Ben Ray Lujan Cop Out of Dad's Political Legacy

The copy below is part of an email from Rep. Ben Ray Lujan. The email came April 3, a couple of days after Lujan announced his candidacy for the United States Senate. Look carefully at what Lujan says about his dad. “My dad was a union ironworker.” That’s all. No mention that papa Ben was speaker of the New Mexico House of Representatives for 11 years.
Lujan appears to wear the cop-out hat well. On August 13, 2015, in an interview of Lujan about the 2015 Gold King mine spill, KOB TVs Chris Ramirez said to Lujan, “There a lot of people looking to you to make sure you are the policing agent on the EPA.”
Lujan’s non-response: “Well, there has to be full accountability with the EPA on this.”
The KOB quote comes from the August 21, 2015, column I wrote about the interview. The email was sent by Democrats.com. It said,
“Activist -
“I wanted you to hear this directly from me:

“I’m officially running to be New Mexico’s next Democratic U.S. Senator.

“I’m asking you to add your name in the first days of my campaign if you support my fight to WIN this seat and WIN a Democratic Senate. >>

“I’m so proud of my New Mexico roots. My mom retired after 33 years with the local public school district. My dad was a union ironworker. I was raised on the small farm that I still call home.”

“Democrats.com is the original online community of progressive activists, with over 3 million supporters. We fight for jobs, justice, healthcare, education, the environment, and peace. We're supported by great progressive partners so we never ask for donations. Please join us at Democrats.com!”


Paid for by People for Ben

Pearce, Cervantes Shine at Stockmen's Candidate. Lujan Grisham Doesn't Come

A non-event was the big news at the governor candidate forum yesterday at the New Mexico Stockmen’s convention in Albuquerque.
Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham didn’t show. I did not hear an explanation of MLG’s absence. There was just the empty chair on the podium with the four male candidates.
The Democrats are Jeff Apodaca (www.apo18.com) of Albuquerque, Peter DeBenedittis (http://peterd4gov.com) of Santa Fe, Sen. Joseph Cervantes (joe4nm.com) of Las Cruces. The Republican is Rep. Steve Pearce (http://peopleforpearce.com) of Hobbs.
One reaction was that MLG has blown off the rural areas, that her strength will be in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
Attending the stockmen’s gathering was worth it for candidates. It offered the only opportunity to get the stockmen in one place before the November 6, 2018 general election.
The other news wasn’t exactly a surprise. Cervantes and Pearce are clearly the choice among the five candidates in terms of experience, demeanor, and ideas.
Apodaca is sincere enough. But he styles himself an outsider which is ridiculous given that his dad, Jerry Apodaca, was governor, means that Jeff grew up around politics. Poppa Jerry later ran for the U.S. Senate, but lost in the primary. Apodaca’s other problem is that what seems his main issue—he kept repeating it—is taking the state’s permanent fund money—$26 billion, he said—and spending in the state to solve all our problems. Other than that it was platitudes and banality.
DeBenedittis offered a first for me; a panel moderator shuting off a topic. DeBenedittis was attacking Pearce for taking the big money that elections cost these days including $1 million from livestock interests. The moderator interrupted with, “We don’t need to go there, sir.”
DeBenedittis, the real outsider, makes MLG look somewhat moderate by comparison. And he is arrogant about it. Maybe he will draw a few of the far left voters from MLG.
Cervantes is the third generation of a family of farmers from southern Dona Ana County. He talked of running a business—meeting a payroll—while serving in the legislature. “I have been a reformer in Santa Fe,” he said, citing instances. Protecting water is a first priority, as is expanding and growing new markets. “We need to make the public understand how important agriculture is,” he said.
Pearce grew up on a very small family farm south of Hobbs. He talked of four principles, three of which are faith, family and freedom. (I didn’t get the fourth one.)
On health care, Pearce clearly knows the policy details, a good thing since he is in Washington, D.C., dealing with those details. He mentioned value-added production such as small refineries and restarting the timber business. He said that if we got rid of fracking, a desire of DeBenedittis, the state would suffer a substantial economic because oil and gas produced through fracking technology is a large part of the state’s production.

