Poverty
Widening income gap partly due to NM's high illiteracy rate
The income gap has increased in New Mexico, according to a report released last week. According to some, one reason for the growing inequality may be found in the state’s shift to a knowledge-based economy at the same time that a sizable portion of adult New Mexicans are functionally illiterate.
Officials vow crackdown on predatory lending
This calendar year, more than 9.000 homes will have been lost to foreclosure in New Mexico neighborhoods. More than 151,000 homes will decline in value in New Mexico because of foreclosures in the neighborhood. With that as a backdrop, Lt. Gov. Diane Denish announced her own "comprehensive and strategic" legislative plan to correct flaws and gaps in state laws she said have contributed to the housing crisis and loss of home ownership at the state level.
Fear and hoarding at the supermarket
The rising cost of rice has been in the news a lot lately, and in the U.S. several retail stores have put limits on the amount of rice customers can buy, leading to headlines about food rationing. So what’s really going on? Prices are high for many reasons (scroll down), but shoppers appear to be reacting to a lot of media hype about high prices by buying and hoarding rice before the prices go higher—thereby increasing both demand and hype.
Keeping tabs on TB
International travel and bio-terrorism have upped the ante in the need for quick turnaround times in disease forensics. But quick turnarounds require that scientists and clinicians have access to a pathogen-centric database. Three scientists explain to NMI how such a national database for one of today's greatest health threats -- tuberculosis -- could be up and running in six months at the University of New Mexico.
Sanchez 'considering' 2010 run for guv
On the eve of a special session of the New Mexico Legislature, Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez says he’s “considering” a run for governor in 2010. “At this point, I’ve been approached and asked to consider it and I’m considering it,” the four-term state senator from Belen told the Independent. Sanchez’s possible entry into the Democratic primary for governor nearly two years away adds a second heavyweight contender to the contest to succeed Gov. Bill Richardson.
Gas prices hit rural areas hardest
The New York Times has some interesting maps this morning illustrating where the price of gasoline is highest, how income is distributed, and how much of that income is spent on gas.
The Times attributes the difference among the states to state gasoline taxes. When it comes to gas prices, New Mexico isn't doing as bad as we think we are, with gasoline still below $4 a gallon around the state. And according to this local map, thats still true in Albuquerque. But gasoline prices aren't the whole story. There's a big difference between urban and rural areas when it comes to the impact of high gasoline.
Regarding income, the Times map doesn't tell us anything we don't already know: New Mexico is poor. That combined with the rural nature of our state is causing a lot of pain at the pump. Remember the campaign that Denise Tessier wrote about a few weeks back, in which she described the problem lower-income rural New Mexicans were having just getting to the grocery store? According to the Times, "The counties where motorists spend the highest percentage of their income on gasoline tend to be in poor, rural areas."
It won't be cheap
New Mexico would need more than $800 million over five years to expand health insurance to a large portion of the state's uninsured population, lawmakers learned this week. The figure isn't a budget request, but a projection. But it gives state lawmakers a better sense of how much Gov. Bill Richardson's plan to expand health coverage would cost.
Cradles of hope, with love to Africa
No foie gras on the menu this time
Eager to avoid charges of hypocrisy, leaders at a UN summit on the world food crisis, meeting this week in Rome, have banned foie gras and lobster in favor of a more modest menu.
As the London Times Online reported today:
"It does not look good if leaders discussing global starvation are seen to be dining lavishly," an official of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said. "At the last summit in 2002 we did not give enough thought to the menu and were open - unfairly, in our view - to the charge of hypocrisy."
The 2002 menu, published by The Times, began with foie gras on toast with kiwi fruit and lobster in vinaigrette, followed by fillet of goose with olives and seasonal vegetables and ending with a compote of fruit with vanilla, all accompanied by an array of fine wines. This time the catering was scaled down. Leaders first ate vol au vent stuffed with sweetcorn and mozzarella, followed by a pasta dish with a sauce of pumpkin and shrimps, and then veal meatballs and cherry tomatoes, with a fruit salad and vanilla ice-cream for dessert.
A label that hurts
If you live in one of three ZIP codes in Rio Rancho, expect for it to be harder to sell your house. The three ZIP codes have been hit with an unwanted designation: declining market, which means higher interest rates and loan fees for buyers. And if it's happening in Rio Rancho, Albuquerque may be next, one realtor said.
Food stamps near historic high
Thousands could qualify for food stamps but they don't know it because they think they earn too much money, the state says. While nearly 95,000 New Mexico families receive food stamps, the state Human Service Department estimates that another 90,000 probably could qualify.
