the rich’ and shrinking the bloated Pentagon.”

Neither fairy tale mentions entitlements, the big part of the problem.

The liberals made the front page with their fear of a proposal to change the index used for cost of living adjustments to social security.

Oh my gawd, Udall told the Journal, “While I would consider reasonable changes to the cost-of-living adjustment, pushing our seniors into poverty is a nonstarter.” Give me a break, Tom.

Even Rep. Steve Pearce, anchor of the right in our delegation, babbled a bit in semi-skepticism. Come on Steve, abandon the fairy tales.

Wage Jobs Up Very Slightly in September

2011-10-27T16:51:00.002-07:00

Pre-recession, three years ago or so, about 63% of New Mexicans were participating in the labor forces, that is, working or looking for work, says the Department of Workforce Services in the monthly job report released today. Had that rate maintained, the state’s unemployment would have continued to increase through September, the latest month covered in the DWS report. But it didn’t, people dropped from the labor force, which explains the unemployment being 6.6% for September and down two points in the past year.

New Mexico added 1,700 wage jobs year-over-year for a rocking 0.2% growth rate. Still, DWS says, September was the fourth month of job growth after 32 months of losses. There were 1,800 new jobs from August to September.

Among the sectors, professional and business services remains the loss leader, down statewide 7,400 for the September to September year and 1,600 for the month.

Retail surprised me with a 4,000 job, or 4.5%, year-over-year increase. The surprise comes because retailers can increase employment, especially via part time people, fairly quickly in response to increasing sales and expectation of further sales growth. Retailers cut just as quickly. Retail responds, one way or the other, to other sectors. The Albuquerque, Las Cruces and Santa Fe metro areas all showed more retailer jobs. DWS
doesn’t report Farmington’s sector numbers.

Year-over-year the four metro areas lost 1,300 jobs, led by Albuquerque, which was down 2,200. The year-over-year arithmetic means rural areas added 3,000 jobs.
Farmington was the only metro area with job growth for the year and from August to September.

Albuquerque lost 2,700 construction jobs over the year meaning that the rest of the metro added 500 jobs.

The four metros added 2,700 jobs from August to September. Even Albuquerque found 1,700 net new jobs in the face of 900 more jobs lost in construction.
Only two counties—Luna and Mora—have more than ten percent unemployment. A year ago the ten percent count was six.

Heather Wilson Interview Transcript

2011-10-25T08:55:00.000-07:00

Interview of Heather Wilson, Republican candidate for the United States Senate. Conducted by Harold Morgan, October 13, 2011, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at the headquarters for Wilson for Senate.

Harold Morgan writes a weekly column that is syndicated to ten newspapers around New Mexico. The interview is the basis for two columns. This transcript been edited to remove verbal pauses, repeated words and similar interference that come with the spoken word.

Morgan: We’re here with Heather Wilson in her headquarters. Heather, I had three things that I (said we) might talk about, with focus, since our time is limited; one being just what has happened in the last couple of years, what you might have seen. Then this whole “conservative” thing. And, thirdly, the money, the main issue in your campaign as you’ve stated it. So what’s happened in the last couple of years? What have you seen? Learned? New problems?
Wilson: I got a dog, subscribed to Netflix. There were times with my family. Survived cancer. Started a business.
Morgan: Yeah, there was that cancer thing, right.

Wilson: Those were the superficial answers. I spent a lot of quiet time, which I hadn’t had in a long time, and I really enjoyed that. I had an opportunity to read and think in longer stretches. That was great. And I really needed some time, but I enjoyed it. I found that there is a geometry to reading. For every book you read there’s usually three that you add to your list, and so, as my husband puts it, the circumference of darkness is roughly three times the size of the diameter of light.
Which, if you do geometry, is actually true. The more you read, the more you know there is to read, and so my reading list is longer today than it was when I left the Congress. I started that that way, and then got back in depth into some of the issues that I care most about, defense and intelligence, and did that work for a couple of years before announcing that I intended to run for the Senate.
So I guess it was an opportunity to reflect, to observe and to become, frankly, deeply concerned with what I was seeing; the decisions about the direction about this country, particularly its financial directions.
Morgan: That seems to answer things, I think. Anything to fill in on that?

Wilson: Well, with respect to the financial direction of the country, we’ve just had a fiscal year that closed on the 30th of September. In the three years, in the three previous years, we had a thirty-percent increase in federal government spending. Three-zero. So a thirty-percent increase in federal government spending in a three-year period of time.
This country has not had that steep an increase in federal government spending since we chose to defeat the Nazis. It was 1941 to ‘44, roughly. The difference is that instead of defeating one of the greatest evils that has ever faced the planet, what we really did was had an increase in spending that was largely domestic spending. That’s at a time when every family in America was cutting back on spending, tightening their belts, worrying about their jobs, the federal government went on a spending spree: $787 billion stimulus bill.
Put this in context: When Bill Clinton decided he want to try that stimulus bill and spend federal government money in order to stimulate the economy, he proposed a $19 billion stimulus bill. It was rejected by the Senate, including democrats in the Senate, because it was too expensive and was the wrong way to go.
The Democratic Congress and the President of the United States spent $787 billion and did not generate the economic activity that they promised, and the reason is they’re wrong in their approach. Government cannot create wealth. Sometimes there’s a short-term sugar high, but it doesn’t do much more than that, because that’s not where the wealth and jobs come from.

Morgan: In Las Cruces, at the Domenici Conference, Alice Rivlin told us that, that we would outgrow the deficit spending eventually with a growing economy, and that the real issue was entitlements, Medicaid and Social Security. What’s your observation on that?
Wilson: If I look back on the things that I did not get accomplished when I was in the House that I worked on and wished we had made more progress on, one was reform of the Medicaid system. It is one of the fastest growing parts of the federal government and it doesn’t serve very well the people who depend upon it. There’s a subspecialty of the bar on how to qualify mom and dad for Medicaid in the nursing home while protecting your inheritance. That’s not what Medicaid was intended for. There is that piece of Medicaid I think needs reform, and Medicaid as a program doesn’t improve the health status of the people who depend on Medicaid.
It is very much focused on paying for episodes of critical illness rather than improving health status. There needs to be a significant change in the way the program is run that improves health status and reduces the cost of healthcare, reduces this escalating growth. So I would probably start there, looking at what we can do with that program, and it is one of the things I most regret not having made more progress on.
With respect to other kinds of programs, it seems to me that if Ronald Reagan and Daniel Patrick Moynihan can get together in 1983, ‘84, and figure out how to extend the solvency of Social Security and protect it for another 30 years, that our generation can meet that challenge too.

Morgan: One of the other things that they talked about at the conference was the notion that there have been the three or four groups examine the federal spending and the deficit, including the Domenici-Rivlin group, and that more or less they had agreed that the main issues are just sort of obvious. The next step then is doing something, having the courage to do something. Again, observations on that point?
Wilson: I was kind of disappointed when the President of the United States proposed a budget for this year. We’re now in the first month of twelve months of our fiscal year (and) still don’t have a budget yet. But the budget he proposed for this year projected over a trillion dollars in deficits as far as the eye can see. This is unsustainable, and his budget was rejected by the Senate. Every single Senator, including all of the democrats, rejected that vision of where we need to go financially. And then, when the House proposed a budget, he calls everyone down for a speech and sits them all there and just blasts them. And I thought, you know what this really means is he’s chosen to make this a political issue rather than trying to figure out what’s right to do for the country and start working to figure out how we’re going to bridge these gaps and get back on the right path to something that’s fiscally sustainable. I just found that tremendously disappointing. So it does require the political will to say we will do what is best for the country.
I think there are two parts to this: One is major reforms, like Moynihan and President Reagan did. The other one is the day-to-day hard work of oversight, to try to find things that aren’t working in the federal government and stop doing them. I’ve done that, both in the federal government and in state government. Everyone talks about waste in government, but it’s actually very hard work to identify the things that are not working and stop them.
Morgan: Such as?
Wilson: The ones that I did or the…
Morgan: Yeah, or ones that you think ought to be stopped.
Wilson: Well, $25 million for EPA conferences, including going to Paris, and that doesn’t sound like a very good idea to me. The Agriculture Department spends $550 million dollars a year in federal subsidies to private landowners who allow hunting on their land. I’m not sure that’s something the federal government should be doing.
There are $2 billion in un-obligated balances in the Army Corps of Engineer budget. Those are just examples. They come from one of these commissions. It does require, though, that people focus on those issues and make decisions on those issues and build consensus to get rid of some of that stuff and do some common-sense things.
What I did in state government, we terminated a lot of contracts that were not getting value for money for the, the taxpayer. We eliminated bureaucratic positions at the top of the department and pushed them down to the field; the priority was customer service. And when I chaired the Technical and Tactical Intelligence Subcommittee in the House for House Intelligence, we did a complete review of all of what would be called overhead architecture. Just technical collection from, from overhead, to see how we could we could look at the system instead of just buying the next version of a particular widget.
If you’re in charge of widgets, you always want widget 2.0. Well, is there a different way to do this by looking at the architecture? Look at the whole thing and figure out how to maximize and meet all of your needs with a system of systems, rather than just individual pieces, always getting the next version. One of the things that that resulted in was the cancellation of a very, very expensive program.

Morgan: The Joint Strike Fighter has been an example of an attempt to do that, that maybe hasn’t quite worked.
Wilson: That’s a very expensive airplane, there’s no question. There are moments when I think the F-16 is still a pretty good airplane. But one of the problems with something like the Joint Strike Fighter was that you’re much better off committing to a program and doing it in a fairly truncated period of time. It’s when acquisition stretches out over decades in the law and beyond is when the cost per unit, it just goes through the roof. That’s another thing that needs to be changed is federal government acquisition, particularly of major systems.
If you think about it, and when the first satellite program was established, I think it was called “Corona.” The first 13 crashed. This was when they—it’s now declassified, but it was, would have been when Eisenhower was president—were trying to take pictures from satellites. The first 13 didn’t work. There were all kinds of problems. But they learned from each one, and they were doing. They were tweaking things as they went along and gradually getting better, not waiting another year to launch the next system, but they were (launching) in weeks and months. So, they rapidly learned and got better, and they succeeded. We don’t buy things that way now.

Morgan: Your illustrations draw my comment on the same issue. Some time in the recent past a federal review of how highway signs should be designed has fallen through somehow to neighborhood street sign design. Right here in Albuquerque. I don't know how those things happen. Had you heard of that one?
Wilson: I missed that one.
Morgan: Oh.
Wilson: So they’ve got new standards for street signs or something?
Morgan: Right.
Wilson: Yes, it costs a lot of money.
Morgan: And it’s a federal mandate on municipalities to replace the street signs and design them in a different way. It seems a little bit of overreach to me.
Wilson: Yes.

Morgan: In talking a couple of years ago to some other Senate candidates, the two of them cited one specific thing about why they wanted to be a United States Senator. Is there one specific thing -- I’ll tell you what this is in a minute, but is there one specific thing that, for you, that says this is why you should be a United States Senator?
Wilson: It’s not a specific thing, but it is a thing. I told you I’m very concerned about the future of this country: our financial future; our ability to defend ourselves; a healthcare system that’s probably going to be near collapse between 2014 and 2016 if we allow this new federal healthcare program to be implemented in the way that it was passed and designed. So there’s huge challenges facing this country, and I believe that every generation before ours had faced those challenges and met those challenges. That’s who we are as Americans. Now’s the time for our generation.
We are blessed by our parents and our grandparents to have inherited a tremendously strong country, full of tremendous opportunity. But it’s not assured. It’s up to every generation to make sure that we steward the freedom that we’ve been given to build a better country for our children and for our grandchildren. I see that as at risk. And I don’t want to be the first generation that failed the test.
Morgan: These other folks, by the way, the one single reason, if you cut it all away down, for wanting to be a United States Senator, is they said that one Senator can stop something. That’s what I was told.
Wilson: That’s true. But that to me is tactical. That doesn’t resonate with me. I’ll just leave it that way.

Morgan: Interesting. You have called for the repeal of Obamacare.
Wilson: Yes.
Morgan: Not just pieces of it -- the whole thing?
Wilson: I think it needs to be repealed and replaced. There are challenges that we face in healthcare in America. There (are) a number of things disappointing about Obamacare, but one of them is that the biggest challenge is the escalating cost, and Obamacare does nothing about that. In fact, it’s going to exacerbate that problem.
The estimate is that one in four Americans who has private-sector health insurance today will not have it come 2014 because of the so-called Minimum Essential Benefit Package that will be required by the federal government; and every small business that’s able now to offer health insurance is going to have to probably expand what they’re offering for their employees. A lot of them will just say we just can’t do this and keep customers coming in the door. So, so people are going to lose their health insurance and the cost of the insurance is already going up. So cost is the central element to me that we need to really focus on.
I also think that competition works to help hold down costs. You see that in Medicare Part D, where, where competition—choice in the marketplace—resulted in a program that’s much, much less expensive than it was predicted to be.
Likewise, if you look at most of the things that aren’t covered by third-party insurance without any co-payments, and those that cost share, like elective plastic surgery, or eyeglasses or hearing aids, the inflation rate for those things is much closer to the normal rate of inflation than we see in the other parts of healthcare because consumers are making informed choices about their options and helping to keep things competitive and costs down.
Fundamentally I think that the Obamacare bill is unconstitutional for two reasons: One is, that it is the federal government mandating that every citizen purchase a government-approved private-sector product. And if the federal government can tell you what you have to buy with the money you earned, then there is no limit to government power.
And the second constitutional argument that few people focus on is the mandatory expansion of Medicaid forced on the states. Here in New Mexico, this new law will force New Mexico to add 120,000 people to the Medicaid rolls. That is supposed to be a joint federal-state program, and it should have been some kind of a joint federal-state decision. But it’s not, it’s a federal government mandate, and a lot of states just can’t sustain it. The kicker is, the first two years the federal government borrows the money—prints it—and there’s no cost initially for the State of New Mexico, but starting in 2016 it starts to go back to the state and federal match, and the State of New Mexico has to find $300 million dollars a year out of its budget, to cover the cost of the Medicaid.
There are only two places that can come from—K to 12 education, or from increases in taxes. And anyone who says that you can add 120,000 people on the Medicaid rolls and it won’t cost anything has a math problem.
Morgan: At best.

Wilson: There are people who claim that this really is going to reduce healthcare costs. But it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work that way. Life doesn’t work that way. It’s unconstitutional, and it is likely to cause the cost of healthcare to go up. Here in New Mexico, it’s probably also going to have a severe impact on seniors who use Medicare Advantage, and here in New Mexico it’s a very popular program. One in four seniors get their healthcare through Medicare Advantage, and that’s where they took half a trillion dollars out of—do you have Presbyterian Senior Care?
Morgan: Um-hmm.
Wilson: Yeah. That is Medicare Advantage, and they took half a trillion dollars out of that program to start all of these other things that are probably less important to seniors.

Morgan: What about Dodd-Frank? Has anyone called for repeal of that?
Wilson: Yes. But Dodd-Frank passed kind of in the wake of Obamacare. People were paying less attention to it. But I’ve got to tell you, when I’m out and about and talking to people in the financial services business or even people who manufacture things that are publicly traded companies. It’s a nightmare. Thirty-three thousand pages of new regulations on banks. That’s probably three-quarters of a mile of paper.
Morgan: Yeah.
Wilson: Maybe CitiBank has enough lawyers to figure out what these regulations mean, but most small- and medium-sized banks don’t. I was talking to somebody who works with a regional bank, not a huge bank, a regional bank in the southwest. They had to hire 44 new compliance people to cope with the rules of Dodd-Frank, so they went from nine people to over 50 people.
Morgan: Wow!
Wilson: You and I are paying for that as customers, just for compliance. In addition to that, there’s all kinds of things in that bill. There is a requirement in there that got added in to have every company traded on the U.S. Stock Exchange has to do an audit and certify that anything they sell or manufacture does not have any minerals in it that come from the Congo or any of the 12 surrounding countries. Now, it doesn’t prohibit using those minerals, but it requires an audit to say, yes, this particular metal in this particular thing comes from the Congo or the Democratic Republic of the Congo or Equatorial Guinea or whatever the 12 surrounding countries are. It’s a blood diamonds provision. This is a cell phone. How many minerals are in this?
Morgan: A lot.
Wilson: Do you know how many cell phones are sold in America every year?
Morgan: A bazillion.
Wilson: Well, just from AT&T they sell 25 million of them (With materials) from 60 different countries. Now, what does that do? Obviously it’s a huge auditing nightmare for anybody. What it really does is that any company that’s looking to potentially go public, better not go public in America or on an American stock exchange. Go to Singapore or London or Delhi. It’s a nightmare.

