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.
As Stateline.org notes, many states are struggling with funding gaps in their pension systems. Illinois has perhaps the worst unfunded pension liability in the nation, reports National Public Radio. Others states, including New Mexico, are talking about ways to close unfunded liabilities in their pension systems. An unfunded liability is the difference between the amount of money a state has in its pension system to cover expenses and the amount of money it would need if everyone covered by the system retired.
Many states also are starting conversations about what some view as a future funding problem: too few revenues projected in future decades to cover expenses as a large cohort of workers retire. Then there’s the issue of retirees living longer, which means states pay out more in benefits over a longer period of time.
New Jersey’s Republican governor this week signed into law a measure that will cut pension benefits for future state and public retirees, according to The Record of Bergen County. The bill faced opposition from the state’s public unions, but New Jersey has one of the largest unfunded liabilities in the nation.
Moving to health care, Virginia and 13 other states have challenged the federal health care reform bill Congress passed this weekend, arguing that it is unconstitutional, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Attorneys general in several states argue that the federal government is overstepping its authority with the legislation.
In the media world, Steve Fainaru, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Washington Post, raised some eyebrows this week when it was learned he was departing the Post to help guide the start up Bay Citizen, reports Michael Calderone of Politico. Fainaru won a Pulitzer for his reporting for Iraq a couple of years ago, Calderone tells us. The Bay Citizen is in the San Francisco Bay Area and is primarily an online news outlet, although it provides content for the twice-weekly Bay Area edition of the New York Times.
For a detour away from politics and policy and into the more ethereal world of art, here’s an interesting profile of the French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir and the traditional art he turned to later in life thanks to Smithsonian Magazine.
