TRUTH IN POLITICS

Deaf Ears In Roundhouse
The Governor’s Special Session is in full swing and most of the Democrats that control the House, the State Senate, the Governor and Lieutenant Governor do not hear the message from the people, or they have chosen not to listen. The people are telling them that they are overtaxed, income is lower, unemployment is at an all time high and we can’t stand any more burdens, on the rich, middle class or the poor. So why then do these elected officials keep talking of raising the Gross receipts tax, gasoline tax, and the taxing of cigarettes and gasoline on the Indian Reservations, etc.?

All this has come on the heels of the Governor firing a handful of his political appointees, (about a fourth of them, that should never have been hired in the first place) and forcing the poorly paid clerks and other people in the state government to take furloughs to make up for some of the shortfalls the state has in the budget. When asked to cut more political appointees, down size some of the featherbedding he created during his years of office, he said no. When asked to sell the Rail Runner, (if he can find a buyer) while cutting a lot of the pork barrel projects he has gotten approved over the last two terms and getting rid of the stupid ‘pit rule’ from the oil industry, what was his answer; again it was no.

Let’s take the ‘pit rule’ for an example. It is a rule that says when you drill a well for oil or gas well, you must dig a certain size pit, line it with a particular substance to keep the wastewater that comes from the well from contaminating the soil or water. First off; to make a blanket rule for all wells is ludicrous. If you drill a gas well, there is no need for such a rule, since the residue from drilling is very low. And for about 90% or more of the oil wells there is no need for it, because most of the residue brought up from the wells during drilling have been proven to be natural sediments that act as a fertilizer to the soil, and are solid enough that they become a part of the upper soil strata on which it is drained. It has also been proven that these sediments do not contaminate the water tables in any way.

Time To Pay The Piper
The end result is that the drilling company must put out over $250,000 for the construction of a pit that is useless, and would allow the dredgings from the well to benefit the land if allowed to be distributed on it. If it was such a good rule and protected the environment in any way, why is it that no other state has such a rule? All it has succeeded in doing is to run most of the drilling companies out of the state, (which means millions less in revenue for the state) and slow down the drilling for the ones left who still try to tough it out.

I grew up in the oil patch around Midland, Odessa and even in Louisiana and Oklahoma. What I found over many years is that the drilling companies have developed methods for drilling that are far better than anything a government official could devise. Game abounds around drilling rigs, simply because there is more grass around those rigs where the pit rule does not exist. In deep water drilling, fish abound and when the drilling rig becomes obsolete, it is cut up in many cases to create a man-made reef, which becomes a haven for fish of all kinds, as well as shrimp and lobster. One can see that Richardson only had the ‘pit rule’ put in place to punish the oil industry, not to protect the environment or the people of the state.

The Progressive Democrats that control both houses of the state, (and have for over 70 years) want only one thing, and that is control over the people and every aspect of their lives. They care not for what it costs you, or that it puts extreme hardships on the people, or that it might be detrimental to the state or the nation as a whole. The key to them is complete control of the people of this state. What does one call a people under the complete domination of the state? I think if history hasn’t changed with the idea, it is called a totalitarian government, be it Socialist, Communist, or Socialist Dictatorship, or by any other name one wishes to put upon it. It simply means total control by the governing body.

The excuses the representatives give for not being able to easily come up with an answer on how to balance the budget is just that, an excuse. They allowed their spending to get completely out of hand, invested our tax dollars in schemes that lost a large portion of it and allowed Richardson and their own distorted vision to lead them into near destruction. Those schemes were funded and paid for with your hard-earned tax dollars. Don’t you think it is about time for it to stop?

Spending More Money To Find Answers
The Richardson/Denish administration is spending approximately $50,000 dollars per day trying to come up with answers that will solve a deficit of close to $700 million dollars, when it could have been done within the session that ended in February. Does it make sense to call a Special session to solve a problem such as this and spend more money to solve it? Don’t the representatives and the Richardson/Denish team know how to balance a budget without creating more expense? Haven’t they ever had to live on a budget? I guess not, since they can’t figure where to cut the fat.

It is as though the only solution these people of questionable intelligence can come up with is ‘raising taxes’, creating more problems for the already overburdened people of New Mexico. Don’t the Richardson/Denish and the rest of their crowd realize we are in the worst recession since the depression of the 30s and this would only further cripple job growth? It is clearly time for someone else to take over the wheel and steer this state’s ship to safe waters. My vote for this would be people like Susana Martinez for governor, Errol J Chavez for State Auditor, Spiro Vassilopoulos for Land Commissioner.

If we can get rid of the big spenders in Santa Fe and get some sane people in office, we can turn this state around. I would like to see change for the better, not just change for the sake of change. The good life is here, all we have to do is wrest it from the greedy grip of politicians like Richardson, Denish, Lujan and others of their ilk. The problems in this state stems from deficit spending and the way to end it is to vote in people like those above. There is sufficient fat in Santa Fe that can be cut to balance the budget, but more taxes are not the answer.