Santa Fe, Holy Thursday, April 13

Holy Week:  Two Versions on Holy Thursday in El Norte

Spring is breaking out all over El Norte.  The snow pack runoff may not last beyond June, but the acequias are running now and the rivers are flowing nicely.  Good time for fishing.

Speaking of fishing, this is a time of the year people remember Jesus' words, "follow me and I will make you fishers of men."  Here are two contemporary versions of actions by citizens of El Norte, in response to this call.

1.  Old Tech NM Version:  The annual pilgrimage is underway, as some faithful Catholics participate in the trek that will culminate tomorrow in Chimayo.  The Catholic Church purchased the Santuario in Chimayo in 1992, from a family that had built it in to honor Nuestra Señora de Atocha, in veneration of Nuestra Señora's son, a child said to have given bread to starving prisoners taken by Moorish conquerors in Atocha, a small village in Central Spain, during the 13th century.  There is also a Mexican follow-up version of the story, dating back to the mid-1500s in Zacatecas, for a miracle in Plateros, a mining village where an explosion had trapped minors and a child is said to have appeared to give them water and lead them to safety.  The New Mexico version, dating to the 19th century, has it that Severino Martinez, seriously ill, promised to build a chapel in honor of Our Lady, should he be cured.  The chapel became the destination of pilgrims soon after it was built.  Today, pilgrims anoint themselves with dirt from the chapel, often expressing a prayer for relief from illness.

Nuestra Señora de Atocha is venerated by Catholic pilgrims and prisoners, and miners throughout the Catholic world, hoping for relief, as well as for people hoping for help for hopeless situations.  In New Mexico many survivors of the Bataan Death March attribute their survival to the intervention of La Señora de Atocha.

(2)  NewTech Soda Pop NM Version:  From the Santa Fe New Mexican today:  An inter-faith group, on moral grounds, is backing mayor Javier Gonzales' proposal on the ballot for a two-cent tax per ounce for soda pop, to raise money to send hundreds of Santa Fe children to pre-school.  Today Charlie Clements, a human rights activist, will speak at an inter-faith forum on behalf of the tax, which he believes is a moral issue.  According to the Santa Fe New Mexican this morning Clements said, "moral issues are those actions or choices which have the potential to help or harm others or ourselves."  The Rev. Talitha Arnold, senior minister at United Church of Santa Fe, wrote on behalf of the measure, "It is both just and right to do what is needed to insure that all children have a chance to reach their God-given potential from the very beginning.  Supporting pre-K for all is one way to do that."  Opposing the measure is a political action committee, Better Way for Santa Fe & Pre-K.  David Huynh, a spokesperson for this group said, "The choice is whether we need to hit residents and small business people hard with a massive tax or instead fund pre-K with a multimillion dollar surplus from revenues that these same people created by working hard."

Links:

• Rising US Mortality Rates for Middle Aged White Men:  Interview with Angus Deaton, found in Tim Taylor's The Conversable Economist
•  Student Debt Bubble Sucks Even More Out of Economy and Ruins Lives, Yet Officials Keep Inflating It -Naked Capitalism
• Ex-Governor of Tamaulipas Arrested for Taking Bribes From Drug Traffickers:  Borderland Beat
• Juarez (37) and Chihuahua (40) Once Again on Global Top-40 Lists for Homicides:  La Polaka
• Governor Vetoes Campaign Finance Reform:  Trip Jennings, New Mexico In Depth

Open Any Door:  Evidence of System Failure 

The links above offer more troubling evidence that political systems are failing to deliver to the vast majority of citizens under their management.  While death rates for middle aged men in Europe continue a steep decline, here in the US the death rate for middle aged men has been on the rise for two decades, now twice as high as Sweden, and almost twice as high as Canada.  Evidence from other sources reveals that life expectation for Bernie's One Percent continues to rise.

After some discussion during the campaign on the D side, evidence suggests student debt still acts as a brake on access to higher education.  The price tag for a student to attend an elite school is around $72,000, dramatically up about $20,000 from just a few years ago, and the evidence suggests that higher costs have nothing to do with improved knowledge-producing capabilities to offer students at elite schools, but rather because elite universities are investing in non-academic personnel hired to raise even more money from wealthy donors in a vicious escalation of costs.

Mexico is still reeling from the war on drugs, and violence is on the rise again.  Mexico's last spike in homicides (2008-2010) coincided with the presidential election runup to 2010.  Mexico will have presidential elections in July of 2018.  Is this a coincidence?  Or is there something about presidential elections that stimulates drug-related violence?

Finally, here in New Mexico, after campaigning vigorously in 2010 against the "pay-to-play" mischief that broke out during the Richardson administration, and that could often be traced back to fundraising activities, the Governor has in 2017 vetoed a relatively mild campaign finance reform measure, co-sponsored by a moderate Republican (Jim Smith) that would simply require greater disclosure of the source of contributions.

Mexico Vs. Trump, Wednesday

Diario de Juarez reported, soberly, on Thursday (click here) that Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray, in Washington on Wednesday, revealed that he had asked Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly to "repect the electoral process in Mexico." Mexico will hold presidential elections in 2018.  Videgaray made his remarks in response to a comment Senator John McCain made at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing to the effect that a leftist president in Mexico would not be good either for the US or for Mexico.

To understand the biting irony in Videgaray's remarks you need to understand two contextual issues.

(1) Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (known popularly as AMLO), a leftist who narrowly lost a presidential election to conservative Felipe Calderon in 2006, now leads in various recent national polls.  His popularity is widely believed to be enhanced by the feeling in Mexico that he would stand up to President Trump, in contrast to the fawning demeanor of current President Enrique Pena Nieto on two occasions, once in Washington and once in Mexico City, in Trump's presence.  The Mexican government, understandably, is concerned about its image as it deals with the President who once called Mexican immigrants "rapists."

