I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Winthrop Quigley, the business writer for the Albuquerque Journal, took exception to some of the terms that conservative health care reform protesters have been using so far, because, he writes, “I am a big fan of calling things by their proper name.” And that proper name, Quigley writes, isn’t socialism.
The people screaming about socialism at [Congressman Martin] Heinrich’s town hall were upset about the car company bailouts, the need of the government to recapitalize Fannie Mae, investments in Citigroup, loans and warrants in the finance sector. What they are upset about is not socialism but state capitalism — state investment in the private sector.
There is a bunch of that around. The state of New Mexico invested in Eclipse Aviation. China’s sovereign wealth funds have positions in natural resource companies. The United States owns stock in Citigroup.
But I’m guessing that yelling, “We don’t want to turn this into a state capitalist country!” just doesn’t roll off the tongue as easy as calling it socialism.
Quigley also notes that the United States government, if they sold off their stock in Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, would have actually earned a decent return from their investments.
He also notes, however, that he is “not a big fan of the federal bail-out of GM and Chrysler” and does “not believe that any business is too big to fail.”
