New Mexico Trying To Organize Broadband Efforts - By Cedar Attanasio Associated Press
The New Mexico Legislature is considering a bill that would consolidate the efforts of multiple state agencies to expand high-speed internet.
The effort comes a year into the pandemic that has pushed education and health care online, eroding residents access to public services proportional to how far they are from an internet connection. We watched the collapse of our educational system during the COVID, and during the shutdown. And we all were watching our kids and our grandkids, dealing with this problem, said Rep. Susan Herrera, of Embudo, who represents residents in three surrounding rural counties north of Santa Fe.
Neera Tanden, Democratic President Joe Biden's nominee to head the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, told U.S. senators on Wednesday she would support raising the federal minimum wage, without giving a target for a higher rate. "Absolutely," she said at a confirmation hearing before the Senate Budget Committee after the panel's chairman, Senator Bernie Sanders, asked her if she would help move to end "starvation wages" in the country "by raising the minimum wage over a period of several years." Tanden said recent studies had challenged the conventional view about the impact of minimum wage increases on jobs and determined that job loss rates due to such raises were "relatively low."