President of the Rio Grande Foundation, Paul Gessing was on Eye on New Mexico today to give his “Piglet” book on pork spending in this state a lot of free publicity. Now you should know that he is the President of a group run by the right wing of the Republican Party and his views on pork spending are clearly very conservative in nature. You can read more about the group on New Mexico FBIHOP at this URL. LP has done a great job of detailing Mr. Gessing’s ties to the right wing.http://nmfbihop.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=324
Now we can all admit that there is pork spending in this state that must be cut in January. Smart cuts could help our state grow and balance the budget at the same time. We should remember that things such as educational supplies and front line pay for educators and educational support employees, health care for children, developing new technology methods for healthcare records, assisting the economically distressed, mental health care for the homeless who are veterans, drug rehab programs and mass transit are all programs that help move our state in the right direction and represent our core values in this state. Building new and larger prisons to house minority individuals, giving tax breaks to the rich, supporting oil and gas over green energy and paying high paid administration employees more money for less work are all items that drive our state in the wrong direction.
Now we don’t and cannot afford lobbyists to support our issues the way the rich and well connected can in this state but we can email our state representatives and express our views which will result in how we vote in future elections. Some of us can take time off from our jobs to go to the state capital to personally express our views on how we want cuts to be made that will affect the voting public in our state.
So now our state representatives must decide who they plan on listening to and were those pork spending cuts are going to be made in January. Do they help the economically distressed and the middle class in this state with affordable education, health care, green energy, and mass transit or do they support the very rich with more prisons, larger roads, bigger tax cuts, and higher wages for people earning over $100,000 presently.
The state treasury and state auditor live on yearly incomes of $85,000 each; therefore, why not the presidents of our two year colleges along with their long, long list of vice presidents? Maybe the savings could be used to make education more affordable in this state for the middle class.
State employees can and do take the railrunner to work each day so why must two year college presidents have their own personal cars that are paid for by the taxpayer’s money? College employees have to drive white school cars so why not the president of the college? Since when is it required to have a taxpayer funded luxury vehicle in order to do your job? Why should the voting public be paying for those luxury vehicles for college presidents?
Now it is up to the voting public to also come up with examples of how we can cut the budget without harming the programs that represent our core values in this state. Once you identify those items please feel free to email them to your state representative.