Morgan: And those things, the requirement like that and the compliance requirement on the financial institutions, (it) seems to me they in effect amount to tax increases.
Wilson: Certainly cost increases, for the cost of doing business. The other thing that’s so ludicrous about this, so they have to audit their whole supply chain with 50 different suppliers for this cell phone or 60 different suppliers in 50 different countries, to say where all the minerals came from in this little piece of equipment. If you were willing to sell blood diamonds, would you be willing to lie to an auditor? What good is this going to do anybody? Well, this is stupid.
There’re a lot of things in Dodd-Frank that just prove another drag on business, another point of reluctance for anybody who is an entrepreneur or creating a company or creating wealth to say, gosh, do I really want to do my initial public offering here in America? Maybe we’d be better off in Delhi.
Morgan: My suggestion that these things were a tax increase, is they (are) government-driven that fall through to individuals by increasing the cost , and that seems to me a tax, in effect.
Wilson: It’s a regulatory compliance tax.
(Discussed Farmington Daily-Times op-ed with staff)
Wilson: I did a piece on the regulatory program, the federal government. There is a requirement that the federal government—the executive branch—provide notice of any proposed rule making next year that is anticipated to cost more than $100 million. This coming year, there are two hundred and ninety, a 15 percent increase over last year. Seven of them have an estimated over $1 billion economic impact from just a single regulation. It’s just growing like topsy. This is amazing to me.
Some of it is things to implement by regulation, Cap and Trade. But there are also all kinds of weird things, like saying that fly ash from a power plant—the ash that’s left when they burn coal—that has to be treated as a hazardous material. Never has been in the past. You know who that really effects? The cement manufacturers who use the fly ash to make cement, because now it’s a hazardous material.
Morgan: I haven’t heard that.
Wilson: That’s a proposed new regulation, and it’s not really intended to protect the environment, it’s intended to shut down coal-fired power generation.

Morgan: All these things seem pretty conservative to me, the viewpoints, that is. This whole thing over the years that has trailed you, that I’ve always thought was strange, was Heather Wilson is somehow not conservative enough. You had your announcement there a few months ago, and (it) seemed to me you checked off all the “Capital ‘C’” Conservative points. You have any observations on this item at all?
Wilson: I’m a free-trade, free-enterprise, pro-life, pro-Second Amendment person. I also believe that the things that government has a responsibility to do, it should do exceptionally well. I think that we should have Medicare. There should be a safety net for the elderly and the poor. Maybe for some people that’s just not good enough. But 12 of 15 sitting Senators in the Legislature and almost two-thirds of the state representatives and an overwhelming third of the elected and local officials from around the state who’ve endorsed my candidacy, basically think I’m okay.

Morgan: Doing something excellently, though, brings back to my mind, as you put it, New Mexico’s unique role in the defense of the country, and your stance on defending that.
Wilson: We do have it—New Mexico makes a unique contribution to our nation’s defense. We have three Air Force bases, two national laboratories, White Sands Missile Range. The stewardship of our nation’s nuclear deterrent is largely done by New Mexicans. There are a few Californians as well, but it’s largely the responsibility of New Mexicans, and we need to make sure that that deterrent is safe and secure and reliable in the absence of nuclear testing. That is an extremely difficult problem.
In addition to that responsibility, our national laboratories have taken on other national security responsibilities, including in intelligence, and try to make sure that not only is our nuclear deterrent safe, for example, but seeking to understand what other countries are doing. And they play an important role in a lot of that. I think New Mexico needs a United States Senator who is able to articulate the importance of that contribution and is willing to stand up and fight for it.
And there are three Air Force bases here, and, of course New Mexico only has about 350 good flying days of the year.
Morgan: Yeah.
Wilson: It’s a great place to train; very supportive of the Air Force in general. I’ve worked with the Air Force and other military services. Of course, most important to us is our New Mexico. We have a long history of serving national interests, and I think that needs to continue.
Morgan: Well, I guess other air forces think we do some of that pretty well as, and train at White Sands.
Wilson: We can do things here in New Mexico without a whole lot of disruption that are very hard to do in other places—in the air and on the ground.
You’re blessed and defended by the world’s most powerful United States’ military. We need to keep it that way.
I do think (that) of Martin Heinrich, Hector Balderas, myself and Mr. Sanchez, I’m the only one that’s ever served in the military. (Greg Sowards, a Republican candidate for Senate, served in the Army.) There are a declining number of members of the United States Congress who have military service, and that’s really a change in the nature of the military. And in the passing of generations. The World War II generation, the Korea generation, Vietnam generation are retiring now, or passing away. My generation has fewer people per capita, certainly, who served in the military, and yet that is the first and foremost responsibility of the federal government, so that matters.

Morgan: Well, I agree with you. Just one more point, our time is going really quickly, but on our defense capability and nuclear, there was a Sandia team, I gather, sent to Japan last spring, pretty quickly, and the other nuclear resource people. A whole bunch of them were there, so it’s broader.
Wilson: There were Sandians who were there. There were also Sandians and Los Alamos folks who supported the effort in the Gulf of Mexico to stop the spill. When the Secretary of Energy says, hey, do you have anybody who could do a very revealing x-ray 3,000 feet below the surface of the water—to try to figure out what’s going on in this wellhead, through murky, gucky water and everything else, yeah, I think we can do that. So their engineers were very important, their engineers and scientists, and they’re important in the nation in a lot of different ways.

Morgan: Well, again the time has grown short. Any final two cents worth here?
Wilson: So I think you covered most things, defense, healthcare, the financial situation the country finds itself in. We’re now almost at the point where our ratio of debt to GDP is close to 100 percent, just roughly where Greece was when things started to come apart. America’s a stronger country with a stronger currency and all those things. I don't know where the point is where we have a similar kind of problem, but I certainly don’t want to find out.
Morgan: Good place to stop. Thank you.
Wilson: Thank you.
(Discussion continued as Morgan looked for the stop button on the recorder.

Morgan: The point you were making dawned on me a few years ago. I haven’t done anything about it. It dawned on me that the broad society was very separate from the military, and basically had no clue. That’s disturbing. I guess it really makes it easier to, let’s say, oppose the Iraq war if you’re not in it, or if it doesn’t touch your life.
Wilson: It is disturbing to me, and it should be a concern to all of us. And it’s not just that, we’re at a point where only two in a thousand serve in uniform. We are such a powerful country. In World War II, one out of ten served in uniform, so, that during World War II, every third house on the block had a blue star in the window. Today you have to go 167 houses to find the next blue star in a window.
Now, with the draft ended in 1973, we now have kids in school whose grandfathers were not subject to the draft. So that’s how far away that sense of mutual honorability is, and it does really leave a gap between the protected and the protectors. One of the things I did say to my classmates and colleagues, who were former military, is that the obligation to serve doesn’t end when you hang up the uniform. You need to have more of them step forward, whether it’s in the city council or the school board or Congress.

Job Situation Still Bleah

2011-10-24T11:02:00.003-07:00

New Mexico had the nation’s largest drop in unemployment rate from September 2010 to September 2011. The reality, though, is that the change comes from people dropping from the labor force instead of getting jobs. On a seasonally adjusted basis, New Mexico lost another 5,700 wage jobs from August to September. The state’s year-over-year job change is not significant, statistically, anyway, accord to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics which release the numbers on Friday.

Sticking with the seasonally adjusted figures, New Mexico had 20,600 people drop from the labor force between September 2010 and September 2011, a 2.4% decline. The labor force was 930,700 in September. During the year, 20,000 dropped from the unemployed ranks, bringing the number of officially unemployed to 61,600.

Officially and still seasonally adjusted, New Mexico added 2,700 wage jobs, year-over-year, a definitely insignificant 0.3% (three tenths of one percent) change.

For the year, construction is down; manufacturing the same; trade and finance, both up slightly; professional and business services, down 6,700 (6.8%) and still the big drag; education health services up 5,500 (4.6%); leisure and hospitality up and bit; and government down a bit.

Abq September Home Sales Third Lowest of 2011

2011-10-23T16:02:00.001-07:00

In metro Albuquerque sales of single family detached homes fell from August to September. Closed sales were 517 in September and 646 in August. That’s a 20% or 129 unit drop.

A piece of good news is that sales were 7.9%, or 38 units above September 2010.

A piece of context is that things happen in August such as kids going back to school that lead to fewer home sales closing September. Going back to 1997, according to the Greater Albuquerque Association of Realtors, only one September, in 2009, showed more sales than during August.

So much for happiness.

The September sales performance brought the third fewest sales of the year, ahead only of January and February, traditionally, the slowest months.

There were 878 sales shown pending during August. Only 59% converted to closed September sales, a 20 point conversation percentage drop from July and August.

The median sales price, $171,500 during September, was up five percent from August but down from the $178,000 of July. Both median and average prices during September were helped by sales increases over 2010 in homes priced from $200,000 to 299,000. Also, the 19 homes sold in the $400,000 range were the most of the past three years.

The September median was 6.3% below September 2010. The average was down 9.8% from September 2010. Except for February, metro home prices have been below the same month of 2010 all year.

NMSU Building Wine Academy

2011-10-18T16:14:00.000-07:00

New Mexico State University’s School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management is building an academy of wine. The full proper name is the Bobby Lee Lawrence Academy of Wine. It will be a beverage management laboratory.

Lawrence died in 2010. A $250,000 gift from his wife, Marion, had made the project possible.

Also at NMSU, renovations and additions to the Branson Library and Hershel Zohn Theatre will create a home for the Pete V. Domenici Institute for Public Policy.

BofA Posts Security

2011-10-11T11:35:00.001-07:00

My noon visit to the Albuquerque Bank of America main office downtown came with a bonus of sorts—people with signs and, in response, security. The security people were in response to the demonstrators, a bank employee said.

A couple of security guys were hanging out on the sidewalk along Third Street near the north entrance to the building. Inside, the north entrance to the first floor banking office area was locked. A sign referred people to the south entrance.

At the south entrance there were four people: two security types; a man, manager of the main office branch, I suspect; and a woman. Another pink sign on the door said, "No trespassing."

The joys of free speech!

Update: As of 4:30 P.M., the sign carriers were gone from BofA. The security folks were still there. This was discovered due to needing to return to BofA. The lack of dedication from the sign dudes is disappointing. Commitment is one thing the country needs. If the sign dudes can't be annoying all day, then why bother at all.

Quigley: Business Culture “Immature and Ineffective”

2011-10-10T16:33:00.001-07:00

That's what the Journal's Win Quigley said of "our business culture" in the Albuquerque Journal’s Business Outlook this morning. (page 5, paragraph 5). Quigley was introducing his interview of George Boerigter, a part time New Mexican and owner of a 140-employee business in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Quigley's full sentence was, "I asked (Boerigter) to (critique New Mexico) because I have long believed our business culture is immature and ineffective."

Quigley didn't define our business culture. Nor did he define what he means by immature and ineffective.

Two things happened here. First, Boerigter seems one of those wealthy, well intended types drawn to NM by "The Enchantment." Usually such folks are liberals with inherited money and they go to Santa Fe and points north. Once here they find we are imperfect, which is true, God knows. So they set about saving us from what they see as our insular, ineffective, immature stupidity. Eventually they go away, convinced we are irredeemably stupid and backward.

Credit Boerigter with backing some of his ideas with money.

Second, journalists are people who ask questions for a living. Those questions generate from within the given journalist's moral framework. Quigley has done us all a favor by going public with how he sees the world that he covers. When faced with dealing with Quigley, we all should understand that he thinks we are idiots. Respond to him, yes. But respond with care.

The Quigley view, as expressed by Boerigter, is “The core business of this town is living off the government. The core local business is real estate: build, buy or flip.” Boerigter must not have noticed what happened to real estate around here the past few years.

As to “the government,” my argument remains: There’s government and there’s government. While the national laboratories and other research facilities bring an often maddening process orientation, they are not regular government, such as, say, the Bureau of Land Management or the EPA. The national labs are world class excellence and play an important role in the security of this nation. I’m glad they are here.

As to building private sector technology businesses, one might check with Sherman McCorkle about his years with Technology Ventures.

An element in play here is something I always associate with the late Gov. Bruce King. “I may be a country boy,” I can imagine King responding to some interlocutor, “But don’t ever call me a dumb country boy because I’ll ‘country boy’ you to death.” And he would.

Montezuma Voting Was A Mess, Too

2011-10-09T14:21:00.001-07:00

Voting at Montezuma Elementary School was a mess, too, in Albuquerque’s city election on Tuesday. This information comes from one of the poll workers which whom I happened to visit this morning.

Through about 3 P.M., he said, the voting machines worked sometimes. When they didn’t work, the lines grew.

A bigger problem, a true system problem, came from the poll workers. Well intended as poll workers almost always are, some of the people had slight to zero computer experience. This is a function of demographics. Poll workers tend to be older. One Montezuma worker had never dealt with a computer mouse. They simply did not deal with the technology as effectively as a 14-year-old or even a 34-year-old. Training will not fix this problem.

Apparently the convenience of the new approach has to do with the technology allowing faster processing of the voters. Even if that’s true, which dubious, so what. Getting ballots to voters is a quick process. Doing something in two minutes instead of four minutes seems a trivial change not worth the disruption. Consolidating the polling places seems to have to do with getting enough voters into polling places to justify the technology.

My sense is that this so-called convenience is something that voting powers-that-be have decided is a good thing. Their attitude is, James Taylor put it, “Well, I'm a steamroller, baby I'm bound to roll all over you.” Time to resist.

Abq Election "Convenience" Meant Long Lines

2011-10-05T13:53:00.001-07:00

Yesterday the city of Albuquerque tried a new approach to locating polling places. The theory, I understand, was to make things more convenient by having far fewer polling places than in previous city elections. This seems backwards. I can’t imagine McDonald’s, one working definition of fast and convenient, consolidating locations in the name of increasing convenience.

We voted at Jefferson Middle School, kitty corner across Lomas Blvd. from the University of New Mexico. The polling place in the old gym. We took my mom to vote. She is pushing 92 and is semi-mobile.

We waited about 45 minutes to vote, finally getting to the head of the line after 6 P.M. More than 1,200 people had voted by this time. This wasn’t all bad. We got to visit with a number of acquaintances who were also stranded.

One theory of the line was offered by the UNM freshman in the line ahead of us. Being close to UNM meant that tens of thousands of people, not resident in the area, perhaps saw the Jefferson polling place as handy. We were told that Montezuma Elementary, a mile or so to the north, had no crowd, which supported the UNM theory. The length of the line drove some people away. One of our neighbors opted for Montezuma, observing that she just didn’t have the 45 minutes to wait.

The Jefferson parking situation, never good with the slightest crowd, which means every day after school, was a mess. Some new access adjustments, clearly the product of the worst nightmares of traffic engineers, made things worse. The parking lot by the gym had two handicapped spots, both full, of course. Two young men rolled their BMW convertible into the spot reserved for police.

