Misc.

The Albuquerque Journal this morning had its top item on the front page a banner on the Lobos victory  over BYU.  Second was a story about former Mayor Marty Chavez being responsible for an inflated salary for the Fire Dept. union Chief.  (Surprise, the union endorsed Marty.)  The third story down was President Obama's State of the Union address with a nice picture.  I think overall this was a 'populist' front page.

Senator Mike Sanchez of Belen is making waves about using state Permanent Fund monies to help erase the deficit.  These fund have always been referred to as rainy day funds but no one has ever dared to use them for those rainy days.  There might be some innovative ways for this to be done.  Perhaps setting an unemployment level threshold would work.  In other words, when the unemployment rate exceeds 9% then the fund could be tapped to support bonds for stimulus and government operations.

The cities are rightly worried about the state raising its share of the gross receipts tax to cover its deficit.  That means the cities, who have no permanent funds, will find it impossible to raise their rates.  Cities provide the most basic services to citizens and they could be hard pressed to keep up.