The New Mexico Legislature at the End of the Beginning: 2022

We move into Act II of the 30-day legislative session.  The early movidas have been duly noted.  All hands, that is to say, the lobbyists, are on deck hoping for a slice of the unusually high $9 billion surplus.  The usual early posturings, like a love-hate pair of Tango dancers, between the Senate and the Fourth Floor, have been acted out, to the delight of the informed onlookers.  Commentators rush to inform us about the electoral significance of each move:  Is the tax cut for social security just an election-year feint by the governor to the public?  Is the hydrogen hub bill, which hit the average legislator by surprise, a kind of election-year tranquilizer for an angry East Side or, after years of suffering, a kiss on the cheek to the Northeast Corner?  Are the proposals to increase state employees and teacher's salaries really intended as insurance payments for a sizeable pocket of votes?

The rules for NM political discourse are pretty rigid.  You can argue for or against a proposal on the basis of whether it will really address the problem it is purported to address.  (Will the hydrogen hub actually increase carbon emissions?) Or you can argue for or against a proposal on the basis of whether it fits within the straight-jacket of current Conservative or "Progressive" ideology (Will the increase in salaries for public employees just increase the size of NM government, a no-no for "common-sense" conservatism?).  Or you can evaluate a bill according to its sponsor or who is lobbying for it. (I'm for--or against-- the hydrogen hub because it originates with Rep. Patty Lundstrom, from the Northwest Corner, Chair of the LFC).  There are many such rules, and a brief glance at the blog world, newspaper opinion pages, or the serious journalists who follow the legislative session, will reveal more.

What is not part of the system of rules governing political discourse during a legislative session is how a bill might fit into the larger scheme for moving New Mexico out of 50th.  Will raising teachers' salaries improve student scores that place New Mexico 50th in public education?  How will the education system--not just teachers--create goals and deadlines for this to happen?  What might those goals and deadlines look like?  By the way, didn't we try this twenty years ago with Richardson only to see the scores continue to drift at the bottom of the barrel?  Does NM have a realistic chance of winning a piece of the $8 billion Congress has designated to create four "hydrogen hubs" across the country?  How will raising state government salaries improve the wait lines at MVD?  By how much?  who will be held accountable for this?

Perhaps the most pessimistic note in our currently disfunctional political system in NM is the acceptance by virtually all of us that moving New Mexico out of 50th is not going to be part of our public discourse.  Making government work better, and how this or that particular bill might move us in that direction, is a side-show, one of 7 or 8 or more talking points, to lay on an unsuspecting legislator.  It is not the main dish.  

Is this not a concession by all of us that deep down inside that we have accepted our status at the bottom of the barrel?  A glance at national politics or changes in the balance of power away from the US at the global level is revealing:  the old international order, created by the US at the end of World War II, is crumbling, and the new order being created is not necessarily democratic or solicitous of US input.  The national consensus about the rules of the game as embodied in the clear language of the US Constitution, has come to an end.  We have no sacred rules, nor many honest rule-enforcers.

The forces at work creating global mischief and national self-destruction are not going to go away.  It is just a matter of time until they reach full-force in New Mexico's political community. If we can't agree on what we want as a political community, it seems unlikely we will negotiate the push and pull of of these forces with any kind of coherence at all.