Part of the convenience idea was that anyone could vote anywhere. But that meant some production issues which took more time. The polling place lacked the usual printed voter list, an omission that made sense because the list would have needed to include every city registered voter.

Polling staff, presented with a photo ID, found the voter in the database, which took a moment or two. Then a custom ballot was printed which took a minute or two. At, say, two minutes per voter, these tasks added more than 40 hours to the process for people voting at Jefferson.

Bernalillo County officials including Maggie Hart Stebbins, a county commissioner, were in evidence at Jefferson. The county really wants to implement a voting system like the one producing the long lines yesterday, we were told.

Say it ain’t so. Just under 40,000 people voted yesterday. Can you imagine the disasterous effect of laying this convenience on a general election?

New Mexico Magazine Layoffs Overdue

2011-09-28T10:38:00.000-07:00

The recent layoffs at New Mexico Magazine, a division of the Department of Tourism, surprised and pleased me. Small publications are dynamic, if nothing else. But this is the government.

Seven of the 17 magazine staffers depart October 5. For the magazine to have lost more than $1.4 million over two years, as I read, without staff changes months ago reflects its government owned status. Just how did the old regime lose all that money. A new editor did appear in May with a new publisher set now.

My perspective is dated. My New Mexico Magazine experience as an employee was in the fall of 1979 and I have paid only occasional attention to it for years.
The magazine has two main problems, being part of the government and a northern tilt in the editorial.

I would create an "authority" to run New Mexico Magazine, keeping it within the state umbrella, but freeing it from the strictures that get in the way. One example is in the games that my boss played to get around the purchasing act. Such games are necessary to function, silly, possibly illegal and certainly inefficient. A later publisher was fired for being what I called "too entrepreneurial." Something about trading ski passes to ad buyers.

Also, I have always found the vacation planner incoherent.

The layoff prompted a letter to the editor that stands as one of those classically parochial whines about the purity claimed from being born in the state. Excerpts:

“It makes me sad to know that with the Sept. 20 layoff, New Mexico Magazine now has even fewer native-born New Mexicans working at its office…
“No longer are there any people of color represented on the policy-making staff, an occurrence that hasn’t been seen in decades…
“New Mexico Magazine — written, edited and presented without our native people — is like making green chile stew and substituting spinach for the chile.”

Redistricting: Martinez Abandons Campaign Position

2011-09-25T19:27:00.000-07:00

During the primary campaign last year, I posed some questions to each of the candidates for governor. There were three questions. One of my newspaper columns was allocated to the answers to a question. Some candidates answered. Others didn't, blowing off the exercise. One of the questions was about redistricting. That was because I knew that redistricting was a partisan mess and because I have become enamored of the idea of independent redistricting commissions. Iowa sets the standard. Arizona and Washington are good.

This was, I admit, also a set up. The answer allowed me to hold the winner accountable. So it is with Susana Martinez. The redistricting special session of the legislature adjourned with no decisions (well, few). The whole thing is going to the courts. That's a cop out, not at all the work for which the governor and legislators get paid. And certainly not bold, to come back again to Martinez campaign slogan. The question and Martinez' answer follows from my mid-May 2010 column.

Question:

Will you introduce legislation in the 2011 regular session of the Legislature creating an independent commission to handle redistricting of congressional, legislative and other districts? Why or why not?

Martinez Answer: I support legislation sponsored by Keith Gardner which amends the New Mexico Constitution and establishes a bipartisan redistricting commission that draws lines for Congressional and state legislative districts consistent with federal and statutory requirements and based on the most recent federal, decennial Census. I support this legislation because too often politics drives this process and detracts from critical discussions like reducing our state’s historic budget deficit and turning our economy around while rooting out corruption.

Keith Gardner is Martinez' chief of staff. "Too often politics drives this process..." Still does, it seems.

2Q Personal Income Up 1.1%

2011-09-23T10:23:00.004-07:00

The personal income of New Mexicans grew 1.1% in the second year of the year from the first quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported yesterday. That growth rate, down from a 1.6% first quarter increase over the fourth quarter of 2010, tied the national growth rate and was good for 35th nationally.

Personal income increased 4.9% in New Mexico from the second quarter of 2010 through the second quarter of 2011.
For the one-quarter increase, Arizona grew 1.2%; Utah, 1.4%; Colorado 1.1%.

By percentage, dividends, interest and rent led New Mexico’s growth with a 1.9% increase, followed by transfers at 1.2% and net income 0.9%.
Construction earning dropped 2.6% during the second quarter. Accommodation and food services dropped 0.4%. Health care and social assistance earnings grew 2.1% during the quarter.

Revisions knocked 1.1% off New Mexico’s previous reported 2010 personal income and 1.3% off the 2009 estimate.

Rural Counties Add 7,200 Wage Jobs. Metros Lose.

2011-09-22T17:05:00.001-07:00

The Department of Workforce Services released new job numbers today. In my Sunday (9/18) entry, I covered the big picture, using the federal figures. Today I’ll concentrate on the metro areas. The numbers that follow are for wage jobs and are not seasonally adjusted.

Albuquerque lost wage jobs for the 35th consecutive month on a year over year basis. The loss was 1,600 wage jobs (0.4%) for the year with a 400-job gain between July and August. One reason, DWS said, is that mining, while growing nicely statewide with an 1,800 job, or ten percent, August to August increase, have only two or three jobs in metro Albuquerque and therefore can’t help things grow.

Leisure and hospitality in Albuquerque, which more or less means tourism and local restaurants, added 1,300 jobs (3%) year over year which losing 300 jobs between July and August.

Las Cruces dropped 100 jobs year-over-year while adding 1,800 between July and August. The improvement had nearly everything to do with New Mexico State University getting backing session.

Santa Fe added 400 jobs for the month and lost 100 for the year. That 100-job loss is 0.2%, nearly nothing.

Farmington added 1,100 jobs over the year, a nice 2.3% gain and had no change between July and August.

The four metro areas together lost 700 jobs year-over-year. The means the rural counties added 7,200 jobs.

Things continue to improve on my ten percent unemployment measure. We’re down to two counties with more than ten percent unemployment—Luna and Mora, both with rates approaching 13%.

Real Economic Development: Sandia, Cray Form Institute

2011-09-19T15:33:00.002-07:00

Real “development” of any economy comes from doing new things or doing existing things more productively. Doing new things can mean luring a new company to an area. Or it can mean existing companies doing something new.

Back in May I got a news release from Sandia National Laboratories about a new partnership with Cray Inc., the supercomputer manufacturer. It slipped to the bottom of the electronic pile, but in thinking about developing our lagging economy and in my continued annoyance at those whining about “dependence on the government,” I dug it out.

Much of Sandia’s release follows. What the release doesn’t say is that New Mexicans at national laboratories have led large-scale scientific computing since before there were national laboratories. Los Alamos was known as the Manhattan Project in those days. When I started following such things in the 1980s, New Mexico had more supercomputers per capita than any state.

Here is the release: May 27, 2011 6:01:54 AM MDT ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories and supercomputer manufacturer Cray Inc. are forming an institute focused on data-intensive supercomputers. The Supercomputing Institute for Learning and Knowledge Systems (SILKS), to be located at Sandia in Albuquerque, will take advantage of the strengths of Sandia and Cray by making software and hardware resources available to researchers who focus on a relatively new application of supercomputing.

That task is to make sense of huge collections of data rather than carry out more traditional modeling and simulation of scientific problems. Sandia and Cray signed a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) to establish the institute.

“It’s an unusual opportunity,” said Bruce Hendrickson, Sandia senior manager of computational sciences and math. “Cray has an exciting machine [the XMT] and we know how to use it well. This CRADA should help originate new technologies for efficiently analyzing large data sets. New capabilities will be applicable to Sandia’s fundamental science and mission work.”

Shoaib Mufti, director of knowledge management in Cray’s custom engineering group, said, “Sandia is a leading national lab with strong expertise in areas of data analysis. The concept of big data in the HPC [high-performing computing] environment is an important area of focus for Cray, and we are excited about the prospect of new solutions that may result from this collaborative effort with Sandia.” Rob Leland, Sandia director of computing research, added, “This is a great example of how Sandia engages our industrial partners. The XMT was originally developed at Sandia’s suggestion. It combined an older processor technology Cray had developed with the Red Storm infrastructure we jointly designed, giving birth to a new class of machines. That’s now come full circle. The Institute will leverage this technology to help us in our national security work, benefitting the Labs and the nation as well as our partner.” Red Storm was the first parallel processing supercomputer to break the teraflop barrier. Its descendants, built by Cray, are still the world’s most widely purchased supercomputer. The XMT, however, has a different mode of operation from conventional parallel-processing systems. Says Hendrickson, “Think about your desktop: The memory system’s main job is to keep the processor fed. It achieves this through a complex hierarchy of intermediate memory caches that stage data that might be needed soon. The XMT does away with this hierarchy. Though its memory accesses are distant and time-consuming to reach, the processor keeps busy by finding something else to do in the meantime.” In a desktop machine or ordinary supercomputer, Hendrickson said, high performance can only be achieved if the memory hierarchy is successful at getting data to the processor fast enough. But for many important applications, this isn’t possible and so processors idle most of the time. Said another way, traditional machines try to avoid latency (waiting for data) though the use of complex memory hierarchies. The XMT doesn’t avoid latency; instead, it embraces it. By supporting many fine-grained snippets of a program called “threads,” the processor switches to a new thread when memory access would otherwise make it have to wait for data. “Traditional machines are pretty good for many science applications, but the XMT’s latency tolerance is a superior approach for lots of complex data applications,” Hendrickson says. “For example, following a chain of data links to draw some inference totally trashes memory locality because the data may be anywhere.” More broadly, he says, the XMT supports programs very good at working with large data collections that can be represented as graphs. Such computations appear in biology, law enforcement, business intelligence, and in various national security applications. Instead of a single answer, results are often best viewed as graphs. Sandia and other labs have already built software to run graph algorithms, though “the software is still pretty immature,” Hendrickson said. “That’s one reason for the institute. As semantic database technology grows in popularity, these kinds of applications may become the norm.” Among its other virtues, the XMT saves power because it runs at slower clock speeds. This normally bad thing is good here because rapid computation is not the goal but rather the accurate laying-out of data points. SILKS’ primary objectives, as described in the CRADA, are to accelerate the development of high-performance computing, overcome barriers to implementation, and apply new technologies to enable discovery and innovation in science, engineering, and for homeland security.

BLS Says Jobs Up, "Employment" Down

2011-09-18T13:38:00.000-07:00

New Mexico didn’t stand out in the August jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, released Friday, September 16. The labor force, on a seasonally adjusted basis, shrank by another 6,500, bringing it to 929,700, down 24,000 from August 2010. Employment, 889,800 a year ago, was 868,300 in August 2011. The number of officially unemployed—people who say they’re looking for work—dropped to 61,400, but that’s only because so many have given up and bagged the whole job game. Our 1.9 percentage point drop in the unemployment was the nation’s largest. It would be nice if that meant improvement in the economy.Total wage jobs (different from “employment”), still using seasonally adjusted numbers, was 805,500 in August, increased 3,100 (not quite four tenths of one percent) from July and 7,400 from August 2010 (approaching one percent). Among the sectors, construction spent the summer at around 40,000 jobs with manufacturing at 29,000. At least they’re not dropping. Trade, together with transportation and utilities for some reason, gained 5,000 (138,600) during the August-to-August year. Finance gained 2,300. Professional and business services, with 93,900 employees, remained in the summer range, but still is down 5,500 for the year. Leisure and hospitality, which sort of means tourism, has spent the year at about 83,000 wage jobs. Government, with 194,600 jobs, is down 1,300 for the year.Education and heath services (127,200 jobs) was steady during the summer and is up 7,600 since August 2010.

Refuge? In the Public Education Department?

2011-09-16T14:33:00.001-07:00

That's what the sign says, though, "Area of Refuge." From what? When is the area to be used? The sign is in a stairwell in the Santa Fe building housing the Public Education Department. I took the photo Tuesday, September 13. I thought church's or spiritual organizations such as the Lama Foundation offered places of refuge.

I was in the education building looking for the Legislative Education Study Committee, which turned out to be across the street. LESC took about two minutes to agree to help find information addressing some questions that the Public Education Department has ignored for several months.

Abq Homes Sales Up in August

2011-09-14T15:01:00.000-07:00

Metro Albuquerque home sales increased in August over July. The news surprised me because the 815 pending sales of single family detached homes during July were a 119 unit, or 13% drop from June. Pending sales provide a rough leading indicator of sales closed the following month. Therefore I expected August sales closed to drop.The difference came in the proportion of July pending sales that turned into closed sales during August. Sales closed during August represented 79% of July’s pending sales. Sales closed during July were 67% of sales pending during June.Why? No idea. A hint comes from the prices of those sales closed during August. Both the median price ($163,808) and the average price ($197,671) hit the second lowest level of the year and were down more than 10% from August 2010. The August median price dropped 8% from July. The average was down 6%.With an average of 76 days on the market, single family detached homes has the shortest sales period of 2010. The average sales period was 89 days during February.Some insight for us comes from Elliott D. Pollack & Company of Phoenix. The oversupply of homes there is getting absorbed, however slowly. However, Pollack sees a housing market recovery taking four or five more years. Phoenix is adding a few jobs, 22,300 in the year from July 2010 to July 2011.

Sanchez: Put Valencia in One District

2011-09-13T17:36:00.000-07:00

Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez has a bright redistricting idea for his home territory—Valencia County. Compact and contiguous seems to characterize the proposal.Sanchez has introduced a bill, prepared at his initiative and without consultation, proposing that Valencia County go into one congressional district. Now the county is sliced in half, roughly along the Rio Grande. Sanchez would put the county into district one, which is dominated by Albuquerque.

Sanchez pitched his idea today to the Senate Rules Committee which is chaired by Linda Lopez.A Rio Rancho resident objected to Sanchez putting “the heart of Rio Rancho” into district one. Most of Rio Rancho now is in district three.Photo by Mark Bralley.

American Cities No Place for Cyclists

2011-09-11T17:00:00.002-07:00

The Economist hit the proverbial elephant sitting on the bicycle seat with this headline, “With very few exceptions, America is no place for cyclists.” The magazine’s point is that “lanes are protected from motor vehicles by a line of white paint—a largely metaphorical barrier that many drivers ignore and police do not vigorously enforce. Bicyclist behavior, often erratic in my experience, is another factor, one not mentioned. Speed kills, the magazine said of the obvious. A car striking a pedestrian at 30 mph has 45% chance of killing the pedestrian. At 40 mph, the odds go to 85%. On Indian School Road in Albuquerque, equipped with those metaphorical white line “barriers,” 50 mph is not an uncommon speed. I have briefly followed a few of the maniacs just to check.Northern European cities separate cyclists from cars with physical barriers such as concrete buffers, trees or parked cars. Speed limits are lowered to about 19 mph, sometime that is done in Albuquerque in couple of places. The death toll is low. Portland is the only American city taking even most of the steps. “The result” more bikes and fewer deaths.”

This is Economic Development?

2011-09-07T14:32:00.000-07:00

Two television shows filmed (taped?) in Albuquerque will end after their respective fifth seasons. They are “Breaking Bad” and “In Plain Sight.” Wrung hands have ensued. But consider another perspective, the economic development perspective. Had a developer appeared before the developer’s board with the proposition below, that developer would have been laughed out of town if the board was at all sentient.Here’s the deal:100 employees. (excellent!). Part time, eight months a year at best. Five years in business would be considered a great success. One or two years is more likely. We, the local and/or state government, kick back to the company 25% of all spending in New Mexico. We think we can find more such companies, but there is no guarantee.

