RGFWatch

Nikolewski: Personal insults OK, criticism isn't

2010-11-11T20:41:00.000-08:00

Look at that: Rob Nikolewski approves personal insults against people, in this case Secretary of Corrections Joe R. Williams and Governor Bill Richardson, but not anything that I write. Note, there is no profanity and no insults in my comment.

It makes me wonder what other comments he does not allow for no other reason than disagreeing with his obvious bias.

Maybe he learned this from being a sports reporter, his only previous stated experience before being hired by the Rio Grande Foundation.

Gessing lies about bike path

2010-09-01T13:31:00.000-07:00

Should it be a surprise that Rio Grande Foundation president Paul Gessing uses dishonest methods to prove a political point? No.

He does so again in a blog post called "Bike Path to Wal-Mart" (link). In the post, Gessing falsely tries to assert that there are no other bike paths from the area around the Wal Mart on the Westside of Albuquerque.

Gessing could have easily checked on the bike path map (link) from the city of Albuquerque's Web site to see that bike and multi-use paths go in all four directions from the area that he asserts is the end of the line.

Interestingly enough, though, Gessing seems to call for corporations to pay for things such as this bike path.

"Considering that those two establishments (Wal Mart and Chili's) are the most likely to gain from the trail, I wonder if they put up any money? I doubt it," the President of the Rio Grande Foundation wrote. This seems at odds with his previous positions on impact fees (link).

But staying consistent is just another victim of Gessing making a political point. I wonder how the Rio Grande Foundation's corporate founders feel about Gessing's new stance.

Florida-style accountability?

2010-08-23T12:15:00.001-07:00

Paul Gessing for some reason loves Florida's education system even though the results are decidedly mediocre. Gessing laughably calls for Florida-style accountability (link) even though Florida has been fudging the numbers for years (link).

If you look at Florida when compared to the rest of the states when using actual numbers instead of their rigged numbers, the state is near the middle for graduation rates, right around New Mexico.

In other words, Gessing wants New Mexico to be more mediocre. Good plan, there, Paul.

Gessing swings and misses on state aid bill

2010-08-20T07:52:00.000-07:00

In order to back his extremist take on a state aid bill that is widely popular among the public (link) because it would help keep teachers employed, Gessing ignored the truth about the economic impact of the bill (link).

Gessing has been pushing a flawed conservative talking point that federal government employees make twice as much as their private counterparts (link). Is this because he would prefer government employees join the unemployment lines populated by victims of the Bush economic policies?

Gessing also uses the Republican frame of calling the state aid bill, which will help keep state governments from cutting services and laying off schoolteachers, a "bailout". Like other far-right commentators, anything Gessing doesn't like he calls a bailout.

But he also does not know, or knows and chooses to say incorrectly, about the economic impact of the bill. Gessing says the bill, "...Among the beneficiaries of this new federal debt will be mostly government workers and the such..."

The bill actually CUTS the deficit. The not-for-profit Open Congress says (link):

The bill is fully offset — meaning that it will not add to the deficit — by cutting $11.9 billion to food stamps (bringing the program back to pre-Recovery Act levels), closing a tax loophole that U.S. companies use to operate tax-free in other countries, and $6.7 billion in recessions from Recovery Act programs, the Defense budget, and other areas. In total, the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the bill found that it would save the federal government $1.37 billion over the next ten years.

Gessing should correct these mistakes to prove that he is more interested in the facts than making partisan points. I am not very hopeful that Gessing will do so, but it would be the right hting to do.

RGF's sports reporter is on top of it

2010-08-17T10:19:00.000-07:00

Rob Nikolewski loves him some Gary Johnson. He thinks that Gary Johnson is the best politician ever.

Of course, he can't quite stay on top of things. Nikolewski wrote, "Now, Salon.com, one of the favorite sites of the left-leaning commentariat, has written a positive article about Johnson called “The Most Interesting Republican You’ve Never Heard Of.” Here’s the story."

If you go to the link as he says, then you find out that the story is three months old. But "That Gary Johnson steamroller keeps movin’ on" according to Nikolewski.

My guess is that he's too busy just reprinting lists (link) and passing them off as news stories to actually read some real journalism.

In case you didn't get the sports reporter reference, Nikolewski's background isn't typical for someone to lead your "Santa Fe Bureau."

Rob Nikolewski worked as a sports anchor for seven different television stations across the country from 1983 until last year, according to his profile on LinkedIn.com. In 2008, he received a Masters in Public Administration from Columbia University, where his profile says he focused on economics, management, leadership and quantitative analysis.

