There’s so much to recommend New Mexico, but its politics isn’t one of them. I think that New Mexico is second only to New York City, Chicago and the most highly populated areas of California in electoral catastrophe after catastrophe. Year after year, decade after decade, New Mexicans continue to send Democrat politicians to Santa Fe to vote exactly as the party has always voted, to the detriment of the state.
New Mexico ranks 48th in poverty, ranks 50th for child well-being, ranks 50th for public school education, ranks 49th for crime, 24th for overall healthcare and so on, unfortunately. But just reading the stats isn’t the whole story. There are unique demographic factors that contribute to all of those statistics. Not that any one of those factors could not be greatly improved with the right politics.
Frankly, the most serious of all the political malfeasance in New Mexico is that we are an unfriendly (and ignorant) business environment. A successful economy in New Mexico would cure all manner of ills. There seems to be no understanding of what the failure to attract industry or to create jobs here has done to our citizens. In a state like ours, that is critically important.
When our schools rank dead-last, crime rates are sky-high, healthcare is just so-so and our children struggle to thrive, it’s not easy to convince businesses to relocate here. “Yeah but . . . we get more sunshine than any place else in north America, and our mountains, forests, white sands, and all-seasons outdoor activities are second to none,” just isn’t going to cut it.
With everything we have – in natural resources, new-world science and old-world culture and architecture – how on earth could we fail so spectacularly to offer a decent place to raise a healthy and happy family? ‘Easy answer to that one. We’ve been run by a Democrat machine in our legislature since . . . well, forever. So, bad government is a permanent fixture.
In the old days (old, as in 20 to 40 years), we would occasionally elect a Republican governor or vote for the Republican candidate for president, but the legislature remained firmly in the hands of Democrats who always vote in their own best interest and never in the interest of New Mexicans. They get away with it by pouring welfare dollars into communities and perpetuating a huge underclass. And traditionally, they turn that huge underclass vote out with “street money.”
We have 58% more lower income citizens than the national average, and both our middle and higher income citizens number close to 25% lower than the national average. We are a border state, of course, which means that we have more than our share of immigrants, both legal and illegal, who contribute to our poverty rates and who are a drain on our infrastructure. But they also provide cheap labor to growers in the south and construction in the north.
The first thing we need to do to cure our ills is to take our school boards back and weaken the teacher unions. You cannot produce a well-educated generation of children with an emphasis on everything BUT a firm foundation in math, reading, writing, history and science. You can’t produce a well-rounded generation of children by separating them according to historical grievances. And you can’t produce a generation of good citizens by teaching children to despise their own history.
We have quietly stood on the sidelines, watching a strong Socialist/Marxist movement in our education industry introduce an anti-American, anti-Judeo/Christian and anti-democratic curriculum in our schools. And they’ve been doing it, slowly, since the turn of the 20th century. It’s sad to say, but our teachers today are products of that indoctrination and can’t be trusted to recognize their own failings, and nowhere more than in New Mexico.
There is certainly a connection between poorly educated children and socioeconomic conditions in much of New Mexico, but there are similarly poverty-stricken states that do a much better job. I grew up in a small south Texas town. 90% of the town was minority. Many children entered school without knowing a word of English, and some lived in “shacks” with their families. They were poor.
But those children entered schools where they were expected to learn essential information and to think critically. Expectations for those children were the same as for any other. They were taught in English, and they exceled. The valedictorian of my class came to the U.S., speaking very little English, when we were sophomores in high school. He went on to earn two college degrees and became a teacher.
Today, we are watching a resurgence of humanity-destroying philosophies gaining their foothold in our schools. They indoctrinate our small children, hoping to create armies of useful idiots. A school administrator or a teacher or even a doctor who would counsel life-altering mutilation of children behind the back of the child’s parent shouldn’t just be fired. They should be jailed. Hopefully, it is the beginning of the end of allowing our children to be turned into leftwing robots.
When we retake our educational system, we will begin to heal the nation. I’m not a big union supporter, obviously. But I’ve also never been as hostile to the concept as many Republicans. In fact, I believe they served a vital role in the growth of our middle-class in America and in protecting the health and safety of men, women and children in the workplace, going back to the 18th century.
But I have never supported unionizing essential public services, and a more undeserving group of people than non-essential mid-ranked government workers simply doesn’t exist. Their salaries, benefits and job protections far exceed those of a person doing the identical work in the private sector. That is not always the case in higher-ranked civil service, but it is for mid-ranked.
It is time for a long, hard look at labor unions in America. It needs to be done by location and category, and where a complete overhaul is necessary to root out corruption or incompetence, do it. Teacher unions, in particular, will surely be identified as both corrupt and incompetent. The tenure system needs to be abolished.
When teachers care more about indoctrination than education, fire them. When a teacher or an administrator or a schoolboard member sees parents as the enemy, fire them. When your child knows more about DEI or CRT than about American history or the Constitution, fire their teachers. When a book in the school library is so offensive that the “grownups” on a school board won’t allow a reading from the book, fire them.
In short, we need to use our common sense! Are there good, dedicated teachers and administrators? Of course. So talk to those educators about overhauling the obviously failed system our children are being subjected to at present. Use their expertise to guide reform. There is a simple test to identify good people. Ask if they feel confident enough in their own skills to be measured for merit- and result-based compensation.
If they answer yes, put them in charge. If they answer no, fire them.
