A4 Thursday, September 15, 2011
OPINION
There are pros and cons to keeping incumbents in office In 1992, a little organization sprang up in New Mexico called “Drive the Rascals Out,” calling on voters to vote all incumbents out of the state Legislature. This organization appeared to have just one member — Marvin something — but it caught on with public sentiment and got plenty of news coverage and TV time. This was the period when “RaymondandManny” was pronounced as one word. New Mexico House Speaker Raymond Sanchez and Senate President pro-Tem Manny Aragon were quite different in style and substance, but the word symbolized the contempt with which many New Mexicans viewed their state Legislature – as incompetent, corrupt and uncouth. There was a great deal of talk in the media, including careless generalizations implying that all legislators were mere followers, rather than 112 individuals with
EDITORIAL
MERILEE DANNEMANN
TRIPLE SPACED
their own values and priorities. This had an effect: Responsible people became much less willing to run for office. A few legislators announced, shortly before filing deadline, that they had decided not to run again. Some of these legislators had solid records as reformers. They were exactly the sort of public officials a fellow like Marvin would want. Ol’ Marvin had quite a reaction. He went on television and said, in effect, “Wait! I didn’t mean you guys!” He made a public plea to these legislators to reconsider.
(Personal disclosure: My late husband, Sen. Ken Kamerman, was one of those legislators.) Marvin had made a common mistake. He had failed to recognize he was not the original inventor of government reform. These others had not only been ahead of him, they had done what he had not. They had run for office, served honorably and done as much reforming as they could. Marvin finally realized that these experienced legislators had learned how to get things done and were walking away with that knowledge. The freshman lawmakers who would replace them would have a steep learning curve and be less effective. More importantly, new lawmakers would know much less about the substance of New Mexico law. Today we’re hearing new calls for term limits. The issue boils
Roswell Daily Record
down to an argument about preventing corruption versus institutional memory. Corruption, the influence of special interests, seems to incr ease with time in office due to the pressure to raise campaign money. But if lawmakers weren’t there when particular laws wer e made, don’t remember what the laws say and why they wer e enacted, they are less effective in doing their jobs and forced to rely on the unelected staff. Under the constitutional separation of powers, lawmakers are supposed to exercise oversight over the executive institutions they cr eated by law. That is much harder for neophytes who have to learn from scratch. New Mexico is particularly hampered because we have a part-time volunteer Legislature, not much legislative staff, and we are held back by armloads of statutes in need of improvement or updating and r egulatory
agencies in need of knowledgeable oversight. If we’re not in favor of changing to a professional paid legislature (I’m not), or adding large numbers of year -round staf f members (I’m not), then we had better think again before advocating term limits — unless you, r eader, volunteer to run for office and to prepare by studying several volumes of statute books. Just kidding. Maybe. It’s predictable that a few legislators will be term-limited by their colleagues via redistricting. They will find their districts redrawn in ways that make it more difficult to run again. The public probably will never know which of those changes were strictly due to demographics or whether some of those decisions were influenced by other, more personal, factors. © New Mexico News Service 2011
Privatize Postal Service
Ronald Reagan tried to privatize the U.S. Postal Service. The effort was dropped after he left office in 1989. It’s time to take up the idea again. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe testified last week before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that the USPS is, essentially, broke. He said the USPS can’t make a required $5.5 billion employee pension payment to the U.S. Treasury by the Sept. 30 deadline. “We do not want taxpayer money,” he said. “We have got to get our finances in order.” But the taxpayers are the only ones who could pay the tab. Mr. Donahoe warned, “We think that by August or September of next year we would be out of cash ... and unable to pay employees.” He said the USPS, to deal with the money shortfall, potentially could end Saturday mail deliveries, cut 120,000 workers and consolidate local post offices. The economic slump has worsened a longterm downward trend in use of the Postal Service. An Aug. 5 USPS report found, “Total mail volume of 39.8 billion pieces, compared to 40.9 billion pieces in the same period a year earlier, a decrease of 2.6 percent, led by a drop in First-Class Mail.” “The Post Office has already been partially privatized, de facto, by email,” Thomas DiLorenzo told us; he’s a professor of economics at Loyola University Maryland and has written often on the issue. “Privatization means a business is subjected to the market feedback mechanism that financially rewards good performance and penalizes bad performance. With the Postal Service, and all other government enterprises, the opposite is true: The worse the performance, the bigger the budget.” Unfortunately, Congress’ current mood is to “kick the can down the road,” Tad DeHaven told us; he’s a budget analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute. “Everybody is waiting on the White House to come up with something.” But he expects Congress will just provide the funds by Sept. 30 to keep the USPS retirement system continuing. “The USPS still has more than 500,000 employees full time, more than half of them unionized. That’s an awful lot of votes.” He added that USPS proposals such as