Merry Christmas!

To all who visit our website, particularly on this day, the day when millions of people all around the world celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the entire News New Mexico team wishes everyone the merriest of Christmases and a safe, happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year. 2010 has been a year of great blessings for our organization. The mere fact that you have chosen to log on to this website is proof of our good fortunes. So let us, with the sincerest sense of humility, offer our deepest gratitude and thanks for your gracious support of all our efforts.

Merry Christmas!

Haussamen: Dealing with Mexican Drug Cartels

NMPolitics.net - by Heath Haussamen - To address the growing problem of Mexican drug cartels, the United States has to seriously consider two ideas policymakers in Washington don’t want to touch. Neither is popular in Washington, and I’m not endorsing either – but I am urging serious consideration of both. The United States must consider legalizing, regulating and taxing some drugs that are currently illegal. And it must consider offering military aid to Mexico’s president. The second would definitely be more controversial in Mexico. So I’ll start there. Read full column here:

Haussamen: Dealing with Mexican Drug Cartels

Parker: Anthony Weiner

Star Parker

Townhall - New York Congressman Anthony Weiner is making a name for himself. He wants taxes raised on wealthy Americans and is one of the more vocal opponents to the deal that would retain current tax rates for everyone. “An estate tax cut for millionaires adds exactly zero jobs. A tax cut for billionaires – virtually none,” says the congressman. But what does Weiner know about job creation, about work, about being an entrepreneur? Looking over his resume, you see he’s never held a private sector job.

Anthony Weiner

Right out of college, he went to work on the staff of then-Congressmen Chuck Schumer, followed by six years serving on New York’s city council, and then ran for congress in 1999, capturing the seat he currently holds. Mr. Weiner is a politically ambitious young man who has built power and career by confiscating and redistributing other people’s money. Read full column here:

Parker: Anthony Weiner

Elder: 50 Years of Bad Ideas

Larry Elder

Townhall - For the past 50 years, the Democrats -- and many Republicans who should know better -- have been wrong about virtually every major domestic policy issue. Let's review some of them: Taxes. The bipartisan extension of the Bush tax cuts represents the latest triumph over the "soak the rich because trickledown doesn't work" leftists. President Ronald Reagan sharply reduced the top marginal tax rates from 70 percent to 28 percent, doubling the Treasury's tax revenue.

President George H.W. Bush raised the income tax rate, as did his successor. But President George W. Bush lowered them to the current 35 percent. President Barack Obama repeatedly called the current rate unfair, harmful to the country and a reward to those who "didn't need" the cuts and "didn't ask for" them. If true, he and his party ditched their moral obligation to oppose the extension. But they didn't, because none of it is true. Democratic icon John F. Kennedy, who reduced the top marginal rate from more than 90 percent to 70 percent, said, "A rising tide lifts all the boats." He was right -- and most of the Democratic Party knows it. Read full column here:

Elder: 50 Years of Bad Ideas

Blackwell: America's Financial Future

Ken Blackwell

Townhall - In August of this year, Admiral Michael Mullens, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, advised Congress that “The National debt is the biggest threat to our national security.” In November, voter sentiment against the debt and deficit led to an historic rebuke of Congressional incumbents. In December, the President’s Debt Commission laid out in stark terms the imminent economic impact of continued deficit spending. Apparently rejecting these clarion calls, the President and Congress acted in the lame-duck session to cut not one dime of federal spending, while increasing the national debt by nearly $1 trillion.

They are ignoring a glaring problem that, if not addressed soon, will cause a panoply of other problems. Some insist that the problem with increasing the debt by nearly $1 trillion is that the borrowed money will be loaned to us by China. Concerning as it is that we have become the world’s largest debtor to a foreign sovereign whose interests are (to put it mildly) not always in harmony with our own, that's not the biggest problem. What ought to be of even greater, more immediate concern is the fact that China will refuse to loan us the money. Read full column here:

Blackwell: America's Financial Future

Heinrich Capitulates - Plays the Demogogue Card

Martin Heinrich

After avidly supporting the outrageously wasteful $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill that died in Congress last week, New Mexico's Martin Heinrich has become an accomplished demagogue. Commenting on the recent compromise in Washington that left tax rates unchanged, Heinrich seems to think now that the government is not going to increase its confiscation of a job creators income, this constitutes redistribution to the "wealthy."

How does he justify this? He begins by falsely pre-supposing that the money he speaks of is already in the hands of government. He then builds one false assumption and conculsion on top of another. Heinrich uses language that would have us all believe that 98% of Americans are "underdogs." How could anyone be against the underdog? His faulty reasoning is based on economic suppositions steeped in three completely irrational concepts. First, the congressman relies on the vice of "envy" in the minds of constituents he tries to manipulate. He first hopes he can get the majority of Americans to aggressively covet the higher income levels of the minority. Second, those that hear his words are asked to take a leap of faith that government can better manage resources than the productive citizens who have their incomes confiscated. 

Third, he tries to peddle the ridiculous notion that IF somehow government does NOT confiscate what has been earned by productive individuals, that somehow an amount equal to what was NOT CONFISCATED must be borrowed by the government. Naturally, the idea of cutting expenses as an alternative to increasing the level of confiscation is blasphemy to Congressman Heinrich. Clearly change will not come from this congressman. Heinrich is quite content to try to pick the pockets of productive citizens for redistribution to any and all omnibus spending bills that come his way.

