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.
States may make hundreds of important decisions about the way its residents are taken care of once Congress is finished with health care reform legislation, the Washington Post reports. Besides the opt-out choice, proposed last week by Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, “health-care legislation being drafted on Capitol Hill would delegate to state officials a multitude of momentous decisions, from what benefits are offered to low-income families to what hurdles to put in front of private insurance companies before they can raise premiums,” the story’s authors write.
On the other side of the country, Oregon misstated the cost of a program meant to lure green jobs to the Northwestern state through tax credits. In fact, the program costs 40 times more than unsuspecting lawmakers were told and now the bill is coming due as the economy sags, according to an investigation by The Oregonian.
Meanwhile, Nebraska faces a $335 million shortfall, leading the Lincoln Journal Star to produce a story that makes that big number understandable to the state’s residents. What examples did it come up with?
Journal Star staff writer Nancy Hicks came up with this:
Shut down the state prison system for the next two years, and you’ll be close to covering the shortfall.
Stop spending state money on public assistance for one year – no foster care payments, child care subsidies, ADC and more – and you’ll still need another $100 million.
Close down the court system and probation for two years, do away with the State Patrol plus stop state funding for the three state colleges, and you’ll have that $335.5 million plus a little change.
In Illinois, that state’s leaders are borrowing billions of dollars this year to keep the state afloat, a strategy that some say is disastrous and is merely putting off hard decisions for another day.
In another sign of the hardships despite last week’s report that the economy grew last quarter, CIT Group, which received $2.3 billion in federal bailout money, declared bankruptcy Sunday, reports the New York Times. CIT has been tottering on the edge of bankruptcy for months and with $71 billion in assets and nearly $65 billion in liabilities, CIT is among the largest corporate bankruptcies on record. CIT’s bankruptcy filing might well result in the loss of the federal bailout money, which was footed by taxpayers. The firm was the largest lender of what is called “factoring, a type of lending used heavily by retailers,” the paper reports.
On a brighter economic note, Ford Motor Company posted a surprise third-quarter profit of $997 million and said it had its first profitable quarter in North America in more than four years, the Times reports. The profit has much to do with the cost-cutting the company has exercised in recent years, meaning fewer employees and fewer benefits. Ford also benefited from the government’s cash-for-clunkers program, the Times says. But Ford isn’t safely out of the scary financial woods. The company is making noise that it still needs to cut costs and its employees are hesitant, after already conceding in some areas this year, to give up more with the company’s bottom-line improving, the paper reports.
Meanwhile in the media world, GlobalPost, an international-news startup that launched in January with a mission to replace the loss of newspaper foreign bureaus, is reporting $1 million in revenue this year and $3 million in revenue next year, a sign that GlobalPost may be a really viable project.
