By: Tom Wright Oil prices are up over 60% since President Biden took office. Locally, the gasoline average is up 35% and propane up 30-cents per gallon. Why? Because the president shut down production and pipeline transportation of crude. It is not because OPEC and Russia have refused to increase their production or because the oil companies are gouging, as President Biden has indicated. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the average price of gasoline in 2020 was $2.17. According to the AAA, as of November 21, 2021 the average in New Mexico was $3.347. In 2020, the average natural gas spot price at Louisiana’s Henry Hub was $2.05 per million British thermal units, the lowest annual in decades.  The November 20, 2020 price was $2.40, due to cold weather and the increase in demand. The November 2021 spot price is $5.06. That increase is more than double in one year and a sure enough negative for the Biden Administration whose Secretary of Energy, Jennifer … [Read more...]

By Tom Wright May 14, 2021 Updated May 14, 2021 The latest report from the U.S. Census Bureau was revealing to New Mexico. We only grew 2.8 percent in the past 10 years. At NMjobkiller.com and Adelante Now Foundation, we documented the stories of why more people are leaving the Land of Enchantment and its high taxes than are moving here. The primary reasons were to find work and, recently, to be able to send their kids to school in a live classroom. Traditionally, New Mexico ends up at or near the bottom of most of the bad lists, like child poverty, food insecurity, crime, literacy, family income, adverse regulatory business climate, medically underserved communities, a pyramiding gross receipts tax system and lack of jobs. Collectively, all of these reasons and more are the cause of our slow growth, declining enrollment in public and university level schools, and general economic stagnation. Politicians take note: This is your fault. The latest report from CNBC’s annual best … [Read more...]

Adelante Now Foundation Press Release 02.09.2021 Teachers, business owners, and families talk about why they are leaving New Mexico.   … [Read more...]

(Previously published, 2017) Adelante Now is an education foundation. For over a decade we concentrated our educational efforts on funding tutoring in a few Rio Grande valley public schools. The tutoring was directed at elementary school children who were not reading at grade level or who were not grasping the elements of math. The tutoring program was rewarding to most of the tutored children -- and to us. Yet, each year we were reminded that there are many more fundamental problems with New Mexico’s education system than our tutoring program was capable of attacking. One cannot long contemplate education problems in the state without realizing that many of those problems are connected to family problems. Struggling or broken families often do not provide the cover and guidance which allow children to take real advantage of educational opportunities. Digging deeper, it is difficult for a mom and a dad to keep their family together, or not to struggle, if good jobs are … [Read more...]