Tagged: Op-Ed

There’s been lots of talk about economic recovery lately, but there’s no good news on the jobs front in New Mexico. Again and again, the business community pushes for corporate income tax cuts and job creation credits.  But there’s no evidence that either does anything but drain the treasury.  So far, we’ve been kissing out tax revenue goodbye, along with the jobs that Hewlett Packard moved to Mexico and the 200 we lost when Schott Solar shut down.

It was reported recently that 7 out of 10 live births in New Mexico are on Medicaid.

Astonishing, troubling…arguably, the most painful statistic of all for New Mexicans wondering whether their state truly is in a “death spiral” as some national media have reported.

The other day, when I was supposed to be doing something else, I was casually reviewing my own profile on Linked In -- the online network for professionals, a sort of serious version of Facebook -- when Linked asked – oh, so innocently! -- if I’d like to add more people to my list of professional contacts.

Sure, why not?  I hit the Yes button.

Minutes later I got an unexpected email. The name was vaguely familiar. Oh yeah, that guy. Somebody I’d quoted in a news story, what, 10 years ago?

Opening day in the NM Senate is always filled with high drama. This year was no exception.  The tension centers on who will be elected President Pro Tem, a position elected by both Republicans and Democrats to lead, to appoint committees and their important chairs.

It’s time to stop the minimum wage madness in New Mexico! Setting price floors for human labor is both bad economics and unfair to the very workers it is supposed to help. Already, Santa Fe has among the highest mandated wages in the nation at $10.29 an hour. Only wealth San Francisco currently has a higher wage.

Albuquerque recently enacted a wage of $8.50 an hour. Now, Bernalillo County may get into the act by adopting legislation that would match Albuquerque’s rate.

It had to be my imagination.

I thought cigarette smoking was a dying pastime—no pun intended.

But all around us—young smokers. Lots and lots of them. Teens and young adults, and college kids.

At sidewalk cafes near any university, including UNM. In hookah bars, puffing away. Environmentally conscious alterna-kids in Rage Against the Machine t-shirts— the last ones you’d expect to support Big Tobacco.

A whole new, wholly unexpected generation of addicts.

The tragic shooting in Connecticut has set me thinking about our own state’s gun laws, and what the legislature has done to expand gun ownership-- even though New Mexico ranks 6th in gun deaths, and even higher in youth suicide. Thanks to Santa Fe’s total abdication to everything NRA—you can openly carry any kind of loaded gun here as long as you’re not a felon, and over 19 years old.

K-12 education reform is direly needed in New Mexico. The latest evidence for that is a report from the US Department of Education which studied and ranked 47 of the 50 states’ education systems and found that just 63 percent of New Mexico students in the 2010-2011 school year finished secondary school and the percentages for Hispanic students and Native Americans were 59 and 56 percent respectively.

Those rates earned the Land of Enchantment a ranking of 46th out of 47.

People often complain there are too many lawyers in the world, and you may think they have a point. After all, an astonishing 40,000 students graduate from American law schools each year, and there are already well over a million lawyers in the U.S.

But whether you believe there are too many lawyers may depend on who you are.  If you’re Hispanic, and you prefer to hire a lawyer who shares your cultural background, or speaks Spanish—you’re going to wonder where all the lawyers are.