GOP "Hired Hand," ALEC Ruins the World For Fun, Profit and Politics

ALEC Crawls Out From Under Its Rock 

To Declare War On The Rest Of Us

MON AUG 03, 2015

byDartagnan

[Visit original article DailyKOS. Links remain enabled.]

At least they've stopped pretending they don't exist anymore. It's almost refreshing to see them wiggle out from under their rocks into the clear light of day. The President has drawn them out this time, with his Clean Power Plan (announced today), designed to ultimately divest this nation as much as practicable from the deadly warming climatic effects of pouring unchecked CO2 into the atmosphere.

As The Washington Post Reports:

Opponents of the Obama ­administration’s Clean Power Plan prepared Monday for all-out war against the carbon-cutting regulation, blasting the measure publicly while accelerating behind-the-scenes efforts to stop its implementation.

* * *

On the day of the rule’s official adoption, key lawmakers and industry groupssharpened their rhetorical attacks and vowed to battle the measure in Congress and in the courts.

The attacks came as other groups prepared to launch initiatives on the state and local level. In anticipation of the rule’s unveiling, a task force of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) — a conservative group funded in part by electricity producers and fossil-fuel ­interests — approved model legislation to be sent to state legislatures around the country. The model bill would give state governments special authority to “expedite approval of resources to challenge the EPA’s Clean Power Plan,” according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post.

More here from the New York Times.

These are the groups that own the Republican party. And let's be clear, in point of fact they arethe Republican Party. The McConnells, the Inhofes, the Tea Party ilk who vote in lockstep at their bidding are really nothing more than paid-off stand-ins. These organizations, ALEC in particular, are made up of industry lobbyists, executives and corporate lawyers who will actively and eagerly sell us all down the river in a heartbeat if it means more profits. When you cut to the bone of what the Tea Party really is, it's this: a group of fat and irate fossil fuel corporations who will pay any price to stop the U.S. government from checking their endless thirst for increased profits, increased drilling, increased mining. More than anything else, this shows why the Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision was such an abomination: it allowed people just like this to take over our country by buying out our political system. This time, however, what they're doing has life-altering consequences for us all. And right now there is only one person stopping them from doing that--the guy in the Oval Office.

What is ALEC? This is ALEC:

ALEC is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that. Through the secretive meetings of the American Legislative Exchange Council, corporate lobbyists and state legislators vote as equals on ‘model bills’ to change our rights that often benefit the corporations’ bottom line at public expense. ALEC is a pay-to-play operation where corporations buy a seat and a vote on ‘task forces’ to advance their legislative wish lists and can get a tax break for donations, effectively passing these lobbying costs on to taxpayers.

Along with legislators, corporations have membership in ALEC. Corporations sit on ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve “model” bills. They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. (ALEC says that corporations do not vote on the board.) Corporations fund almost all of ALEC's operations.

Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own brilliant ideas and important public policy innovations—without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills.

This is what Democracy has come to in the United States of America. There are a lot of words for it, Oligarchy, Corporatocracy, Plutocracy. Whatever you want to call it, their already-organized response to the President's proposed EPA Rulemaking fits the bill:

The proposed legislation seeks to direct state attorneys general to join lawsuits against the EPA to prevent “unlawful and costly obligations from being imposed on states,” according to the copy obtained by The Post. It also calls for transferring money into a special fund set up by participating states to underwrite efforts to challenge unwanted environmental regulations. The money would come from state appropriations as well as “any gifts, grants and donations” from outside groups.

In other words they're planning to ram through legislation through their bought and paid for Republican state legislators, through the same bought and paid for Republican "attorneys-general," to create a slush fund solely for the purpose of rolling back regulations imposed on these polluting fossil fuel corporations, and permitting them to keep destroying the planet's climate that protects all of us, until Hell quite literally freezes over, or more likely, the reverse. "State" appropriations means that taxpayers, at least in part, will pay for this.

Think about that. It means corporations have devised a way to make the surplus population pay for the slow death of the planet, and all of the human suffering that will come with it.

This is what they're fighting to stop:

[In addition to it focus on Renewable Energy sources and reduction of Greenhouse Gas emissions] The Clean Power Plan, and other policies put in place to drive a cleaner energy sector, will reduce premature deaths from power plant emissions by nearly 90 percent in 2030 compared to 2005 and decrease the pollutants that contribute to the soot and smog and can lead to more asthma attacks in kids by more than 70 percent. The Clean Power Plan will also avoid up to 3,600 premature deaths, lead to 90,000 fewer asthma attacks in children, and prevent 300,000 missed work and school days.

