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Taxpayers should fund campaigns
PETE DINELLI got the required $5 donations to qualify for matching funds. Kudos to him. Mayor Richard Berry is opting for private funds and has asked the question, “Why should we burden the taxpayers with the cost of the campaigns?” Well here is the answer: if the taxpayers fund the campaign, then that is whom the candidate will be responsible to when he gets elected. Mayor Berry will likely get his money from rich development companies and flush corporations and that is whom he will be responsible to once he is re-elected. Now, who do you think should finance the campaigns? Simple enough to understand? AL V. PUGLISI Rio Rancho
Politicians must live within means
ALL POLITICIANS — city, county, state and federal — don’t get it. The money they get is from us, the taxpayers, and we, their employers, have no more money. Our country has lost over 8.5 million jobs by job-killing regulations on businesses. Raising old taxes and adding new taxes is taking its toll on all Americans. Now they want to increase wages and pensions for government workers. With what? We have to live on what we have by cutting spending and doing without. Our politicians have to do the same.
MARY SUE ENCINIAS
Albuquerque
We get what we deserve in elections
LET’S LOOK and see if we have learned from this past election. Twenty-one of 22 incumbent senators were re-elected. Three hundred and fifty-three of 373 incumbent members of the House were re-elected. The American people re-elected 94 percent of the incumbents who were running for re-election to an institution that has an approval rating of about 9 percent. This indicates, as an electorate, that we are a nation of idiots. We’re now stuck with the useless, dysfunctional government that we deserve
WILL SALAZAR
Albuquerque
U.S. merits nukes; Iran doesn’t
IN HIS commentary March 30, “If Iran shouldn’t have nukes, neither should U.S.,” Peter Neils offers a pleasant vision: A world without nuclear weapons. However, he neglects to balance his idealism with thoughtful anticipation of its implications.
There are two dates we should consider before committing ourselves to the goal of a world without nuclear weapons. They are 1914 and 1939. Those were the years that the two world wars began. Interestingly enough, they both began in the world that Neils wants us to return to – a world without nuclear weapons. They both began back when the world was safe for massive armies, navies and air forces – and expansionist sociopaths – but not for careers, families, or lovers. The insane idea that nations could with sovereign impunity ally themselves to win wars of global domination became actual insanity in August 1945, in the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Why anyone would advocate that we return to the bad old days when millions of people might be killed, maimed or dispossessed year after bloody year is a mystery. Frankly, it is gross and inhumane of Neils to lobby for such unfettered industrialized horror, which has only grown more potent in the intervening decades.
Furthermore, Iran has convincingly demonstrated its proclivity for oppressing women, sponsoring terror and slaughtering neighboring Iraqis. All these very stark facts are exactly why the U.S. should maintain its nuclear weapons, and why Iran should be denied them.
It would be incredibly silly not to.
STEVE STRINGER
Los Alamos
Clarifying the 10th Amendment
KENNETH BROWN’S analysis of the self-inflicted failures of the National GOP campaign of 2012 (March 31) is spot on. Although I am not a Republican, I believe that the traditional core values — self-reliance, small government, personal responsibility — of the party are eminently marketable when presented in an intelligent and standalone way.
However, I believe that Brown misreads the 10th Amendment to the Constitution regarding “The powers delegated to the United States . . .”. The “powers” are clearly laid out in the preamble of our most sacred secular document. There are only six: “form a more perfect Union,” “establish Justice,” “insure domestic Tranquility,” “provide for the common defence,” “promote the general Welfare” and “secure the Blessings of Liberty.” (Capitalization and spelling is in concordance with the original document).
Articles 1 through 7 are, in point of fact, little more than the agreed upon orderly process for implementing the equally agreed upon goals of the preamble. That is to say, that the laws and statutes, programs and privileges, must always be developed in support and furtherance of the preamble.
Furthermore, if one views the Constitution and its preamble as a living document — which I do — then it is possible and proper to use it to address the modern complexity and novelty of issues totally out the realm of imagination of our founders.
Finally, what Brown and I might further agree on is that laws that address temporally proximate problems/issues need periodically to be readdressed and either updated or repealed.
DAVID BLACHER
Albuquerque
Day off for religious reasons OK
TWO ARTICLES caught my eye in the Albuquerque Journal (recently) ….
The first one, on March 28 titled “Jobless office to close at noon Friday” said it “will close at noon Friday for seasonal observance.”
The second, on Good Friday, titled “County closed today” said “Bernalillo County government office will be closed today for spring break.”
Pardon me, “seasonal observance?” “spring break?” Since when do county offices close for spring break? The holiday is Good Friday, a traditional religious holiday celebrated on the Friday before Easter.
It seems to me that if government offices choose to deny the observation of Good Friday and Easter they shouldn’t have a day off at all. If the event is not observed there is no reason for a seasonal observance or a spring break.
