Carter Bundy

With all the excitement about the Lobos and the Aggies in the NCAA, let’s talk about how much of an impact athletics really have on economic development. Should New Mexico be investing as much money as it does in college athletics?

On Wednesday night in Santa Fe, writers from The Independent mingled with dozens of guests gathered at Rio Chama for the first of four Independent Forum events. The Independent’s partner KNME was on hand to film a panel discussion of issues from the first two days of the legislative session, featuring Sen. Eric Griego (D-Albuquerque), [...]

UPDATED This week our panelists respond to the question: “Should we amend the New Mexico state constitution to define marriage as being between one man and one woman?” On Friday, panelist Bill Jordan added his thoughts, including this: “…as Dr. [Martin Luther] King so rightly noted, when discrimination against anyone is tolerated, discrimination against everyone is possible.”

A bill in the state Legislature could change the way the state deals with guns and alcohol. See what our panelists say and share your own opinions. Updated Friday: The New Mexico Restaurant Association expresses its strong opposition to the bill.

New Mexico would eliminate more than 900 jobs and reduce state workers’ salaries by 2 percent to balance the state’s out-of-whack budget, if it followed a budget proposal released Monday by the Legislature’s budget committee.

Gov. Bill Richardson on Thursday said he would order nearly 20,000 state workers to take five furlough days. He also pledged to axe 1,000 vacant state jobs and make cuts at the agencies under his control. But state lawmakers said he could have averted some of the pain by taking action earlier this year.

Albuquerque’s public financing system is set up so that if outside groups spend a certain amount of money on behalf of a candidate — by sending campaign mail, for example — then the other candidates will receive matching funds in the same amount. But if that mail is sent from an organization only to its members, that expenditure can’t be tracked, and therefore can’t trigger matching funds. It’s a loophole in the law that can likely never be closed because of strong First Amendment protection of free speech, experts say.

An overreaction? Both Cocoposts and Jim Baca think the U.S. Forest Service needs to “chill out” when it comes to the Rainbow Family meeting in the Santa Fe National Forest this week.

Clearly New Mexico’s Tracy Dingmann has the skinny today on a new report about the role of the blogosphere in media criticism. It’s definitely worth the read. The money quote, as highlighted by Dingaman, is about bloggers “crashing the gates traditionally kept by the so-called ‘legacy’ media.”

“Here comes the crowd, and in many instances, they’re [...]

A bill to rein in “double-dipping” by public employees may not pass constitutional muster, according to the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office, which is causing the governor to backtrack on his promise to sign it. But NMI has found that the AG’s office itself employs 13 double-dippers — which may explain why the office is still not saying what it doesn’t like about the bill.

Blogs, blogs and more blogs. Tuesday is my day to do the New Mexico Independent’s blog roundup. Since I’m from Las Cruces, expect a southern slant.
But first the breaking news: The Albuquerque Journal’s blog is reporting a major power outage affecting about 25,000 people in northern New Mexico, including people in the Española and Cuba [...]