School choice through a system of tax vouchers has popular support and will improve both public and private education. Voucher models proposed by several groups from Washington to Wisconsin and New Mexico show that a good voucher system will also reduce costs in education as well.

During the next four years we can expect new tax increases from the federal government. This will certainly hurt the national economy – removing needed dollars from the private sector, away from investment, savings, and consumer purchases. Our federal-dollar dependent state economy could also be hurt. The end of the Cold War has brought cuts in military spending. New Mexico, while important to the nation for its labs and research could also face cuts. Therefore, the legislature should consider commissioning a one-year task force to study what action could be taken through state economic policy to counter federal policy that will create a poor job market.

Privatize. Every tax dollar collected has to go through several government channels to make it to state employees and funded beneficiaries. Those channels have employees that also need to be paid. That means higher taxes for each area needing funds. Privatization of specific areas could dramatically reduce government dollars spent, and red tape.

By the way Mr. Legislator, do you know what the State Department of Education is doing? I bet you don’t. Did you know the State Department of Education reduced the number of competencies kids have to know from 2600 to less than 10 per subject? Is this what you intended when you appropriated money for education restructuring last year?

Regarding the family, the legislature should take a close look at the loose cannons in the State Department of Human Services. Cutting Edge has reported on the abuses by some social service workers who, without any binding, restraining, legislative guidelines, may remove children from their homes without a shred of evidence of abuse or neglect. Parents are never allowed to face their accusers in a court of law as they are often anonymous callers.

Social service workers, along with enforcement, should absolutely be required to have some burden of proof before removing a child from a home. Removing said children automatically implies guilt by parents whose only action may have been to yell a bit too loud, or swat their child in public instead of private. If you are accused of a crime, at least evidence is first gathered before making an arrest. This is not so with parents whose children are kidnapped by government workers “in the child’s best interest.”

In the way of guidelines, the legislature should at least give Human Services a legal definition of abuse. Is there one now? You can’t tell by the way the agency is sometimes reported to operate. Spanking a child is not against the law in New Mexico, or the rest of the Union; yet children are sometimes removed from their homes because they have been spanked after an anonymous caller tattles on mom or dad.

Parents who lose their children to Social Services often don’t see them regularly – even for months at a time. This is wrong. It is psychologically damaging for both parents and children. Only the legislature can put a stop to this abuse by giving Human Services strong guidelines.

Finally, both houses of the legislature should hire a fundamentalist chaplain with a paddle. Not many people believe the new ethics committees are to be taken seriously. Besides, a good hard spanking, center-stage on the floor of each house for bad-boy lawmakers could do some real good. In fact, why not put a chaplain-with-a-paddle on the ballot for a constitutional amendment. I’d vote for it.