The New Hampshire Presidential Campaign

New Hampshire correspondent Kathy Morgan has called attention a continuing feature at WMUR TV in Manchester, New Hampshire. The feature is a series of conversations with actual and potential presidential candidates. A few days ago it was Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. The format is a half hour in two segments, one an interview by the anchor, the other questions from the audience. A “web feature” follows. Go to http://www.wmur.com/politics.
There is enough time and the format is sufficiently relaxed to get acquainted with the individual.
Also, one finds the newspaper, the Manchester Union Leader, at http://www.unionleader.com.
It seems that for the 2016 race, technology will bring us in the fly-over hinterland a chance to make a more intelligent choice.
If you see a worthy candidate on WMUR,options for active support would seem to be sending money and/or calling the respective New Mexico party headquarters to find the NM contact.
Our correspondent is ably assisted by Christopher Phelps Johnson, age five months, one day, as of this writing.

Clinton Email Logistics Are Confusing

I do not understand the logistics of the emails. Mrs. Clinton was Secretary of State for approximately 1,461 days (the years 2010, 2011, 2012 plus ten months of 2009 and two months of 2013). The 31,830 private emails averaged 21.8/day, plus nearly that many for business. Call it 40 total/day. Assume Mrs. Clinton sleeps four hours/day, leaving 20 hours for everything else including emails (at an average of two emails/hour all day every day) and meetings with foreign ministers. Some of the business emails would have been complicated and would have required some thought and some time—multiple drafts and staff debate—in creating the reply. To be sure, threads with multiple emails would account for some of the total, but how many? I presume that Mrs. Clinton was not the person at the keyboard entering the reply. (Does she type?)
From my perch in the wilds of New Mexico, it appears that she had to have some help in managing this process. How did that work? What was the decision process with regard to eliminating the personal emails? Highlight all and hit delete?

Gary King Incredibly Disappointing

I have always thought of Gary King as a decent guy, not someone I would for barring the Republican being an idiot, but decent. That’s over. I have also felt that King’s long quest to be elected governor and follow his dad, Gov. Bruce, was a little strange.
This morning’s Albuquerque Journal brings news that King is deeply into parochialism that is one of New Mexico’s big problems.
That’s my take on King’s remark at a Belen Fundraiser that Gov. Susana Martinez “does not have a Latino heart.” The remark is in a brief video published yesterday on the web site of the conservative magazine, “The Weekly Standard.”
Find the video at: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/nm-dem-says-gop-guv-martinez-does-not-have-latino-heart_804671.html.
Just one of King's many missed points is that Martinez represents the majority of New Mexico Hispanics. She is a generation or two out of Mexico. The people who have been in the state and proudly proclaim that accident makes them better people, they are the minority. This is as of the 2000 census.

Source For Wertheim Column

An essay about paternalism provided the anchor for next week’s column. It came via http://www.aldaily.com which means arts and letters daily. Aldaily prints very short excerpts from articles, book reviews and essays and provides the link. The little introductions open intellectual doors that I could never hope to find, much less open.
The following drew me to the paternalism piece. “The new paternalism is so nonconfrontational, anti-ideological, and unwilling to claim moral authority that it can hardly be called “paternal.” Let’s call it “maternalism”... more»”
Find the article at http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the_triumph_of_the_maternalists/14346#.UquBDqUw2pd. The publication is spiked.com, which calls itself, “Britain’s first online-only current-affairs mag, spiked is a metaphorical missile against misanthropy.” Nancy McDermott was the writer.

Higher Ed $$: NM Almost Wins

The competition was the race for leading the five-year inflation adjusted change in average net tuition paid per full time student. Change of course means increase. We were second to Georgia which increased net tuition 77.5% for the five years from 2007 to 2012. New Mexico's increase was 54.3%.

The net part means the numbers are after deducting state and institutional grants and scholarships. The numbers are in a report released today by State Higher Education Officers Association (http://www.sheeo.org). The report is the annual State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) report. Find it at http://www.sheeo.org/resources/publications/shef-—-state-higher-education-finance-fy12.

In the race for leading the reduction of funding per full time student, we weren't competitive, finishing only in the second group which cut support from 20% to 40%.