(link)

NM Watchdog lets GOP candidates write their blog for them posts

2010-08-10T20:03:00.000-07:00

If you are a Republican, you have to love New Mexico Watchdog. Not only does "editor" Jim Scarantino only right right-wing talking points -- sometimes he lets Republican candidates write their blog directly.

In one of the latest "blog posts" from Scarantino's site, he just reprinted a press release from Republican congressional candidate Steve Pearce (link). No other reporting, no other context. Unless you count, "This just in from the Pearce for Congress Campaign" as context.

And remember, New Mexico Watchdog is run by the Rio Grande Foundation -- a nonprofit that must be nonpartisan. I'm not sure, but just reprinting a partisan press release and saying it is a "blog post" with no other context doesn't just blur the line between reporting and partisan campaigning -- it erases it.

Scarantino promotes group that says Obama is a "covert hypnotist," and denies HIV-AIDS link

2010-08-09T15:24:00.002-07:00

The problem with believing that everything that says "tea party" on it is a good thing is that there are a lot of nutjobs out there with ties to the tea party. Whether it is the racist Mark Williams (link) or life-destroyer and serial liar Andrew Breitbart, the crazy isn't far from the top.

But "investigative reporter" Jim Scarantino found some people crazier. The tea party mouthpiece stenographer highlighted a group called the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (link). AAPS. Sounds like a legitimate organization.

But a little bit of digging finds that this group holds some unorthodox views. Reporter Jon Ralston highlighted the craziness because tea party favorite Sharron Angle was linked to the group with an appearance at the very same Doctor's Tea Party that Scarantino highlighted (link).

The group has a piece arguing Barack Obama may have used "covert hypnosis" to sway crowds and below that is a link to a Q and A with a prominent birther: POTUSthehypnotist
And its journal once argued "there are real grounds for positively denying that HIV causes AIDS." That piece is here: GODdidit
Here's the AAPS ad for the event -- Angle is headliner
Here's the group's website, which includes a tab for a how-to guide for members to opt out of Medicare --AAPS
Here's the group's principles in which it describes Medicare as "evil" and "immoral" when it was passed:Medicare

No group is too crazy for the Rio Grande Foundation as long as they call themselves part of the tea party.

Chris Christie misleading people about his budget balancing

2010-07-30T18:12:00.000-07:00

To hear New Jersey governor, and Rio Grande Foundation favorite (link), Chris Christie talk, you would think that he fixed the budget gap in New Jersey.

But it turns out that he didn't (link).

Gov. Jon Corzine’s fiscal year 2010 budget appropriated $42.9 billion in state and federal funds to support state programs; Christie’s budget for fiscal year 2011 appropriates $41.6 billion. My math tells me that this year’s budget is $1.3 billion smaller than last year’s.

The story outlines how Christie used budget tricks to make it appear like he cut more than he did.

This is what the Rio Grande Foundation wants our next governor to model herself after.

RGF standing up for millionaires

2010-07-16T20:45:00.000-07:00

I don't even know how to reply to this. Paul Gessing jokes that Yankees owner George Steinbrenner might have killed himself to save his kids money (link).

Now, as it turns out, Yankees’ boss George Steinbrenner — not one of my favorites I might add — dies in 2010 which just so happens to be the only year for which the death tax is completely repealed. This stroke of luck (or genius, because with him you never know) will save his heirs as much as $500 million in estate taxes.

By the way, the estate tax only effects people with estates of $3.5 million or more. In other words, the richest of the rich.

That is the class that people like Gessing are really worried about.

Scarantino defends men who branded swastika into arm of developmentally disabled Navajo

2010-06-21T19:58:00.000-07:00

Did anyone catch The Line this Friday when they were disgusting a heinous hate crime where a developmentally disabled man who had a swastika branded into his arm by three... well, I don't know what to call them. Bullies isn't strong enough.

Three of the panelists and host Gene Grant were suitably outraged. But Rio Grande Foundation investigative reporter Jim Scarantino went in another direction. He decided to vehemently defend the men who branded the swastika into the man's arm.

Unfortunately for Scarantino, there is video evidence of his atrocious defense, where he defends men who would brand the arm of a man who has the intellectual capacity of a 12 year old. Yes, a 12 year old.

I get that libertarians are against hate crimes laws. I understand their logic and completely disagree with it, but I understand that.

What would drive Scarantino to defend men who branded a disabled man with a swastika completely baffles me. Was he merely trying to be contrarian? He says that he is not trying to defend the men, never even bothering to condemn them, but then goes on to defend them. He offers up some other very lame defenses.

Then Scarantino says that if a man with the intellectual capacity of a 12-year old asks you to brand something in their arm -- or if three men say that the man with the capacity of a 12-year old asked them to brand his arm then it is OK.