At first glance, Videgaray's eagerness to reveal his complaint to Kelly about McCain's comment appears to be a slight over-reaction from a super-sensitive Mexican administration that lost its chance to prove, when the world was watching, that it had huevos.  But there is more

(2)  In the context of the scandal of the Trump campaign's coziness with the Russians as they were hacking into one of our presidential candidates' emails, and the widespread suspicion throughout the world, including Mexico, that there was collusion by the Trump campaign in this, there is an implicit suggestion here in Videgaray's remarks thatTrump's people might well be willing to intervene in a second presidential election:  beware, Mexico, of someone hacking into your elections next year!

Score one, on the rhetorical board, for Mexico.

Links:

• The Truth About NAFTA:  Laura Tyson, Project Syndicate
• Twenty Six Graves of murdered persons found Near Juarez so far this year:  Diario de Juarez
•  Mayor of Cuauhtemoc Complains to Governor Corral About Replacement of Municipal Police With State Police:  La Polaka
• Why O'Rourke Wants the Senate:  El Paso Inc.

  

News From the Border

The links provided above give us a glimpse of the border today.  First, as Laura Tyson notes, Mexicans are making their own calculations about what to do, now that they know they have an Ugly American in the White House who used Mexico as a convenient scapegoat during the presidential campaign--the wall, the rapists, the trade deals taking away Bubba's job.  She raises the scary possibility that it may become politically useful for politicians in Mexico to mirror the right-wing hate-filled ranting of Trump, destabilizing the subtle understandings that have developed between Mexicans and Estadounidenses over the past quarter century and that have led to an exceptionally powerful partnership between the two countries.  As long as Trump is President, a trusting relationship is highly unlikely.

Ever since the beginning of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, there has been remarkable agreement among US security strategists that the major security threat from Mexico is not the Mexican government, but political instability in Mexico.  It was instability in Mexico that led to problems during the Revolution along the lower Rio Grande in Texas, and the assault by Pancho Villa on Columbus, ending with a massive mobilization by General Pershing on the US-Mexico border just prior to World War I.  If you can imagine a black-haired, blow-dried president of Mexico flinging insults at the US to reawaken deep-seated resentments from the past for political purposes, think through some of the mischievous possibilities that might arise from such a scenario.  It is a scary proposition indeed, and one that all Americans should be concerned about, regardless of their views on NAFTA.

The war on drugs is not over in Mexico.  Violence is rising in certain areas of the country, including Chihuahua state, putting pressure on elected officials to do something about it, and underscoring the kind of instability that occurs when rival law enforcement institutions are corrupted by the money flowing from the drug trade.  The mayor of Cuauhtemoc, a city of over 150,000, is convinced the new Governor, Javier Corral, in bringing in his state police, will simply upset the delicate equilibrium that has kept the peace in his city.  After all, local police know their own territory much better than state police.

Finally, the most popular politician in El Paso, Beto O'Rourke, has announced he is running in the Democratic primary next year, hoping to secure the nomination to run against Ted Cruz.  O'Rourke speaks perfect Spanish.  He has spoken out strongly in favor of rethinking the Drug War and opening up an honest discussion about the role of government within it.  He is an adult, in spite of being only 44.  While the odds are against him, should he win the nomination he may well become a game-changer against Ted Cruz.  He has a knack for telling truths we are not allowed by political correctness to say, and with a down-to-earth common sense that disarms even the most ardent opponents:  Ted Cruz's bombastic, know-it-all style would be severely challenged.

Public Education in NM:

What the Bottom of the Barrel Looks Like

 

 Note:  The NCES does not provide data for NM for the period 1998-2002

In July 2009, after six years of the Richardson administration, LaPoliticaNewMexico looked at the bottom line in education in New Mexico, student scores in comparison with other states.  In 2009 Richardson received an award from the NEA for being the "greatest education governor."  But the evidence (click here for the post) indicated New Mexico was very near the bottom among states in student performance in math and reading, in spite of a huge increase in teacher salaries earlier in the administration.

How has public education fared under Governor Martinez?  The short answer:  poorly

Here are several recent rankings of the NM educational system by reputable national organizations:

• Kids Count:  2016 ranking shows NM at the bottom:  50/50, down from 49 during 2013-15.
• Wallet-Eye:  2015 ranking of "school system quality," NM 51/51 (with Washington DC included) on a composite of 13 weighted elements.
• Education Week: 2016 ranking shown NM "overall" at 48/50; 49/50 in "chances of success," and 36th "school finances."
• NAEP Fourth Grade reading scores:  2015 ranking shows NM at 50/50
• NAEP Fourth Grade math scores:  2015 ranking shows NM at 49/50

When confronted with the disaster of NM student achievement scores, members of the NM educational establishment (principals, superintendents, teacher unions, and too many legislators) tend to argue that New Mexico being poor, we simply don't spend enough money on education to close the gap or, worse, lapse into excuses about the high presence of "minority students" as though Natives and Hispanics, who comprise more than two out of three of our students, all have learning disabilities.  Accountability for this poor record, stretching back over more than two decades, cannot be laid solely at the feet of the governors.  As Secretary of Higher Education of New Mexico from 2011-2014 I witnessed first-hand the strong tendency of legislators to favor the entrenched interests of the educational establishment--typically they want more money and less accountability--far more than the pleas of those willing to step on entrenched toes for better system performance.  The highly partisan conflicts within the legislature and between the legislature and the governor's office also kept issues of system performance out of the public eye, in part because of the media's insistence on covering partisan conflict rather than the substance of policy reform.

How true is it that we don't spend enough money on education?