Two states reduced tuition during the period—Wyoming and Arkansas. Two states increased the financial support—resource rich North Dakota and bankrupt Illinois.

Policy Band-Aids From Barela, Jennings a Variable

Economic Development Secretary Jon Barela brought a menu of economic policy band-aids to commercial real estate developers in Albuquerque on Monday. The organization was NAIOP NM. His rhetorical bumbling (I'll be polite) was discussed in the previous post.

The policy list, presented under the mantle of a "New Century Jobs Agenda," seems mostly to be good stuff. However, the new century started 12 years ago. The proposals are technical, reflecting what I see as the Martinez administration's lack of vision. Whatever. Here is the list:

1. Allow companies to elect a single sales tax factor.
2. Cut the corporate income tax.
3. Put $10 million into the Local Economic Development Act for paying for local infrastructure for companies.
4. Put $4.75 million into JTIP, the well regarded job training program.
5. Capital outlay reform.
6. An informed consent law for the Spaceport.
7. Main Street program: Double the capital outlay money.

My problem with Main Street is that while it nicely renovates small town downtowns, it does so without regard as to whether there is a functioning economy around the community. The only difference between an empty store with a renovated facade and an empty store with a crumbling facade may well be the tax money spent on the facade.

After the election next Tuesday, Barela said the administration will "come together" (with legislators?) and see what else can be done.

Senate Pro Tem Tim Jennings of Roswell will be a variable. The Governor, through her political guru, Jay McClesky, has run a vicious campaign against Jennings. Even if Jennings loses to Cliff Pirtle, a 26-year-old high school graduate, which would surprise me a lot, Jennings' many friends in the Senate will remember and the Senate's leadership may become less conservative. If Jennings wins, he retain his strong commitment to doing good for New Mexico, but, well, he's human and he will remember.

Barela Misleads

Economic Development Secretary Jon Barela brought economic good news to commercial real estate developers in Albuquerque today. Unfortunately on one key point, he, ummmm, misspoke and on another he misled.

"Las Cruces is doing very well," Barela asserted. Not exactly. Las Cruces lost 1,500 jobs, year-over-year, according to latest job report.

The joys of New Mexico's dropping unemployment rate got Barela's kudos. Unfortunately, as apparently everyone but Barela knows, that dropping rate is solely a function of people dropping from the labor force. If these people were still in the labor force, they would be unemployed and the rate would be higher.

The occasion was the meeting of NAIOP, the commercial real estate developers group.

Political Direct Mail Finally Appears

The lack of direct mail advertising from political candidates has surprised me this fall. We were buried in such solicitations during the primary election.

A piece came today from the Republican Party of New Mexico. Two pages of the four-page 8.5" x 11" item attacked President Obama and Martin Heinrich, candidate for the U.S. Senate. The other two pages were an application for and absentee ballot. As such, the piece doesn't quite count as candidate direct mail.

A further curiosity is that the mailer came to my son (or current resident). He hasn't voted from my house for years. When he registered recently in New Mexico, we simply assumed that he had long since been deleted from the rolls. Just after he registered, a mail item came from the county clerk to my address, not the one where he registered. In between, he was in Colorado, registered there and voted there.

Ds Have Already “Destroy(ed) Medicare As We Know It"

“Destroy Medicare As We Know It”

That’s the fiendish horror which Democrats accuse Republicans of planning. The phrase is the apocalyptic specter which Democrats invoke when speaking of possible changes in Medicare, especially the changes proposed in the House of Representatives budget by Rep. Paul Ryan, now the Republicans candidate for vice president with Mitt Romney.

Changing Medicare, narrowly taken, does in fact mean ending Medicare as we know simply because any change means ending the old and bringing in something new.

In their stock phrase, the Ds are saying, basically, don’t change Medicare and, by extension, don’t change Medicaid and Social Security. This is a disservice to the American people, to put it politely. That’s because the entitlement programs—Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security—must change before they financially destroy the country.

To argue otherwise is to lie to the people. Of course the phrase is not a policy argument, it seeks to create fear of the Rs and therefore generate votes for Ds.