Scarantino neglects to mention conference he attended was put on by his funders

2010-06-16T22:53:00.000-07:00

Jim Scarantino, the "investigative" partisan reporter for the Rio Grande Foundation, has been bragging about being in Chicago for "several days for meetings and training provided by the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity" (link).

He forgets to mention, however, that the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity are the people who fund the Watchdog websites -- one of which he maintains.

The group counts Scarantino's "phantom district" scam as one of their biggest successes. Of course, this was exposed as misleading by Washington Monthly (link).

he only problem: the story was, at best, misleading. In a "fact check" feature on Watchdog’s scoop, the Associated Press’s Matt Apuzzo took the step that the Watchdog reporters had not: he checked to see what was happening to the money. As it turns out, the funds were going exactly where they were supposed to go, not vanishing into black holes as the Watchdog sites had implied. The problem was simply that a handful of the local government agencies and nonprofits that had received stimulus funds had mistyped the zip codes when they entered information about their projects into the federal database. In other words, all the fuss had been over a few stray typos. "[T]he ‘phantom congressional districts’ are being used as a phantom issue to suggest that stimulus money has been misspent," Apuzzo concluded.

The zip codes scoop was not atypical for the Watchdog sites; as often as not, their reporting is thin and missing important context, which occasionally leads to gross distortions. The Nebraska Watchdog, for instance, recently ran a post claiming that a $2.5 million stimulus project to replace the roof of an Omaha courthouse would create only one job, which sounds on its face like an outrageous abuse of funds. But had the reporter dug a little deeper, the story would have lost most of its punch. Calls to the Government Services Agency, which oversees the distribution of stimulus funds, and Johnson Roofing, the company that did the work, reveal that while only one position was added specifically for the project, the number it employed was considerably larger. In fact, between eight and fifteen people worked on the project full-time for the five-month duration, and a dozen individual subcontractors were brought in on an ad hoc basis, according to Johnson’s management. This sort of misleading reporting crops up on Watchdog sites often enough to suggest that, rather than isolated instances of sloppiness, it is part of a broad editorial strategy.

This is the sort of "journalism" that the Rio Grande Foundation and New Mexico Watchdog perform.

Gessing fiddles while the world drowns

2010-06-16T22:49:00.001-07:00

Paul Gessing likes to pretend that everything is fine in the world and that there is no such thing as climate change. His latest says that islands are safe from going underwater (link).

Of course, scientists say the ocean will rise rise in coming years and decades (link):

Antarctic geologists from New Zealand, key players in the Antarctic Drilling Project (Andrill) in the Ross Sea, explained how the rate of ice melt won't be linear.

Rather there will be a cumulative, run-away effect as the greenhouse influence raises ocean temperatures, shifts ocean currents and alters the frequency of climatic events.

Data from Andrill enables scientists around the world to model what is likely to happen to the two massive polar ice sheets at each end of the Earth as temperatures rise, based on an extensive range of data - geological, biological and climatic - hidden within the rock cores when similar climatic events occurred millions of years ago.

Will Gessing note this? Of course not.

Those that he serves to protect, the oil and gas interests, would not like this.

Scarantino: Journalist or GOP shill?

2010-06-14T14:13:00.000-07:00

Take a look at this glowing description of a puff piece by Jim Scarantino at New Mexico Liberty (link).

This scares the crap out of Democrats. They will no longer be able to exploit Hispanic voters by manipulating ethnic fears. They may actually have to discuss issues, and explain why, with 80 years of control in Santa Fe, their ideas haven't worked.

Non-partisan journalist or GOP shill? Scarantino proves on an almost daily basis that he isn't an independent arbiter of anything, but rather there to attack Democrats and defend Saint Susana.

Paul Gessing makes things up in letter to the editor

2010-06-11T22:05:00.000-07:00

Paul Gessing, who regularly gets op-eds printed in the right-wing editorial section of the Albuquerque Journal, recently boasted about getting a letter to the editor published (link). That argues the regular things that the Rio Grande Foundation argues.

Which, of course, means that he uses false facts to back up his argument.

First and foremost, Hoenig is quoted as saying “too little taxation” harmed the economy. This is simply wrong. Federal spending as a percentage of U.S. GDP has remained relatively constant at 20 percent for decades. Only in recent years has spending grown out of proportion to the economy.

Gessing's 'first and foremost' point is based on a fallacy.

Here is a chart that actually shows government spending as a percentage of GDP (link). The last time that the U.S. Governmental spending was even within five percent of 20 percent was 1951.

Nearly sixty years ago.

This is both an indictment of Gessing and the Albuquerque Journal. Gessing for using false statistics and the Albuquerque Journal for not factchecking the letter to the editor.

