Thinking Out Loud

Listening to a Sarah Palin speech is not easy. If you simply read her speeches and you are capable of employing a bit of horse sense, there is very little she says that is not logical. However, she really needs a voice coach. With all the money she has taken in for speaking engagements one would think someone would suggest she learn how to project her voice for emphasis rather than merely screech. Maybe she will take some time to work on that vocal skill while the majority in Washington works on its questionable economic logic.

Arthur Laffer

The column we posted by Walter Williams earlier this week on “Eating the Rich” was unusually informative. Williams did a great job of explaining why a philosophical assault on America's high achievers is nothing more than hopeless jealousy and envy disguised as "compassion and fairness." Williams explains why trying to corner and confiscate from the “rich” will not solve our problems. Those who have rejected the overwhelming evidence that favors the efficacy of Arthur Laffer's supply-side economics seems to have a congenital compulsion to embrace trickle up poverty instead of policies that actually work.

We have seen several homecoming story segments on the TV networks lately. They involve soldiers who have been in harm’s way returning to their young families. These are heart warming stories. Unfortunately, at the same time these stories are running our president is caught on open microphones talking trash about his predecessor for getting “us” into two military incursions without paying for them. Is this not the pot talking? Only his explanation of his vote five years ago to NOT raise the debt limit carries less weight than his thoughts on authorizing, but not paying for various military policies.

The murder last week of a prosecutor in Juarez is particularly instructive of the tribal war going on just across the border. The Mexican drug cartels are engaged in atrocities that are creating anarchy and lawlessness just a few miles away. Why are we looking to solve terrible human tragedies in Libya when we could be helping our next door neighbors with unimaginable difficulties? And why are we suddenly spending hundreds of millions each day in Libya while deciding to slash $226 million from the border security budget earlier this month? More insanity.

With the cost of a gas tank fill-up skyrocketing, we wonder if anyone is connecting the dots. Through capital injections into the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. is now actively encouraging and financing off-shore drilling in Brazil. In the meantime our own EPA kills domestic drilling and actively attempts to destroy jobs and living standards in our state under the guise of protecting a frigging lizard? There should be a hundred thousand protest letters on the desks of Ben Ray Lujan, Martin Heinrich, Tom Udall, and Jeff Bingaman expressing outrage over the stupidity of the Sand Dune Lizard. Is Steve Pearce the only elected official we have sent to Washington with a lick of sense? Ok that is a rhetorical question.

And finally, it looks like the Anthony casino question is back in the news. The question is simple. Does the State of New Mexico and Dona Ana County want to create an opportunity for the Jemez tribe to snare a location 300 miles off their reservation and use unimaginable tax advantages to destroy existing local businesses, wipe out local jobs, and assault local and state tax revenues, simply because if we allow their “investors” to do so, they will build a real nice building and pay people to accomplish these things? You can bet President Obama’s Interior Secretary won’t stand in the way of this ill-advised economic suicide. Shall we mix in some home grown economic insanity? With the final say only Governor Susana Martinez knows for sure. We have a great upcoming guest lineup on the show. Have a nice week.

Thinking Out Loud

Hill: Obama Hostage of His Assumptions

Austin Hill

Townhall - Here are just a couple of the assumptions that currently seem to have engulfed the President: “Government always know best” – President Barack Obama seems to have very little confidence in the abilities of private individuals and groups to solve problems, and seems to view individual liberty as a problem to be “managed.” Thus, no matter what the dilemma – the rising cost of healthcare, the collapse of American automobile companies, or a proliferation of “bullying” on school campuses – the President’s instinctive responses are almost always the same. Form a commission. Convene a summit. Appoint a Czar. Set-up a new “department.” The President seems to assume that with more oversight and control, government will always act benevolently and in the “collective interests” of all, whereas private individuals and organizations are almost always suspected of acting selfishly and destructively. This philosophical assumption was absolutely entailed in the President’s remarks about our fiscal crisis.

Paul Ryan

While Congressman Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee Chairman proposed to expand competition in the healthcare markets as a means of reducing Medicare costs, an indignant President Obama would have nothing to do with the idea (as the Wall Street Journal pointed out the President stopped short of calling this idea “murderous”). The only means by which entitlement spending on Medicare can be controlled, so far as President Obama is concerned, is to have all Medicare coverage decisions routed through an un-elected commission in Washington so as to eliminate “unnecessary” Medicare payments (this approach also re-affirms his previously stated belief that greedy medical doctors have a proclivity to bill Medicare for unnecessary procedures, simply because they want the money).