Here is what President Obama said about his Clean Power Plan and the threat presented by Climate Change:

We have a moral obligation to leave our children a planet that’s not polluted or damaged. The effects of climate change are already being felt across the nation. In the past three decades, the percentage of Americans with asthma has more than doubled, and climate change is putting those Americans at greater risk of landing in the hospital. Extreme weather events – from more severe droughts and wildfires in the West to record heat waves – and sea level rise are hitting communities across the country. In fact, 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have all occurred in the first 15 years of this century and last year was the warmest year ever. The most vulnerable among us – including children, older adults, people with heart or lung disease, and people living in poverty – are most at risk from the impacts of climate change. Taking action now is critical.

There's only word that describes ALEC and the Party that serves it: it's Evil.

Just What Are Those Pesky Koch Brothers Up To Now?

Keeping an Eye on the Billionaires in YOUR State

Normally, MeanMesa is reluctant to simply "re-post" a lengthy newspaper article, but this one has made itself a startling exception to that rule.  This is copied directly from The Guardian.  As a visitor to Short Current Essays, MeanMesa emphatically suggests that you take a few minutes to read the entire thing.

Be confident that future MeanMesa posts will reference this excellent reporting.  All the links in the original Guardian article are left enabled in the content as it is quoted in this post.  You can visit the site here.

State conservative groups plan US-wide assault on education, health and tax

• State Policy Network co-ordinating plans across 34 US states
• Strategy to 'release residents from government dependency'
• Revelations come amid growing scrutiny of tax-exempt charities
• Read key excerpts from the SPN proposals
• Portland Press Herald: group's plan to eliminate taxes
• Texas Observer: the money behind the fight to wreck Medicaid

inSEd Pilkington in New York and Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington

theguardian.com, Thursday 5 December 2013

The State Policy Network has an annual war chest of $83m drawn from major donors like David Koch, above, and food giant Kraft. Photograph: Mark Lennihan/AP

Conservative groups across the US are planning a co-ordinated assault against public sector rights and services in the key areas of education, healthcare, income tax, workers' compensation and the environment, documents obtained by the Guardian reveal.

The strategy for the state-level organisations, which describe themselves as "free-market think tanks", includes proposals from six different states for cuts in public sector pensions, campaigns to reduce the wages of government workers and eliminate income taxes, school voucher schemes to counter public education, opposition to Medicaid, and a campaign against regional efforts to combat greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.

The policy goals are contained in a set of funding proposals obtained by the Guardian. The proposals were co-ordinated by the State Policy Network, an alliance of groups that act as incubators of conservative strategy at state level.

The documents contain 40 funding proposals from 34 states, providing a blueprint for the conservative agenda in 2014. In partnership with the Texas Observer and the Portland Press Herald in Maine, the Guardian is publishing SPN's summary of all the proposals to give readers and news outlets full and fair access to state-by-state conservative plans that could have significant impact throughout the US, and to allow the public to reach its own conclusions about whether these activities comply with the spirit of non-profit tax-exempt charities.

Details of the co-ordinated approach come amid growing federal scrutiny of the political activities of tax-exempt charities. Last week the Obama administration announced a new clampdown on those groups that violate tax rules by engaging in direct political campaigning.

Most of the "think tanks" involved in the proposals gathered by the State Policy Network are constituted as 501(c)(3) charities that are exempt from tax by the Internal Revenue Service. Though the groups are not involved in election campaigns, they are subject to strict restrictions on the amount of lobbying they are allowed to perform. Several of the grant bids contained in the Guardian documents propose the launch of "media campaigns" aimed at changing state laws and policies, or refer to "advancing model legislation" and "candidate briefings", in ways that arguably cross the line into lobbying.

The documents also cast light on the nexus of funding arrangements behind radical right wing campaigns. The State Policy Network (SPN) has members in each of the 50 states and an annual war chest of $83m drawn from major corporate donors that include the energy tycoons the Koch brothers, the tobacco company Philip Morris, food giant Kraft and the multinational drugs company GlaxoSmithKline.

SPN gathered the grant proposals from the 34 states on 29 July. Ranging in size from requests of $25,000 to $65,000, the plans were submitted for funding to the Searle Freedom Trust, a private foundation that in 2011 donated almost $15m to largely right wing causes.

The trust, founded in 1998, draws on the family fortune of the late Dan Searle of the GD Searle & Company empire – now part of Pfizer – which created NutraSweet. The trust is a major donor to such mainstays of the American right and the Tea Parties as Americans for Prosperity, the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), the Heartland Institute and the State Policy Network itself.

SPN's link to Searle, the Guardian documents show, was Stephen Moore, an editorial writer with the Wall Street Journal. Moore, who advises Searle on its grant-giving activities, was asked by SPN to rank the proposals in two halves – a "top 20" and "bottom 20". It is not known how many of the 40 proposals were approved for funding, nor which may have been successful.