Also, Gessing blames Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the current recession that is going on. But he ignores one extremely huge contributor to the recession: Former Federal Reserve Chairman, and Ayn Rand fan, Alan Greenspan.

Nobel Prize winner in economics Paul Krugman one described Greenspan as "a man who suggests leaving the barn door ajar, and then – after the horse is gone – delivers a lecture on the importance of keeping your animals properly locked up" (link).

Gessing, and the other industry-funded libertarian think tanks around the nation, are the type of people that will leave the door to the barn open and then blame their neighbor instead of taking their own responsibility.

RGF's war on renewables continues

2010-06-07T12:48:00.000-07:00

The Rio Grande Foundation has long been a cheerleader for the oil and gas industry and dismissive of any clean, renewable energy sources. In the latest broadside against clean energy advocates, Paul Gessing argues that oil and gas are cheaper (link).

This is perhaps bad timing for Gessing, as it looks like the oil and gas companies, worldwide, get more than half-a-trillion dollars in subsidies from governments (link). Comparing the highly government-subsidized oil and gas industry to a green industry isn't comparing apples to oranges; it's comparing apples to watermelons.

Gessing writes, "For the record, we at the Rio Grande Foundation are against ANY subsidies from Washington (or Santa Fe). Utilities and their customers should be able to choose the energy source that works for them, without government interference or manipulation."

I think one reason that the tax expenditure report (link) was so opposed by industries is because it would expose just how subsidized their industries are. Gessing knows this, but pretends that the oil and gas industry gets no tax breaks from the state or federal government. Which is not only wrong, but willfully wrong.

It would be interesting to see how much the oil and gas industry contributes to the Rio Grande Foundation.

A comment the RGF won't post

2010-06-03T17:51:00.001-07:00

If you disagree with the Rio Grande Foundation in their comments, they will censor you.

Here is a comment that I wrote in regards to a post by Paul Gessing praising a George Will Washington Post column (link):

Is this the same George Will who had a column about global warming that was so filled with falsehoods that it had a rebuttal days later in his own paper? http://bit.ly/aB4rNl

Is this the same George Will who devoted valuable space to telling people they should not wear jeans? http://bit.ly/aB4rNl

George Will is a joke of the legacy media that backs the massive intrusion on civil liberties that is the Arizona immigration law http://bit.ly/aB4rNl
That Mr. Gessing believes that the neocon George Will is “insightful” shows how low Gessing’s bar for “insightful” is.

The column that Gessing praises? It’s filled with inaccuracies. http://hnn.us/articles/124669.html

I would expect Gessing to retract this post, but he is not in the business of accuracy, but partisan point-scoring. This Washington-DC think tank style of punditocracy is apparently what the CATO foundation and RGF’s other funders like.

Will it be approved?

Scarantino ignores his own side's guilt-by-association

2010-06-03T17:22:00.000-07:00

To what depths will Jim Scarantino go to smear Democratic candidate Diane Denish? Apparently by going guilt-by-association in a nearly decade-old case before Denish was even Lt. Gov.

Scarantino dredged up a nine-year old case (link) about the daughter of Vincent "Smiley" Gallegos.

Scarantino wrote, "I ran across this story while doing some research on the District III Hosing [sic] Authority scandal." In other words, he used Google. Does this have anything to do with, well, anything? No, but dredging up old news that is bad for Democrats is something that is clearly in the Rio Grande Foundation's best interest.

Of course, Scarantino won't mention the unethical ties of someone involved in a publicity stunt that he himself reported on -- even though it has nothing to do with the site's mission -- recently. Scarantino wrote approvingly of a publicity stunt where some DINOs voted for Jon Barela in the Democratic pre-primary convention (link). Of course, he didn't report that the ringleader of this particular publicity stunt was Robert Aragon, as a source in the Democratic Party told me.

Aragon has backed Heinrich's opponent, the neocon Jon Barela (link). Aragon's law firm has also helped fund the Republican front-group New Mexico Turn Around (link).

He is also the cousin of disgraced former state legislator Manny Aragon. Why didn't Scarantino report any of this? Because he is a paid operative of the far-right in New Mexico, and not an "investigative journalist" as he says he is.

And why doesn't Scarantino mention Aragon's involvement? Because New Mexico Turn Around and the Rio Grande Foundation are working together (link).

So Scarantino is now actively ignoring the role of someone that helps fund a group that Scarantino's employer is involved with. Can you say conflict of interest?