• NM ranks 36th in expenditures per pupil ($9734) but scores 50/50 in student achievement
• Arizona ranks 48th in expenditures per pupil ($7528), but scores 36th in student achievement
• Utah ranks 50the in expenditures per pupil ($6500) but scores 13th in student achievement
• NM taxpayers would save $1.1 billion per year if we spent what Utah spends per pupil
• NM taxpayers would save $746 million per year if it spent what Arizona spends per pupil

The problem is not a lack of money.  The problem is that we NM taxpayers don't get our money's worth for our education dollars.  Saying it differently, state government has not had the will to improve.  Fixing this is in our power without spending more money.

Is it possible for a state to make significant improvements in student scores in a relatively short period of time?  Consider this:

• Texas moved from a ranking of 43 to 29 between 2002 and 2008
• New Jersey jumped from 26th to 9th between 2002 and 2008
• Pennsylvania jumped from 41 to 17 between 2001 and 2008
• South Dakota jumbed from 35 to 5 from 1999 to 2008
• Virginia jumped from 27 to 11 from 1999 to 2008
• California, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah are among 22 states making significant improvement in math and english scores from 2003 to 2013

The Good News:  One of the few significant accomplishments of the Martinez administration's efforts in education is the adoption of "grading" school and district performance each year.  While some object, perhaps with good reason, about the details of how this is done, at least it gives parents a way to know, with real data, not gossip, how well their schools are performing in comparison with all other schools.  Parents now have access to information they need in order to hold schools accountable.  All you have to do is click here to find a school and its current grade.  While the chart below isn't necessarily good news, since the gap is just as wide as it was a quarter century ago, at least it doesn't seem to getting wider.

Mexico Violence in the News Again

For reasons I don't fully understand, drug cartel violence is on the rise again in Mexico.  Chihuahua, our neighboring state, is feeling it.  El Norte, an excellent newspaper in Juarez, is closing down its paper edition, apparently concerned about risks to journalists who cover the drug war beat.  Kent Patterson has a fine piece about this today in NM Politics.Net.  For a long time I have placed an online link to El Norte's electronic edition on this site (bottom-right).  It will continue publishing online, so I will leave the link intact.  Two weeks ago Miroslava Breach Velducea, an investigative reporter for La Jornada, was murdered in front of her home in Chihuahua City, about to take her children to school.

NM Corruption in Perspective

Cesar Duarte, former Governor of Chihuahua (2010-2016) is living in El Paso, on the lam, wanted in Mexico for allegedly stealing massive amounts of public funds during his tenure in office.  Both Duarte and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto are said to be unusual in their pattern of kleptomania in that, allegedly, they stole most of their money in the first three years of their tenure rather than in the last three years.  The norm among governors and presidents in Mexico is to steal the money in the last year or two so that, when people catch on, the incumbent is no longer in office and the story is less newsworthy and less likely to lead to unfortunate consequences.  In the case of Pena Nieto and Duarte it is a combination of the huge scale of alleged looting and the brazen-ness of doing so up front that bothers many people who long ago accommodated themselves to the reality of official corruption among Mexico's governors and presidents.  The corruption scandals during the Richardson administration (except for his aggressive fund-raising Richardson himself was never implicated as a beneficiary of the mischief), outrageous by New Mexico standards, pale by comparison with Mexico.

Mañana:  El Estado de la Educación Pública en Nuevo Mexico
In Tomorrow's Post here:  Grading the Martinez Administration in Education

The State of the State in New Mexico:  Deja Vu

"State government is in the worst financial condition I've seen since I was first elected to the NM senate in 1988," John A. Smith, Chair, Senate Finance Committee, interviewed by Jose Garcia April 2, 2017

Contributing to the poor condition, according to Smith, is a state financial system, which relies too heavily on oil and gas revenues, creating a shortfall when the price of oil or gas goes down.  But, he said, an aggravating factor is mismanagement, characterized by a failure to respond to warnings more than a year ago that another shortfall was looming and planning for it was critical to ease the pain.

Sound familiar?  Eight years ago Bill Richardson nicknamed Smith "Dr, No" for warning the state, correctly, we could not sustain the gush of dollars flowing from state government, given the likelihood of a drop in oil prices..

But the poor condition is not only financial.  Politically, New Mexico is pretty much where we were during the last two years of the Richardson administration:  impatient for the current administration to end (Yes! Thank God the end is in sight!)  but with little public discussion about what might be done to reverse chronic governance failure.

In early 2009 the state was suffocating under the taint of outrageous corruption and despotic governance.  Our education system was treading water at the bottom of the barrel in performance, even after massive inflows of funds.  Our tax system was a mess.  Taxpayers were subsidizing the new Railrunner to the tune of $16 per passenger (today it is much higher).  Democrats refused to pass tougher ethics legislation, and party leaders uniformly followed the conventional wisdom that voters would move in lock-step to support the see-no-evil, no-idea candidacy of the Democratic Lt. Governor to continue the regime.  The outcome?  Susana Martinez, Republican, became governor.

Eight years later the state is suffocating again under the yoke of exceptionally poor leadership.  Our education system, after countless hours of photo ops of the governor reading to third graders, is still at the bottom of the national barrel.  Higher education is one of the three most expensive systems in the nation, but with dismal performance to show for it in graduation rates and declining quality in programs, to say nothing of the current UNM scandal of paying a coach $1 million for not coaching next year, and the insistence on politicizing the board of regents, possibly to find cushy jobs at UNM's Health Sciences Center for some of Susana's people, just as Richardson did eight years ago.  The tax system is still a mess.  Our bond rating was downgraded a year ago after the administration dipped too far into reserve funds.  Ethics reform is dead.  Worse, as Joe Monahan has pointed out, the best and brightest are fleeing the state and an air of hopelessness has filtered into the body politic.

Candidates for governor:  where do you stand on all of this?  Do you have any ideas? Or, as is the case at the national level, will the citizens have to intervene through town hall meetings and the ballot box to lead us out of this mess?