Martinez Speech Disappointing, At Best

2011-09-05T20:32:00.000-07:00

“Disappointing” is the nicest description possible of Gov. Susana Martinez’ “remarks” (not a speech) last Wednesday, August 31, to the Domenici Public Policy Conference in Las Cruces.The disappointment began with the introduction of Martinez by NMSU president Barbara Couture who repeated the nonsense (true nonsense, but nonsense) that Martinez was “born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley.” Born and raised in El Paso, Martinez hid behind the euphemism for most of her race for governor. Probably someone gave Couture the script and Couture didn’t think much about it. But why are Martinez people still unwilling to admit her birthplace. It’s just silly.This birth place thing is not quite as absurd as Bill Richardson’s claim of having been drafted by a major league baseball team. But with each repetition, it gets closer.Martinez said she was in Las Cruces to help celebrate the beginning of a new minor at NMSU, in child advocacy, I think she said. If Martinez is serious about reducing government activity in New Mexico, the last thing (or maybe the next to last thing) she should be doing is expanding the state’s profligate higher education system. But this was Las Cruces, NMSU and a subject close to Martinez' heart. Martinez repeated her campaign promise to cut the staff at the governor’s mansion. Old news. Whoppee.She said, proudly, “In the end we balanced the budget.” Balancing the budget is required by the constitution. Any governor who brags on balancing the budget is blowing major smoke.The next brag was on Union Pacific starting work on the multi-modal facility at Santa Teresa. Martinez indicated that the project was the result of her pro-business policies. Well, no. Martinez did support reauthorization of a locomotive fuel gross receipts exemption (or something like that) vital to the multi-modal. But the tax exemption, previously extended, has been around for maybe five years and the multi-modal idea has been around for maybe 25 years. Kevin Boberg invented the project and honored me with one of the first presentations.Probably the gross receipts extension was a slam dunk. Martinez had little to do with it. To claim more credit for the project was disingenuous at best, dishonest at worst. Martinez trashed legislative criticism of her ever expanding agenda for the special session of the legislature that starts tomorrow. She said legislators only wanting to do redistricting just want to protect themselves. True enough, but so what. Martinez did not pursue the idea of an independent redistricting commission, a notion that during the campaign she told me she favored.Martinez gave the same speech (er, remarks) earlier in the day to the Las Cruces Chamber of Commerce. At least I didn’t have to go to both meetings.

Chilies in Las Cruces, Large and Small

2011-08-31T18:02:00.001-07:00

The small chiles, all on one plant, I believe, are at the Chile Pepper Institute Teaching and Demonstration Garden in Las Cruces. (See sign photo.)

It appears to be a large red beached whale to drivers passing America's Best Value Inn on Picacho Avenue in Las Cruces. It is, however, proclaimed by a sign to be the world's largest chile. GIven that chiles are edible, more likely it is the world's largest sculpture of a chile. We had this same confusion in Durant, Oklahoma, when viewing what claimed to be the world's largest peanut. We suspected it was the world's largest sculpture of a peanut.

Does anyone know the size listing for chile and peanut sculpture?

Gallup Job index Survey Questions Are Here

2011-08-29T13:36:00.000-07:00

My current newspaper talks about New Mexico being in the bottom ten on the “job creation index’ produced by the Gallup polling firm. The column is in release to the ten subscribing newspapers around the state. In the column I promised to explain how Gallup came up with the numbers.
Here is what Gallup said about the survey:
“These results are based on aggregated data from nearly 100,000 interviews with employed adults during the first half of 2011, conducted as part of Gallup Daily tracking. Gallup asks those who are employed whether their companies are hiring workers and expanding the size of their labor forces, not changing the size of their workforces, or laying off workers and reducing their workforces. The figures reported here represent the net difference between the percentage reporting an expansion and the percentage reporting a reduction in their workforces.”
Find Gallup’
S release at: www.gallup.com/poll/149072/Energy-States-Lead-Job-Creation-Financial-States-Struggle.aspx.

Prices Increasing at Abq Journal

2011-08-27T10:10:00.002-07:00

The Albuquerque Journal is increasing the price of the base seven-day subscription by $24 per year starting October 1. The 14% increase will take the base seven-day subscription to $195 per year.
The letter from Albuquerque Publishing (Dear Valued Subscriber) only says the subscription is going up two dollars per month. The rest of the math is mine. In June I paid $171 to renew for a year.
The $171 price seems to apply to Albuquerque and Santa Fe. There is a $207 rate for "daily Sunday" that includes, eJournal, the Journal's new website offering of the print edition. I deduce that the increase also applies to the eJournal package, though that isn't clear. The Albuquerque Publishing letter mentions that "our electronic products were not included with you original subscription package."
The letter says my subscription "will include seven-day access to the eJournal." I think the idea is that my subscription may include the eJournal, but again I'm unsure.
The letter offers a test-drive of the eJournal. I'll look at it.

State Drops 5,500 Jobs During July

2011-08-25T16:33:00.001-07:00

New Mexico lost 5,500 wage jobs during July but still managed to add 3,500 jobs (on a non-seasonally adjusted basis) in the year since July 2010. That’s an increase of less than one half of one percent, a figure known to lay people as “hardly any at all.” On a seasonally adjusted basis, the increase was 2,200.
Today’s report from the Department of Workforce Services could only tout the continuing drop in the unemployment rate. But then DWS fessed up and said, “The recent declines resulted from workers leaving the labor force, not an increase in employment.” The seasonally adjusted report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, out August 19, shows a 20,800 drop over the year. People did join the labor force during the year and start seeking employment. But 20,800 more people than joined decided they would no longer be with the force.
An even 800,000 people have wage jobs in the state, DWS estimates.
Among the metro areas, Albuquerque remains the black hole with 3,200 wage jobs gone during July and 2,200 for the year. Government was the big loser in Albuquerque, down 6,600, with nearly all the losses coming in education and reflecting summer, I suppose.
Still, down is down in the real world and not the Orwellian “growth” that must be jargon for a lower rate of decline.
Las Cruces lost 300 jobs over the July-to-July year, as did Santa Fe. Farmington added 1,000 jobs.

Road Notes: Ranchos de Taos, Questa and Carson

2011-08-21T17:57:00.001-07:00

There is a Carson, New Mexico. It is about halfway between the Rio Grande and Taos Junction which is on U.S. 285 ten miles or so east of Ojo Caliente. Advertising brought us to Carson. It was the billboards in Taos erected by the Ojo Caliente folks (full name: Ojo Caliente Mineral Springs Resort and Spa). The boards reported that a newly paved road along the west rim of the Gorge would get one to Ojo. The “west rim” part was a stretch. The road was far enough west of the rim that one could not see into the gorge. Still, a nice drive.
But whether paving the road was justifiable in light of the transportation department being hundreds of millions of dollars short of doing what it says it really needs to do, well, that’s another question entirely.
Things have changed, big time, at Ojo since 1979 when “Hot Springs and Pools of the Southwest” described it as an “older commercial resort and bath house.” The older buildings are still there, but facilities such the new (to us) “Cliffside Suites” go for $349/night on weekends. Check it out at www.ojospa.com.
In Questa we found, after some searching, Shakey’s Bar and Grill. It is two large rooms behind a liquor store. We didn’t ask the origins of the K-Bob’s mirror over the bar. The burrito was good.
Other than the San Francisco de Asis mission church, for me the gem of Ranchos de Taos remains the Trading Post Café with elegant Italian food, fine and expensive art on the walls (even in the restroom), and an overall environment that can only be called “intensely local.” My lunch was a Torta Cubano, hardly Italian, but who cares.
Red River, our destination on this jaunt, was full of No Vacancy signs and Texas license plates with the occasional Oklahoma. That’s good.

Pres' Cancer Program Gets National Story

2011-08-16T15:46:00.000-07:00

Dealing with the healthcare system is a chore in the best of times. When one has something ugly and dangerous, the hassle goes way up.
Presbyterian Healthcare System’s nurse navigator program offers patients’ guidance and advocacy (Squeeky wheels and all that) for dealing with the system. Pres’ nurse navigator Colleen Sullivan-Moore and Metro Court Judge Judith Nakamura, in her cancer patient mode, made page one of the Wall Street Journal’s Personal Journal section this morning.
Over seven months of breast cancer treatment including two surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation treatment, Sullivan-Moore helped Nakamura, the story says, “understand the diagnosis and overcome her fears.”
Of Sullivan-Moore, Nakamura was quoted as saying, “She was the one who answered all the questions I was trying to figure out and coordinated every step for me.”
Great story. Great program.
I wonder if local media will follow up.

NM Leads in Federal Dollars

2011-08-15T12:45:00.003-07:00

The United States is one country, so it's easy to spend more money in some states than the given state pays in taxes to the federal government.
New Mexico leads in this status, reports The Economist in the July 30 issue. Take federal taxes paid minus federal spending as a percentage of state GDP for the years 1990 to 2009. New Mexico has received more money from the feds than sent to the feds to the tune of 260% of GDP.
The reason is that our modest population of two million, ranking about 37th nationally, and ample space have made New Mexico an ideal place for critical activities paid for with federal money—national laboratories, testing at White Sands and two Air Force bases requiring large, preferably empty spaces for practice.
Virginia and Maryland (including Washington, D.C.) roughly tie for second in this financial sweepstakes with federal financing coming in around 150% of GDP. One difference, though is that those two states, while having much national defense work, do The Government, everything else but national defense. Also, the two states have more people, 6.3 million in Maryland and eight million in Virginia. So there's much more money sloshing around.
The Economist's point is that since Europe consists of independent states, the European Union can't move the money around with the ease of the U.S.

Truth About the EPA, Wind Turbines Break, and Solar Subsidies

2011-08-11T15:04:00.002-07:00

Innovation magazine is a bimonthly (www.innovation-america.org) paid for by DOE and produced by Technology Ventures Corp. Given the source of the money, every issue has a certain amount of full blown policy flackery all in a full color package.
The June-July issue, which I only looked at today, has an interview with Heather Zichal, President Obama's "deputy assistant to the president for energy and climate change." Zichal "explained the administration's energy strategy.” What I wonder about such articles and a solar piece in the same issue is, Do people really read this stuff? And still do nothing?
The solar article said solar was getting competitive with conventional energy sources. And why, you wonder, “...government incentive and rebate programs.”
Piety about technology transfer occupied pages and pages. But two little words explained much of the problem with tech transfer, “lab culture.”
Finally a news flash. Wind turbines break. “…although modern wind turbines have a design lifespan of 20 years, they typically fail two to three times per year during the first ten years and average four unplanned maintenance incidents annually.” The wind turbine industry doesn’t know why their turbines break.
Here is what Zichal said about the EPA & utilities:
"Zichal said the Obama administration plans to push back hard at Republican attempts in Congress to scuttle an Environmental Protection Administration effort to set new standards for utilities and other major industrial polluters. The EPA dispute has been brewing since 2007, when the Supreme Court agreed that greenhouse gases could harm human health and well-being. As part of its ruling, the court found that greenhouse gas emissions—including carbon dioxide—are within the Clean Air Act’s definition of air pollutants. Late last year, the agency issued a finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger the public’s health and welfare and announced plans to set new standards for utilities and other large industrial polluters.
"Then, in December 2010, the agency announced plans to set new greeenhouse gas emissions standards for utilities and petroleum refineries. In January, the new greenhouse gas permitting requirements kicked in for large emitters that are already obtaining permits from the EPA for other pollutants. New and existing facilities making major modifications would be required to include greenhouse gases in their permit requests if they increase greenhouse gas emissions by at least 75,000 tons per year. The permits must demonstrate the use of “best available control technologies” to minimize emissions if the facility is expanded."

Home Sales Down from June

2011-08-10T19:33:00.001-07:00

The good news is that metro Albuquerque home sales during July were up over July 2010, according to figures just released by the Greater Albuquerque Association of realtors. Sales closed during July on 625 single family detached homes, a 53 unit, 12.2% increase from July 2010. Pending sales, 815 during July, were up 63 units or 8.4% from July 2010.
But there’s a catch. Isn’t there always?
Those 2010 sales were artificially depressed by the Obama administration’s first time buyer tax credit, which sucked sales into the months before the tax credit ended April 30, 2010.
The 2011 reality is that July sales, under “normal” seasonal market behavior, should have been a bit more than June.
Didn’t happen. July sales closed were down 33 units or 5% from June. Pending sales, the leading indicator for sales the following month, dropped 119 units or 13% from June.
Further, 67% of June’s 934 pending sales turned into July closed sales. For June, 73% of May’s 899 pending sales turned into June closed sales.
In other words, not only were there fewer sales during June, fewer of May’s pending sales became closed sales. (Statistically, this doesn’t quite work because some of July’s closed sales were pending in May. I figure these laggard pending sales average out over time.) From this highly informed (yeah, right) perspective August looks a tad ugly.
Prices were up from July 2010 but down from June 2011.
With 99 homes sold, the most popular price category was for homes between $200,000 and $249,000.

Government Checks Drive Income Growth

2011-08-09T17:40:00.001-07:00

Regular readers, those few whom I may frustrate with irregular postings, know I get crabby about images of New Mexico as a lapdog existing because of The Government, a huge single entity. Just the latest annoying mindlessness came yesterday from blogger Joe Monahan who used the phrase “the all important government sector…”
However, in one area—money—a part of The Government, the Barack Obama failed Keynesian stimulus part, has provided the action the past couple of years.
Metro area personal income figures for 2010, released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, show that transfer payments, meaning checks from the government, provided the income growth for our four cities the last two years.
The BEA said, “Personal income in the metropolitan portion of the United States rose 2.9 percent in 2010 after falling 1.9 percent in 2009.” The worst performer, Grand Junction, Colorado, down 0.9% in 2010, in very much in our neighborhood. “Private-sector earnings grew in 2010 in each of the 15 largest MSAs (accounting for 48 percent of this sector’s earnings in the metropolitan portion of the United States),” the BEA said.
We’re not in the game.
Personal income in Albuquerque was $30,984 million in 2010, a 2.2% increase from 2009 which, in turn, increased 0.5% in 2009. Albuquerque beat the nation’s 2.9% 2010 income increase but was behind the nation in 2009. Net earnings in Albuquerque dropped 1.4% in 2009 and 0.1% in 2010. Net earnings is what people get from working. Here is the BEA’s definition, “Net earnings is earnings by place of work (the sum of wage and salary disbursements, supplements to wages and salaries, and proprietors’ income) less contributions for government social insurance, plus an adjustment to convert earnings by place of work to a place-of-residence basis.”
Transfer receipts—checks from the government to Albuquerqueans—were up 13.5% in 2009 and 10.6% in 2010.
Bad as it was in 2009, Albuquerque’s percentage earnings growth rank 87th nationally. As the national economy began to improve a little in 2010, Albuquerque earnings growth improved, but the growth rank dropped to 286. In other words, 285 metro areas beat Albuquerque.
After an ugly 2009 (net earnings down 6%) Farmington’s national rank for income growth bounced to 173 in 2010 from 306 in 2009. Still, Transfer payments were up 11.9% in 2009 and 12.1% in 2010.
By the measure of national rank of income growth, Las Cruces had good years in 2009 and 2010, ranking fourth and eighth in growth. Again, transfer payments drove the growth.
Personal income to Santa Feans dropped 2.6% in 2009, overcoming a 15.9% increase in transfer payments that year. Income grew 2.2% in 2010 on a 0.7% increase in net earnings, 1.4% growth in dividends interest and rent, and, once again a 10% hike in those government transfer check amounts.