Scarantino does the GOP's bidding

2010-06-02T20:09:00.000-07:00

Jim Scarantino is an industry-funded, partisan hack. He has been working as an unofficial opposition researcher for the Republican Party. He is only stepping up his efforts now:

If you mention White Peaks land swap on New Mexico Watchdog, he will not approve your comment and then not approve any of your other comments after that. If you mention that Commissioner of Public Lands Pat Lyons has done the bidding of industries that fund his campaigns over his constituents, such as with the White Peak land swap, he will ignore you. If you mention that Republicans falsely claimed that NASCAR was coming to New Mexico (link) he will ignore you.

But mention a conspiracy theory about Denish that is even proven to not be true (link), he will move the goalposts and lie about what he found (link).

Will he tell you about how Susana Martinez plea bargained hundreds of DWI cases after she promised not to (link)? No.

With the Republican Party heads dishonestly funding a PAC to defeat Democrats in the primary (link) it begs the question -- how much money has Harvey Yates Jr. and Ryan Cangiolosi given to the Rio Grande Foundation to do opposition research for them? Does this violate the non-profit status of the Rio Grande Foundation?

And why does New Mexico Watchdog not disclose on their masthead that they are a project of the Rio Grande Foundation? Knowing the dirty tricks from the right-wing of the Republican Party in New Mexico that is the Rio Grande Foundation's target audience, it is to trick those who casually find the website into thinking it is a legitimate news operation when it is part of the Rio Grande Foundation echo chamber.

Scarantino openly backs Republicans

2010-06-02T13:15:00.000-07:00

New Mexico Watchdog says they are non-partisan, but during the primary, their Twitter account (link) couldn't hide their bias anymore.

Take a look at this screenshot from Wednesday afternoon:

Scarantino rails against Denish, calling her a "rich white woman" and says he will fact check a Denish ad -- but he was silent on Republican ads that were themselves proved to be dishonest by an actual non-partisan, respected fact check organization (link).

Scarantino is the same person who backed Darren White in the 2008 Congressional race against Martin Heinrich. White is a Republican and Heinrich is a Republican.

Scarantino also "reported" (by that I mean quoted sources without verifying their truthfulness) on Republicans who voted against Heinrich in the Republican pre-primary. A source tells me the person behind that publicity stunt is a funder of the now-infamous New Mexico Turn Around PAC that is run by Republicans.

Robert Aragon, the cousin of Manny Aragon, has never donated to Democratic candidates at a federal level. Instead, he has only given $2,400, the maximum allowable by law, to Jon Barela. Aragon's law firm gave $1,000 to the New Mexico Turn Around PAC, which advocates for Republican takeover of the House.

Scarantino, who works at a group that is all-but a Republican front organization including sponsoring numerous Republican debates where they charge admission, is a fan of Republican mask groups.

However, Scarantino's mask came off last night.

...and a pony!

2010-05-28T19:10:00.001-07:00

Libertarians love to pretend that the free market will fix everything that ails this country.

Arthur Alpert, one of the great columnist in the state, wrote about the problems with assuming the market will fix everything at ABQJournalWatch.com (link).

The market didn’t end slavery, abolish Jim Crow, give women the vote, rescue Americans from the Depression, end child labor or discrimination against women and minorities in jobs. Government did. Assuming you approve all that, what is government’s proper sphere and what is the market’s?

And yet Paul Gessing in his weekly entreaty to the mainstream at the New Mexico Independent's Independent Forum (link) decides to say that the free market will fix something... then provides no backup.

When asked what he would do with $500 million to fix the situation at the border, Gessing first ignores the question like Palin at a Vice Presidential debate and says he would give the money back to tax payers. Then he says this:

Now, if the money were my own, I’d spend it to set up several free market think tanks in Mexico to work with their government, elected officials, and citizens. After all, the best long-term way to solve the immigration issue is to convince Mexico to pursue free market reforms that would make Mexico a wealthier, more prosperous place.

In other words, Gessing thinks that by putting more Republicans and libertarians on Wingnut Welfare, that will solve the immigration problem!

How? The free market!

Question: Wouldn't the free market have no restrictions on who a company would be able to pay and how much they would be able to pay?

KOB teams up with the far-right wing

2010-05-28T11:58:00.000-07:00

I guess that KOB-TV is hoping to he the local equivalent of Fox News. For what other reason would they team up with two of the most-far-right wing for a televised debate that was not open to the public (link).

The Rio Grande Foundation and 770 KKOB both make pains not to call themselves partisan organizations, but they are explicitly for conservative Republican audiences and both lionize Republicans while mocking Democrats.

And KOB channel 4 decided to air a debate sponsored by the two far-right organizations (link).

Someone should call KOB and ask if they want to be a serious news organization -- or just another tool of the far-right wing in New Mexico led by the "Talk Monster" and the Rio Grande Foundation.