The Electoral College 2016

The electoral college meets today in each state to elect the President of the US.  The mainstream media treats this as a mildly embarrassing technicality, a constitutional provision written by elitist slave owners and misogynists who wanted to create an escape clause in case of a "mistake" made by the electorate in the selection of a powerful national leader.  So powerful is this bias that electors who vote their conscience are disparaged as "faithless," or "rogue" electors.  

The current US Supreme Court, usually led by justices who have made a fetish of following the "original intent," of the Constitution, as though this were a sacred obligation discernible only by the most gifted legal minds (I'm thinking Scalia here, and his surviving acolyte and rubber stamp, Clarence Thomas), have been curiously silent about clarifying what states can do to minimize this constitutional provision.  States, for example, are allowed to punish "faithless" electors, almost certainly in violation of original intent, without a peep from a Supreme Court that has no difficulty permitting the sale of modern assault rifles to certified lunatics as part of the original intent of the writers of the second amendment.

The Supreme Court's unusual neglect of the way the electoral college functions is a reflection of a wider feeling that the college is somehow less democratic than many of our other institutions, and it is difficult today to find strong support for it.

Here are two reasons we the people should reflect seriously about doing away with the electoral college.

1.  The problem is not with the electoral college, the problem is with the way it is practiced.

Do you know the names of the five electors from New Mexico?  Which one did you vote for?  Do you know that person?  Do you trust him/her to vote in a wise manner?  So prevalent is the disdain for the electoral college that the electoral machinery in most states makes it extremely difficult for voters to know who is representing the "will of the people."  If the selection of presidential electors were more public, with media face-time to explain their voting philosophy, and typically resulting in sending our best writers, esteemed former top officials, and the like in a truly competitive process, it might well provide a welcome change of pace from the usual breathless coverage of presidential elections as currently crafted in predictable news cycles and sound bites from highly self-interested parties.  Would you feel better about the electoral college if you had a serious chance to look over prospective electors in a public process?

2.  Even more important, the will of the people in a presidential election in a state is not always clear.

The elections in Ohio and Florida in 2000 (and in later elections as well) have become classic textbook cases (and there are many more) of messy elections in which the will of the people is not clear from the numerical results of the official count.  In both cases the Secretary of State was controlled by persons who proved over and over to be bent on maximizing votes in a partisan direction.  And in both cases voter suppression techniques were aimed at black voters in ways that have been documented, with credible estimates that the anomalies and outright brazen tactics had a decisive effect on the official outcome of the elections.  The "hanging chad" situation in Florida in 2000, in which voter re-counters had difficulty determining a voter's intent, also comes to mind.  Does it make sense under such circumstances, to insist that all presidential electors should vote lock-step for the "winner" of the election?  Did the founding fathers have things like this in mind when they created the electoral college? Almost certainly so.

One major proposal for change of the electoral college is to have each congressional district determine 435 of the 535 votes in the electoral college.  The other 100 votes, presumably, would be "winner take all" votes (two for each state) for the vote-count winner of each state.  I have looked in vain for the presidential vote in 2016 by congressional district, but I am told by my friend Rod Adair, an outstanding demographer who has followed these things for half a century, that almost certainly Trump won a majority of these districts due to the games people play in redistricting in most states.  And Trump clearly won 60 of these votes (Clinton only won 20 states).  So this proposal would not have changed the results of the 2016 presidential elections.  But it would have had the effect of encouraging presidential candidates to think in terms of congressional districts rather than states.  It would also put a lot of pressure on the normally outrageous gerrymandering of congressional districts every ten years.  Voters might insist, as they have in California, on getting a much more partisan-neutral system of redistricting than the highly partisan circus we normally see.
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Fidel Castro RIP

Whatever one thinks of Fidel (demon or superhero, not much in between) his impact on Cuba, Latin America, and the United States places him on the highest rung of globally influential leaders in the latter half of the twentieth century.  On the Left, only Mao can rival the profundity of social and political transformations he brought about within his own society.  In Latin America various leaders, inspired by his example and assisted by Fidel himself, tried, but fell pathetically short of his achievements:  the Sandinista's, Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales.  In Africa no leader rivals Fidel's stature.  In the rest of the developing world no name is as starkly embedded in our minds as that of the simple name Fidel.

Pope John XXIII qualifies as a rival to Fidel in ambition as a global force, but his leadership ignited a reactionary movement within Christianity, largely successful, to suppress his followers, especially in Latin America, where he had his strongest influence.  So his legacy was not as lasting as Fidel's.  Similarly, Lyndon Johnson, who tried to expand the New Deal and passed the Civil Rights Act in the United States, was crippled by failure in Viet Nam, enabling a strong counter-movement on the Right that lasted for many decades.  Lech Walesa in Poland, who led the labor union-driven Solidarity movement toward democracy and greater autonomy from the Soviet jackboot in the late 1970s, must be counted high in the rankings, but once elected president of Poland, his popularity waned and he failed to be re-elected in 1995.  Except for Mao, one is hard-pressed to think of a leader with as powerful and long-lasting influence.

Inside Cuba:  in 1960 Cuba ranked 43rd among nations in life expectancy, at 64.2 years.  The US ranked 16th that year at 69.8.  In 1980, after two decades of Fidel's rule, Cuba ranked above the U.S., at 15th (73.8 years), three places above the US (73.7years).  And in 2015 Cuba ranked 32 in the world in life expectancy, just behind the U.S., which ranked 31.  How did Cuba do this, without the world class medical infrastructure available to more developed countries?  By taking the best and brightest, putting them into medical schools, and emphasizing bread-and-butter no-cost preventive health care for everyone.  In 2016 infant mortality in Cuba placed it eleven places better than the US in global rankings (44 compared to 55).  In literacy, Cuba ranks 15th in the world, the US ranks 50th.  New Mexico, if a country, would rank 94th, lower than the global average among countries (yes, New Mexico ranks below the world average in literacy rate for adults!).  How did Cuba achieve high literacy?  In 1961 Fidel initiated a literacy campaign that reduced illiteracy dramatically, in an extremely short period of time, down from 25-40% to just 4% by sending a cadre of some 300,000 throughout the country to teach people to read.  Cuba has ranked among the most literate countries in the world ever since.  And while some might not like to live in a country in which there are only minimal salary differences between people, (top salaries are less than double the lowest), despite the economic embargo that has thwarted Cuban economic development, Cuba manages to rank 67th in the UN Human Development Index, well above Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and all Latin American countries except for Uruguay and Panama.  (The US ranks 5th on this index).