KAY BROOKS
Albuquerque
People with good jobs create jobs
I NOTICED WITH trepidation on the future of New Mexico a number of articles in the paper (March 30) including one where the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce voted that the tax cuts for New Mexico corporations “… is about jobs. It will make us more attractive to business and more competitive with surrounding states.”
Governor Susana Martinez was happy as can be about the Legislature passing the tax cut bill, and vetoed the relatively tiny minimum wage raise, and a number of positive education bills. With regard to the minimum wage, her excuse was the Republican mantra that it would “kill New Mexico jobs.” What typical tripe.
Empirical evidence in all states shows that businesses don’t flock to states with low corporate taxes, as we saw with the Texas governor’s recent trek to California to lure California businesses to their low tax (and low wage) state. Notice that few if any California businesses moved to Texas.
Businesses choose to be in a location for many factors beyond low taxes. Economic empirical evidence shows, as well, that jobs create jobs, not low taxes for corporations. Put money in the people’s pocket, and the economy does better — as it did during the Clinton years, when income taxes for the rich were actually higher than now.
It is a Republican lead fallacy that lowering corporate taxes creates jobs — corporations keep the money and/or send it overseas. Citizens spending money creates jobs, something that won’t be happening in New Mexico. What will happen is higher taxes at the county and city levels through higher property and sales taxes, and our very low wage earners will have much less to spend, and few new jobs will be created. So who does the governor really support?
STEVE SHACKLEY
Albuquerque
Cantwell column gives Sanchez a pass
RE: NED Cantwell op ed Sunday April 7
From 1992-2009, I worked as a lobbyist first for the district attorneys’ association and later for three successive attorneys general. Therefore, I enjoyed Cantwell’s tonque-in-cheek analysis of the legislative process in New Mexico. His only shortcoming was he let Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez off too lightly. Since Sanchez’s elevation to majority leader, his death-grip on the Senate floor calendar has proved to be despotic. Bills that he opposes go to the bottom of the calendar and stay there. If he doesn’t like the measure, it’s never heard. He is virtually a one-man Senate.
And Cantwell certainly got this wrong. Were he to question Sanchez about Sen. (Peter) Wirth’s texting-while-driving bill, he would not get “another version of the finger wagging.” He would likely receive an angry, veins-bulging, eyes-popping, red-faced tirade from Sanchez. I speak from more than one experience on this point. In over 35 years of public service in two states, I never met an official with so little regard for one’s right to have a different viewpoint or to express an opposing opinion. (The late District Judge and former) DA Bob Schwartz once quipped, “He likes all of those Amendments except that first one.”
STEVEN SUTTLE
Albuquerque
Goldberg wrong on Keystone pipeline
THE KEYSTONE XL pipeline is a no-brainer only in the sense that party-line boosters like Jonah Goldberg are not using their brains. Tar sands oil is the muckiest kind around, the hardest to clean up and Trans-Canada has a history of spills. The refined oil does not go to the U.S., but to the highest bidder on the global market.
And the number of jobs forecast, 20,000, is 1 percent of what the infrastructure bills would have created, if they hadn’t been torpedoed by the Republicans who are all for XL.
Goldberg specializes in scaring people about non-existent bogeymen like the “liberal media.” Both he and the GOP, whose talking points he echoes, are piling up a mountain of evidence of wrongheadedness.
BRET RAUSHENBUSH
Albuquerque
Obama takes too many vacations
I THINK INSTEAD of Obama giving 5 percent of his salary back, he should cut back on his lavish monthly vacations for him and his family. This is like letting the air out of tires to save on gas. What we need is someone who understands how to grow the economy, not stupid grandstand moves that have no effect and are just good fodder for the main media that they report with a straight face.
Why don’t they report on how much his vacations cost the taxpayer? Tax and spend is all he knows. The amount his one vacation with Tiger Woods cost is as much as keeping the White House open for tours for one full year.
LORRAINE COLLUMS
Albuquerque
Too much money, effort on sports
THERE WAS a time before N.M. taxpayers and the big federal government poured wasted money into the continuously failing N.M. school system sinkhole we experience today, when there was a return on investment benefiting everyone: the student, the teacher, the community, the employer and ultimately, the country.
Long gone is the very stupid and naive concept that by getting a good grade through honest diligent application of discipline, today’s students will earn self-esteem through education.
What is with this sports love affair in this country? Do we really care that some coach paid more than you and I will make in our lifetime here in New Mexico is going to California?
Our tax dollar investments should be laser-beamed toward preparing and educating our kids to earn a living at a time when values about that are more than stunted. It’s not about money — it’s about community. And it’s not about sports. Self -esteem comes from making the grade. We taxpayers give of ourselves for kids we don’t even know.
Sports: where are we going with this?
CHRIS HUBER
Placitas