Texas' budget only balanced because of stimulus

2010-05-26T17:34:00.001-07:00

Texas is one of the states that Paul Gessing of the Rio Grande Foundation lionizes and says New Mexico should be like. Like other libertarian think tanks, they oppose the stimulus.

Guess what? Texas could only balance their budget because of the stimulus (link).

Although Mr. Perry has railed against the federal economic-stimulus program, billions of dollars from that initiative helped Texas legislators balance the current budget. Those funds won't be available for the next budget.

Oh, and Texas' budget outlook for next year continues to look worse than New Mexico's, with projections showing an $18 billion shortfall over the next two years.

One reason? Their lack of an income tax and lack of diversification on taxes leaves them vulnerable to recessions.

RGF favorite calls for repeal of key part of Civil Rights Act

2010-05-23T13:53:00.001-07:00

One of Rio Grande Foundation's favorite libertarian voices, John Stossel, responded to Rand Paul's remarks on the Civil Rights Act by... calling for repeal of a key part of the Civil Rights Act.

Stossel wants it to be legal for private businesses to discriminate based on race or any other bigoted reason (link):

“I’m in total agreement with Rand Paul. You could call it public accommodation, and it is, but it’s a private business. And if a private business wants to say ‘we don’t want any blonde women or mustached guys,’ it ought to be their right. Are we going to say to the Black Students’ Association that they have to take white people, or the gay softball association that they have to take straight people? We should have freedom of association in America.”

Color of Change is calling for Fox to fire Stossel. (link)

But in New Mexico, John Stossel is a favorite of the Rio Grande Foundation. He has headlined a fundraiser for the group (link) and Paul Gessing often links to Stossel approvingly. Just a few weeks ago, Gessing did so (link) when Gessing backed out of state companies instead of locally owned construction companies.

As one Washington Post blogger wrote (link), "It's simply astonishing in this day and age that a major-party nominee for the U.S. Senate would try to breathe life into the long-discredited notion that the Constitution might protect an individual business owner's 'right' to exclude customers on the basis of race."

This is someone who the Rio Grande Foundation not only chooses to associate with, but embraces with arms wide open.

Will the Rio Grande Foundation denounce the call by Stossel to once again allow racism and bigotry in private businesses? Or will they silently stand by while someone they associate themselves with calls for one of, if not the, most significant piece of social legislation in this century to have a key section repealed?

On think tanks

2010-05-23T12:57:00.001-07:00

This describes the far-right Rio Grande Foundation pretty well (link>:

I have always been deeply suspicious of all think tanks, mostly because I think people underestimate how easy it is to corrupt intellectual inquiry. Doing “research” from an explicit ideological viewpoint will result in bullshit, whether it’s Christianist intelligent design or Stalinist Lysenkoism.

DougJ says he will be writing more about think tanks in the coming days.

RGF backs highly unpopular NJ-Gov

2010-05-19T15:27:00.000-07:00

Paul Gessing thinks that Republicans should be more like New Jersey Chris Christie.

That's the same New Jersey governor who is incredibly unpopular in his home state.

This also shows some hypocrisy from the right-wing in American politics. When President Barack Obama talks about the tone of the press? He's violating their first amendment rights and being a thug.

When a Republican does it? He is just pushing back against the "liberal media."

ABQ Journal stops disguising RGF columnists

2010-05-13T15:13:00.000-07:00

From the great people at ABQ Journal Watch (link).

Today, unlike all the other times the Journal has run Gisser’s pieces, the tagline identified him as a senior Rio Grande Foundation fellow.

Journal Watch, along with many sharp-eyed Journal readers, has often noted that the Journal has failed to note the connection between a number of their frequent guest column writers and the Rio Grande Foundation. The ultra-right RGF supports privatizing Medicare and is a huge supporter of Albuquerque Tea Party events.

I know that the Albuquerque Journal wants to hide their allegiance to the far-right wing organization known as the Rio Grande Foundation, but they have a duty to show who are writing opinion pieces in the editorial pages of the Albuquerque Journal.

Gessing cherrypicks educational stats, ignores context

2010-05-12T14:19:00.000-07:00

If there is one thing that outsiders don't understand about New Mexico, it is our unique demographics. Not only does New Mexico have the highest percentage of Hispanics in the the state (nearly 45 percent according to the U.S. Census Bureau), but the Hispanics themselves are different demographically than in other countries.

It is easy to pigeonhole all Hispanics and pretend they are the same; but those from Mexico have different customs and even speak differently than, say, those from Cuba. It is a different culture, as different as England to Australia.

The Pew Hispanic Center has the demographic information (link) for New Mexico. In New Mexico, 84 percent of Hispanics are native born, and just 16 percent are foreign born.

Many can trace their family back to before the United States was in control of this area.