In addition to being hypocritical, deceitful and dishonorable, to the extent that the Ds phrase pushes the scary status quo for entitlement programs and a good thing, it also is a lie. That’s because the Ds have already changed Medicare.

In the heavy duty angst that has followed Ryan’s VP anointment, a new number has appeared from conservative research gnomes—$716 million. That’s the amount the president’s health care law pulls from Medicare. (As to exactly how, you will have to look around.) But the point is that the President has already “destroyed Medicare as we know it.” Further, the President claims that Ryan’s plan would cost seniors an extra $6,400 per year. I read today that this number came with huge caveats from the Congressional Budget Office, might apply in 2022 and has nothing to do with the current Romney-Ryan proposal.

Not too bad, lying on both sides of an issue. The American people are pretty smart. I hope they figure all this out. Romney and Ryan will have to help the education. I trust they won’t be nice.

News Flash, Winston. Teacher Information Release Incredible

The idea that the Albuquerque Teachers Federation gets the contact information plus social security number for non-union member teachers is just incredible. That Albuquerque Public Schools Superintendent is “OK” with releasing the contact information, as the Albuquerque Journal put it July 8 also is incredible.

Brooks’ acceptance of this invasion contained two elements. Other districts do it, he said. That everybody does it has to rank as just about the laziest, least valid excuse for anything. The second element brings the question of Brooks connection to the real world.

As the Journal quoted Brooks, he said, “I am less bothered by the name, address and phone number given that most of us who have a telephone get (our) name, address and phone number put in the phone book.” At least Brooks is bothered by the union getting the social security number.

Well, Winston, a whole bunch of us don’t. My phone number has been unlisted since 1990, the result of telephone harassment disturbing my then wife. My present wife (how to state that without awkwardness…) hasn’t had a listed number for decades. For her it was the whole issue of being a single woman.

For more than a year, we have been in the vanguard of change in telephony. We dumped our land line and only have cell phones.

Federation President Ellen Bernstein said unions “have an obligation and a right to inform and organize.” Another “I” word is in the equation—intimidate.

In the fifth paragraph of the story and still on page one, the Journal commendably noted that Rio Rancho, Santa Fe and Central New Mexico Community College do not provide access to teacher’s home contact information.

"Visiting," Considered, And Political Donations

The late Gov. Bruce King taught me about visiting. I interviewed him at his home in Stanley. This was in late 1978, just before his second term started. Actually, I didn’t lead the interview. I took a freelancer along because I felt unable to take King seriously, what with his “mighty fine” persona and all.

We visited. In the kitchen of the King home. Around the table. Drinking coffee. For three hours. The group included Gov. King; Alice, his wife and true partner; brothers Sam and Don; and sons Gary, now attorney general, and Bill.

Well before the conversation ended, I was in awe of King. He and his family provided a complete communication. We had visited. Visiting is about communication and relationships.

Visiting is what I think Republican State Senate candidate Pat Woods does when he talks to people. I haven’t met Woods. In this week’s newspaper column, I offered a brief theoretical consideration based on the broad and rural concept of visiting for Woods’ donations to Democrats over the years, donations that have drawn the always nasty rhetorical wrath of Susana Martinez political henchman Jay McCleskey. The column length of around 600 words limited the analysis.

This is theory. But I have enough experience in rural areas to believe the theory is in the vicinity. First, let’s attest to Woods’ conservativeness. He has regularly donated to Congressman Steve Pearce, who is a good working definition of being really, really conservative.

One of the Democratic candidates getting a Woods donation was Craig Cosner of Tucumcari. I haven’t met Cosner.

My Google search surfaced these items about Cosner that add to conservative. He is from Tucumcari. He is a retired banker. Given Tucumcari’s location, much of Cosner’s banking work will have involved agriculture. Woods is a farmer and rancher from the Clovis area. He will have known Cosner. They will have visited, had some coffee somewhere, more than once. Even if Woods and Cosner aren’t friends, they will have been in the same circles for a long time. That sort of relationship means that if one party to the relationship runs for office, the other gives some money.

Woods isn’t perfect. In 2002, he made a small donation to Patsy Madrid, a super liberal. Such a donation is inexplicable to me.