“Private resources ultimately belong to the government” – President Obama is well known for his “spread- the-wealth-around inclinations, given his now famous run-in with the “Joe the Plummer” character during the 2008 presidential campaign. What often goes unnoticed, however, is that he frequently speaks not merely of government’s “right” to re-distribute private wealth, but of government’s ultimate ownership of it. This philosophical assumption was apparent in the President’s fiscal crisis speech as well. When discussing the taxation rates imposed upon America’s top income earners, President Obama insisted that America “can’t afford” to leave these rates in place. Both explicitly, and implicitly, the President was saying that our government incurs a cost, when it does NOT take money away from private individuals. How can this be? The government “loses” money, when it does not take money away from private citizens? President Obama has been using this line of reasoning for nearly all of the twenty-eight months of his presidency. It ultimately points towards a believe that your money, at the end of the day, belongs to the government, and it’s up to agents of government to determine how much you’re permitted to “keep.” Read full column here: News New Mexico

Hill: Obama Hostage of His Assumptions

O'Reilly: Lunch Decisions

Bill O'Reilly

Townhall- Back in the Stone Age, I brought my noon meal to school in a Davy Crockett lunchbox. It was made of cheap metal, and had I eaten it, the taste would have been similar to the sandwich inside, usually bologna or tuna on soggy bread. My mother also included an apple (usually thrown, not ingested) and some Mallomar cookies: 800 calories each. According to an article in The Chicago Tribune, my standard lunch would not have been acceptable at the Little Village Academy public school in the Windy City. The principal, Elsa Carmona, is quoted as saying that her students can either eat the school cafeteria food or "go hungry." Wow! Tough dietary deal. Carmona went on to say that some parents are morons who allow their children to eat garbage and that is not going to happen on her watch. The Tribune quotes her: "It's about ... the excellent quality food that they are able to serve (in the lunchroom). It's milk versus a Coke." Read full column here: News New Mexico

O'Reilly: Lunch Decisions

Tea Parties Rally Around the State

Capitol Report New Mexico - At roughly the same time that taxes are due, a number of chapters of the Tea Party movement held rallies across the state. On Friday (April 15), a rally was held in Albuquerque (you can click here to see how the Albuquerque Journal covered the event and click here for KOB-TV’s coverage) as well as Moriarty and Farmington. On Saturday, rallies were held in Silver City, Lincoln County, Deming and Santa Fe. We dropped by the Santa Fe event, in which a couple hundred people gathered at the Plaza downtown. Afterwards, we interviewed John Hosenfeld of the Santa Fe Tea Party about his organization’s main focus, how the Tea Party has influenced national politics, what its stance is on corporations and taxes, whether the movement has any common ground with the political left, and whether the Tea Party needs to compromise in order to grow: News New Mexico

Tea Parties Rally Around the State

Fed Beige Book Sees Growth in NM

New Mexico Business Weekly - The economy in New Mexico and six neighboring states “expanded solidly in late February and March,” the U.S. Federal Reserve reported Wednesday in its latest Beige Book survey of the region’s business executives. The local report was consistent with those of the nation’s other 11 districts, which all reported at least moderate economic improvement since the last report. New Mexico and neighboring states are part of the Fed’s 10th District, based in Kansas City. Each district released its own Beige Book Wednesday. During the six-week period since the last Beige Book, regional consumer spending rebounded in March after severe weather limited February sales, and retailers expected their sales will rise in the next three months, according to the report. Read full story here: News New Mexico

Fed Beige Book Sees Growth in NM

Trinity Six Decades Later

Santa Fe New Mexican - TULAROSA — Tresa VanWinkle struggled to hold back tears as she glanced at family photos perched on her desk among the clutter of her downtown office. "I look at what has happened to members of my family, and I wonder if we are the children of the bomb," said VanWinkle, 53, director of the Alamogordo-based Cancer Awareness, Prevalence, Prevention and Early Detection center. She was pulling up national and state cancer trends on the computer — numbers that she said show spiking cancer rates among families in the sprawling, often wind-whipped and ever-dusty Tularosa Basin north of Alamogordo. "The bomb" was the 19-kiloton plutonium device nicknamed "The Gadget," detonated just before dawn July 16, 1945, on the northwest end of what is now the White Sands Missile Range. Read full story here: News New Mexico

Trinity Six Decades Later

Newsnm is Tweeting

Not wanting to wait until the last minute, News New Mexico has plunged deeper into the 21st Century. You can now get many of the latest updates from News New Mexico on Twitter. Particularly when we post stories or columns originated by the Newsnm staff members, we plan to "tweet" to our followers. You can follow along at jspence0556@twitter.com.

Newsnm is Tweeting