Why do I bring this up?

Because the Rio Grande Foundation apparently thinks that all Hispanics are the same.

For more on Florida’s successful education reforms, check out Ladner’s presentation comparing Florida and New Mexico here.

The presentation linked to has a one-size-fits-all approach towards education.

And the approach isn't that great -- Florida graduated 63.6 percent of students in 2005-2006, the newest numbers available, according to numbers from the National Center for Educational Statistics (link). New Mexico graduated 67.3 percent.

Neither are particularly good. The national average is 73.4 percent.

Rio Grande Foundation praises AZ educational reforms, ignores controversy

2010-05-11T20:10:00.000-07:00

If you were writing about Arizona's educational system, would you ignore the most controversial and Un-American part of their new educational efforts? Well, you would if you were the Rio Grande Foundation and Paul Gessing.

Gessing praised the Arizona educational efforts yet forgot to mention a controversial new educational rule that would bar people with accents from teaching and eliminated ethnic studies classes.

NPR had a great commentary on the accents part of the new Arizona law. This law will actually hamper education for some students.

According to one of the report's authors, psychology professor Zohar Eviatar, the concentration a student would have to summon to understand English in a different accent is considerably greater than if the student was a native English speaker.

In Arizona, that would mean that Hispanic kids studying English would learn better from teachers with Spanish accents.

Gessing, as he usually does, praises the inflated statistics of Florida's schools.

But his ignorance of bigoted laws (even moreso than the Arizona immigration law which the Rio Grande Foundation has been silent on) speaks volumes when he praises other initiatives in Arizona.

Does this mean that Gessing agrees with those laws? Or he just doesn't care?

Will RGF acknowledge the US has lowest tax burden in years?

2010-05-11T13:17:00.000-07:00

This runs counter to the Tea Party's narrative that taxes are going up and they're "Taxed Enough Already" -- that is, it is the truth.

Including state, federal and local taxes -- with sales tax and property tax thrown in -- the average tax bill came out to 9.2 percent of personal income in 2009, USA Today reported Tuesday.

That's down from an average of 12 percent over the past 50 years. The tax burden has not been this low since 1950, the newspaper said.

"The idea that taxes are high right now is pretty much nuts," said Michael Ettlinger, head of economic policy at the Center for American Progress.

I'm sure the intellectually honest folks over at the RGF will be all over this news to tell their Tea Party cohorts about this. Then again, similar news happened last year but went without mention from the tea baggers.

RGF responds by contradicting themselves and linking to other corporate-funded think tanks

2010-05-07T23:50:00.001-07:00

It looks like this little Web site is starting to get the attention of Paul Gessing at the Rio Grande Foundation. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that he has made the decision to make honest arguments.

Gessing writes:

It is good to keep people honest and point out places where their logic falls short. For example, yes, I’ve written about Texas favorably, but that’s because Texas is one of the mosteconomically-free states (check page 4) in the nation. That has led Texas to have significantly-higher income levels than New Mexico.

Before getting into the Fraser Institute and their funding from corporations (why do all of these right-wing think tanks have funding from corporations and not grassroots people?), let's take a look at the two lists.

New Mexico is ranked 42nd on the income list for 2009 -- the highest that New Mexico has ranked on the list compiled by Bureau of Business & Economic Research at the University of New Mexico. The data goes back to 1990, so it spans through four governorships; a year of the four-year term of Garrey Carruthers, four years of Bruce King, eight years of Gary Johnson and six years of Bill Richardson.

The state bottomed out under the governorship of Johnson, ranking 48th (ahead of just Mississippi and West Virginia) and 47th in most of his other years in office.

I say this because Johnson is a governor who the Rio Grande Foundation has praised while Governor Bill Richardson is someone they constantly criticized.

Enough of that aside.

Gessing directly says that Texas' economic freedom has resulted in higher pay than in New Mexico. Looking at the stats, however, shows virtually no correlation between the two rankings. Using 2005 numbers, since the Fraser Institute's Economic Freedom Ranking (EFR) numbers are from 2005, and I will use the "all-governmental" numbers (though neither have a particularly high correlation).

Here are the top ten in EFR and their corresponding income ranking:

Delaware: 1, 14
Texas: 2, 24
Colorado: 3, 9
Georgia 3, 32
North Carolina: 3, 34
Nevada: 6, 11
New Hampshire: 6, 10
Indiana: 8, 38
Tennesee: 8, 37
Utah: 8, 46

As many of the top-ten in EFR are in the bottom-half of income as the top-half.

The bottom of the list is a bit closer to the income levels, but this may be based on luck as much as any real correlation.

So Gessing saying that Texas' economic freedom (ranked 2nd) leads to higher income (ranked 24th) is a bit of a stretch.