Rural Counties Gain Jobs, Metros Lose

2011-07-29T09:29:00.001-07:00

New Mexico added 2,400 wage jobs in June over June 2010, an insignificant 0.3% growth, all coming in the rural counties, according to figures released yesterday by the Department of Workforce Services. The four metro areas lost 4,300 jobs among them. That means the rural counties gained 7,700 jobs. This was the first time in 32 months for statewide year-over-year job growth.
The state also added 1,400 wage jobs between May and June on a seasonally not adjusted basis. Seasonally adjusted, the May-June increase moved to 3,700 jobs.
Albuquerque continued to lead the year-over-year metro job loss sweepstakes, down another 2,400. Las Cruces lost 1,300 jobs, year-over-year; Santa Fe, 400; Farmington, 200.
While the unemployment rate drop means little due to mostly reflecting people leaving the labor force, the county unemployment performance is worth one note. A year ago, nine counties claimed more than ten percent unemployed, including Torrance and Valencia counties in metro Albuquerque. The ten percent figure is down to three counties—Luna, 17.2%; Mora, 14.8%; and Guadalupe, 10.6%.
The wonders of movie making, rolling along in Albuquerque in June 2010, explain an 1,100 job drop in the to 8,200 jobs in the city’s information sector. As DWS says, the business is cyclical.

Three Rs Pitch Environmentalism and Taxes

2011-07-27T08:56:00.000-07:00

Four “conservation activists” offered a defense of a federal program called the “Land and Water Conservation Fund” in the Albuquerque Journal today. That’s good, I suppose. Everyone can make their pitch.
What’s bad is their claim that the fund “is not paid for with your tax dollars.” The money comes from royalties on off-shore drilling. That, to me, means a tax. Further, to the extent that the drilling tax, er, royalty, raises the cost of oil, that tax is imposed on everyone.
Three of these activists claim membership in a group called Republicans for Environmental Protection. I have always thought this group stood for more regulation, higher taxes and the resulting lower economic activity.
Pretty much everyone is for environmental protection. The overall debate is long since done. The question is what the protection means in a given situation.

Road Notes: Quality, Rest Stops & Mowing

2011-07-24T17:37:00.001-07:00

Twelve days, seven states and 3,000 miles maybe 85% on Interstates, we were pleased to return to New Mexico from southwest Wisconsin. Our new car, a Toyota Avalon purchased from Beaver Toyota, treated us well. The weather did not. Between the heat and the humidity, it was unpleasant. While loading our luggage in Wisconsin, I felt as if I was working in a sauna.
With one exception, we found that mostly the roads were acceptable. Sometimes stretches of road had deteriorated. Some times roads were being repaired.
The exception was I-76 from the Nebraska border into Denver. The right lane was so shattered that drivers routinely chose the left lane.
Going south from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, I-380, heavily traveled every day, was jammed for miles by the closing of one lane. A Pawlenty for President RV was stuck in the jam. We have read that Pawlenty’s campaign is stuck, too.
Rest stops varied from nonassuming and functional to palaces. Iowa had a couple of serious palaces with signs offering several hundred words of explanation of the area’s significance. Texas, as one might expect, offers the best palace. The buildings serve as small museums. They perch on a hill on I-40 east of McLean with spectacular views.
New Mexico goes the other way.
North of Las Vegas along I-25 on the west side of the highway, there is a rest stop without facilities at mile marker 360 and another, with facilities, at mile marker 375. That’s 15 miles. Obviously the one without facilities should be closed.
Let’s just say that the other one needs work. We stopped there because we were going south. It was last Wednesday, July 20. The wood pillars supporting the portal are eroding. (I couldn’t find my camera, so there’s no photo. Sorry.) The signs designating the men’s side are hand lettered. A clue.
The report from the women’s side starts with a wobbly toilet. The lock is broken. The grate has come off the hand dryer, one of those hot-air things, exposing the wires that heat the air. The stall is coming unscrewed.
A part of the New Mexico Department of Transportation called District Maintenance Patrols is supposed to maintain rest stops.
Of the seven states we traveled, New Mexico and Colorado, where it rains the least, paid the most attention to mowing along the shoulders of the highways. Iowa, home to much rain, seems to have given up mowing. The delightful result is miles and miles of flowers along the highway.

Mixed Signals From NM Economy, That's Good

2011-07-22T10:46:00.001-07:00

Some OK things happened in the New Mexico economy between May and June, according to figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics this morning.
But the not-so-OK bottom line is that without the education and health services sector, the state would still be losing wage jobs.
Overall, however, the signals appear mixed, a huge improvement over the uniformly poor performance of the past three years. (All the numbers here are seasonally adjusted.)
The two principal jobs numbers went in opposite directions. “Employment” was down 4,400 in June from May, but up 500 from June 2011. “Wage jobs,” a different and probably better quality number, was up 3,700 in June over May and also up—good news here—up 2,100 from June 2010.
More good news comes from the large and well-paid professional and business services sector, up in June to 93,100 jobs by a statistically insignificant 200 jobs from May but also up from April. Professional and business services is down 7,000 from the employment of 100,100 in June 2010.
The small but critical manufacturing sector appears stable over the past year at 28,600 jobs. Government employment has held at just over 198,000 jobs over the year.
Education and health services added 4,000 jobs in June for a total of 127,400, a performance that seems amazing to me. The sector is up 7,500 since June 2010.

Those Expensive Road Signs

2011-07-15T13:59:00.004-07:00

I have talked—on and on, some might say—about the absurd road signs along our border, courtesy of the Richardson administration. A problem has been that the concept is difficult to describe. These photos of the signs on I-40 at Glenrio were shot a couple of weeks ago by my sister, Connie Matzen of Raleigh, NC.
There are three other signs, one at Hobbs, and two on I-10 south of Las Cruces. Total price, just shy of $1 million.

Abq Not Resilient. Other NM Metros Worse.

2011-07-15T13:50:00.003-07:00

Albuquerque ranks 117 out of 361 metro areas on the Resilience Capacity Index produced by the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California Berkeley. See http://brr.berkeley.edu/rci/metro/index. That's not encouraging, but check the state's other metro areas. Farmington is 278. Las Cruces is 332. Santa Fe is 223.
The website says, "Regional resilience refers to the ability of a place to recover from a stress, either an acute blow, as in the case of an earthquake or major plant closing, or a chronic strain, as may occur with longstanding economic decline or unremitting rapid population growth. Conceiving of regions as capable of adaptation and transformation in response to challenges allows researchers and practitioners to understand the conditions and interventions that may make one place more or less resilient and why."

Road Notes: Mowing, Flowers and Corn

2011-07-12T15:13:00.000-07:00

Mowing highway shoulders seems a useless exercise, especially in the case of interstates where the paved shoulder is the width of even large autos. I commented on this before. Mowing the highway shoulder seems especially useless in the desert, which is a little short of rain to grow plants next to those wide shoulders.
Highway folks in Iowa seem to have the same idea, no more mowing (or at least less). The bonus stems, so to speak, from the fact that it rains in Iowa with the result being abundant flowers along the interstate highways.
Sometimes the wind blows in Iowa in Wisconsin. Wind, we’re told by our Wisconsin expert, was the explanation for yesterday’s weird sight, miles of corn fields with the corn tilted, even pretty much laying flat. The big wind blew by at around 6 A.M. yesterday morning. Tilt-a-corn, I observed. Today, happily, the corn was back standing tall.

Not Much Happening in Santa Rosa

2011-07-08T16:11:00.001-07:00

It was a warm morning today in Santa Rosa. The downtown streets were empty to a fair degree. The streets are amazingly wide, except at intersections where the anti-mobility cabal has bribed the city into building a concrete blob into the intersection to restrict movement. A good many stores were closed at 10:30 A.M.
What especially wasn’t happening was the morning agenda for the interim Economic and Rural Development Committee. It took a while to discover this. We were a bit late for the meeting, partly due to leaving Albuquerque a little late.
We were also late because we couldn’t find the building, the Blue Hole Dive Training and Santa Rosa Conference Center. We had an address, 244 4th Street, from the city’s website, www.srnm.org. It took a few minutes to determine the facility wasn’t on 4th Street. I figured to ask the Guadalupe County Communicator newspaper, but the office was locked. Plan B was the visitor center across the street. The woman gave us directions. After one missed turn, we got to a place that had a sign saying, “Blue Hole,” which is Santa Rosa’s renowned diving nirvana. There were folks in swim suits, but no legislator license plates, the usual sign of congregated legislators.
We sought more directions and were sent back to Blue Hole, where we had just been. This time we got out of the car and checked out the somewhat rundown appearing building next to Blue Hole. It was indeed a meeting facility. One room had tables arrayed in a manner common to committee hearing. The building was empty and locked. There was no sign on the building. We had not seen a mention of “convention center” on the sign at the parking lot entrance.
We watched families leaping into Blue Hole from a bluff perhaps 15 feet above the water. We chatted with a couple from Colorado as they donned diving gear. They prefer to dive in the Caribbean, but Santa Rosa is next best and much closer.
We then cruised downtown, saw some lovely stone buildings, bought a snack and left.
On the way out of town, for the first time we read the fine print on the website page about the conference center. It said, “Construction… is currently underway with a targeted completion date of August 2009… Opening date is still tentative.”
Road Notes:
Drivers in downtown Santa Rosa stopped to let us cross the street, even before we stepped from the curb. A nice, small town touch.
Interstate 40 has a construction project that seems to consist only of signs announcing the project.
Black blotches, presumably from grass fires, mostly small, dotted the roadside.

Hyperion Gets Money

2011-07-03T14:56:00.002-07:00

Hyperion Power Generation Inc. (www.hyperionpowergeneration.com) of Los Alamos (and Denver, London and Washington, D.C.) has obtained additional capital, reports Commercial Break, a newsletter of Technology Ventures Corporation. The article said, "The company closed on its Series B round of capital from existing and additional private investors. HPG was formed to commercialize a small modular nuclear reactor design by
Los Alamos National Lab scientists. The reactor fills a previously unmet need for a transportable power source that is safe, clean, sustainable, and cost efficient."
The new capital will allow Hyperion to complete the final power plant design and to begin licensing and sales. When "in mass production," each reactor will produce power for 20,000 homes.
As mentioned in my May 2 post, Small modular reactors were a big topic at the uranium fuel cycle conference in Hobbs. But I didn't hear a mention of Hyperion, which still seems a bit odd.
Hyperion presented at the 2010 TVC Equity Capital Symposium. Find Technology Ventures Corporation at www.techventures.org.

Labor Force Drops 9,800, Albuquerque Leads Job Losses

2011-06-23T15:28:00.001-07:00

People are dropping from New Mexico’s labor force far faster than jobs are appearing, says the Department of Workforce Services in the May job report, released this afternoon. That means the unemployment rate is down, but that’s the result of fewer people caring enough to say they are unemployed. New Mexico had the nation’s largest April-to-May unemployment rate drop with 0.7 percentage point decline to 6.9%.
Our labor force was 954,100 in May 2010 and 944,300 in May 2011.
New Mexico lost another 6,300 wage jobs from May 2010 through May 2011, making for 31 consecutive months of statewide job declines.
Albuquerque, now aided by Las Cruces, continues to be the black hole of the New Mexico economy. Albuquerque lost 3,700 jobs for the year with Las Cruces dropping another 1,700. Albuquerque added 800 jobs during May.
Santa Fe and Farmington both added a few jobs year-over-year and during May. The joint year-over-year growth was 500 jobs.
Albuquerque and Las Cruces dropping 5,400 jobs and Farmington and Santa Fe adding 500 means that the rural counties lost 1,400 jobs, year-over-year.
Two important segments of New Mexico’s basic economy added jobs during the year. Leisure and hospitality was up 1,500 jobs, or 1.8%. Mining employment grew by 1,300.
The growth leader again was education and health services with a 4,200 annual gain. The education part contains all sorts of instructional firms from private colleges such and St. John’s in Santa Fe to University of the Southwest in Hobbs to driving schools. Health care means all the obvious stuff including medical practitioners, hospitals, blood banks and ambulance firms, kidney dialysis, home health care and child day care companies, so long as they are in the private sector. But as you can see, government pays for much of the health sector.
The information segment, which contains movie production, continued to lose jobs, down 1,100 year-over-year For all those claiming sustainability or stability or something like that from the heavily subsidized movie business, here’s the DWS version of the truth. The “motion picture component is subject to large employment fluctuations based on film production activity. April, May, and June 2010 each produced an elevated jobs estimate, so another large over-the-year loss, possibly even greater than April’s, will
likely occur in June.”
Professional and business services, for some time the state’s weakest basic sector, showed a 100-job annual gain. The gain came in temporary help, hardly something to cheer.

Sandia, LANL Win 7 R&D Awards

2011-06-22T15:38:00.000-07:00

With seven 2011 R&D 100 Awards between them, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories continue their place among the nation’s research leaders. The annual awards, considered the Oscars of innovation, are given by R&D Magazine. The awards, announced today, honor the 100 leading technological advances of the year.
People who whine about the lab’s place in New Mexico—“…overdependence on the government…”—must not know about the awards. Or, worse, maybe they don’t care.
Sandia got four awards. LANL got four. I’ll let the respective press releases do the explaining.
Los Alamos National Laboratory:
NanoCluster Beacons: “NanoCluster Beacons are collections of silver atoms designed to illuminate when bound to nucleic acids, such as the DNA of specific pathogens. (T)hese beacons can be used to probe for diseases that threaten humans by identifying the nucleic acid targets that represent a person’s full genome, and allow for personalized medication. They can also be used in quantitative biology applications, such as counting individual molecules inside a cell.”
Revolutionizing Deepwater Oil-Well Drilling:
TAPSS, or Trapped Annular Pressure Shrinking Spacer, is a spacer fluid… to help prevent catastrophes in offshore oil-well drilling. Conventional spacer fluids are placed between oil well casings to secure the well and balance the pressure exerted by the surrounding geological formations. Most of these fluids expand when heated during drilling, causing potential pressure build ups and disastrous oil spills. TAPSS, on the other hand, shrinks when heated and can be used to offset any thermal expansion from the other fluids. TAPSS is formulated with enough methyl methacrylate to counteract the expansion of conventional spacer fluids. This new spacer is not difficult to use, is self-functioning, and requires minimal time to install.”
Thorium Is Now Green:
“Th-ING was developed… as a straightforward, cost-effective, and safe method to produce thorium. Thorium is an element capable of producing more energy than both uranium and coal using significantly lower quantities. This element is only slightly radioactive, making it an excellent candidate for a future sustainable energy source. It is so safe that it will never lead to a nuclear meltdown when used in a nuclear reactor.”
Sandia National Laboratories:
Microresonator Filters and Frequency References: Microresonators are small acoustic resonators that have highly precise sound and are manufactured using the same technologies that mass-produce integrated circuits (IC). Microresonator technology allows hundreds of filters and oscillators operating over a wide (32kHz – 10 GHz) frequency range to be realized on a single IC chip and monolithically integrated with radio frequency (RF) transistor circuits. They will perform RF filtering and frequency synthesis functions in next-generation wireless handsets, cell phones and other wireless devices, offering higher performance and frequency diversity in a smaller package and at a lower price than current technologies.
Ultra-high-voltage Silcon Carbide Thyristor: This DOE Energy Storage Systems project has developed an ultra-high-voltage silicon carbide thyristor. The semiconductor device allows next-generation “smart grid” power electronics system to be built up to 10 times smaller and lighter than current silicon-based technologies. These packaged-power devices are the world’s first commercially available, high-voltage, high-frequency, high-current, high-temperature, single-chip SiC-based thyristors. Their performance advantages are expected to spur innovations in utility-scale power electronics hardware and to increase the accessibility and use of distributed energy resources
Biomimetic Membranes for Water Purification: The new biomimetic membranes purify water through reverse osmosis (RO) technology. The selective, high-flux desalination membranes are formed of self-assembled nanopores tuned (with atomic-layer deposition) to mimic key structural features found in cell membranes. Advances in theoretical modeling were essential for deciphering how biological pore structures selectively remove ions, thereby guiding pore design for efficient new membranes. Nove l synthetic strategies were instrumental in fabricating highly ordered nanoporous membranes with tailor-made pore geometries and interior surfaces.
The Demand Response Inverter. (Jointly submitted this invention with Princeton Power Systems Inc.) The inverter is designed to reduce the levelized cost of energy of photovoltaic (PV) power by being more efficient, more reliable and more cost-effective than currently available inverters in the market. (T)he DRI will provide valuable grid-support functionality that encourages high penetration of PV power systems into the electrical grid and also provide added value for the system owner and local utility. The process (has) reached its commercialization stage

