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 Obama administration released its final rules Wednesday for Race to the Top, a huge educational initiative meant to reward states undertaking bold school improvement initiatives. New Mexico is eligible for $25-$75 million in funding.
The paper reports:
States have until mid-January to prepare applications for a first round of the grant competition, and until June for a second round. Applications must comprehensively describe multifaceted strategies for change. Assembling proposals of such scope will be challenging, especially since they must be accompanied by statements of support from leaders of local school districts, which in the case of big states like California number more than 1,000.
In other news, Intel Corp., which has a major plant in New Mexico, agreed to pay its rival, Advanced Micro Devices, $1.25 billion to settle antitrust and patent disputes, the New York Times reports this morning. The settlement is related to one case pending in Delaware and two in Japan, but A.M.D will agree to withdraw all of its regulatory complaints.
This week, as the U.S. Supreme Court heard appeals in two Florida juvenile cases, the St. Petersburg Times noted that Florida leads the nation in locking up kids for life when they committed crimes in which no one died—and for sending more children to adult jails and prisons, period. Laws make it easy for prosecutors to pluck young people out of the juvenile justice system before they turn 18, the paper reported.
Western New York, meanwhile, leads a nascent trend of “political downsizing” — not voting the rascals out of the office but doing away with the offices themselves, USAToday reports. The story goes on:
In what this region calls “political downsizing,” communities are voting by referendum to reduce the number of seats on town councils. The movement’s theory, as voiced by its founder, a gadfly named Kevin Gaughan: The best (and maybe only) way to cut government is to start with your own representatives.
So far the downsizing movement is confined mostly to western New York, but it’s part of a national wave of frustration over big government that was illustrated this year by raucous town-hall-style meetings over health care and the rise of the Tea Party movement. Unlike those movements, downsizing is a proven hit at the ballot box.