Outside Cuba:  Fidel's example inspired thousands of young persons to seek change through revolution.  In nearly every country in Latin America guerrilla movements modeled after Fidel's sprung up during the 1960s and 1970s and into the 1980s.  Books analyzing the Fidelista movement sold millions of copies worldwide.  Fidel's willingness to fall within the orbit of Soviet influence broke tacit rules of the game among dependent countries, causing the U.S. to adopt strategies specifically aimed at preventing  "another Cuba," including beefed up counterinsurgency strategies, heightened intelligence activity, and patterns of foreign assistance to small countries.  Fidel's successful defiance of the U.S., in the face of punitive economic policies, served as a constant source of encouragement and inspiration for nationalists in dozens of countries who were worried about the impact of U.S. global hegemony on their home countries as the U.S. expanded its global reach.
  
On the down side, the Cuban state under Fidel was not tolerant of dissent, and few people would like to have lived under his authoritarian rule.  Fidel did not hesitate to punish and, when expedient, to kill. This is as much a  part of his legacy as his most positive achievements.  And in a moment in which people in many developed countries seem to be turning toward authoritarian, intolerant, solutions, and when many leaders help themselves in the name of state security, with little dissent, to more and more arbitrary and unchecked executive power, it might be wise to take a sober look at the underbelly of Fidel's security apparatus, which has been well documented, and take heed.

Perhaps the most attractive and inspiring thing about Fidel is that he became a symbol, for millions of persons around the world, of what a single person can accomplish.  You don't have to wait for more favorable political conditions to arise or for huge financial support to come your way to compete for power.  Dramatic improvements in literacy can be made in a year or two; health care for an entire society can be elevated to world-class levels on a minimal budget.  You can, if you have the guts to do so and are willing to pay the price, maintain a nation's dignity, today, in the face of hostility from the most powerful country in the world. And here in New Mexico, where daily we are reminded of worsening levels of educational attainment, increasing rates of poverty, and growing public corruption, we should not be so proud as to think that nothing Cuba accomplished under Fidel is worthy of our attention.  No soy fidelista, pero adios, Fidel:  you kicked up a world class storm!

Santa Fe Dems Meet:  

Bernie-Hillary Supporters Not Yet Quite Chilled Out

Between 115-120 people, mainly Anglos and mainly middle-aged or older, showed up at what amounted to a post-election venting session at Democratic Party headquarters in Santa Fe last night (Wednesday).  One man, who expressed deep resentment over the insider mischief by Debbie Wasserman against the Bernie campaign, left the podium after someone shouted repeatedly he didn't want to "hear about that."  Several people then repeated their similar dismay about the wiki-leaks scandal, while several others spoke of their passionate support for Hillary.

But mostly people offered suggestions about what to do next or else ask for guidance on whether to focus on the local scene or the national scene.  Paul Gibson, who ran the Bernie campaign, announced a town hall meeting to be held on Sunday afternoon, November 20, for a new organization called "take back the roundhouse."  He said one effort will be to have people in place for every committee meeting at the legislature, to hold legislators accountable for their actions.

One man suggested creating a foundation like the Libertarian Rio Grande Foundation, to focus attention on statewide issues.  A woman wanted to see an effort to pass the industrial use for hemp products, vetoed by the Governor.  Several educators brought up education issues.  One man thought Democrats needed a liberal version of Rush Limbaugh.  Several expressed a need to listen to the young people who voted for Trump.

In Las Cruces after the Kerry campaign in 2004, which attracted many Anglo Democrats in the county, a group of Kerry supporters formed what they called the Progressive Voters Alliance, which began fielding candidates for local offices, with impressive victories in city elections.  Nathan Small was elected to the city council through this group, and last week he beat Andy Nunez (who has run as a Democrat, Independent, and Republican) for state rep.  But the group has been less than fully imaginative or ambitious about their project, focusing mainly on getting liberals into local elected positions, and spending time on local environmental issues of importance to some of the leadership.  Retake the Roundhouse (https://retaketheroundhouse.org/) has far stronger leadership, ambition, and ganas, than  the PVC.  At the moment that's where the most dynamic energy lies among Democratic voters in New Mexico.

Cd Juarez After Trump

Zotoluco working with the bull yesterday evening

Buying pesos at an exchange cubicle on Juarez Avenue yesterday afternoon on my way to the bullfights I saw a note taped on the window:  "15 peso surcharge to pay for the wall."  It was just the kind of sardonic humor you would expect in Juarez, whose inhabitants have observed our electoral process with a mixture of amazement, disbelief, and, sometimes, deep dismay.  There have been calls to impeach President Pena Nieto for the toadying up to Trump during and after the campaign.  Some say his fawning over Trump will lead to the election of Lopez Obrador, a Bernie-like leftist, two years from now.