consolidating post offices mean it’s “basically working toward the flexibility of private-sector companies.” But members of Congress like naming post offices after local worthies. “Even Rep. Steve King of Iowa, a tea party favorite, worked to keep a local post office open.” Mr. DiLorenzo pointed out that the USPS “hasn’t innovated in decades. In government, failure is ‘success’ from a financial or budgetary standpoint,” because it brings subsidies. Congress should start getting the postal house in order by listening to Postmaster General Donahoe, though we don’t hold out too much hope. Privatization is unlikely to happen until after the November 2012 election. We encourage Republican candidates to debate the matter on the campaign trail. Guest Editorial The Orange County Register DEAR DR. GOTT: I am uncertain about the best way to send a letter to you. Is email a possibility with my letter attached as a document, or should I write to the Lakeville (CT) address by snail mail? Or should I write to the mailing address in my local newspaper, which is c/o United Media at 200 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10016? Thank you for the clarification. DE A R R E A D E R : I f y o u have access to a computer, you can contact me t h r o u gh my website, www.AskDrGottMD.com. Simply click on the “contact” button, where your question can be asked in as much detail as you would like. There’s no
Higher taxes on rich won’t up revenues ALAN REYNOLDS CATO INSTITUTE
In last week’s campaign speech disguised as an address to Congress, President Obama said, “Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary — an outrage he has asked us to fix.” Writing recently in The New York Times, the famed chairman of Berkshire Hathaway complained that his federal income tax last year was “only 17.4 percent of my taxable income” — less than $7 million on a taxable income of about $40 million. Buffett claimed that, like himself, other “mega-rich pay
Doonesbury
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need for an attachment. I review all email correspondence. Or, use the U.S. Postal Service, directing your mail to Dr. Peter Gott, P.O. Box 433, Lakeville, CT 06039. It appears there are several addresses for me in local newspapers. Some publications use their own address, others the New York address. These are not recommended,
income taxes at a rate of 15 percent on most of their earnings,” but that is not at all common. The average income-tax rate of those earning between $1 million and $10 million was 29.5 percent in 2009. Obama used Buffett’s uniquely low 17.4 percent tax as proof that “a few of the most affluent citizens and most profitable corporations enjoy tax breaks and loopholes that nobody else gets.” That is not true. To hold out the tax policies of 1977 or 1992 as examples of effective ways to raise more revenue is ludicrous. Anyone whose income is almost entirely composed of
as the mail takes a while to get to me in Lakeville if sent to a local paper, and the New York address is no longer active. DEAR DR. GOTT: Is it safe to take Prilosec daily as long as I am taking calcium citrate to protect my bones? DEAR READER: Drugs such as Prilosec are used as acid suppressors and are believed to be the secondleading-selling medication worldwide. In May 2010, the Food and Drug Administration determined that Nexium, Dexilant, Prilosec, Zegerid, Prevacid, Protonix and Aciphex might include a warning on their labels regarding the possibility of fracture risk, stating proton pump
realized capital gains or dividends would “pay income taxes at a rate of 15 percent on most of their earning.” Investors with modest incomes also pay a tax rate of 15 percent on dividends and capital gains, although that rate is scheduled to rise to 18.8 percent under the Obama health law (and much higher if Congress enacted the “reforms” Obama will propose next Monday). Before 2003, when the tax on dividends was made the same as the tax on capital gains, Berkshire Hathaway was a handy tax dodge — a way to own dividend-paying stocks without paying taxes on the dividends. Buffett is famous for
inhibitors (PPIs) may interfere with the ability of our digestive tracts to absorb calcium. Just this month The New York T imes ran an article indicating that some medications, including PPIs, may increase our risk for bone loss and hip fracture. Prilosec, Prevacid and Nexium — medications primarily recommended to treat the symptoms of gastroesophageal reflux disease and other conditions that result from excess stomach acid — were listed. Reinforcing the concerns of U.S. health care officials, new Korean research, published in the May/June issue of the journal Annals of Family Med-
See GOTT, Page A5
collecting stocks with a generous dividend yield without Berkshire itself paying any dividend. The dividends Berkshire receives are reinvested in buying more stocks, so the holding company ends up with more assets per share which results in capital gains that would be taxable only if the shares are sold. Warren Buffett is the second wealthiest person in America, but he reports surprisingly little taxable income for someone who owns more than $50 billion of Berkshire shares.
25 YEARS AGO
See REYNOLDS, Page A5
Sept. 15, 1986 • Roswell service club Cadets of the Month for September 1986 at New Mexico Military Institute have been named by Col. Charles K. Hanson, commandant. Serviceclub cadets are selected for their overall accomplishments and contributions to cadet life and the corps; Hanson said. The Monday Lion of the Month is Britt R. Sanchez of Santa Rosa. The Thursday Evening Lion of the month is John C. Lusk of Springtown, Texas. The Cadet Rotarian is Barney L. Durham of Ruidoso. Elias R. Valdez of Bradford, Mass., is the Cadet Kiwanian. Durham and Valdez are high school seniors, Sanchez is a high school sophomore and Lusk is a college freshman. • Army Pvt. Wendell A. Campanella, son of Marian J. Pendergrass of Roswell, and Louis W. Campanella of Artesia, recently completed basic training at Fort Dix.