We began the week with news that three elected officials sent to Washington by the citizens of New Mexico have decided they will not have town hall meetings with constituents back home for the time being. Those on the dodge are: Martin Heinrich, Tom Udall, and Jeff Bingaman. According to the Udall and Heinrich camps, security for these events is expensive and besides, they are too busy working on job creation ideas to meet face-to-face with New Mexico citizens. There is no explanation on the hiding reasons of Obamacare ramrod Jeff Bingaman. The theory is Bingaman retiring at the end of next year with a full pension and sees no reason to provide explanations for his votes.
On the other hand, Representatives Ben Ray Lujan and Steve Pearce are facing the music. Both are looking constituents in the eye when they demand explanations. Only time will tell if his decision to dodge constituents will damage Martin Heinrich’s chances to win a Senate seat. With Tom Udall’s re-election efforts out to 2014, he has some hope that disappointment over his constituency dodging decisions will fade. Gutlessness has a long history of paying dividends……at least in politics. 
Just as reports from the southern hemisphere revealed there are record cold temperatures in New Zealand (following record cold temperatures here last winter), we received news that Evergreen Solar went belly up in Massachusetts. The bankruptcy filing came despite $58 million in “green job investments” in Evergreen by that state. Amazingly, Governor Deval Patrick said he does not regret losing that much of the taxpayer’s money. Another report from Seattle showed that $20 million in federal grants to provide “green jobs” through the retrofitting of 2,000 homes, yielded just fourteen jobs (mostly administrative) while a whopping total of 3 homes were actually retrofitted. There seems to be no end to stories of record cold temperatures around the globe in 2011 while America continues to borrow and blow taxpayer dollars in the name of saving the planet from global warming.
Speaking of government waste, Rio Grande Foundation Executive Director Paul Gessing released a well written expose on the biggest white elephant in the history of New Mexico this week. The financial disaster known as the “Rail Runner” continues to be the New Mexico train wreck that keeps on taking. After we talked about Gessing’s column on the show on Thursday we were reminded by a physician and loyal listener that Governor Richardson’s original transportation nightmare investment in Eclipse Aviation was also a disaster. Our staff did a little homework on Eclipse Aviation and found that it’s CEO (and the company itself) were both contributors to Richardson’s campaign coffers. The New Mexico taxpayer’s loss was $20 million on that deal.
We noticed a little rumbling within the rank and file of AFSCME in the state. AFSCME is public employee union organization. It seems that some local members were upset that AFSCME endorsed town hall averse Martin Heinrich without much consideration of the Hector Balderas candidacy for U.S. Senate. We will have AFSCME’s Carter Bundy on the show Tuesday to explain the advance endorsement of Heinrich by AFSCME and the reaction by some of the locals. |
| Hector Balderas |
And finally, we took note of the fact that after considering the near 50% dropout rate and the non-college bound students exiting high schools in New Mexico, that 83% of those remaining needed some form of remedial education work before entering college. The only thing clearer than the absence of aggregate academic achievement is the anticipation that the entrenched power structures in public education will tell us the solution to this sticky problem is more taxpayer money.
Our guest list for the show next week is terrific. We have state GOP Executive Director Bryan Watkins on the show Monday. Steve Henke of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association and Carter Bundy will join us Tuesday. Dalene Hodnett from the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau is scheduled for Wednesday. Jay Lininger from the Center for Biodiversity will be on Thursday. And Representative David Doyle from Albuquerque will return to the show again to finish out the week with us on Friday. 
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