Eulalio Lopez, alias El Zotoluco, was making a farewell appearance in Juarez after a long and distinguished career as a matador.  He was fighting with two other outstanding matadors, Diego Silveti and the Spaniard Miguel Angel Perera, who fight regularly in the best rings in Spain and who maintain solid rankings.  Together they cut 8 ears (only 4 of them well deserved) in a memorable evening with the arena about 60% full.  It was the best afternoon of bullfights I've seen in Juarez since 16-year old novice El Juli astonished the crowd in 1998.  Good bulls, only one with serious weaknesses, and an obvious effort by the matadors to bid Zotoluco a fond farewell

The fans were grateful for the afternoon and honored the performance by carrying the matados on their shoulders after the event was over.  I didn't see any American tourists at the bullring, something unusual, but the lines at the Santa Fe bridge heading north were full (about an hour's wait time), so I was grateful I have my express lane card, and there was absolutely no traffic except for me on that lane.

Zotoluco cut an ear for his first bull

Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez in Las Cruces

Sen. Finance Chair Smith says state finances under the Martinez Administration have been handled "more irresponsibly" than any Governorship since he was first elected in 1988

Sen. John Smith, Sen. Mary Kay Papen, Sen. Michael Sanchez in Mesilla on Nov. 2

NM Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez appeared at a fundraiser luncheon in his honor this afternoon (Wed. Nov 2) at Salud! de Mesilla.  He gave an energetic and rousing defense of the relatively civil boundary lines that, he said, once characterized New Mexico politics prior to the take-no-prisoners hardball that began with the McClesky-Martinez partnership in the governor's office in 2011.  Sanchez has once again been targeted for defeat by McClesky, as he was four years ago, in what has been characterized as a $2 million smear campaign to beat him.  Sanchez survived the attack four years ago, but Sen. Tim Jennings, President Pro Tem of the Senate, did not.

At the event, Sen. John A. Smith expressed concern to me in private (but on the record) that the recent downgrading of the NM bond rating my Moody's may get worse before it gets better.  The question for the immediate financial future of the state, he said, is "how do we build up our reserves to a healthy level again" in the middle of an economic downturn?  In addition to labeling Governor Martinez's financial management of the state as the "most irresponsible" of any governor" he has known, Smith added that her record in job-creation is equally dismal.  "We (Democrats) should have been more forceful in labeling the mess that happened in mental health a few years ago for what it was--an exercise in needless job destruction," he said.

Seeing the three most powerful senators in the state--Papen, Sanchez, and Smith--mingling with guests at the event and with each other reminded me that Southern New Mexico at the moment is blessed with an abundance of political clout.  This raises the question:

Is Belen, home of Sen. Sanchez, in Southern NM or in the North?  Where does the North begin?  Nature, at least, tends to create its own boundary lines, shifting in response to environmental change..  Just as predicted by global warming science, the flora characteristic of the Chihuahua desert, has been moving northward for at least the last two decades and is expected eventually to engulf a good deal of Colorado.   Right now, at least along the freeway, the vegetation boundary area appears to be in a zone somewhere between Socorro and Los Lunas.

Trump vs. Clinton With Four Weeks to Go

My brother David had it right nearly a year ago:  By the end of 2014 Republican leaders had squandered away their party's base voters and Trump, a novice at politics, simply tripped, stumbled, and fell into bed with the most disgusted members of that largely white, male, non-college-educated, and downwardly mobile base. Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, John Kasich, Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum?  These establishment members of Congress put their mouths on cruise control in the early primaries, blaming everything as usual on Obama, not realizing the base hated them more than it hated Obama!  Trump almost literally slapped each one on the face a couple of times and they were gone from the contest, still shocked that Trump's disrespect of them was what the base really liked about him. 

That Trump was willing to use raw, insulting terms against Mexicans, Afro-Americans, Syrians, and Muslims, rejecting the more polite dog-whistle terms (such as "law and order" and "family values") through which politicians appealed in the past for the R base vote, made him seem all the more authentic and fresh, to this base. Alone among his opponents, he not only understood their anger:  he also spoke their language.  When the news media attacked him for the use of his language, Trump scored again, big-time, by attacking the news media's Big-Brother-like penchant (called "political correctness") for enforcing the stilted language, full of subterfuge, of the political class.  For the Republican base these were two home runs for Trump in the early innings.  For the entrenched political class in both political parties, including the grossly overpaid but mostly mediocre talking heads on television, Trump's unexpected victories showed them up to be out of touch, desperately wielding checkers skills unsuccessfully in a game of chess, and too arrogant to wake up soon enough to understand, much less control, the flow of events.  Only Kasich had the huevos to play hardball at Convention time:  the rest joined in, half-heartedly, in the Convention celebration, which briefly gave Trump a national lead.  Kasich aside, no Republican figure from the primary season emerged with the slightest sign of moral conviction or devotion to the common good, a stunning commentary on the poor quality of Republican leadership.

Tonight I heard a talking head sputtering about whether Trump might split the Republican Party after the election.  My brother had it right months ago:  the base of the party split from leadership two years ago, and this fact, still not understood in Washington, dominated the dynamics of the 2016 presidential campaign throughout the primary campaign season.  Yes, the realignment has already taken place.  Republicans simply have to learn how to deal with it, and the GOP will be lucky to emerge from this election controlling both houses of Congress.  If the Rs lose the Senate, they will of course blame Donald Trump for the loss.  But Donald Trump's success as a candidate is a living symbol of the failure of the Republican Party to satisfy its own base, or to be creative in forging a winning coalition.  When Trump loses the election next month (demographic realities won't permit him to win) the split within the party that occurred two years ago will still be there, after two years of festering without medical attention from Republican leadership.

Yes, Trump will lose, barring a catastrophic development.  But the Republican dysfunction that gave rise to Trump is only part of the political story in the USA today.  The other part is the growing polarization against the political establishment among Democrats, who threaten the same kind of split within the party that occurred two years ago in the Republican Party.  This split has been aggravated by the nomination of Hillary Clinton, in the present anti-establishment context one of the weakest possible candidates, who should thank her lucky stars she ended up running against a man so boorish as to trump her glaring failure, thus far, to understand and respond to her own base.