An inconvenient crisis
Quite a buzz is being generated about a new movie Reuters says "may be to the U.S. economy what 'An Inconvenient Truth' was to the environment."
"I.O.U.S.A.: Live with Warren Buffett, Pete Peterson & Dave Walker" can accurately be described as a "movie event" because it's only airing one night across the nation and at only one theater in New Mexico: Aug. 21 at the Cottonwood 16 in Albuquerque.
GOP: Don't register with ACORN
The state Republican Party is cautioning against registering to vote with workers employed by ACORN.
“Voters who would like to register to vote would be better served by contacting their county or state Republican or Democratic parties or their county clerk,” Adam Feldman, the state GOP executive director, said in a news release.
The GOP joins the Doña Ana County Bureau of Elections in expressing concern about the nonprofit group, which has had two problems in the county in recent weeks. Earlier this month, the county warned that it had received complaints about misleading voter-registration activities by ACORN employees, a charge ACORN denied. And about a week ago, 90 completed voter-registration applications were stolen from ACORN’s Las Cruces office.
Prison reform outlined
The state should consider charter schools in its prisons, expand on its current limited use of a Navajo Nation practice of restorative justice and divert as many non-violent drug offenders to treatment as possible rather than lock them up. More drug and mental health courts, as well as halfway houses, should also be opened and more educational opportunities given to inmates, including domestic violence prevention programs. Those were among the recommendations from a task force task force report submitted Tuesday to Gov. Bill Richardson. The report was the product of a task force Richardson empaneled earlier this year to devise ways to curb future prison overcrowding and to lower the rate of offenders who return to prison after being released.
No surprise: NM kids fare poorly
New Mexico is once again near the bottom of the Annie E. Casey Foundation's rankings designed "to track the status of children in the United States."
New Mexico ranks 48th overall out of 50 states in the group's annual Kids Count report. Last year, New Mexico ranked 47th.
"It's always disappointing to see New Mexico so close to the bottom," said Lisa Adams-Shafer, Kids Count program manager for New Mexico Voices for Children, which co-releases the annual report. "But, as always, there are some bright spots. We continue to do very well in terms of infant mortality rates, and we continue to outpace the national average in improvement in high school dropout rates," she added. "Sadly, our child death rates have continued to worsen."
NM has second-worst graduation rate in nation, new report says
A new report out shows that New Mexico has the second-worst graduation rate in the country.
According to the report, which is in Education Week, fewer students in New Mexico's class of 2005 graduated with their peers than students in virtually every other state in the union, except Nevada.
Here's an excerpt from the report:
Nationwide, about 71 percent of 9th graders make it to graduation four years later, according to data on the class of 2005, the latest available. That figure drops to 58 percent for Hispanics, 55 percent for African-Americans, and only 51 percent for Native Americans. While more than eight in 10 students graduate on time in Iowa, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Wisconsin, that rate drops to fewer than six in 10 in the District of Columbia, Georgia, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, and South Carolina.
The press release announcing the report also has a link to a cool map that allows you to see what the graduation rates are for local districts.
Drive to end hunger
A sobering fact to come out of a recent report is that there is one grocery store for every few hundred square miles in New Mexico. In fact, many rural communities in the Land of Enchantment don't have a grocery. That's why the Roadrunner Food Bank is launching the state's first ever Mobile Food Pantry next month. The pantry aims to provide nutritious food to New Mexicans in need. It's modeled after a similar program in Michigan. Organizers say that the souring cost of gas is yet another factor hurting already poor, rural families with long drives to the nearest grocery store.
Sticking a fork in hunger
Coming face to face with hunger is disturbing -- and that's exactly the point of a series of television ads and billboards now on view around New Mexico, the second hungriest state in the nation.
Judges "express surprise" at mining plan
Here's a brief update on the uranium mining story we published yesterday. A panel of federal judges "expressed surprise" at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's decision to allow a mining company to extract uranium from an aquifer that supplies drinking water to thousands of Navajos in northwestern New Mexico, the Associated Press is reporting:
Behind the Food Crisis: Free Trade?
ALBUQUERQUE – A policy brief recently released by the Oakland Institute, a California-based progressive think tank, claims that increased free trade has contributed to the food crisis. In answer to the question “Who stands to gain from high food prices?”, Institute founder Anuradha Mittal answers: In fact, it is traders and middlemen who stand to gain most. Speculation in world commodities is driving prices upward, from global futures commodity trading to traders and hoarders in West Africa, Thailand, and the Philippines.