Gun Fire From Juarez Hits El Paso City Hall

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott called on the White House to send more troops to the border yesterday after stray bullets from guns fired in Juarez smacked El Paso City Hall on Tuesday. There have been 1300 murders in Juarez in 2010. There was no immediate comment from Mexican President Felipe Calderon or U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on the lead flying. Both men are rumored to be too busy composing their next denouncement of the State of Arizona to offer views on this latest problem with border security. Read bullet story here:
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Road to nowhere....why is the city KILLING JOBS?

Does this road (right) lead to nowhere? The answer is no, not exactly. This road leads directly to one of the finest new golf courses in the Southwest (see picture below). Where is this new golf course? It is just north of Highway 70 in Las Cruces. Why would we ask if this a road leading to nowhere? Because for the time being, that is exactly how this road is being treated by the Las Cruces City Council. For reasons known only to those working behind closed doors the city has repeatedly thrown up what amounts to local job-killing roadblocks. And in doing so, local policy makers have thwarted all efforts to get the golf course open for local and visiting residents to play. With unemployment a severe problem for working families in our city, our elected officials have some explaining to do. Exactly why are our city councilors, politicians who speak of jobs during speeches to their constituents, denying our local workers access to hundreds of construction jobs, golf course jobs, and restaurant jobs?
The gross receipts tax losses alone that have been caused by city council's dithering away opportunities to help get this course open have cost the city coffers more than a half a million dollars. Tomorrow, we will show pictures of a brand new elementary school that is due for opening next month in this same area of town. News New Mexico plans to broadcast by remote control from the street corner leading into this school if City Councilors do not begin explaining why the restrictive “safety” rules it is applying to the golf course’s opening do not apply to the safety of elementary school children that will attend the school. It might be time to start calling your city councilors.

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Joseph Phillips - The True Cost of Liberty

Columnist Joseph Phillips offers a 4th of July message that help us understand what American and Americans should be all about.  Read his thoughts here:
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Harry Jackson Jr. - Wright is Wrong....Again!

Apparently the ghost of the 2008 election past is rearing its ugly head again. Columnist Harry Jackson Jr. got wind that the Reverend Jeremiah Wright was "teaching" a course in Chicago recently. Read Jackson's views on the Reverend in his column here:
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Part I - Partisan Politics and the Oil Spill

History is fast becoming the harshest critic of the morphing of the American political system. America got a wake up call from OPEC on energy policy in 1973. Voters allowed elected officials to hit the snooze button and embark on a thirty-seven year odyssey of dual-party leadership ineptitude instead of getting up and smelling the coffee.
The grotesque Internet images of crude oil spewing up from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico serve as a living monument to the snooze button. Dead wildlife washing up on the beaches and crippled fishing industries provide additional compelling evidence of what voters have allowed partisan Democrats and Republicans to do. Simply put, when afforded the opportunity to raise a few million dollars in campaign contributions and make a few good appearances on television, there is no end to the snoozing that can take the place of critical long range national planning.

The need to plan for America’s long range energy needs was actually developing long before 1973. The problem began as American oil fields began to mature. Having picked off all the low hanging fruit, vertically-integrated international oil companies figured out pretty early in the game that it would be much “cheaper” to simply import supplies from oil gushers in the Middle East than to keep looking farther and wider on U.S. soil for the same seemingly generic raw material. Importing, refining, and marking up this basic commodity at a reasonable profit, while quenching the American consumer’s thirst, made good business sense. Connecting the “cost dots” was not as easy forty-five years ago. However, after a several nasty military clashes in Palestine, clashes the Islamic oil producing and fervently anti-Israel nations lost, the circumstances surrounding U.S. energy supplies changed, literally overnight.

Once OPEC figured out America was hooked on the black stuff, a cleverly crafted embargo in 1973 enabled its members to bring the U.S. economy to its knees. Hundreds of billions of extra U.S. cash was funneled in the direction of petro-rich countries in the Middle East. It would be the first of many energy crunches.