Lewis Mischaracterizes Marty Chavez, Cops Out on Red Light Debate

2011-06-20T14:22:00.001-07:00

Albuquerque City Councilor Dan Lewis, who is running for Congress, had an op-ed piece the other day advocating a referendum about keeping the red light cameras in Albuquerque.
Lewis’ argument has several big problems starting with a mischaracterization of former Albuquerque Mayor Marty Chavez role in the red lights. Lewis says, "It was forced on our city by the previous mayor without any consultations with either citizens or the City Council."
In considering this, note that “mischaracterization” might be considered a really long word for “lie.”
No “consultations” with the city council? Well, the city council had to approve the contract with the red light guys, so it would seem they were consulted. In my brief Google search, I found one story indicating that the council approved a draft of the contract and that maybe Mayor Chavez played fun and games between the forced and the final contract. Whether that was true, or not, I’m not too worried about the details, but clearly the council was involved.
As to citizens, one blogger claimed “everyone” opposed the red lights. Equally, clearly, citizens were involved, maybe only the blogger and his best friend.
So we have a double mischaracterization.
Later, Chavez equivocated one way and then another about red lights as he contemplated a run to the Senate. Again, there was public dialogue.
While the red light cameras are a bit Big Brotherish, I see two substantial reasons to oppose them.
1. A retired police officer and friend is correct when he says that citizen / police interactions should be between people, not a person and a piece of equipment. That said, I suggest the lights are an example of the consequences when there are too few people. One goes to capital equipment to deal with the situation.
2. The red lights miss the point. The solution, I continue to believe, is to change the definition of running the light from entering the intersection after the red to still being in the intersection after the red.
For me neither point is persuasive.
Lewis makes two populist points worthy of consideration.
1. The whole thing is a conspiracy of insurance companies. Think about this. Insurance company CEOs sat around a table somewhere and chose to support red light cameras.
2. In advocating a referendum, he also advocates the multi-referendum California approach, which has resulted in the disaster that is California's government today. Of course, given the opportunity, people will oppose the cameras. The incentive of the people is to reduce chances of getting caught.
Lewis says, "On rare occasions, some questions should be decided by referendum." The red light cameras aren't even close. I refer you to California. What else, I wonder, might Lewis consider appropriate for a referendum? Leash laws? Pot-hole repair policy?
In our country, we have representatives. They vote and that should be that. If voters don’t like the vote, we have the next election. Elected officials are paid to make decisions and stick with those decisions, not to advocate cop-outs such as referendums. What is Lewis going to do in Congress, if elected, advocate national referendums?

Aztec, Corrales Win Home Price Comparison

2011-06-17T14:24:00.006-07:00

The prices shown here are for four bedroom, two bath, single family detached homes in the given community.These communities are among 2,319 listed in the newest Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC Home Listing Report. To make the Report, a community had to have at least ten such homes listed between September 2010 and March 2011.
Aztec wins because it has the state's lowest prices. Corrales wins because it has the highest.
Price // Rank
Aztec 178,850, 527
Roswell 179,838, 543
Los Lunas 213,361, 927
Las Cruces 215,873, 956
Gallup 221,955, 1007
Alamogordo 232,385, 1092
Clovis 235,076, 1114
Edgewood 236,337, 1124
Rio Rancho 251,007, 1252
Belen 256,983, 1300
Farmington 275,964, 1429
Albuquerque 313,334, 1602
Ruidoso 359,978, 1762
Santa Fe 383,062, 1830
Tijeras 434,021, 1961
Sandia Park 600,290, 2188
Corrales 649,861, 2218

The nation’s lowest priced four-bedroom, two-bath homes are in Niagara Falls, NY, where the price is $60,820. The most expensive are in the land of sail boats and money, Newport Beach, CA, where prices average $2.54 million.

Home Sales Up in May, Prices Steady

2011-06-13T15:08:00.002-07:00

It’s way, way premature to suggest anything positive is happening in the metro Albuquerque real estate market. Even so, a few glimmers appear in the May sales report posted this afternoon by the Greater Albuquerque Association of Realtors (www.gaar.com).
The sale of 632 single family detached homes closed during May. That was a 65-unit, or 11%, increase from April. Sales had dropped three units in April from March, but it is reasonable to say sales have climbed every month since bottoming in January at 363 units. Part of this has to be seasonal. In a normal market, sales increase from a winter low and peak during the summer, not that anything has been normal in Albuquerque real estate for several years.
The 2010 spring market distortion came from Barack Obama’s first time homebuyer tax credit, which pushed sales into the 2010 spring. This distortion is seen in May’s year-over-year 13.5% drop in sales.
There were 899 sales pending during May, after two months of pending sales at 903 units. With pending sales a key leading indicator of closed sales, for an increase in closed sales of any significance during June, the percentage of pending sales moving to being a closed sale with have to increase. Hmm….
The number of pending sales did jump 32.6% over May 2010. But that doesn’t count because May 2010 pending sales had dropped off a cliff following the end of the of the first time buyer credit.
A more important comparison comes with 2009. For pending and closed sales during 2011, all five months of the year show nice increases from 2009.
This happiness doesn’t mean health. The job numbers in metro Albuquerque continued down during April. No jobs, no home sales.
Another comparison with 2009 shows May sales up for homes priced under $160,000. Sales then drop for the five price groups up to $399,000. For the three price categories from $400,000 to $999,000, sales are the same or up from 2009. May 2011 showed no sales of home over $1 million.

Can't Take UNM Football Seriously

2011-06-06T13:58:00.001-07:00

I just can’t take University of New Mexico football seriously.
The thought re-appeared the other day with an ESPN story ranking college football jobs by desirability.
Texas is number one. Oklahoma State is 20th. The list includes ten southern schools. (I count the Oklahoma schools as southern for this purpose.)
Three schools seem exceptions to any other commonality: Southern California, Notre Dame and the University of Oregon, which is in Eugene, also home to Nike and gazillions of dollars.
Five are in state capitols. Six are in places of some size such as Austin, Columbus, Ohio; and Tucson and Tempe. A dozen or so are in “college towns” such as Norman, Oklahoma, or Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
Identity may be the theme linking these 20. The biggest headline on the LSU website (www.lsu.edu) says, “Love Purple. Live Gold.” The University of Florida (www.ufl.edu) says, “The Foundation for the Gator Nation.”
An ultimate expression of identity fixation, or football fixation anyway, comes in Lincoln, Nebraska, where football radio broadcasts are piped into the elevators of the Cornhusker Marriott, the fanciest hotel in town.
Another cultural impact clue comes with “Roll, Tide,” which seems to a common form of greeting in Tuscaloosa. Can you imagine greeting people in New Mexico with, “Go, Lobos?”
The University of New Mexico offers nothing similar, which is just fine with me. But that’s the point. UNM Is a commuter school. The relationship, for nearly everyone, is: Drive to campus, go to class, leave. UNM has no identity.
Rocky Long showed us doubters that UNM football could be competitive. Fans sometimes filled the stadium. The two years since his departure showed just how fragile was the base.
Thus it was laughable to read that UNM may join a lawsuit against the BCS, the college football championship charade. So long as public money doesn’t finance this nonsensical concept, I don’t care.
The third item motivating this modest meditation was reading that UNM coach Mike Locksley ranks second on the new list of coaches in greatest danger of losing their job.
This morning I shared the Locksley ranking with a fellow at the gym. Laughter in response to hearing Lockley’s ranking. “You mean there’s somebody worse,” the man said.
The laughter suggests that UNM football may be doing it’s basic job of entertaining.

Albuquerque Chamber Emails

2011-06-03T14:38:00.001-07:00

Three yesterday. Three today. Absurd.

Griego Attempts Rebranding, Sort Of

2011-06-01T17:25:00.002-07:00

State Sen. Eric Griego had an op-ed piece in this morning’s Albuquerque Journal. Griego is a candidate for the Democratic nomination for congress in the first district which means mostly Albuquerque.
Credit to Griego, he's not hiding who he is. That is, a class warrior against "this growing unfair distribution of income and unequal tax system..." and the savior of "children, the elderly, the poor and the disabled.." and throughout, in favor of raising taxes. The op-ed this morning does strike me as an attempt of sorts at repackaging.
Some observations:
About entitlements, all he says is, "..without decimating programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security that most Americans support."
In the Wall Street Journal today, John Huntsman, while carefully avoiding saying he supports the Paul Ryan budget and associated reform proposals, makes the point that anyone not liking Ryan's approach has a moral obligation to suggest something else. Griego suggests nothing.
"Besides the recession, The Bush tax cuts are the major reason for our deficits," Griego said. A howler, to be sure.
Point one is a detail, that the recession has been over officially for two years. Point Two is that Heather Wilson, speaking March 25 at the Economic Forum, argued that we have a spending problem, not a revenue problem. And she has PowerPoint slides to prove it.
When I hear words such as fair or unfair (unfair distribution, fair share), I always wonder what's fair? With Griego, I think it would equal incomes across the board and much higher taxes on "the rich." Note that the lower echelons of "the rich" include lots of people working for the national labs.
Griego heads the New Mexico outlet of Voices for Children. The New Mexico Voices is part of what calls itself a network and has affiliates (if that’s the right word) in every state plus the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands. In New Mexico has been a leader in the pitch for higher taxes and the only really morally proper way (I may exaggerate.. slightly) to combat the state’s multi-year revenue / spending saga.
The Voices for Children material from the past few years will make rich fodder for a campaign.

Private Sector Adds Jobs Over the Year

2011-05-26T15:57:00.002-07:00

Government more than accounted for the 2,600 wage jobs the New Mexico economy lost between April 2010 and April 2011. Government lost 3,200 jobs for the year. The Department of Workforce Services didn’t put it that way in the April job report, release late this afternoon.
But, folks, doing the math shows that the private sector added 600 jobs for the year. DWS might call in their often invoked “sampling error” whine to discount my conclusion. Certainly the number, 600, is quite small in the face of 603,100 private sector jobs for April, one-tenth of one percent, and could disappear with the wave of a sampling feather.
Even so, with the shortage of good news for our economy outside of Las Cruces until this month, I’ll take it.
With the private gain and the government loss, slightly more than 25% of the state’s wage jobs are in the private sector.
Eight industry sectors added jobs year-over-year. They are leisure and hospitality (+4,000); Education and health services (+3,600); retail (+1,500); wholesale (+400); mining (+1,500); finance (+1,000); other services (+700); and transportation, warehousing and utilities (+700).
These gains offset the 8,300-job loss in professional and business services. This sector is critical because of its size (91,900 jobs in April 2011) and high pay.
Albuquerque and Las Cruces provided the loss of 7,400 jobs with 6,300 of those year-over-year losses coming in Albuquerque where ten of the 12 main job sectors lost. Albuquerque’s loss leaders were construction (-2,500); professional and business services (-1,300); and information (-1,100).
Santa Fe added 900 net jobs with private sector growth of 1,200 jobs. In Santa Fe, 27,3% of the wage jobs come from government.
Farmington added 100 jobs, year-over-year.
Only three counties now claim an unemployment rate of more than 10%. They are Luna (20.7%); Mora (15.5%); and Guadalupe (10.1%).

Wilson Speaks to Economic Forum; Martinez Appears

2011-05-25T09:48:00.002-07:00

You could cut the many layers of irony with a knife at the Economic Forum in Albuquerque this morning. Heather Wilson was the speaker. Wilson, the former U.S. Representative and now a candidate for Senate, was to talk about federal fiscal matters. A surprise attendee was Gov. Susana Martinez who sat next to Wilson at the breakfast. Martinez did not speak.
Yesterday, Lt. Gov. John Sanchez announced his candidacy for the Senate. Also yesterday, Martinez said she would give Sanchez no tasks beyond his limited constitutionally mandated duties, which mostly consist of presiding over the state senate. Remember that Martinez spent two years running for governor, a full time task, while remaining on the government payroll and district attorney in Las Cruces.
More layers of irony come from history. Jay McClesky, Martinez 2010 campaign strategist and still her political adviser, was one of three people who invented Sanchez back around 2000. The other two were John Dendahl, then NM GOP chair, and Sanchez himself.
During her time at the podium, Wilson said nothing about Sanchez.
One man at my table wondered, “What is Sanchez thinking?” The man, a bit confused, actually said Garcia.
The Economic Forum describes itself “as a non-partisan business leaders group founded in 1982 which is funded entirely by membership dues and is dedicated to the continued improvement of our community.” See http://econ-forum.com.
Wilson mostly stuck to her assignment of discussing fiscal matters, but touched on foreign affairs at the end of her talk.
“America must always stand for freedom,” Wilson said. She “was stunned” at President Obama’s suggestion (or whatever it was) that Israel should retreat to its 1967 borders. “I find that (Obama’s suggestion) inexplicable.” Wilson has been to the Golan Heights, the area that overlooks the main part of Israel and which was controlled by Syria until 1967. She has looked across Israel and understands the small size of the country, which she related to Albuquerque. Guns on the Golan Heights compare to having guns on Albuquerque’s heights able to shoot into the valley. Scary.
Wilson said she came “to talk a little bit about the federal budget… so that we can educate ourselves about the challenges.” As a topic, she said the budget is a bit geeky, but talking about it is necessary.
“Government does not create wealth; it can create the conditions…”
“Washington’s current policies have turned a fiscal challenge into a fiscal crisis.” The public debt is an adjustable rate mortgage, but which she meant that the interest on the debt is certain to increase. She sees a potential national security problem because China owns a large proportion of the debt.
Wilson supports raising the federal debt ceiling, but “not without taking dramatic steps” to reduce spending. “We do not have a revenue problem in the federal government. We have a spending problem in the federal government,” she said.
Vigorous applause came when she said that besides the Obamacare health plan being incredibly expensive, “that health care bill is unconstitutional.”

Customer Not So Friendly kMart

2011-05-24T16:49:00.002-07:00

This afternoon's adventure was buying razor blades at the neighborhood kMart.
The choice was two packages of five blades each for a total of around $30.00 or one package of 12 blades for around $30.00. Hmm...
The trouble was that the 12-blade package was locked onto the display. It hung from a metal arm. A red plastic device prevented removing the blade package. On the plastic device the instruction was to see a "sales associate." The trouble was that sales associates weren't exactly hanging around looking to be helpful.
I finally flagged a cashier who turned to the service desk. The people there had no clue. A young man appeared and stepped into the situation. He, too, had no clue, but finally found an assistant manager, who seemed to have some idea that the red plastic device was really there on purpose. However, the assistant manager could not locate the specialized tool required to remove the red plastic item. Finally I persuaded him to simply cut the blade package from the metal arm.
This is dumb, kMart dudes. Dumb.

April Jobs Show No Real Change

2011-05-20T15:12:00.001-07:00

New Mexico’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dropped half a point between March and April, according to figures released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The April rate was 7.6%. In March it was 8.1%.
The seasonally adjusted numbers show New Mexico with an April 2010 to April 2011 drop of 4,700 (or 0.5 percent) in the labor force, and a 2,500 increase (0.3 percent) in employment.
Both the employment and labor force changes are trivial. The unemployment rate change looks nice and will get headlines.
I wonder if the locals, in the face of kinda-sorta positive news will invoke their usual mystical claims about survey problems to say things aren’t as good as they look.
“Non-farm payrolls,” seasonally adjusted, were 805,400 in April 2011, down 400 from April 2010. That “change,” 0.05% or five hundredths of one percent, is no change at all.
These sectors were up from April to April: Trade, transportation and utilities; finance; education and health services; and leisure and hospitality.
These were down: professional and business services (down an ugly eight percent); government (minus one percent); construction and manufacturing.