More to come.....including an analysis of New Mexico!

How Education Can Help Solve the Budget Shortfall

In New Mexico public schools the proportion of costs going to administration is the highest among all states. (see http://www.governing.com/topics/education/gov-education-funding-states.html).  Yes, the bloated school bureaucracy in New Mexico gobbles up fully $1274 per pupil each year on administration--13% of our per-pupil costs in 2015 of $9734.  This compares with administrative costs of only $400 per pupil in Utah (6% of per pupil costs of $6500) and $348 per pupil in Arizona, $629 per pupil in Colorado, and $485 per pupil in Texas.  Not a single one of our neighboring states spends even half of what we spend per pupil on administrative costs!

Let's dig a little deeper into the data to assess the bang for the education buck in New Mexico compared with other states.   The state with the lowest overall cost-per-student is Utah, at $6500.  Where does Utah rank among all states in K-12 student achievement?  13th, according to Education Week (http://www.edweek.org/ew/qc/2016/2016-state-report-cards-map.html).  Where does New Mexico, which spends $3234 more per pupil, rank?  You guessed it, 49th!  Is there something wrong with this picture?  What about Arizona, which spends $2206 less per pupil than New Mexico?  Arizona ranks 25th in K-12 achievement, way ahead of New Mexico.  There are many other states that beat out New Mexico in student achievement while spending a lot less per pupil.  New Mexico simply isn't getting its money's worth in public education  Putting it differently, if New Mexico spent the same amount per pupil as Utah, we would save $1.1 Billion dollars per year!

If we were to cut administrative costs in half, to $637 per pupil, still higher than any of our neighboring states, we would save $215 million per year.  This would make a substantial contribution to filling in the current 2017 budget shortfall, and does anyone really believe cutting administrative costs down to normal in New Mexico would hurt our already-dismal student achievement?  Might even help!

If we were to take half of that money ($318.5 per pupil) saved and invest it,say, in higher salaries for teachers, our average teacher pay would go up to $50,285, moving New Mexico up from 47th to around 25th in the nation, slightly higher than the average salaries for teachers in our surrounding states.  That would make it easier to attract better teachers, and better students into becoming teachers, and still leave more than $100 million to cut into the shortfall.  Does the legislature have the political ganas (will) to cut this fat, or many other possible cuts out of the education budget, which would likely have little if any effect on student achievement?

In higher education, in spite of lower faculty salaries and lower costs of living, New Mexico appropriates fully $1865 more per full-time student than the national average, placing us in sixth place among all states.  (http://sheeo.org/sites/default/files/project-files/SHEEO_FY15_Report_051816.pdf, Table 7).  Only Wyoming allocates a higher proportion of its budget to higher education.  Moreover, in the past five years total higher educational revenues per FTE in New Mexico have increased 24.9%, more than any other state in the nation.  In spite of this lavish spending, New Mexico ranks 47th among the states in the six-year graduation rate for a BA (http://collegecompletion.chronicle.com/state/#state=ny&sector=public_four), and for the first time in New Mexico history the older generation is better educated than the younger generation.  Every other state improved more than New Mexico in the proportion of the population holding a college degree.  If we were to reduce the appropriations New Mexico makes to higher education down to the national average, still way above Arizona and Utah, it would save New Mexico over $179 million per year. Add that to the $100 million left over after giving teachers a needed raise, and you get $279 million, which goes a long ways toward filling in the shortfall.  It is more difficult to measure higher education administrative fat, but judging from the outrageous salaries of many administrators, there is a lot that could be cut here, too.

There is nothing partisan about cutting fat out of the budget.  In a state doing as poorly as New Mexico has fared economically in the past few years, it only makes sense to use this downturn as an opportunity to create greater efficiency in the taxpayer dollars now lavishly doled out to public and higher education systems that are at the bottom of the barrel among states and that have resisted efforts to address seriously the quality of education in the state.

New Mexico as the Summer Ends

The winds of winter seem to be blowing in earlier this year.  Already the leaves are turning in the mountains of Northern New Mexico.  And as the coming fall always reminds us of the inevitability of change, it is hard not to read from the yellowing of the leaves a portent of hard times ahead.  

On the international front, the European project, so successful for the past 60 years in showing the world a cooperative, voluntary, and democratic  alternative to the nation state, is in trouble, at least temporarily, largely over botched immigration practice and nationalist economic policies.  The Middle East is undergoing a moment of abject horror (only intermittently covered by our mainstream news outlets) triggered by unwise policies by the powerful for short-term gain but long-term disaster that is just beginning to play itself out.  Both political parties were complicit in generating this mess, so the topic is taboo.  Global warming is beginning to look like it might be worse than political correctness allowed us to believe.  Global growth rates are slowing down in the rich countries, aggravating tensions between rich and poor as income inequality rises to unsustainable levels.  While these themes are playing themselves out, Russian leadership eagerly experiments with mischief at every opportunity in sometimes unexpected venues, including American politics.

In the U.S. presidential race, our dysfunctional political system provided us with two of the most unpopular and divisive candidates in recent history, raising serious doubts the winner will be able to govern, much less invoke the slightest drop of moral authority.  One primary candidate, Bernie Sanders--in an astonishing development that motivated greater enthusiasm from our youth than we've seen since the war in VietNam--placed the growing disparity between rich and the other 99% squarely on the political agenda, where it belongs, only to see it buried by the winning candidates in the now-normal gotcha game, so beloved by television producers, of proving each other, over and over, to be liars and hypocrites. Campaigns are no longer structured to bring out the best in oneself, imagining a better world, but to generate fear.  In mid-September, beneath the gotcha game, the presidential contest seems to be boiling down to dog-whistles (by both sides, to different audiences, two sides of the same coin) appealing to base fears about race and immigration, now that both campaigns have succeeded in convincing us beyond doubt that each candidate is a liar and a hypocrite.  On inauguration day most of us will feel only fear of what is to come from the White House.