Heinrich Capitulates - Plays the Demogogue Card

Swickard Column - The real Christmas of meaning

Commentary by Michael Swickard -

“I grew up with the classics. My mom and I would sit and watch "Singin' in the Rain" and "White Christmas" - those kind of movies.” Lucas Grabeel

While I am much older than Lucas Grabeel, I too grew up with “Classics” such as, “White Christmas” and had those classic moments like singing loudly in public school, “We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.” We even meant it back then when we sang, “You’d better watch out, you’d better not cry, you’d better not pout I’m telling you why, Santa Claus is coming to town.”
My Christmas seasons have always been inclusionary. Anyone wanting to celebrate Peace on Earth and Goodwill to All was just fine with me. The whole American Christmas legal holiday good cheer on our lips does make some people angry and resentful. Me, I am calling it Christmas until Congress votes to change the name to something else. I do have to confess that the holiday season is a reason all its own and is a bonus to all I have experience over the years from one Christmas to another with my loved ones.
My sister asked last week which Christmas I remember best. They all blur together with many that have meaning for me. I remember best the “Oh Susanna Guitar” Christmas which would have been more appropriate now with our newly elected governor than it was back in the 1950s.
I had lobbied Santa and everyone else who would listen desperately for a drum set. My mother agreed that Santa might bring a drum set as long as it was delivered after her death and while she lay in the doorway which was mom-speak for “Over my dead body.”
When I tore the wrapping paper off I could not believe my eyes. The tag said that it was from my Uncle Gene. As I opened the box and pulled out the guitar my mother, father and I all said at the same time, “Oh my God!”
It wasn’t a real guitar; rather, it had a crank which when turned played “Oh Susanna.” I turned the crank and the song was a hit. Uncle Gene had a big smile, even when my mother, while bringing him a cup of coffee, accidentally poured it on him.
I played the song again while they cleaned up the coffee. It was an easy song to play so I decided to sing along and even added some yodeling and a few high pitch yips and yaps here and there. I was Johnny One Song all Christmas day. Upon reflection I do remember that my parents looked a little frayed by the end of the day.
Then it was time to brush my teeth, say my prayers and go to bed. I played the song one last time for my mother and added some great yodels. What a great Christmas! The next morning I jumped up, grabbed the guitar and turned the crank. No sound came out. Can you believe it? The guitar simply broke while I was fast asleep. I was crestfallen. It just sat there and looked like a guitar, but no song played. My uncle felt my pain and like me looked glum. I asked him hopefully, “Can you fix this?” He looked at my mother who was his older sister and reluctantly shook his head. We called him Uncle Genius, and if he couldn’t fix it, heck it was broken for good since he was an electrical engineer.
I admit I suspected that one of the grown-ups had some hand in the guitar not working, so I asked my mother if she had been playing “Old Susanna” after I was asleep. Her expression wavered between hysteria and alarm. She firmly stated that no one had been playing “Oh Susanna” while I slept. So the guitar broke on its own. My brother Bill said Santa had broken it because he didn’t like the song, but I did not believe him.
Like all of my Christmases then and now the guitar that broke Christmas night is just part of the holiday lore. Maybe Santa really did not like the song, but I doubt it.

Swickard Column - The real Christmas of meaning

"Israeli War Crime" Ads on Seattle Busses

From atlasshrugs.com – "Israeli War Crimes," the enormous advertisement reads. "Your tax dollars at work." To the right of the image is a group of children -- one little boy stares out at the viewer, the others gawk at a demolished building, all rebar and crumbled concrete. It's an ad you'll be seeing soon on a handful of Metro buses in downtown Seattle. A group calling itself the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign has paid King County $1,794 so that 12 buses will carry that message around town, starting two days after Christmas. That's December 27: the two-year anniversary of Israeli attacks on Gaza, aimed at stopping rocket attacks and weapons smuggling. More here

"Israeli War Crime" Ads on Seattle Busses

Obama and EPA to Set Greenhouse Gas Standards for Industries

From politico.com : The Obama administration is expected to roll out a major greenhouse gas policy for power plants and refineries as soon as Wednesday, signaling it won’t back off its push to fight climate change in the face of mounting opposition on Capitol Hill. The Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to a schedule for setting greenhouse gas emission limits, known as “performance standards,” for the nation’s two biggest carbon-emitting industries, POLITICO has learned. More here

Obama and EPA to Set Greenhouse Gas Standards for Industries

The Net Neutrality Campaign, Who is Behind it?

From wsj.com The net neutrality vision for government regulation of the Internet began with the work of Robert McChesney, a University of Illinois communications professor who founded the liberal lobby Free Press in 2002. Mr. McChesney's agenda? "At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies," he told the website SocialistProject in 2009. "But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control." A year earlier, Mr. McChesney wrote in the Marxist journal Monthly Review that "any serious effort to reform the media system would have to necessarily be part of a revolutionary program to overthrow the capitalist system itself." Mr. McChesney told me in an interview that some of his comments have been "taken out of context." He acknowledged that he is a socialist and said he was "hesitant to say I'm not a Marxist." For a man with such radical views, Mr. McChesney and his Free Press group have had astonishing influence. Mr. Genachowski's press secretary at the FCC, Jen Howard, used to handle media relations at Free Press. The FCC's chief diversity officer, Mark Lloyd, co-authored a Free Press report calling for regulation of political talk radio. More here

The Net Neutrality Campaign, Who is Behind it?