Political battle heats up over efforts to raise Albuquerque's minimum wage

From KOB-TV.com - By: Stuart Dyson - A political battle is heating up over efforts to raise Albuquerque's minimum wage by a dollar an hour. The city clerk has 10 days to check over more than 25,000 petition signatures to see whether enough city voters can force the city council to vote on the issue, or put it on the ballot for an election. Right now the city's minimum wage is $7.50 an hour. It would climb to $8.50 if petition signers get their way, with cost of living increases every year. Business groups are ready for a fight. "It's a political battle, that's for sure," said Chamber of Commerce president Terri Cole. "It does look like they might have the signatures, so we're ready for the battle and we'll win this one." "Most people think that the minimum wage is for high school students," said Rebecca Glenn, an activist working for the increase. " Really there are people with families and people in their thirties and people in their forties. There's a lot of other people making minimum wage and it's not a living wage." "Passing an increase in minimum wage will just flat out make Albuquerque more uncompetitive," Cole said. "The only way businesses could possibly deal with this would be to increase prices, cut benefits, and cut jobs." Read more

Political battle heats up over efforts to raise Albuquerque's minimum wage

Santa Fe Bag ban proposal 'far from done deal'

From the Santa Fe New Mexican.com - by Julie Ann Grimm - A preliminary proposal to stop Santa Fe retail stores from providing plastic carryout bags received mixed reviews Tuesday from a city advisory committee. Policymakers plan next to hold a community meeting in conjunction with the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce to gather input about how such a proposal could affect businesses and the environment here. In 2008, the City Council considered a plan to make retailers charge customers for plastic bags, but councilors ultimately backed away from the idea, voting instead to direct city staff to come up with an education program to discourage use of disposable plastic bags. Business ombudsman Fabian Trujillo said the current effort is a way to “revive implementation” of that resolution. Staff in the city’s Economic Development Department and members of the Business and Quality of Life Committee are working on a draft proposal that would ban single-use plastic carryout bags at retail stores and require stores to charge customers a fee for a paper bag. Stores would be mandated to provide or sell reusable bags. Read more

Santa Fe Bag ban proposal 'far from done deal'

Penn State accreditation in jeopardy over scandal

Jerry Sandusky

From CNN.com - By Michael Pearson - (CNN) -- The organization that grants academic accreditation to Penn State has warned the school that it is in danger of losing that crucial status in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal, the university announced this week. The move by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education is the latest blow for the beleaguered university, which has seen its reputation clobbered and its football program hobbled after investigators found school leaders did too little stop the abuse. Were the commission to pull Penn State's accreditation -- which it has not done -- the school would face the loss of eligibility for federal student aid programs, guaranteed student loans, federal research grants and could lose eligibility for state aid, commission spokesman Richard Pockrass said in July The commission voted August 6 to place the school on warning status. Two days later, it notified Penn State officials that the school's accreditation was "in jeopardy" based on information contained in former FBI Director Louis Freeh's report on Penn State's handling of the sex-abuse allegations against Sandusky and a National Collegiate Athletic Association action against the school. Freeh found that Penn State's leadership showed "total and consistent disregard" for youths sexually abused by Sandusky, the former assistant football coach convicted by a jury in June on 45 counts involving child sex abuse. Read more

Penn State accreditation in jeopardy over scandal

In the age of 'Mediscare,' which side is right?

From the Politico.com - By JENNIFER HABERKORN - When the Obama campaign accused Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan of wanting to “end Medicare as we know it,” the two Republicans could have responded: “Yes, you’re right — our country is going broke, and we’re going to have to make some painful choices if we want to survive.” But they didn’t. Instead, Romney and Ryan declared themselves to be the ones who would “save” Medicare — and accused Barack Obama of being the one who would kill it. It’s not like Obama is anxious to discuss the details of his plan either, since he took a knife to Medicare spending when he signed the Democrats’ health care reform law in 2010. So you can forget about that high-minded “adult conversation” about entitlement spending that everyone says we ought to have. Obama doesn’t want it, Romney doesn’t want it, and the National Republican Campaign Committee officially took it off the table this week with a memo advising candidates not to even utter the words “entitlement reform.” What we’ll get now is three months of “Mediscare” — with Republicans and Democrats warning daily that the other guy would throw grandma off the cliff. So who’s right? They both are — and they both aren’t. Read more

In the age of 'Mediscare,' which side is right?