Moore told the Guardian that he is an unpaid adviser to the Searle Foundation, having been a lifetime family friend to Dan Searle. He said the grant decisions were made by Searle's sons and grandsons based upon the late businessman's "commitment to the advancement of free enterprise and individual rights".

The proposals in the grant bids contained in the Guardian documents go beyond a commitment to free enterprise, however. They include:

• "reforms" to public employee pensions raised by SPN think tanks in Arizona, Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey and Pennsylvania;

• tax elimination or reduction schemes in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Maryland, Nebraska and New York;

• an education voucher system to promote private and home schooling in Florida;

• campaigns against worker and union rights in Delaware and Nevada;

• opposition to Medicaid in Georgia, North Carolina and Utah.

SPN's president, Tracie Sharp, told the Guardian that "as a pro-freedom network of think tanks, we focus on issues like workplace freedom, education reform, and individual choice in healthcare: backbone issues of a free people and a free society."

In its grant bid, the Maine Heritage Policy Center asked for $35,000 to support a "research and demonstration project" that would "release residents from extreme government dependency". It would turn the state's poorest area into what the Portland Press Herald describes in its report from Washington County as "a gigantic tax-free zone".

Dubbed "Free ME", the initiative would eliminate state income tax and sale taxes from residents and businesses until the economic conditions in the county rise to the state wide average. The hole in the county's income from lost tax revenues – estimated at $35m a year by the think tank – would be filled through budget cuts.

Medicaid is the target of a grant proposal coming from the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), an influential think tank funded largely by right wing foundations and corporations including the energy tycoons the Koch brothers, tobacco company Altria and the telecoms giant Verizon. The Texas Observer has investigated the contents of the document and points out that in its request for $40,000 from Searle, TPPF claims credit for blocking Medicaid expansion in the state.

"[S]topping Medicaid expansion is just the first step," the proposal says, adding that the "missing piece to complete our message is an economic forecast" showing how block-granting Medicaid would "bring significant savings" to the state. That information would then be used to garner attention from the media.

The Observer describes TPPF as "one of the most influential state-level think tanks in the nation". One of its former executives was Ted Cruz, now US senator for Texas, who today is the keynote speaker at the national conference in Washington of SPN's sister organisation, the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec).

Several hundred miles to the north east in Massachusetts, the Beacon Hill Institute requested $38,825 from Searle to weaken or roll back a five-year effort by states in the region to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The institute said it would carry out research into the economic impact of the cap-and-trade system operating in nine states known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

BHI appeared to have already arrived at its conclusions in advance, admitting from the outset that the aim of the research was to arm opponents of cap-and-trade with data for their arguments, and to weaken or destroy the initiative. "Success will take the form of media recognition, dissemination to stakeholders, and legislative activity that will pare back or repeal RGGI," the funding proposal says.

The Beacon Hill Institute, technically an affiliate rather than a full member of the SPN, operates out of the economics department of Suffolk University in Boston. David Tuerck, its executive director, denied the group had engaged in lobbying. "There is never any lobbying," he told the Guardian. "Maybe I need to look up the definition again, but lobbying consists of buttonholing legislators and other policymakers to get a particular result on a particular issue, and we never do that."

But Suffolk University, which hosts the Beacon Hill Institute as a research arm of its economics department, sharply criticised the research proposal to the Searle Foundation. In a statement to the Guardian, the university said the grant bid had not been submitted to the university, as required, and that the university would never have approved the proposal. "The stated research goals, as written, were inconsistent with Suffolk University's mission."

Watchdogs that monitor the work of SPN and other conservative networks in the US said that the centralised coordination of state-level campaigns showed a significant attempt to build local activism into a nationwide movement. Lisa Graves, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, which issued a recent report on SPN, said that the local identity of the network's members belied a larger purpose. "They appear to be advocating purely local interests but what they are promoting is part of a larger national template to radically remake our government in a way that undermines public institutions and the rights of workers," she said.

The SPN said that its co-ordinating role was justified because local and state issues were increasingly impinging on national politics. "There's no mystery here," Sharp said. "The whole idea of a state policy network is that individual thinktanks can be in communication, share best practices and analysis, and combine their efforts when they see a benefit from doing so."

Some of the grant bids to Searle focus specifically on prominent local politicians the thinktanks hope to influence. The grant bid that emanated from New Jersey, from the Common Sense Institute (CISNJ), another tax-exempt "research and education organization", floats the idea of a campaign to support the efforts of the Republican governor Chris Christie in ending the ability of public employees to claim untaken sick days and vacation leave in their retirement packages.

"Governor Chris Christie has been waging a war to eliminate this practice; and CSINJ would like to provide ammunition," the proposal says. The thinktank plans to produce a "research study" which it would call "Busting the Boat Checks" – an allusion to the phrase Christie uses to denote the watercraft retirees are claimed to buy on the back of sick and holiday leave payments.

