Obama Administration Making Huge Push in Hispanic Community to Increase Food Stamp Recipients

Daily Caller - The government has been targeting Spanish speakers with radio “novelas” promoting food stamp usage as part of a stated mission to increase participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps.
Each novela, comprising a 10-part series called “PARQUE ALEGRIA,” or “HOPE PARK,” presents a semi-dramatic scenario involving characters convincing others to get on food stamps, or explaining how much healthier it is to be on food stamps. Read full story here: News New Mexico

Obama Administration Making Huge Push in Hispanic Community to Increase Food Stamp Recipients

Martinez Still Weighing Adding Another 170,000 to NM Medicaid Rolls

KRQE - Gov. Susana Martinez said she is undecided on whether she will decide to expand Medicaid health insurance coverage to poor people as called for in President Barack Obama's health care overhaul or if she will join other Republican governors in refusing to.
"It is going to be the administration at the end of the day that makes the final decision as to whether or not we are going to expand it and to what level," said Martinez.
The U.S. Supreme Court health care ruling last month said Washington cannot force states to expand Medicaid coverage to adults at 133 percent above the poverty line, or people who make less than $15,000 a year. In New Mexico, officials at the Human Services Department estimate that would make 170,000 more people eligible. Read full story here: News New Mexico

Martinez Still Weighing Adding Another 170,000 to NM Medicaid Rolls

Santa Fe Public School District Superintendent Switch Will Cost Over $400,000

KOAT - The Santa Fe Public School District is paying nearly $500,000 to replace its superintendent. The teachers union calls the decision to spend the money ridiculous, especially since teachers haven't gotten raises for years. "The amount that was decided upon was pretty much a shock to everybody, especially because we have not had a raise in about five years," NEA President Bernice Garcia Baca said. Garcia Baca said she doesn't know why the former superintendent's contract was bought out a year early. She does know the move cost more than $400,0000 when you add up the buyout, candidate search, interim pay and the new superintendent's salary. Read full story here: News New Mexico

Santa Fe Public School District Superintendent Switch Will Cost Over $400,000

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Gov.’s Tax Plan Would Aid Big, Little Firms

Tom Clifford

Albuquerque Journal (Subscription) - The Martinez administration, hoping to improve the state’s economy, will once again ask the Legislature to reduce corporate income tax rates, eliminate gross receipts taxation of the state’s smallest businesses, reduce the tax burden on research and development companies and give personal income tax credits to military retirees. Finance and Administration Secretary Tom Clifford told a Legislative Finance Committee hearing Wednesday that the proposals, little changed from legislation it backed at this year’s session, have to be consistent with Gov. Susana Martinez’s top priority of “sustainable budgets that we can maintain over the long term” once they are enacted. “This (tax reform) package has to be whittled down to what can fit in the budget.” Some of Clifford's proposals:

• Lowering the top corporate income tax rate from 7.6 percent to a rate more competitive with neighboring states. He said Arizona will lower its top rate to 4.9 percent over the next five years.
•  Changing the way corporations calculate their income taxes to benefit companies that sell much of their products and services out of state.
• Allowing small businesses to deduct their gross receipts tax payments from income taxes if their receipts are less than $50,000 a year. “It’s an issue of trying to make life easier for our entrepreneurial businesses, our microbusinesses,” Clifford said.
• Reducing the GRT burden on companies that sell research and development services to the Defense Department and the department’s contractors or that sell satellite- or laser-related services. Clifford said New Mexico faces much more competition for R&D than it did decades ago when the state’s GRT was designed.
• Phasing in a personal income tax credit on veterans’ retirement income. Clifford said the measure would help attract skilled former military workers to New Mexico.
• Reforming the high-wage tax credit paid to employers. Clifford said the time companies have to claim the credit should be limited, and the credit should be targeted toward industries that will help the economy grow.

Read More News New Mexico

Gov.’s Tax Plan Would Aid Big, Little Firms

New Energy Economy Enviro Group Misleads Public in Campaign Against PNM

New Mexico Watchdog - An environmental group that wants PNM to stop using coal to generate electricity is using deceptive and misleading images in its billboard campaign.  New Energy Economy on July 2, 2012, announced an advertising campaign to pressure PNM to switch completely to solar power.  Its campaign, entitled “Coal Hurts,” shows a child sucking air through a respirator against a background of heavy smoke pouring from a cluster of smokestacks.  But the photo has nothing to do with PNM’s power plant.  And though the child in the photo has asthma,  NEE won’t say if the child’s problem was in any way caused by PNM’s power plant. New Energy Economy ‘s campaign targets PNM’s  San Juan Generating Plant,  But NEE admits that the photograph of heavy pollution pouring from four smokestacks is not of PNM’s plant.  We obtained a photograph of the San Juan  plant from PNM. The real PNM San Juan Generating plant is shown here.  We apologize that the file is too big to reproduce on this page. NEE will not tell us where and when the photograph it used in its billboards was taken.  It will not reveal if the photograph was of a coal-fired electric generating plant or another type of industrial facility, or if the plant shown in its billboards is even still in operation. Read More News New Mexico

New Energy Economy Enviro Group Misleads Public in Campaign Against PNM

952 Drug Killings in Juarez in 2012: Down 42%

KRWG - The Mexican army says killings by criminal gangs in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez have fallen 42 percent in the first six months of 2012 as compared to the same period of 2011.
Local army commander Gen. Emilio Zarate says there were 952 such killings in the first half of the year, compared to 1,642 in the first half of 2011.
Zarate says the drop is due to the weakening of the local Juarez drug cartel and its rivals in the Gente Nueva gang, which is allied with the Sinaloa drug cartel. Read full story here: News New Mexico

952 Drug Killings in Juarez in 2012: Down 42%

U.S. T-Notes at Record Low Yields: Retirees Taking Huge Hits on Interest Income Subsidizing Gov't Borrowing

Financial Times  - Investors accepted the lowest yields ever for 10-year paper in a US Treasury auction shortly before the release of Federal Reserve minutes showing a bias towards more monetary easing.
The scale of demand at the auction suggests investors expect US interest rates to remain low for several years. The $21bn sale of 10-year paper sold at a yield of 1.459 per cent, the lowest ever in an auction. Read full story here: News New Mexico

U.S. T-Notes at Record Low Yields: Retirees Taking Huge Hits on Interest Income Subsidizing Gov't Borrowing