Shale gas is giving a big boost to America’s economy

From The Economist - PENNSYLVANIA, THE SITE of America’s first oil wells back in the 1850s, is now home to the world’s second-largest gas field after South Pars, on the border between Qatar and Iran. At the turn of the millennium America’s conventional gasfields were in decline. The country was preparing to become a significant importer: around $100 billion was invested in LNG import terminals that may now be redundant. Shale gas was known to geologists but had never been worth extracting. As recently as 2000 hardly any of it was coming out of the ground. Now shale contributes a third of America’s gas supplies. By 2035 the country’s share of total supplies (which may by then have risen to 820 billion cubic metres a year) could be nearly half. The rise has been helped along by a variety of factors, such as the liberalisation of access to existing pipelines by third parties that started in the 1970s, a deep and liquid gas market that allowed the risks of drilling to be hedged, ready access to capital, America’s home-grown oil industry and the entrepreneurial zip that provided the men and equipment. But the biggest difference was down to the efforts of one man: George Mitchell, the boss of an oil-service company, who saw the potential for improving a known technology, fracking, to get at the gas. Big oil and gas companies were interested in shale gas but could not make the breakthrough in fracking to get the gas to flow. Mr Mitchell spent ten years and $6m to crack the problem (surely the best-spent development money in the history of gas). Everyone, he said, told him he was just wasting his time and money. Read more

Shale gas is giving a big boost to America’s economy

Gov. Martinez should “Just say No” to Medicaid Expansion

Paul Gessing 

It’s free money! That’s the line used by actor Jimmy Fallon in a series of credit card commercials. It is also the line increasingly being used by advocates of Medicaid expansion here in New Mexico and across the nation. After all, who but a bunch of anti-social, uncaring, right wing conservatives could possibly turn down “free” money? The answer is that anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of economics knows that there is no such thing as a free lunch or “free” money. Even barring that first-semester ECON 101 lesson, in this case the money doesn’t stay “free” forever. New Mexico taxpayers will be on the hook for hundreds of millions of additional dollars in Medicaid spending if they accept this money. Lastly, since when does Congress keep its promises? First, some background: The Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) tried to force the states to expand Medicaid to cover most people with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. While the Supreme Court accepted a bulk of the new law, it did throw out the requirement that states expand Medicaid. Nonetheless, the federal government can bribe states with taxpayers’ own money. Currently, New Mexico’s system provides coverage at somewhat lower income levels. Despite the fact that the federal government pledges to cover New Mexico’s Medicaid expansion at rates starting at 100 percent and shifting to 90 percent, the Heritage Foundation finds that the Medicaid expansion will cost New Mexico taxpayers $306 million from the years 2014-2020. Read More News New Mexico 

Gov. Martinez should “Just say No” to Medicaid Expansion

Obama's Dirty Energy List

Marita Noon

Townhall - During a recent trip to Washington DC, I heard that “by the end of his second term, President Obama wants 40% of our natural resources to be imported.” Like Harry Reid’s “Bain Capital investor,” my source is reliable: a Capitol Hill staffer. While I do not have a secret White House memo to validate the premise, it explains a lot. During his 2008 campaign, candidate Obama made it clear that he doesn’t have a problem with $4-a-gallon gas. His Energy Secretary is on record as having said that he thinks our gasoline prices should be more in line with those of Europe—which are typically more than double ours in the US. We know that supply issues are one of the leading drivers of higher gasoline prices, yet Obama’s policy decisions—such as Keystone—lead to reducing the resource. In his first campaign ad of the season, President Obama touted his record on oil, claiming that we have more domestic production in America than at any time in recent history. While this is true, it is not thanks to his policies. The majority of the oil extraction is on private land, mostly thanks to North Dakota’s Bakken Field. The development that is being done on federal lands is thanks to leases made and wells permitted during the Bush administration. Read More News New Mexico 

Obama's Dirty Energy List

courtesy of http://www.conservativedailynews.com/

http://www.janice2012.us/

Sustainability Summit to Spend Borrowed Money

An all-day “summit” is set for Saturday in Las Cruces. Those coordinating the event are celebrating a $2 million federal grant for a “sustainability initiative.” The money for this initiative is all part of $3.8 trillion in spending by the Obama administration this year. The money has been made available without passing a budget for three years.
Progressive Democrats, including Doña Ana County Commissioner Billy Garrett and Las Cruces Mayor Pro Tem Sharon Thomas, will begin the process of consuming the grant which was given to Doña Ana County by the federal Partnership for Sustainable Communities. The U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department (HUD), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) gave the money away.

Sustainability Summit to Spend Borrowed Money