The institute conceives a "media campaign" with its aim being the "full elimination of unused sick and vacation leave payouts".

"We believe our study can be used to sway public sentiment further and be used as a brandisher for reform in Trenton," it says.

CSINJ's president, Jerry Cantrell, denied that the grant bid involved any element of lobbying, insisting instead that his group was providing a service that in the past might have been done by the decimated local media.

"CSINJ is an education organization focused on providing the public with facts and the truth. We don't represent any interest besides the folks who are burdened by this practice – the taxpayers," he said.

He said the proposal was focused on the "abusive practice of accumulating sick or vacation day payments over an entire career and using them as retirement bonus. We've seen too many instances of high level individuals working out the door with $500,000-$750,000 claiming to have never missed a day in 30 years of employment."

The proposal from the Illinois Policy Institute for a campaign to deal with Chicago's government worker pensions crisis by switching to 401(k)-style retirement plans similarly focuses on a politician – in this case Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The proposal says that "Mayor Emanuel has privately expressed the need for 401(k)-style changes to truly achieve reform."

The institute plans to "leverage the leadership potential of Mayor Emanuel … as the spark for wider pension changes in Illinois." It adds that "friendly legislators would be welcome to draft legislation modelled on our policy work and work in tandem with Mayor Emanuel to move it forward in the legislative process."

John Tillman, CEO of the Illinois Policy Institute, told the Guardian that Emanuel had been "an outspoken proponent of pension reform that includes moving to a 401(k)-style, defined contribution system." He saw no problem with the lobbying that the think tank undertakes.

"We are not allowed to do any campaigning or electioneering, and we don't. We are allowed to spend a significant percentage of our expenditures on lobbying and we are very proactive in lobbying for liberty-based policy, including the urgently needed pension reform. We report our activities accordingly."

New Mexico: Climate Change, Infrastructure & Water

Before We Begin,

 A Quick Note On Climate Change

MeanMesa has posted a few apocalyptic essays before, notably There's Infrastructure, and Then There's Infrastructure (Doomsday Without the Lipstick), each one hopefully addressing tangible possibilities of infrastructure projects which  could be undertaken immediately, and which might mitigate some of the more catastrophic -- and lethally unpleasant -- impacts of global climate change.  [For the more ambitious MeanMesa visitor, a longer and more in depth post can be seen at Managing Global Warming Solutions.]

It has always been the "high ambition" of MeanMesa with respect to this topic to present solutions of the "engineering type" rather than plunge headlong into the details of planetary chemistry and meteorological physics or simply drone on endlessly about the hopelessness of it all. 

Technology's forward movement toward a solution is impressive, but painfully slow, encountering not only the anticipated difficulties of any new ideas, but also  further obstacles emerging from the social culture of money, power, politics and, in an unsettling way, meteorological illiteracy.  Precisely the same voters who will ultimately face the responsibility of financing the mitigation of the approaching threat are inundated in purposefully misleading propaganda designed to protect the wealth of a few from the massive expenditure inevitably required.

In simpler terms the coal mine owners, the petroleum nobility and a small collection of others with their personal wealth dependent on continuing the present self-destructive course intend to bring the rest of us down with them.  More immediately, it is precisely the accumulated wealth of this "new nobility" class which will be required to finance the planet's rehabilitation.

This last proposition is one largely unspoken in our class-war sensitive social culture, but, make no mistake, the currently grotesque results of wealth redistribution and concentration was created largely by the same social and economic factors which have created the present climate crisis.  Quite without regard to philosophical or ideological ideas of "right and wrong" or "legitimate and not legitimate," the political reality will ultimately dictate the allocation of this "privately held wealth" to planetary survival.

In a certain sense, while we may think of climate change as a matter of fossil; fuels, carbon dioxide and the like, it can also be seen as nothing other than the inevitable product of the long, rapacious avarice of this wealth obsessed class which has led us to this planetary precipice.

Infrastructure in New Mexico

The common story of infrastructure has, unfortunately, settled on a convenient list of project types -- schools, bridges, roads, hospitals and so on.  However, with closer scrutiny we rather quickly notice an interesting omission from that "standard list."

In fact, if we imagined ourselves in an alternate universe -- perhaps MeanMesa's "future history" department, we might encounter the following in a high school geography text book:

The US State of New Mexico, being in a region where water availability was a constant priority, very wisely invested its own state tax revenues in a series of water management infrastructure projects.  The State constructed not only water retention reservoirs to collect surficial run off during monsoon seasons, but also a  series of smaller flood control and distributed water retention projects across all the regions in the state which could route essentially all the year round precipitation into a number of lakes and reservoirs for local use.

