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.
Foreign aid trickled into Haiti’s devastated capital on Thursday morning as survivors of Tuesday’s earthquake, many of them injured and homeless, woke to another morning with no electricity and dwindling water, to search for the missing and claim their dead, reports the New York Times. Even as the aid arrived, worries remained that damaged infrastructure would hamper efforts.
Meanwhile, here in the U.S., California’s only remaining A-level credit grade from a major rating firm is in greater danger as the state’s budget woes deepen yet again, reports the Los Angeles Times. That could drive up the cost of the nation’s largest state to borrow. Standard & Poor’s on Wednesday cut its rating on California’s $64 billion in general-obligation debt to A-minus from A and warned that the outlook was “negative,” meaning another reduction could loom, according to the paper.
Down South, some lawmakers are skeptical, but Alabama Gov. Bob Riley said the state’s budgets will not see cuts because of an injection of federal funds he is expecting from Washington including a second federal stimulus, reports the Montgomery Advertiser. Alabama, like most other states, is struggling with a budget shortfall. That makes me wonder if Riley has a special line to Washington. Congress has been talking about a second stimulus, but to publicly declare there won’t be cuts because of federal money seems to be needlessly heightening expectations. If that stimulus doesn’t materialize or, more likely, doesn’t amount to what Riley expects, his declaration will come back to haunt him.
Next door, Texas is snubbing its nose at Washington. The nation’s second-most populous state will not compete for a highly coveted federal education grant that could have reaped the state as much as $700 million, the Austin American-Statesman reported.
In the nation’s capital, President Obama plans today to propose a sharp increase in the taxes paid by the nation’s largest financial institutions designed to raise $90 billion over the next decade while constraining the industry’s ability to take large risks and reap outsize rewards, according to the Washington Post.
And the F.B.I. is working on more than 2,800 mortgage fraud investigations, almost five times the 534 cases in 2004, Attorney General Eric Holder told a congressional committee, the New York Times reports.
On the media front, a new poll tells us that among more than 2,000 online adults surveyed, 77 percent said they wouldn’t pay anything to read a newspaper’s stories on the Web. And among those willing to pay, 19 percent would cough up between $1 and $10 a month; only 5 percent would shell out more than $10 each month, reports CNET.news.