Albuquerque Chamber Emails

2011-05-18T14:35:00.003-07:00

Three this afternoon and its only 3:30. Just one yesterday, blessed relief. I really need to put the Chamber's email into my block list. The honor will be well earned.

Museum Mailer Makers Miss Mark

2011-05-18T14:00:00.001-07:00

Every so often designers of communications pieces get carried away and produce something with a design that gets in the way of the message. The designers should know better, but management for sure should know better.
My latest example comes from the Museum of New Mexico Foundation. The Foundation works on behalf of the Museum(s) of New Mexico, one of the states great institutions. This criticism come from a friend.
Received last week, the two-piece card-stock, full color item (one wraps around the other) was folded three times. The front panel headline said, “Home Lands How Women Made the West. The photo on the front panel was of a person standing on a ladder adding adobe to a wall. One cannot tell the gender of the person. The upper right corner of the front panel was cut away, an expensive design touch. The fourth panel was perforated for easy detaching. This panel looked a little like a bookmark, but far from obviously so. Just now, while writing, I saw the tiny type saying, “Detach here for your keepsake bookmark.”
Best of all, the piece came in a clear holder. The address was printed on the mail piece, which was then inserted in the holder, which, in turn, was supposed to be closed via a strip of adhesive on the flap. The trouble was, the adhesive on my neighbor’s mailer stuck to my envelope. I got two mailers. The neighbor got none. Certainly others got two sets of this expensive mailers.
I would have to see the mailing machine to understand what happened with the technology. What I know did happen is that the designer got cute, the machine didn’t work as planned and the message suffered.

Conference Notes: Uranium Fuel Cycle, Chpt. 3

2011-05-16T13:39:00.000-07:00

Remember that these are, well, notes. The value is in gaining an indication of the presentations. Being notes, this material is far from complete.
Conference presentation materials are available at http://nmcep.nmt.edu/

Gregory OD Smith, CEO, Urenco USA, LLC: Urenco’s diagram of the nuclear fuel supply chain is especially useful. Urenco’s enrichment plant near Eunice has been the nation’s largest construction project for the past four years. Smith expects the project to retain that honor for several more years in the future. Phase 2 f the plant is underway. Phase 3 is in the planning stage.
Former Sen. Domenici is the only reason we’re in New Mexico.

Steve Laflin, president and CEO, International Isotopes, Inc. The Idaho-based firm is a public company. They do nuclear medicine and other things. They are developing a deconversion facility about 18 miles west of Hobbs. Components will come from a plant in Gore, OK.
Deconversion is “a special part of the front end” of the fuel cycle. There is material left over from enrichment, i.e., left over from what Urenco does. International will get its supplies from Urenco. It will strip the fluorine and turn it into comme3rcial industrial products.
The formal design started in mid-April. Customers are talking about co-locating on the site.
The impact of the Japanese (Fukushima) disaster “was fairly immediate.” A $30 million offering on the Toronto stock exchange was in the works and was being sold the day of the earthquake. The demand for the offering disappeared within hours. The investment community has walked away from nuclear—for now.

Dan Lopez, president, New Mexico Tech: He is convinced that Tech needs a nuclear degree within chemical engineering.

John Kelly, Office of Nuclear Energy, Department of Energy: U.S. government support of Fukushima—Daiichi:
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission sent 30 people to Japan. DOE sent about the same number. INPO, the industry group, sent people, as did national laboratories including Sandia. “Virtually all of our laboratories were involved.”
Lawrence Livermore modeled the fallout plume. “Expect insignificant consequences” from radiation release. Current situation: quasi-stable. “Accident forensics” is the major current and future activity. This gets to the “lessons learned” activity.

Van Romero: New Mexico Tech: It’s too early to tell really what went wrong with Fukushima—Daiichi (or what went right”). Romero provided detailed mapping of the Fukushima reactors.
The amount of radiation found in milk on the West Coast can be measured in minute amounts. Such tiny amounts pose no harm. The radon levels inside Carlsbad Caverns are 2,000 times the standard surface level.
Dealing with Spent fuel will be the major lesson learned from the situation.

John Kelly, Office of Nuclear Energy, Department of Energy: The Department of Energy is very excited about small nuclear reactors, known and small modular reactors or “SMRs.”. DOE “want(s) to re-establish the United States as a leader in the nuclear field.”
Small nuclear reactors bring all sorts of advantages. They will be very safe and secure. They cost much less that large units. They can be made in a factory, that is, in a controlled environment. Units can be added incrementally as demand grows. Location can be underground, enhancing security. They are air cooled instead of water cooled, a benefit in the water short West.
A record exists on building small reactors. Nuclear reactors for submarines are built in factories.
The DOE interest is to “enable the development of a fleet of SMRs.”
DOE sites are being considered for SMRs. The TVA has proposed the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Kevin Butterfield, B&W Nuclear Energy Inc. B&W is Babcock and Wilcox. B&W’s SMR project is a joint venture with Bechtel called Generation M Power. B&W saw “a kind of a sweet spot” in the 100-to-1,000 Megawatt range. Butterfield reiterated the SMR advantaged listed by Kelly, above.

CEOs Rate NM Not the Worst

2011-05-16T08:29:00.000-07:00

New Mexico ranked 32nd for business in the newly released 2011 survey of chief executive officers by Chief Executive magazine. We dropped three places from 2010. See http://chiefexecutive.net/category/best-worst-states-for-business.
A number of stories on the site analyze the results.
The top five states are Texas, North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee and George. The bottom five are those you would expect: Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Illinois and California.
The site selection leaders are Utah, Arizona, Florida, Tennessee, Texas and Oklahoma, the magazine said. Note that four of those states border New Mexico.
For the complete list of location factors counting the most, see http://chiefexecutive.net/the-state-of-the-states.
The leading location factors are state income and corporate tax rates, perceived attitude toward business, cooperative employee-management relationship (that must mean unions), employee work ethic, crime rate, and quality of public education.

UNM Computing PhD Joins NASCAR

2011-05-15T09:26:00.000-07:00

This man, in his late 20s, graduated from UNM yesterday. In about two weeks he will start work as track day technical lead for a NASCAR team. Earnings will be in the low hundreds, as the phrase goes.
Is that cool or what!

Home Sales Drop in April, Defy Seasonal Pattern

2011-05-11T12:24:00.000-07:00

Figures just posted by the Greater Albuquerque Association of Realtors (GAAR) show that sales of single family detached homes declined in April. Yes, the decline was tiny. April 2011 had 567 sales while April 2010 had 570. The performance defies the general seasonally trend that Albuquerque sales increase during the April and build to a summer peak.
This is the sixth year out of 14 years, going back to 1997 that sales have dropped from March to April. However, go back just ten years and sales have dropped March to April in only three years. Further, last April’s increase doesn’t really count because the figures were inflated by the First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit that ended in April 2010. April to May sales last dropped in 2006 and 2007.
The future is exactly pretty either. That’s because pending sales, the leading indicator for closed sales the following month, were the 903 in April, the same as March.
The problem is simple—jobs. Though metro Albuquerque wage jobs increased by 1,000 in March over February, the annual performance (March 2010 to March 2011) showed a 3,000-job loss. The March situation marked 30 months of year-over-year job loss, says the Department of Workforce Services. Those 30 months started in October 2008.
Median and average single family detached home prices—respectively $165,000 and $196,321—inched up in April, but fell well short of returning to the February levels of $171,750 and $220,299.
A multi-decade veteran of selling homes in metro Albuquerque puts it this way, “Never thought sleepy old Albuq would be so hit by these national trends. Suffice it to say, this has been the worst cycle I have ever seen.”
GAAR provides eight measures of market conditions. The measures report inventory, sales and prices. The only one showing a positive change from March was the average time it took to sell a home. That is, it took longer—twelve days longer on average—to sell a detached home during April 2011 that during April 2010. All eight categories were negative during April for condos and townhouses and by bigger margins than for detached homes. Only 37 condos sold during April. Those few that did sell, sold in 71 days, down 26% from the 96 day average sales period of April 2010.

Conference Notes: Uranium Fuel Cycle, Chpt. 2

2011-05-09T15:06:00.002-07:00

Note that these are, well, notes. The value is in gaining an indication of the presentations. Being notes, this material is far from complete.
Conference presentation materials are available at http://nmcep.nmt.edu/

Dr. Virginia McLemore, Professor of geology, New Mexico Tech: Provides whirlwind tour of geology. Will post the slides. See: http://geoinfo.nmy.edu/staff/mclemore/home/html.
“Today we’re looking at a mine as a life. No longer (just) explore, mine and walk away. Closure and post-closure are actively part of the equation. We do have a cycle now.”
“There’s uranium everywhere, but it’s not in a concentration that can be mined.” Mineable deposits are not conveniently located. Hydrology (water) has much to do with uranium deposit locations.
Unconformity related deposits are much of the Canadian resource. Very high grade. Must use underground mines. Prone to flooding.
Sandstone uranium deposits: Found worldwide. Much of U.S. resource is in sandstone.
Some drinking water resources in NM have uranium well over EPA standards, such as in the Espanola Valley. The uranium can be extracted.
Rare Earths may be concentrated in uranium deposits.

Mark Pelizza, Uranium Resources, Inc., of Texas: “New Mexico has the largest and best grade of uranium ore reserves in the United States.”
The reserves are in the Grants Uranium Belt, from Albuquerque to Gallup and north of I-40. The area can produce from 15 to 20 million lbs/year, “sustained.
NM Tech has a huge geologic library. There is a huge data base about the Grants Belt due to past exploration. Existing infrastructure such as shafts gives NM a jump in (re)starting production.
In-situ is becoming one of the major uranium production technologies in the world.”
If a uranium ore body is present in water, then the water is by definition, not drinkable.
The industry has a huge need for people—engineers, scientists, miners.

Jon Indall, attorney, Santa Fe: Represents the Uranium Producers of America and the Uranium Producers of New Mexico.
The World War II bomb uranium came from the Belgian Congo and from the vanadium on the Colorado Plateau.
“Nuclear is the only no-carbon option.”
Back in the 1950s, there were no regulations, no requirements. Then showed a slide listing the federal-level permits required, perhaps 20 or 30. The next slide showed NM permits required, maybe another 20 or 30.
In-situ is considered a milling process, not a mining process. Thus, there are different regulations and regulators.
The legacy issues are now part of the process before any mining is done. The means a reclamation plan with a bond. This includes measuring the conditions of the site before anything is done. The measuring provides a baseline for reclamation.
In Ambrosia Lake, there was no premining site condition measurement because such things were no in the process at the time. Thus, we don’t know the pre-mining conditions.
Hope to see production in NM within one year. (HM: The URI Churchrock project?)

Former U.S. Senator Pete Domenici: He would like to see two or three firm commitments from large banks to finance a nuclear power plant. During the next year, not only must we address the financing, “a commitment must be made by the United States Government, presumably) to dispose of the waste.”
Cite Wipp as something that works. Three months ago Domenici got eight members of the federal Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future (Domenici is a member) to visit WIPP. None had been the salt beds. The group was hugely impressed. “The science has proved that this salt has not moved for 300 million years.”
“We ought, as a nation commit to do the research” to figure out what is needed to do to put high level waste into salt as a permanent repository. (One problem, he indicated, is that a stronger container is needed than the ones used for the WIPP waste.)
Then we should commit to an interim repository in a central location for high level waste. The problems can be confronted by “intelligent, knowledgeable people.”
He is very unhappy that a nuclear power plant loan guarantee program was sabotaged by the Bush administration. People are working to revitalize the program with the Obama administration.

Martinez Speech “Lame,” Fraught With Errors

2011-05-02T17:58:00.003-07:00

Someone had to have liked Gov. Susana Martinez’ noon hour speech today to NAIOPNM, the New Mexico Chapter of the Commercial Real Estate Association. The size of the crowd, maybe 500 including about a zillion politicians, gives excellent odds of at least one happy listener.
But the speech wasn’t a “State of the State,” which was how it was advertised. Had Martinez honestly reported the state of the state, she would have had to say, “Not so good, but not as bad as it was.”

Rather, the speech was a report from Gov. Martinez after four months and two days in office. The report contained errors of fact, for which it gets an “F,” overreach, and a “lame” attempt at philosophy. The latter judgment came from a seatmate, a self-admitted liberal who wants taxes increased. On the cliché ridden attempts at bigger ideas, he was right.
A running rhetorical sideshow was Martinez inability to pronounce certain words and to get the right word in the right place, an odd situation from someone who had been talking in public and in courtrooms for years.
Martinez cited the success in expediting government projects of a new Office of Business Advocacy in the Economic Development. A water treatment plant in Las Cruces was one example. She touted a law favoring procurement from in-state businesses. Such a law is by definition a subsidy for local who compete less well with out of state firms.
The state’s tax structure hasn’t been reviewed in 15 years, Martinez said. I’m pretty sure she said 15. I know she didn’t say eight years, which was when the Blue Ribbon Tax Commission thoroughly examined the tax structure, only to have its considerable efforts blown off by the Richardson administration.
A staffer is reviewing the tax structure, Martinez said. The staffer doing the review, who Martinez said was working in her office, is in a cabinet department. Details, details.
Total credit was grabbed for Union Pacific’s planned multi-modal freight facility near Santa Teresa. The credit grab resulted from a tax exemption benefiting the operation that was supported by Martinez and nearly everyone else. In fact, the project has been in the works for several years, has been discussed for perhaps 25 years. The tax exemption was first passed several years ago, was extended once or twice (writing from memory, here), and was merely extended again this year. Extending the exemption may well have a lot to do with Union Pacific starting work, but Martinez cannot claim credit for the project itself.
Asked about the Spaceport by Albuquerque establishment leader Sherman McCorkle, Martinez bounced the question to Jon Barela, economic development secretary, who, Martinez said, had read the latest report. Barela said little, only that Martinez had “brought competence and accountability” to the Spaceport board and management, that some spin-off businesses seemed possible and that intermediate and long term benefits are expected.
In response to a questioner pitching putting the mislaid capital projects bill onto the call for the redistricting special session of the legislature, Martinez talked of having a “statewide plan,” an oft-mentioned truly scary concept that hasn’t yet happened in spite of decades of bureaucratic dreaming.
Jon Barela Sidenote: He’s a good guy and, I suspect, totally well suited for the economic development job he holds now. I’ve seen him in public situations twice in the last six days. Barela is thinking about running for congress again. (He lost to Martin Heinrich last year.) Based on what I’ve in these two presentations, on the performance last year and his dithering in considering a second race, I’m just not inspired about him as a candidate.
Photos by Mark Bralley

Conference Notes: Uranium Fuel Cycle 2011, Chpt 1

2011-05-02T08:51:00.001-07:00

The conference was held in Hobbs, New Mexico, April 27 and 28, 2011.
275 registered for the conference. Among the many students in attendance were 23 from Lovington High School.
The speaker notes and associated comments below are in order of the speaker’s appearance. The notes posted here are not quite half the total. Expect the rest in two or three of four days.
U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce: “All you want as a consumer is to flip the switch. We confuse energy and power. “Power is truly what we need.” He is having continuing discussions with tribes about the legacy issues from uranium mining.
Jon Barela, Secretary of the New Mexico Economic Development Department: He listed the principles for economic development of the Martinez administration. The principles are “so that we can create jobs.”
1. “Government must get its financial house in order.” Barela then linked financial probity to the deliberations of a firm considering where locate a facility. Barela confused “economic development,” i.e. recruiting companies to the area, with developing the economy. However important, economic development is an at-the-margins activity within developing the economy. The remark is another example of the Martinez administration’s failure to get into the question of what really should government be doing.
2. “Ensure we have a business friendly regulatory environment,” especially with regard to energy businesses. “Capital and jobs will flow to the course of least resistance.” “We will never, never compromise the environment.”
3. Three Cs: Competition, climate, culture. “Make sure New Mexico has a competitive tax environment.”
4. A workforce that is ready to take these jobs. Barela complemented the state’s workforce (seriously, apparently) and the community colleges.
5. Viable infrastructure—roads, broadband.
6. Maybe most relevant, “an environment that fosters innovation.”
In the past, economic development has been top down. “If it wasn’t film, we weren’t going to get involved.”
Barela closed with the myth and lie of energy security. He cited the lack of “an energy policy that makes us energy secure.”
Dr. Daniel Fine, New Mexico Tech. Fine had five minutes on the agenda. He took more than 20. Underlying this conference is the possibility of getting a small modular nuclear reactor in southeast New Mexico. Fine pitched the Babcock and Wilcox design.
Hyperion Power Generation of Los Alamos (www.hyperionpowergeneration.com) is commercializing a small modular nuclear reactor design developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Hyperion was not mentioned at the conference, which I find curious.
Dr. Peter Scholle, state geologist and professor of geology at New Mexico Tech.: The salt deposits in southeast New Mexico make the state the best place in the world for nuclear waste storage.
Even without climate concerns, nuclear energy has to be part of the mix. Renewables—wind and solar—will also be part. However, renewables are not available all day and all night, every day. Renewables will consume large amounts of land for their sites and large amounts of minerals for manufacturing.
Overall, the world has a lot of uranium, but presently is producing less than is being used. The United States produces only seven percent of the uranium it consumes. The rest comes from Russian nuclear weapons, a source that ends in 2013. The world-wide resources is “at least 100 years.” Reprocessing would greatly increase supply.
With regard to the Japanese nuclear disaster, Scholle said that as a geologist, he “could not have thought of the poorer place to locate a nuclear power plant.”
He added, “There is no completely harmless way of producing energy.”