As the climate change induced drought settled over the Western US during the first half of the 21st Century, New Mexico's water management infrastructure continued to provide communities and agricultural water needs while largely protecting areas of the state which had previously suffered from repeated flooding, also serving to protect New Mexicans from some of the worst consequences of the climate induced water shortages in the Western state region while promoting a continuous rate of common sense, sustainable economic development and growth.

Perhaps more than any of New Mexico's other resource development investments five decades ago, the extensive water management projects were the foundation for the state's exceptional prosperity in this current period of drought created economic collapse in the other states in the region.

Of course all this would cost money, but right there we immediately see an economically positive side -- in fact, we see economically positive sides.  Lots of them.  Right here we can trot out an old MeanMesa logo which has appeared on the blog in plenty of previous posts.

Yes, back to DEMAND ECONOMY

The very idea of a "demand economy" in New Mexico is literally "knocking down the door!"

In the first half of this year New Mexico's Republican Governor, Susana Martinez, "rolled out" $10 Mn in state funds for "job training."  She "rolled out" more than that for "economic development."  Of course no one walking the streets of Albuquerque or sitting in the State Capital have seen any of those jobs.

The tale of the "economic development" is even more outrageous.  Naturally, the "economic development" expenditures were legislative promises which were also well lubricated with the more alluring, gaseous promised of the creation of even more imaginary jobs.  When more sensible State legislators asked the Governor's office for an account of the expenditures, that is,  a look at the jobs created and examples of where the NM  "economy" which was developed, their request was refused.

At first the Governor insisted that her staff would analyze the progress and then "report" all the good news to the State Representatives, but later it became "necessary" for the job to be transferred to an expert consulting firm in Arizona with the "know-how" to make sure that everything was "examined correctly."

So much for jobs in New Mexico.  New Mexicans don't even get a few hours of paid work to establish why the "jobs program" didn't create any jobs.  If you are still not certain that you have an accurate "grip" on the total cess pool this has become, just imagine that you are in the Black Hole of Calcutta and start digging from there.

We're headed for the "climate change, infrastructure and water" in this post's title, but we have one more short stop to make first.

One More Time, ALEC New Mexico

Let's face a few facts.

1. Tax-wise, billionaires and corporations like it just the way it is.  They've spent millions of dollars in bribes -- ooops, campaign contributions -- for purchasing Congressmen and for purchasing tax laws, to get the taxes on their profits down to essentially zero where they are now.

2. Doing anything about the rapidly approaching impact of climate change will cost money -- tax money.  Steadily since Reagan's introduction of "trickle-down, voodoo economics," but especially in the economic wreckage of the Bush W. autocracy, the billionaires and the corporations have all the money.

3. Repeat number 2, above, but replace climate change with unemployment and national prosperity.  The economy of the United States today is crippled.  The oligarchs have emptied the shelves, the bank account and the cash register.  The United States will not be able to meet the challenges of climate change with a "basket case" economy.

4. ALEC -- both in states all across the country, but also in New Mexico -- offers "one stop shopping" for any billionaire or corporation with an appetite to own a Republican state Senator or Congressman.  ALEC's very most, most, favorite things are state financed "economic development grants" followed in by close second with deregulation of any regulation that costs any ALEC billionaire even so much as a single dollar, and third, more and more endless tax cuts on corporate profit, in each case ushered into law through a comatose state legislature bathed in the whimsical justification of creating jobs.

Interestingly, none of this stuff ever produces the effect promised, and in most cases is not the written legislation which is reported to the respective constituents.  All across the country, Americans are now painfully familiar with the effect that is produced from processes similar to those we see in New Mexico.  The other almost incomprehensible fact is that the Congressional constituents in these ALEC-victim states never actually wanted any of these bills to pass, that is, constituents did not ask their lawmakers to author these bills.

These bills came straight down the chute from the national ALEC think tanks into the hands of eagerly complicit state Congressional "leaders."

Here in New Mexico our ex-Democrat Republican Governor continues to pretend that she is "unleashing" the "free market," and that unbridled prosperity is "just around the corner," but we never get to see that "corner" or even get a peek at the "prosperity" there.  We have out of state suppliers furnishing everything from job training, weird Christian high school text books, consultants for every task possible, professional experts on deregulation, crooked "assistants" helping invest the New Mexico "rainy day fund" and plenty of ALEC campaign cash to grease the wheels -- not only providing the mimeographed legislation authorizing all this plunder, but also providing the Round House votes to put it in place.

The point here is simple.

Any effort to direct state resources to water infrastructure will be ambushed immediately by ALEC sponsored Congressional "temper tantrums."  The crooks and oligarchs who own ALEC -- along with the crooks and oligarchs who own the Republican Party -- have not positioned themselves to "drink deeply" from infrastructure money.  Should a piece of this kind of legislation actually survive the inevitable ALEC counter attack in the State legislature, the Governess would immediately want to take the contract to Texas or Arizona where her campaign contributors are.