At almost the same time as the first energy crunch was engineered, the environmental movement was gathering momentum. And before the end of the 1970’s, environmentalists were trumpeting the idea that use of all fossil fuels was inherently evil. While the armies of environmental lawyers haven’t ended the use of fossil fuels, they have done a marvelous job of making domestic exploration and production of fossil fuels more expensive than ever.

Eventually domestic drilling for crude oil was literally driven out of sight, meaning it was driven offshore. And in most places all shallow water drilling was also banned. Most new domestic exploration (for energy that everyone uses regardless of what their expressed political views are) was eventually driven into the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. And the rest as they say…..is history.

While America was beginning a long tortuous process of denial back in 1973, other countries took note of the implications for the safety of oil supplies and took action. Instead of milking various competing energy sources for campaign contributions, long range planning ensued in most jurisdictions around the globe. Even in perpetually poorly led France, the leadership realized it had a dangerous dependency and vulnerability to imported oil for its electricity generation. Accordingly the French wisely embarked on a nationwide conversion to nuclear energy. Their conversion began almost immediately. And by 1988, the French were generating nearly 80% of their electrical power from about sixty-five brand new nuclear plants.

Tomorrow we will examine all the things Republican and Democratic party partisans did to make our problems worse.
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Old Keynsians Don't Die

Paul Krugman a partisan disguised as an economist......or is it an economist disguised as a partisan, proves that old Keynesian theories never die. Their proponents just spend away. Read his public policy commentary here:
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Carlos Vargas and Ivan Fernandez to Replace Don Ball

Long time NMSU coaching assistant Carlos Vargas will take over the men's tennis program and NMSU assistant Ivan Fernandez will coach the NMSU women. The announcement was made by NMSU A.D. McKinley Boston (left) yesterday in the wake of the retirement of long time head coach Don Ball. Read the story here:
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Federer Ousted From Wimbledon in Quarters

Sixteen time grand slam winner Roger Federer was beaten by hard hitting Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic at Wimbledon yesterday. It marks the first time in eight years Federer won't be in the finals. Is father time finally catching up with Federer? One could say "time" will tell but in the world of sports and in life time DOES tell. The question is not IF but WHEN all the matches of his career and gravity will take its toll. Read the Wimbledon recap here:
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Entitlement Riots

As public officials grappled with the task of trying to figure out how to take back absurd pension promises that cannot be kept, union-organized protests turned into riots in both Greece and Spain yesterday. Are these previews of coming attractions headed to a theater near you? Read the details here:
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Understanding Growth

We are on the e-mail list of our Congressman, Harry Teague (right). A few months ago Representative Teague sent a nice e-mail to his constituents asking many of us what we felt like was the single most important thing Congress could do to make things in our businesses better. Naturally, it was hard to narrow down the list of all the things we would have Congress do to a single item. Finally, after giving the excellent question plenty of thought it dawned on us. We suggested he urge Congress to adjourn for five years.
    The first priority of medical care is “Do no harm.” And based on the track record of this Congress it figures to be easier to ask them to do nothing, rather than try to hope they get something right.
    After we sent the message we began to think perhaps we had been too harsh. We experienced an epiphany this morning that convinced us a congressional adjournment is exactly what we need. It began when my wife (Kristi) called me to back porch to look at a plant we thought we had killed earlier this year. Literally, every leaf on the poor plant had turned yellow, drooped and fell off four months ago. When what we had to take care of had finally been reduced to a tall skinny pot full of dirt, I took it upon myself to admit failure and take the darn pot to the sun room and leave it there. I wanted all reminders of our failure out of sight and out of mind. The problem with growing house plants is we are not exactly experts. We are business people not horticulturists. As such we haven’t studied up on house plants and we really don’t know how much water and/or fertilizer is needed to insure growth. Just above is a picture of the pot we found in the sun room four months after I abandoned it. Notice it has two substantially new green shoots coming out of the top. The new leaves should start to unfold soon. In all the time the pot has been sitting in the sun room we have not done a thing. In effect, we adjourned all the programs we were using to "help" make the plant grow. Apparently, like most businesses that distribute our living standards by hiring workers, this plant simply wanted us to leave it alone. Naturally, because we were there this morning we were tempted to put the plant back in the house under our watchful eye. But of course we thought better of that idea and simply decided to remain adjourned.
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