The southeastern section of New Mexico is experiencing a mini oil boom of sorts. The gushers are coming in on a regular basis in this Republican-dominated enclave of wildcatters. But there’s a problem brewing up in Santa Fe, the state capital, where last year the Democrat-dominated legislatures drew up a program of bills dubbed “The Mini-Me Green New Deal” that will require the state to draw all its electricity from renewable energy, not fossil fuels, within the next quarter century, and is proposing hefty hikes in oil royalties — as well as a complete ban on hydraulic fracking. Down near the Texas border, where the oil actually comes from, this doesn’t sit well with hardly anyone, whether they’re in the oil business or not.

New Mexico is now the third largest oil-producing state in the country, and the state budget for 2019 expects to see a surplus for the first time in nearly half a century — nearly 2.5 billion dollars. 

Governor Michelle L. Grisham, a Democrat, wants to use that bonanza to offer free tuition to any in-state college for all residents. This has got Republican sections of New Mexico up in arms, as they charge the Democrats with building a welfare state from the money that the oil wells are providing. 

The only way this war of words and ideals can change is if the Republican retake the legislature this coming year.

Boeing has reported a sharp drop in quarterly deliveries, earning, and, most troubling, in sales today. The steep decline is being blamed on the problems connected with the two fatal crashes of their 737 Max plane jets earlier this year. The 737 Max was grounded after the second deadly crash, and none have flown since then, nor are they expected to in the near future. In fact, reports are that the company has now stopped delivery of the jet on pre-orders. This blow to the corporate bottom line is creating chaos, not only for Boeing, but for the aircraft industry as a whole. 

Earnings were down a disheartening forty-three percent. Sales dropped twenty-one percent, to around twenty billion dollars.

Boeing told its board of directors, prior to their annual stockholder’s meeting, that commercial airline earnings this past summer dropped a massive forty million dollars from the previous year. Deliveries in the same department fell sixty-seven percent during the same quarter. The entire Boeing delivery numbers for that quarter was a meager 62 aircraft.

Boeing is still hoping that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will give the green light to the Max being able to take to the skies again next spring, but many hedge fund managers are now unloading Boeing stock and have no plans to pick it up again even if the Max does take off next year.

Bernie Sanders, who is running for president in 2020, recently told a major New York newspaper that he is formulating a tax on the most wealthy that will, he hopes, eliminate billionaires. Both he and Sen. Liz Warren are proposing taxes on immoderate wealth that push accumulated assets into the stratosphere of hundreds of billions of dollars. While Democratic presidential candidates have often promised to ‘soak the rich’ if they were put in the White House, so far it has been mostly a bit of campaign razzle dazzle, not something you could take to the bank. But political experts are now eyeing both Sanders and Warren as possible White House residents, since Trump has been losing ground over his withdrawal of troops in Syria and continuing issues with tariffs in China.

CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, begged to differ from Sanders this past Friday. Zuckerberg, who is estimated to be worth over seventy billion dollars, told Fox News that taxing billionaires into extinction would be a severe blow to philanthropy and the funding of much cutting edge scientific and medical research.  

Zuckerberg also told Fox News that while he was uneasy with the idea of single individuals possessing huge fortunes in the billions, he thought letting government take the money for its own purposes would be even worse.

At first it seems like a conundrum: With the American economy continuing with its decade-long winning streak there are now thousands and thousands of employees around the nation who have gone on strike for higher wages and better benefits. They range from auto workers in Detroit to public school teachers in Chicago — and those are only the most publicised strikes. Dozens of other companies are plagued by workers who have gone out on strike. The key to the puzzle is that almost every striking union member has the same beef — that ten years ago they all accepted the fact that raises and better benefits would have to be put on the back burner while the country rode out a recession; but the hard times are now past and while boardrooms and upper management reap the bounty of a revived economy most blue collar workers are still stuck in an austerity rut. And they want out.

And even though union membership in the United States is at an all-time low of just ten percent (down from twenty-five percent forty years ago), union leaders feel that now is the time for a show-down — as the economy continues to grow and its harder for companies to fill blue collar positions. So economists predict that the public should be prepared for more strikes as long as the economy continues to expand.