In New Mexico, in the United States and around the entire globe we face monumental work.  It will all cost money, and the people who currently have that money are apparently not inclined to spend any of it on this until the planet is in shambles and the people of Earth are wallowing in violent, desperate chaos.  ALEC is both the active legislative voice of these people and the channel through which they can employ their great wealth against our common survival.

All ideology will have long ago melted two decades from now.

Drought, Dams and DimWits

What, exactly, is MeanMesa proposing here?

Beginning with a consideration of the economic impact resulting from all these decades of inaction, we can start by estimating the present cost of facing today's challenges.  We have flood damage across the state from heavy monsoon rains, but we also have gigantic reservoirs such as the one at Elephant Butte practically empty.

Elephant Butte in better days [Se: NASA]

Elephant Butte Reservoir is supposed to look like this when NASA photographs it from Earth orbit.  Because there has been a drought for the last few years, this reservoir, although not bone dry, has become an over sized puddle stuck in a low spot.

Caused by the drought?  Certainly, but this reservoir was going dry on precisely the same day that the monsoon run off was careening out of the state last year, the year before that and the year before that and so on.

Elephant Butte today [Se: NASA]

This is a photo was what Elephant Butte looks like today.  The State geologists tell us that it will take a series of strong monsoon seasons every year for the next few years to fill the reservoir back to what is shown in the top photo.

Just remember that this takes such a long time because most of the monsoon moisture drains away to the Rio Grande River where it almost instantly becomes the property of Texas and becomes included in Texas water rights.

In fact, the State of Texas is currently suing New Mexico because the Texans claiming that Albuquerque's new water treatment project, the San Juan Chama plant, is diverting too much river water as the Rio Grands flows sedately through the county.  If you feel that a troubling part of the autonomy of the State of New Mexico seems to also be draining down the Rio Grande into the hands of the same "free marketeer" Texans who financed Governor Martinez's campaign, MeanMesa could not possibly agree with you more.

Monsoon flow in Albuquerque - KRQE

The amount of infrastructure development required to "move" the water we see in the photo [right] to a place where it can be retained and used is significant.  Yet, when we consider the photos of Elephant Butte and the rush of New Mexico surface run off to Texas -- the ultimate destination of the water in the photo at the right, how can we miss the opportunity?

If the surface water flow running through the Albuquerque arroyos during a single monsoon season were captured in a reservoir prior to the point where it reaches the Rio Grande, this city would soon have its own lake.

Now, having that lake would not be an immediate solution to the area water shortage, but it would hold possibilities which are quite attractive.  Urban surficial run off is typically highly polluted with contaminants literally washed off the ground by the rain.  These include anti-freeze, motor oil, sewage effluent, fertilizer and pesticides, just to name a few. 

However, there is probably no place with more access to tremendous solar heat power -- precisely the kind of power with zero emission, low maintenance and low operating expense which is perfect for a high volume solar distillation facility.  Using solar heat, we can clean that surface water at a very low cost.  Further, we can distill water from our new reservoir all year long, contributing the perfectly clean distillate directly into the city's drinking water.

It would be the cheapest water flowing through our drinking fountains and taps -- cheaper than the aquifer well water, cheaper than the San Juan Chama water.

An Over Reaction to a Temporary Problem?

Hardly.  Although ALEC has largely adopted the climate change denying business as a full time hobby for fun and profit, MeanMesa visitors have known better for years.  The science paints a far bleaker picture.

IPCC predicts our future (article here)

[You will be able to read the chart  more clearly if you click the image.]  The alternatives connected to facing this type of a future are clear enough.  New Mexico can either take steps now to guarantee available water in our future or, -- we can plan on leaving.

This post isn't simply proposing a reservoir for Albuquerque.  The entire State needs similar projects from border to border.  The New Mexico of the future can be a lattice of dams, retention reservoirs, solar distillation plants and aqueducts.  Our State's agricultural production can increase exponentially with enough low priced water. 

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

The engineering and construction of this type of vital infrastructure can be almost entirely sourced inside the State of New Mexico.  The $10 Mn "jobs training" expenditure the Governor is so proud of could make one hell of a down payment on the Albuquerque reservoir and plant construction, and -- importantly -- it would actually create jobs!  These would be jobs which didn't depend on the whimsy of distant markets or require expertise only available through the Governor's "out of state consultants."

Uh oh.

THIS would be the demand economy MeanMesa has been hammering about for so long.

ABQ Journal

The Albuquerque Journal photos [right] show scenes around Albuquerque during some heavy rains in this year's monsoon season.  We've already considered the infrastructure development possibilities with respect to retaining this run off water, but when it comes to job creation, we are also looking at a huge number of flood control projects, too.