But then some time back I sat in on the donations committee of a construction industry professional group. The committee approved a small donation to a state senator of my acquaintance, one who I felt was the enemy of all thing capitalist.

Communication was the reason for the donation—keeping the lines open. Communication is the reason for a good many political donations. Organizations, business organizations in particular, want to maintain relationships, the keep the legislative boat stable. Winning is not the issue much of the time.

The Jay McCleskey’s live in a different world. Winning is the only thing.

Feldman: Arnold-Jones Video Bill "A Great Thing"

Albuquerque legislators Sen. Dede Feldman and Rep. Jimmie Hall briefed the Albuquerque Press Women about the recent session of the legislature today.

Feldman, a Democrat and a liberal, said she could speak frankly because of her decision to not run for reelection. She did, to fair degree, saying, for example, that the whole purpose of redistricting was “to preserve incumbent seats.”

Feldman did a video-the-senate bill because of "Janice Arnold-Jones forcing the issue and that was a great thing."

For Arnold-Jones, this seems not a "bipartisan work across the aisles" situation, but rather one of having ideas that are so good and so provocative that Ds are forced to go along. Now running for Congress, she can brag on that.

Legislators had a little “new money” to work with. Note that “little” is on the scale of things, around $250 million. The policy dilemma was choosing between tax breaks, Gov. Susana Martinez’ preference, and “filling holes.” “We did a little of each,” Feldman said.

Martinez’ line-item vetoes in the budget “kind of revealed values.” A program for home-delivered meals got axed, for example, by the clearly heartless Governor.

Feldman disapproved of Martinez’s veto of many “pork” projects, small capital projects allowing legislators to make constituents happy. But Bill Richardson vetoed a lot of pork, she said. “He did it vindictively, too,” she said.

During the session, education provided “the biggest piece of tension between the governor and the legislature,” Feldman said.

Rep. Hall didn’t push the partisan framework. Rather, he offered insights about the day one retirement announcement of House Speaker Ben Lujan. The announcement “colored the rest of the session,” Hall said. “The moment he said that, (it) created a power vacuum.”

Biden Comes for Money. D Plutocrats Pay Up. Fewer Jobs Being Lost.

Vice President Joe Biden came to Albuquerque yesterday and left with money.

Locals whined to talk radio about the random traffic disruption. Geez. Get a life. If a president or vice president comes to any town, to get to their destination, they will disrupt traffic. The Heather Wilson supporters displaying signs along the route were a little more creative.

For my wife it was her second such disruption. A few years ago President George W. Bush delayed her arrival at the Dubuque, Iowa, airport. She is the family Democrat. That day she called me and her dad and brother, both now deceased, to say that “your President” almost made her late.

Biden does seem to have a way with Albuquerque traffic. The Albuquerque Journal shows Biden motorcade problem stories from October 2011 and 2009.

The talk radio whiners missed a more important point. A standard litany in the public dialogue is that “New Mexico is a poor state.” The price for the Biden event was $10,000.

The Democrats go on and on about income inequality while somehow “forgetting” that Democrats are plutocrats, too. Even in “poor” New Mexico, there are Democrats with money. This was obvious under Bill Richardson, but has been hidden the past year.

On the other end of the plutocracy spectrum, fewer New Mexicans seem to be losing jobs. To be specific, fewer seem to be filing new claims for unemployment compensation.

No trend shows yet. As of this writing state level unemployment claims figures are available for five weeks of 2012. The year started nicely with 457 fewer claims filed during the week of January 7 as compared to a year ago. The figures for the following four weeks are:
Week ending January 14. New Claims: 1,820. One year change: -430.
Week ending January 21. New Claims: 1,638. One year change: -109.
Week ending January 28. New Claims: 1,654. One year change: +55.
Week ending Febuary 4. New Claims: 1,710. One year change: +286.

Heather Wilson Interview Transcript

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.

Redistricting: Martinez Abandons Campaign Position

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.

Sanchez: Put Valencia in One District

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.

Martinez Speech Disappointing, At Best

“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.

Wilson Speaks to Economic Forum; Martinez Appears

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.”