As for the Fraser Institute itself, it is part of the same right-wing infrastructure to help corporations at the expense of regular citizens. The Fraser Institute is one of those groups that gets funding from oil companies to study global warming and not disclose that funding (Sourcewatch).

The Canadian think-tank, like RGF favorite Randal O'Toole, has ties to Koch Industries and other far-right funding organizations. It is therefore not a surprise that their logic and reports don't always show what they think they do -- just like the Rio Grande Foundation.

Does Paul Gessing still want New Mexico to emulate Texas?

2010-05-06T15:16:00.000-07:00

Paul Gessing has praised Texas as a state for New Mexico to emulate. Of course, the reality is that Texas is, like nearly every other state in the nation, suffering from the worldwide recession.

But Texas governor Rick Perry has made numerous decisions that have hurt Texas.

For example:

Four months after Perry touted Texas’ economic health and turned down the unemployment funds, the Texas Workforce Commission would be forced to borrow $2.1 billion from the feds and nearly double taxes on employers to replenish the state’s empty unemployment fund. “Because of a political calculation, he needed to not accept something so he could bash it,” says Rep. Jim Dunnam, a Democrat from Waco, of the $555 million. “At this point, Texas has borrowed $2.1 billion for the UI fund, and businesses will have to make up for it by increasing their taxes.”

His refusal to accept funding from the government ended up costing his state extra. That's the sort of leadership that Gessing wants New Mexico to emulate.

The entire piece at the Texas Observer is worth reading to show what Gessing thinks New Mexico should be like -- overrun by failed privatization and bilking taxpayers.

RGF guest speaker funded by far-right organizations

2010-05-05T16:55:00.000-07:00

The Rio Grande Foundation is no stranger to receiving funding from far-right organizations, which is why Randal O'Toole and the Rio Grande Foundation go hand-in-hand.

The anti-public transportation and pro-sprawl speaker from the Thoreau Institute has some interesting funding.

Included? The Charles G. Koch foundation a group that exists because the Koch family was heavily involved in Stalin-era U.S.S.R.. Ironic, considering the RGF rails against what they call socialism and communism.

The secretive oil billionaires of the Koch family, the main supporters of the right-wing groups that orchestrated the Tea Party movement, would not have the means to bankroll their favorite causes had it not been for the pile of money the family made working for the Bolsheviks in the late 1920s and early 1930s, building refineries, training Communist engineers and laying down the foundation of Soviet oil infrastructure.

Koch Industries is in the oil game, so they directly benefit from a lack of public transportation; the more people drive, the more money they spend on gasoline and the more money goes to line the pockets of the Koch family.

So no wonder Randal O'Toole rails against public transportation, opposing anything that doesn't involve you hopping into your car and spending money on gasoline.

In the press release announcing that O'Toole is speaking at a fundraiser for the Rio Grande Foundation, they never mention his connections to the oil industry.

Can you say conflict of interest?

Then again, anything that benefits corporations -- and the right-wing circuit of non-profits that includes the Rio Grande Foundation -- is in the wheelhouse of Paul Gessing and the Rio Grande Foundation.

Gessing defends BP in oil spill

2010-05-05T16:32:00.001-07:00

Nearly all Americans see the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which will have massive ecological and environmental ramifications for years to come, as an unmitigated disaster. They want BP, the company responsible for the spill, to pay their share.

Paul Gessing of the Rio Grande Foundation? He wants the company that made the mistake, and which is highly profitable, to pay a pittance.

The New Mexico Independent reached out to the far-right radical for his view on the spill, and he argued against BP paying their share (which means that the government will foot the bill).

One thing that should not happen is to retroactively change a law that caps BP’s liability for economic damages at $75 million by raising that cap to $10 billion (this cap does not apply if BP is found to have acted negligently or violated the law). This law — which was adopted by Congress after the Exxon Valdez — also set up up a system under which BP and other oil companies put money away in the unfortunate event of an oil spill.

So he wants BP to pay only $75 million in a cleanup that will cost in excess of $12 billion.

Who else will pay for that? The taxpayers.

Once again, Gessing chooses corporations over people.

RGF argues for lower pay for workers

2010-05-05T00:44:00.000-07:00

It shouldn't be a surprise, but the DC-think-tank funded Rio Grande Foundation is arguing for lower-pay and higher unemployment in government.

See what they wrote here, where they basically say that governmental employees don't deserve to be employed.

I would ask Paul Gessing and Jim Scarantino to reply, but they do not like to explain their positions that just happen to be the positions of corporations and other big money interests. Perhaps they should say where their funding comes from.

Then again, that would involve honesty, something that their organization is apparently against.