If our State government committed itself to the design,  construction, modernization and expansion of flood control infrastructure across the State, there would be more construction jobs than there were construction workers. Of course, a little "macro-economic project scheduling" could easily solve the shortage, but -- WHAT A GREAT PROBLEM TO HAVE!!

The "icing on the cake" would be an economy increased not only by the pay checks New Mexicans would be getting from working on these projects, but also the "reserved buying power" made possible when New Mexicans were no longer facing the financial damage we see in the photos.

A demand economy runs on buying power.  New Mexico is no exception.

All the State money being plowed into "economic development" and "job training" could start this State-wide reconstruction program this year.  When the larger picture is considered, why would we be messing around with clusters of small minded, heavily looted "oatmeal" programs when such a great future is literally knocking at our door?

We haven't even thought about how a STATE BANK could finance this.

New Mexicans, don't create a future where you will have to explain to your grandchildren why, when confronted with this solvable future challenge, you did nothing.

Latest ALEC Scourge Hits New Mexico

[A MeanMesa Note:  Blogger is not able to correctly format parts of this post.  Our apologies.]

N.M. GOPCons Screaming Back to "Tax the Poor"  

 Just think of "High Desert Visigoths" 

The Sacking of Rome (image source)

 

All across the country -- especially in those unfortunate states currently stuck with typically ruthless straight Republican governments -- the latest "tax the middle class and hand the goods over to the top earners" scam is being trotted out as if it were something new. It isn't new.

It's old.

Very old.

For MeanMesa visitors "old enough to remember" George W. Bush's wild borrow and spend antics, this latest scam is only slightly newer -- but not any less stinky. This latest scheme promises to stink just as much as the unregulated mayhem of the banksters' paradise which roared, unabated, right up the the explosion of the Great Republican Recession of 2008.

Here's a sample article from the Alamogordo Daily News. This pair of likeable fellows are the ALEC front men who are dutifully proposing this latest regressive tax legislation in the Round House. They enjoy the same dilemma which characterizes state legislators of their ilk. Unable to actually operate a state government -- for example, sustain a local economy which will provide adequate revenue to run the state -- these two have predictably reverted to the road weary lament of the sickeningly familiar oligarch refrain.

"Broaden the tax base." You know, to include more poor people.
"Cut tax rates for high earners and businesses so they will create jobs."
"Eliminate state revenues from income taxes
so 'job creators' will move here."

NM State Representative Tom Taylor (R)

NM State Senator William Sharer (R)

N.M. legislators propose 2% consumption tax, 

elimination of other taxes
Alamogordo Daily News

By Milan Simonich, Texas-New Mexico Newspapers

Posted: 01/31/2013 01:36:53 PM MST

SANTA FE -- Two legislators from Farmington on Thursday outlined their bill for a sweeping overhaul of the state's tax system, but admitted they did not know if they are on exactly the right track.

Sen. William Sharer and Rep. Tom Taylor, both Republicans, said their 207-page bill would eliminate almost all taxes and replace them with a 2 percent across-the-board consumption tax.

Their hope is that this would raise the same amount of revenue for the state, cities and counties, but make New Mexico more attractive to businesses by eliminating the corporate tax, the compensating tax, personal income tax and myriad other taxes.

"Far too many people come into this building seeking exemptions, credits and deductions," Taylor said during a news conference at the state Capitol.

Each time something is exempted or credited, the tax system becomes more complicated and less reliable in terms of what revenue it will generate, he said.

"For a long time, we have talked about a broad-based tax with very low rates. The bill does exactly that," Taylor said, likening it to the original gross receipts tax of the 1960s.

Sharer said 51 new tax bills already had been introduced this year in New Mexico.

"Obviously, our system is an epic failure," he said.

A solution to the madness would seem to be eliminating taxes and therefore all the possibilities for credits and exemptions. Then to make up the revenue that would be lost, the 2 percent consumption tax would be instituted.

But both legislators said there could be problems with their bill that they have not accounted for, even after months of review. Taylor said one difficulty was that exemptions and credits are sprinkled throughout New Mexico law, not just in the tax code. 

Sharer's proposal, Senate Bill 368, faces four committee hearings in the Senate. Sharer said that exceeds the number of hearings allowed by the Senate rules, but he did not seem to mind.

A companion bill that Taylor will carry in the House of Representatives has been scheduled for six committee hearings.

"I'm sure that's a world record," Taylor said.

But, like Sharer, he said multiple reviews of the bill would likely expose any flaws in the concept that many taxes can be erased and replaced by one.

As analysts from the state and other groups dig into the bill, they may find deficiencies that so far had not been flagged, Sharer said.

Not eliminated by their bill, the legislators said, would be severance, gasoline and property taxes.

