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.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is going up with a big buy in New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District. The committee will have a $300,000 TV buy attacking Steve Pearce on a number of fronts, including ethics concerns related to the sale of an oil services company that Pearce owned.
Pearce’s campaign says that the ads’ premise has already been proven false because of a faulty investigation by the ethics watchdog that accused him of wrongdoing.
Citizens for Responsiblity and Ethics in Washington (CREW) did admit that they failed to uncover a part of the story in the sale of Pearce’s company. Factcheck.org recounted what happened earlier this year with an ad by the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund that made a similar claim:
CREW added Pearce to its annual list of “most corrupt” members in September 2007. The group alleged that Pearce “appears to have violated the Ethics in Government Act” for failing to disclose the 2003 sale of the assets of his company, Lea Fishing Tools, to Key Energy on the financial disclosure reports required to be filed annually by members of Congress.
After CREW’s 2007 report was published, Pearce sent a letter to the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (known as the ethics committee) to determine whether he should have disclosed the transaction. On Oct. 11, 2007, the committee told Pearce in a letter that he did not violate the ethics rules. The panel concluded that Pearce sold the assets of his company — not the company itself. The company was renamed and continued to operate, so the sale of its assets did not have to be disclosed, the panel found.
CREW did not exactly give Pearce a clean bill of health. Pearce links to a press release from the group that admitted its error in not uncovering the letter between 2007 and 2008.
But the group says it “stand[s] by our original interpretation of the Ethics in Government Act.”
According to the Act, filers must report each purchase, sale, or exchange of real property or securities by themselves, their spouse, or dependent child when the value exceeds $1,000 in a calendar year [see statute here]. Contrary to the position taken by the House Ethics Committee in its letter, there is no exception in the Act for transactions involving the assets of a business actively engaged in a trade or business. The only exception to the reporting requirement is that a transaction solely by and between the reporting individual, his spouse, or dependent children need not be reported.
Pearce also attacks CREW itself, noting that it has a liberal bent and has some big liberal donors.
The group’s list of crooked candidates in 2010 features 14 candidates, only three of which are Democrats. Two more are independents. One, Charlie Crist of Florida, was a Republican. The other, Jim Traficant of Ohio, was a Democrat. CREW’s list of worst governors features 9 Republicans to just two Democrats. One of those Democrats was New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.
However, the group’s list of most corrupt members of Congress, the list which Pearce found himself on in 2007 and 2008, currently features eight Democrats and seven Republicans.
The DCCC ad also hits Pearce on his support of the Fair Tax. The Fair Tax would replace all other federal income taxes with a 23 percent federal income tax. The DCCC ad omits the fact that it would replace other income taxes.
However, there are questions if a 23 percent federal sales tax would work. Factcheck.org was dubious and says that the 23 percent number was “misleading.”
Washington Post domestic policy reporter Ezra Klein, writing in The American Prospect in 2008, was more colorful.
It would, to be sure, lower the tax burden on those making less than $24,000 a year. It would also lower the tax burden on those making more than $100,000 a year. Guess what happens to those in-between? The magical tax fairy waves her wand and increases their tax burden. That, apparently, is what FairTaxers believe to be unfair about the current system — it rests too lightly on the middle class. Indeed, in their own chartmeant to sell the plan, they subdivide the country into income brackets, the highest of which is “$75,223 and up.” That bracket, then, includes a schoolteacher making $80,000, and it includes billionaires like Warren Buffett, and those making tens of millions a year, like the Yankee’s Alex Rodriguez. As they say, there are lies, damn lies, and then there are FairTax statistics. We live in a country where the top one percent of the country earned more than a fifth of all income in 2005. In that country, rich does not begin at $75,223. Indeed, in 2004, about 60 percent of Americans made between $25,000 and $100,000. I don’t know what you call raising taxes on the great middle, but progressive ain’t it.
“New Mexico voters deserve to know the truth about Steve Pearce’s record and his plans for a 23 percent tax on the food, gas and clothes New Mexicans buy every single day. Steve Pearce is just out of touch with southern New Mexico,” DCCC spokesman Andy Stone said in response to an e-mail request about the ad.
“Once again, Teague is rewarded for his support for the cap and trade energy tax, the failed stimulus and massive debt with misleading ads from Nancy Pelosi and outside liberal groups,” said Pearce campaign spokesman Jason Heffley. “For two months, Teague’s allies have peddled the same unsubstantiated smears in a desperate attempt to save their loyal ‘yes’ man.”
Though Heffley characterizes the ad as a reward for Teague’s cap and trade vote, the DCCC has aired ads that help Democratic candidates who did not vote for cap and trade or health care reform (Teague did not vote for health care reform).
