It will be interesting to see how Governor Susanna Martinez and her minions will handle the coming budget meltdown resulting from the drop in oil prices. As the boom bust cycle reasserts itself in the oil patch with massive layoffs and curtailed drilling, then I predict New Mexico could go to the very bottom of almost all economic rating categories in the country. Much of this will occur because Martinez and her neocon staff has done absolutely nothing to grow our economy in other sectors. Two years from now she will be reviled for her incompetence and her political advisors will be run out of the state. Of course, between now and then she may well pass the so called 'Right to Work Law' which will put downward pressure on living wages in New Mexico. We are truly in dark times.
On the national level, with nothing left to lose, President Obama will finally do something about immigration. Speaker of the House John Boehner said that the American people don't want these kinds of actions taken. That was why the GOP took the Senate. But actually they took the Senate because nothing was happening and government was broken. Now something will happen on this issue that has been festering for years because of GOP inaction. I am pretty sure the President will be breaking out his executive policy powers on any number of issues. Good for him.
And the Senate Democrats continue to pander to the people who never support them by rallying around Senator Landrieu from Louisiana who never supports the positions of her own party. Would the dems really support the Keystone Pipeline just to help her? It really would not be worth it.
On the national level, with nothing left to lose, President Obama will finally do something about immigration. Speaker of the House John Boehner said that the American people don't want these kinds of actions taken. That was why the GOP took the Senate. But actually they took the Senate because nothing was happening and government was broken. Now something will happen on this issue that has been festering for years because of GOP inaction. I am pretty sure the President will be breaking out his executive policy powers on any number of issues. Good for him.
And the Senate Democrats continue to pander to the people who never support them by rallying around Senator Landrieu from Louisiana who never supports the positions of her own party. Would the dems really support the Keystone Pipeline just to help her? It really would not be worth it.
5 comments:
Yeah, we really need that pipeline to buy foreign oil because our own domestic supplies are at an all-time high. That influx of the more expensively processed tar oil sands from Canada will really help our NM lease revenues, I'm sure.
Mayor Richard Berry is salivating over the passage of a State Right to Work Law in New Mexico. The passage of the Right to Work law will give Berry exactly what he needs to get rid of all the City Hall Unions he dislikes so much including AFSME, APOA, the Fire Fighters Union, Transit Workers Union and the Solid Waste Workers Union and who Berry has been at impass with for 5 years. Berry as Mayor has advocated the passage of a Right to Work law all the time he has been Mayor, saying it will help economic development which is nothing but a lie. When Berry runs for Governor, he will be able to say he was the Mayor who got rid of the City Unions and he will do the same state wide as Governor, starting with the Teachers Union. Berry has almost 3 years to continue his crusade to get rid of all the City Hall unions which may be more than enough time and the Democratic controled City Council will let it happen. AFSME was more concerned about electing Diane Gibson to the City Council than opposing Berry in the last city election and she has been nothing but disappointing when it comes to standing up to Berry, so she fits right in with the other 4 Democrats.
Mary Landrieu is dead as a doornail in the upcoming runoff election. Trying to save a festering conservadem is a waste of time, energy, and money.
Great post and great comments.
There's a lot to think about here. Take immigration. In the midterms Democrats lost a good chunk of the Latino vote. Maybe in addressing immigration first Obama wants to salvage his party's future and his reputation.
There's also the so-called right to work law. Readers of this blog know "right to work" is a term designed to mislead, so please make that clear when you talk about it. My ex used the term "right to work for nothing." I'll hand her that one.
And remember the law establishing "right to work" is part of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1948, the first concerted pushback against the New Deal.
Taft-Hartley was passed specifically to diminish union power, and by extension the economic gains being made by workers, whose wages rise with union density whether they're in unions or not because people want a "good union job" so to fill positions other employers must pay more in wages and benefits
Anonymous rightly portrays a so called right to work in the context of our Republican mayor's war on unions. It's just another battle in the class war, the ruling class pushback that flowered under Reagan and continues under Reaganomics, which tragically most Democratic politicians abide by now. It's strictly class warfare.
It also ties in with the state economy and governor. People shy away from thinking about class warfare, but the ruling class has no qualms about waging it. The outside money billionaires give NM Republicans is proof they see them as their agents here.
We either don't know or forget that we're doing OK because people took sides in the class war, from Roosevelt to Truman to Senator Dennis Chavez, who was from an important New Mexico family but wrote some of the most important legislation in the New Deal, which current NM Democrats are disgracefully helping dismantle.
Republicans (despite the social issue gobbledygook they could care less about) always see politics as class based, which is why they support the Keystone pipeline in spite of the fact that, as Vicki points out, it doesn't even benefit the US. But it benefits the Capitalist class.
Democrats have drunk the Kool-Aid of tax cuts for the rich and the idiotic notion that we'll all prosper somehow if we all make less and can't buy as much, and they've prostituted themselves to get a piece of that ruling class campaign cash, but the ruling class won't stop accumulating wealth wile it has the means and political power. Just as they're taking it from us by force, political and otherwise, it must be taken back by force by the people whose labor creates it, and whose support of Democrats must be contingent on the party actually representing their interests.
At the end of his post Jim raises a critical question - why are Democrats supporting the Keystone Pipeline and Mary Landrieu, who "never supports the positions of her own party," who always takes the side of oil companies and polluters?
Democrats have lost their way. They've coldly calculated that populist economic policies and promoting the strength of unions won't help them personally, and to hell with country's future. It's all about maintaining their status and fancy title.
If they want to hold onto the Latino or any vote, or save the planet from ruling class greed, they must learn once again to see politics as the expression of class interests, and a good place to start their reeducation is a debate over a so-called right to work law.
New Mexicans and their Democratic politicians, who won't utter the word "union" in public, must be taught that it was when unions were strongest, and the American working class reached a living standard that made it the envy of the world, that the United States became a world powerhouse.
Jim Baca wrote: "Two years from now she will be reviled for her incompetence and her political advisors will be run out of the state."
You mean like Kansas voters ran off Sam Brownback and his crew because they destroyed the Kanasa economy and ...
Oh, wait, Kansas voters re-elected the whole loony, destructive bunch, didn't they?
I admire Jim's optimism. I wish I could say the same about the American electorate.
Face it, Jonathan Gruber's biggest mistake was saying the truth out loud. That will get you in hot water every time.
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