They have made allowance in the proposal for impoverished people or those living just above the poverty line. Sharer said they could file for rebates and reclaim some of the taxes they paid for living expenses.

The motive for this latest crime is presented as "eliminating the income taxes" on personal and corporate earnings as an incentive for out of state businesses to rush to New Mexico where they can pay even lower wages and offer even fewer, cheaper benefits.

MeanMesa is still waiting to see a list of the businesses and jobs resulting from the stupendously large, over priced, ineffective "give aways" we're already making every year.

Democrats Reportedly Also Interested in Bill -- Really?

This legislation has sometimes been described as having Democratic support in the legislature.  While any evidence supporting this claim is elusive, the treachery would not be below some New Mexico Democrats.  Although these quiet supporters don't get all the ALEC privileges which come with entirely forgetting their oath, there is so much free cash floating around that anti-democracy outfit that this little scheme might still be quite interesting to them.

One exclusively New Mexican advantage these soiled state legislators enjoy is that state voters, as usual, have no idea what they are trying to do in Santa Fe.  Not surprisingly, when most of both the written word and television coverage throughout New Mexico is fundamentally reactionary and "fact free," public interest lagged to a comatose state years ago.

Tax the Poor, Trickle Down and Job Creation

Wait a minute!  These are the same "oldies but goldies" which lubricated media cover for the massive looting of the Bush W. autocracy!  Yet, there they are.  They might seem to be no more than battery operated corpses of the bad old days, but ALEC's owners are obviously insisting that the Zombie Apocalypse won't be over until they say it's over.

We may forget quickly, but we don't forget that quickly.

The fact that identical legislation for this crazy proposal surfaced in every state under Republican control within a period of a week is pretty good evidence that the GOPCon state legislators in all those places were handed Xerox copies still smouldering from the same print run.  MeanMesa has said before that it's unfair to assume that these hill billies and bigots have, somehow, written all this identical ALEC legislation on their own while sitting in a hotel room somewhere.

Here, we are immediately confronting the old "big picture" problem for the ALEC puppets.  Theoretically, each one of these Republican state Representatives and Senators, both here in New Mexico and all the other places this same bill has been introduced, are supposed to be responding to their constituent interests.

This bill, however, only favorably responds to the "constituent interests" of voters rich enough to dodge the regressive tax increases it contains.  The count on that crowd is so far below an election majority anywhere that the ALEC Xerox conspiracy emerges as the most likely explanation.  No one else could reasonably want this thing to become law.

Bribing Job Creators: The Zero Sum Game

If your state eliminates corporate and high earner income tax -- and the state revenues which come from those taxes -- in an effort to woo businesses away from states which won't cut the throats of the poor in the same way, does this mean that there will be more jobs?

Sure, there might be more jobs in your state, but when considered as an impact all across the country, it only means that some "job creators" have simply moved from where ever they used to be to this place because of incentives, a slightly more favorable tax policy and, in New Mexico's case, even lower wages.  We must realize that what's really being offered in these sweet deals is the prospect of relocating the pain of unemployment.

Naturally, the ALEC parasites have been instructed to relocate that pain to blue states at any cost.  We, as tax payers in New Mexico, will, of course, be paying that "any cost" as we throw everything on the table to entice these fickle "job creators" across our border.

We may not be a deliciously red state, but with Martinez in Santa Fe, we are definitely a purple state.

MeanMesa might be more positive about this if the ALEC scheme ever even worked.  It doesn't.  Perhaps even more interesting, it never has.  This is, excusing the expression, the "elephant in the living room."  These ALEC boys in the Round House get to their "competing with other states" pretty quickly when you show them a microphone, but the actual picture is more akin to Lucy holding the football for Linus, year after year.

Republican, in their panic, have generally adopted the "Sherman's March" approach to retaining power.  They can't win elections.  They can't stand with their record. They have no salable platform beyond the drawls of the feral anti-abortionists.  They have geriatric dreams, at this late stage in their dwindling life, of being able to inflict even more economic pain on poor people or on states which won't continue to bribe businesses sympathetic to the ALEC philosophy to stay put.

Amazingly, the GOPCons and their owners still think this is an election winning program.

Additional Reading

This story has received significant media attention.  Here are a few suggested links if you would like to read more.  Take note:  Some of these articles are quite reactionary.

Albuquerque Business First  http://www.bizjournals.com/albuquerque/news/2013/01/31/new-bill-aims-to-reboot-nm-tax-system.html

State Tax Reformers - OnLine WSJ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323968304578245720280333676.html

More Governors Look to Repeal Their Income Taxes - RealClearPolitics http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2013/01/30/more_governors_look_to_repeal_their_income_taxes_300879.html 

 Income Tax Could Be Eliminated by Many Republican Controlled States - Huff Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/13/income-tax-eliminated_n_2466612.html