In New Mexico the mood this year has been highly pessimistic; Joe Monahan has done the best job of describing the malaise that afflicts the political class, and the exodus of some of our most talented youth.  Part of this is due to the poor quality of performance at all levels:  in our educational institutions, which are unbelievably expensive in comparison to their performance at the bottom of the barrel of states; in our state government, in our business class.  Nobody seriously believes state government will do anything to revive the economy or, for that matter, do anything useful at all during the remainder--well over two years--of the current administration.  Our legislature almost certainly will continue to protect the most entrenched interests in the state.  Our business class, not exactly a paragon of creative entrepreneurship, keeps hoping Uncle Sam in Washington will come back with multi-billion dollar contracts for our defense industries to keep their customers growing.  But lately, our representatives in Congress don't seem to be bringing back the same amount of bacon as their predecessors.  New Mexico is beginning to look like Hobbs before the fracking started.

While all of this is true, I am not as pessimistic as most.  Just as things seem to be going bad, and getting worse, change tends to come.  The fruit must rot before the seed takes hold in the soil.  Paradigms shift.  My brother maintains a paradigm shift, a realignment, already occurred within the Republican Party at the national level.  Bubba simply doesn't believe a word of national Republican rhetoric, whether from Mitch McConnell or Paul Ryan.  Trump simply stumbled in and took advantage of it.  While his solution--make the dog-whistle loudly audible to his fans--is not a successful strategy (the demographics are against it), the effect of Trump is likely to force a healthy restructuring of the long-term appeal of the Republican Party.  This would be healthy for a political system that is stuck at a broken level, unable to solve any national problems.  And unless the Democratic Party can channel into young people after roughing up Sanders in a dark alleyway, a realignment will take place there, too.

New Mexico needs a shift in paradigm.  The state is not functioning in anything that approximates a healthy state of being, and everyone seems to understand this.  Schools don't produce educated citizens; sectors of law enforcement are unaccountable; violent crime is on the rise; the economy isn't getting better; corruption is rampant and the judicial system doesn't seem to notice; and state government has been demoralized beyond belief by the past two administrations that did little to improve the state of affairs.  But just as we know the winter is coming and need to prepare for it, we also know Spring will follow.  Welcome the change:  it is overdue.

Special Session on the Table to Fix 2016, Not 2017

On August 24 another state revenue forecast is due, and if the present trend continues, the state will be in worse shape, financially, than anticipated in the last forecast, which predicted a $500-600 million shortfall for FY 2016 and 2017.  Apparently the Governor has agreed to call a special session to fix the smaller 2016 shortfall, but not the 2017 shortfall.  

 

This is an election year.  There has been talk lately, given presidential candidate Trump's mounting train wreck of a campaign, of the New Mexico House flipping back to the D side.  No one is anxious to be on record voting for cuts to programs.  But FY 2016 has already ended and by law it must be fixed, and can be fixed without much pain.  But the day of reckoning for 2017 is likely to be more painful, and can be postponed until early in the legislative session, in January.

 

Pessimism is the New Mexico Political Virus of 2016

The state's political class has been in a doom-and-gloom mode for months, now, complaining about the Martinez administration's poor performance on economic development, continued failure at all levels of performance in our institutions of education, the exit of some good jobs and college-educated people from the state, the lack of progress on many fixable problems, and so on.  Pessimism and optimism are contagious, and pessimism is the New Mexico political virus of 2016.  

 

My take is different. New Mexico's decline has been slow, and it began decades ago.  The failures we see today are no worse than the failures of our business and political classes ten or twenty years ago.  What may be new is that we no longer believe we have the will to improve; we believe that partisan bickering has become a substitute for the hard work of governing, and that this condition has become permanent.  But as Shakespeare once wrote, the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings.  As Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders proved in the past year, voters have the capacity to shake things up when they decide enough is enough.

TRUMP CAMPAIGN APPEARS TO BE IN SEVERE TROUBLE

In an amazing turn of events, the Trump campaign for President appears to have reached what may well be a dead end with very limited and highly unpleasant exit routes.  The Khan family challenged Trump during a highly visible moment during the Democratic National Convention, pointing to the Constitution and reminding the nation that Trump has never made any sacrifices to country, let alone the heroic actions of their son in his fatal act of courage.  Trump answered back in his usual never-back-down tone, All of this has backfired on Trump, in spades.

The pressure on Republican leaders everywhere to repudiate Trump's attacks on the Khan family and, by extension, his threat, should he become President, to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S., is likely to be unbearable in the next few hours.  It is hard to imagine any Republican seeking office to risk endorsing Trump's attack on a family whose son died a hero's death, in uniform, protecting his soldiers..

Trump's poll numbers appear to be, finally, collapsing.  Yesterday reports went out that the Trump campaign had asked Republicans in Congress to help him out, but there appear to be no takers.  In fact, Rep. Richard Hanna, a Republican, publicly announced today he would vote for Hillary Clinton.

Also today President Obama, whose approval ratings are reasonably sound, flatly asserted, in front of the Prime Minister of Singapore, that Trump was "unfit" to be president and challenged Republican leaders, asking why they should continue to endorse him.  This is an unprecedented step for a president during the television age, and Obama stated as much, seemingly challenging partisan opponents to deny the validity of his claim Trump is unfit.

The problem Trump faces may well be fatal to his continued candidacy.  If he apologizes and retracts much of what he has said it raises serious questions about his judgment over the past few days: Trump could have apologized any time this past weekend, with perhaps only minor damage to his support base.  But if Trump refuses to back down it raises even more severe questions not only about his willingness to admit to a serious mistake but also about his empathy for a family's loss, and whose only consolation lies in the memory of his heroism.  Would you like to be in the corner Trump appears to be in?