Chinese Now Love Pecans; Stahmanns Helped Teach

2011-05-01T13:34:00.003-07:00

A recent report said that the Chinese (in China) are going nuts over pecans. The huge demand—anything happening in China is huge—is driving up prices. The Stahmanns of Las Cruces, I'm told, help make this happen by having the patience to continue sales trips to China even after years and years of empty handed trips home. Now Stahmann Farms and other American growers are reaping benefits.
Stahmann's web site, www.stahmanns.com, says nothing about China, but it says much about pecans.

Oil Patch Road Culture

2011-05-01T11:19:00.001-07:00

Traveling last week east on U.S. 82 from Artesia, we noticed a few things that don’t happen in the north central urban area.
The road was two lane, but with a shoulder wide enough for trucks. In that part of the world, some trucks are heavily loaded, a function of the oil and gas business. Of necessity, they go slowly. For these trucks, driving on the shoulder offers a courtesy to other drivers, though one probably not anticipated by the highway designers. For the mostly urban driver, the apparently unusual behavior raises the question of what really is happening.
Other than the larger trucks, nearly all the vehicles on U.S. 82 are pickups, usually larger models. Nearly all these trucks are white.
While in Hobbs, we did see a couple of Halliburton staffers driving a red pickup matching their red jump suits. But the standard for Halliburton was red lettering on the side of a white pickup.

Martinez Administration Continues Richardson Profligacy

2011-04-25T14:40:00.004-07:00

A high school teacher told me last week that he knows of 20 colleagues facing layoff. Though not happy about it, he seemed to resigned to the reality.
This morning I got yet another copy of "New Mexico Wildlife," the newsletter of the Department of Game and Fish, inserted in my Albuquerque Journal. This issue is a 16 page tabloid with four colors of ink on every page. For the non-printers among the readers, all that means "expensive." The only cost concession is use of newsprint as the paper, though I don't think it is the cheapest newsprint.
A story on page two told of the new 18-foot high statue of a rattlesnake's tail at the privately owned Chiracahua Desert Museum in Rodeo. The story did not explicitly say the Museum is privately owned, but it did name the owners, Bob and Sheri Ashley. Charles Painter, a Game and Fish herpetologist did the statue, the story said. I am absolutely sure that every moment Painter devoted to the project came on his own time, including the time he took to pose next to the statue for the photo that appeared in the newsletter.
A couple of years ago an issue of "New Mexico Wildlife" cost $40,000. The price alone ensured the publication an honored place on Harold's List of Really Stupid Stuff done by the Richardson administration. I know the current budget year, which ends June 30, started under Richardson. But it is disappointing to receive another example of profligacy along with my morning paper, especially as we lay off teachers.

Abq Chamber Email Deluge

2011-04-23T10:17:00.002-07:00

Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce forever exec Terri Cole has the idea that quantity matters in email communication. It has to be Cole. By all reports and my dated experience, she runs a tightly controlled ship.
I’m not a chamber member. But a few months ago I began to be buried in emails from the chamber. During the legislative session, this was OK, sort of, though I didn’t care about the detail and the snide tone with regard to the legislature was off-putting. Surely Cole knows that snide tones and arrogance have killed legislation. Still, I ignored the quantity.
Finally, though, I decided to count the emails, none of which I read. For the five days of the workweek starting April 18, there were 12 emails: two on the 18th, three on the 19th, two on the 20th, four (!) on the 21st and two yesterday.
That's a waste of time.

Street Signs; It's the Feds?

2011-04-22T13:40:00.002-07:00

The comment below responds to last Friday's musing about new street sign design. The story in the link provided in the comment says just what the commenting person claims. This is pretty incredible. We would have to have here a good definition of government overreach. Further, the City of Albuquerque, led by a pragmatic conservative, Richard Berry, refuses to take a stand? We would have to have here a good definition of government overreach.

Comment: " City of Albuquerque is following federal regulations for new street signs. Here's a link from ABC news explaining what's going on. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/local-governments-told-buy-street-signs/story?id=12256322"

Here's the beginning of the story. "By JONATHAN KARL (@jonkarl)
Nov. 29, 2010
The federal government says THIS is harder to read than This.

Got that? ALL CAPS are bad. Mixed Case is Good.

It's just one reason the Federal Highway Administration is ordering all local governments -- from the tiniest towns to the largest cities -- to go out and buy new street signs that federal bureaucrats say are easier to read.

The rules are part of a tangle of regulations included in the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices.

The 800-plus page book tells local governments they:

-- Should increase the size of the letters on street signs from the current 4 inches to 6 inches on all roads with speed limits over 25 miles per hour. The target date for this to be completed is January 2012.

-- Install signs with new reflective letters more visible at night by January 2018.

-- And whenever street name signs are changed for any reason, they can no longer be in ALL CAPS."

And much more.
The story notes that the new regulations were written under the Bush administration. They were issued under the Obama administration.

State Maps Still With Bill

2011-04-17T16:34:00.002-07:00

The Tourism Department is still distributing state roads maps with the picture of Bill Richardson. A department staffer said this afternoon that the Martinez administration said it would make no sense to toss the 200,000 maps remaining with Richardson's picture. The staffer said the Richardson administration promptly dumped all remaining state maps with the photo of Gary Johnson.

New Style Signs Harder to Read

2011-04-15T20:02:00.004-07:00

Someone in Albuquerque’s City Hall has invented a new style for street signs.
The old style was better because it allowed more space for letters which, then, could be bigger and, being bigger, would be easier to read.
Using caps and lower case means most of the letters are smaller, and therefore harder to see. Putting the border around the sign takes space, reducing the size of the letters.
I have never understood why using all capital letters is preferred for headlines on sign. But it is.
What we have, if nothing else, seems to be a government person arbitrarily changing things without real public input.
I’m reminded of the obstruction that appeared seemingly from nowhere a couple of years ago in Girard Blvd. and a few other places in Albuquerque.
My neighborhood association recently asked Isaac Benton, the area’s city council member about the obstruction. Benton’s staff person blew them off.

Stupid Cyclist Note

2011-04-14T16:31:00.002-07:00

This guy was texting from his moving bicycle. To his credit, though, he did stop at the red light a few hundred yards down the road. But when he stopped, he was on the wrong side of the road.

March Home Sales: Prices Drop as Reality Intrudes

2011-04-11T16:15:00.000-07:00

Reality lumbered into the metro Albuquerque real estate market during March with a 10.1% decline in sales of single family detached homes from March 2010 and price declines from February and from March 2010.
Some good news does exist in the year-over-year sales decline. Those 634 sales during March 2010 were inflated with sales borrowed from later periods by President Obama’s first time homebuyer tax credit. That means the year-over-year sales drop was expected. The good news about the 570 sales during March 2011 is that the performance represented a nice 39% jump from February. To be sure, much of that increase has to be seasonal rather than reflecting market improvement or anything positive in the Albuquerque economy, which is still losing jobs. March showed 903 sales pending during the month, a 28% increase from February and suggestive of further sales growth during April.
The median price, $162,000 during March, was down 5.7% or $9,750 from February. From March 2010, the median price dropped $13,000 or 7.4%.
The average price was $199,683 during March, 9.4% or $20,616 decline from February. The average price was down $11,366 from March 2010, a 5.4% drop. The average price was moved up by the sale of three homes prices at more than $1 million and one home in the $750,000 to $999,000 range.
Prices for townhouses and condominiums showed a similar pattern with sales down from March 2010 and prices declining from February 2011 and from March 2010.
During March, sales in Rio Rancho doubled from 60 units in February to 121 units in March. That 61-unit increase accounted for 38% of the metro-wide 160-unit increase in sales from February to March.
The sales figures are just out from the Greater Albuquerque Association Realtors, www.gaar.com. In the monthly market report, GAAR offered no interpretation of the numbers, something unusual.

Life With Bicyclists: The Stupid Factor

2011-04-10T16:36:00.002-07:00

A week ago P.J. O’Rourke provided the unwashed, those of us trampled by the bicycle stampede, an analysis headlined, “Dear Urban Cyclists: Go Play in Traffic.” Into the second sentence O’Rourke got the words “innocent,” as in motorists, and “sanctimonious,” as in cyclists.
In O’Rourke’s spirit, I offer four observations of cyclist behavior in my neighborhood. With these four, what is called “the stupid factor” seems in play. Of course, maybe these folks aren't stupid, just arrogant.
The first came a couple of weeks ago. The others bunched into a period of a few days.
1. I am on a residential street, heading west, slowly due to just having entered the street from a driveway. I see a cyclist ahead of me, also going west, but very slowly, hardly moving at all, actually. His front wheel goes back and forth, helping maintain balance. Lacking the slightest clue as to this jerk’s intent, I drop into major caution mode.
Then, suddenly and without the slightest signal, he does a 180° turn towards me and goes into a driveway.
2. I’m at a red light. The two streets are two-lane. Two cyclists are stopped at the red light, headed the other way. While the light is still red, one comes across the intersection.
3. I’m on a four-lane road with a 40 mph, with bike lanes on both sides, and where drivers sometimes go well over 50 mph. A cyclist going the other way in the bike lane see some congestion on the sidewalk, but not in the bike lane. With no hesitation and certainly with no signal, the cyclist pops into the driving lane to avoid the congestion.
4. On the same four-lane road, two cyclists are riding along side one another. One cyclist is in the bike lane. One is well into the auto lane. Fortunately, at the moment, there was no auto traffic affecting the pair.
O’Rourke’s commentary was in the Wall Street Journal.

Big Brother's Well Scrubbed Cousin Visits

2011-04-01T15:26:00.000-07:00

Big Brother or maybe Big Brother’s younger cousin, visited my block yesterday about noon. That’s what it seemed initially. After some digging, I found that the scrubbed young couple on the block probably worked for the county assessor.
They appeared—he with clipboard, she with long measuring tape—from a white Focus with an unreadable logo on the side and came across the street. I was just leaving my house. I’m always curious about clipboard carriers, so I chatted them up.
They offered neither ID card, nor verbal identification, just a smooth articulate presentation. I went along with the presentation, asking questions, but stupidly overlooked asking for ID.
Their assigned task, they said, was to measure the buildings on the block (exactly which block, I wondered later) and compare the measured building size with their record. Sometimes they did check measured differences against building permits. Sometimes an addition was done with no permit. Sometimes the project out grew the permit specifications.
They hadn’t been on my block in four years, which they said was a long time. Four years seemed a short time to me.
All this didn’t quite make sense, but I continued my errand and the couple went into the back yard of the house at the end of the block.
Post errand, with things still not making sense, I emailed the ever helpful Deborah Nason in the City of Albuquerque department that handles building permits. Nason did some digging, found nothing, and handed me to the office of Bernalillo County Assessor Karen Montoya.
The second assessor staffer I spoke to recognized the male of my visitor couple and explained that this time of year the Assessor sends people into neighborhoods to compare structure size with the Assessor’s record. If the structure has grown, the property tax may well grow.
Straightforward, I guess, though I’m still not comfortable with random folks tromping around my back yard.
But an identification from the couple by name, backed by a badge and a statement that they were working for the Assessor would have saved us a bunch of time.
Transparency, that’s the word.

NM Economy: Recovering? Nation’s Worst?

2011-03-31T17:45:00.001-07:00

“Technical issues” blew a decent, all things considered, job report for February into negative territory of a 7,100-job loss statewide from February 2010 to February 2011. The Department of Workforce Solutions didn’t quite say it that way in the monthly news release this afternoon. But the numbers for professional and business services, the group for lawyers, accountants and national laboratories, showed an 11,000-job, or 11%, loss year-over-year. Jobs losses in Construction, information wholesale trade and government added another 6,000 to the negative performance.
Whatever the reason, New Mexico led the nation in job loss percentage for February with the 0.9% decline.
The decent part of the report came with added jobs statewide in key sectors including mining, manufacturing, retail, transportation, finance and leisure and hospitality.
What DWS said was, “The February data are preliminary, and we expect the revised data we present next month to show an improved outlook. The data are sample-based, and at this early time in the data collection cycle, the response rate is still lower than we would like.”
Gee, that’s nice. Then DWS continues, basically saying trust us, it will come out in the revisions.
“Technical issues aside, the recovery is under way but progressing
slowly,” DWS says. “Recovery” continues to mean we’re losing fewer jobs.
Of the ten counties with an unemployment of more than ten percent, three are in the Albuquerque metro.
In professional and business services, Albuquerque lost 2,000 jobs for the year. Las Cruces and Santa Fe each lost 100. The math says that Farmington and the rural counties lost 8,800. That’s a big number. From where?
In the new, transparent Martinez administration, DWS should fess up. DWS should say a problem exists, what the problem might be, the effect on the numbers, and solutions that are in process.
Maybe the revisions will make all these “technical issues” go away. Until then, I’m dazed, confused and uninformed.

NM 2010 National Leader in % Income Growth; Rate Dropped

2011-03-24T19:22:00.001-07:00

With 4.2% growth in personal income during 2010, New Mexico led the nation in percentage income growth, according to figures released yesterday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
For per capita income, which is calculated by dividing population into personal income, New Mexico ranked 43rd nationally in 2010. Per capita income in New Mexico was $33,837 during 2010 and was 83.4% of the national per capita income of $40,584.
New Mexico lost 10,800 wage jobs during 2010. The average job total was 801,600 in 2010 and 812,400, for a 1.3% decline.
The income growth came in the first half of 2010. From the first quarter to the second quarter, the increase was 1.7%. The quarterly growth rate dropped to 0.8% for the next two quarters, a pace that ranked 28th nationally for the fourth quarter.
New Mexico was one of ten states where earnings topped the pre-recession peak.
Transfer receipts are the biggest piece of New Mexico’s personal income at $1,464 million and increased 10.4% during 2010. Transfer receipts provided 52% of personal income in New Mexico during 2010.
Net earnings and dividends interest and rent are the other two components of personal income.
Earnings in finance, information, construction and utilities declined in New Mexico during 2010.