Per the AP, Richardson will employ a simple litmus test for Supreme Court nominees. Maybe it’s more real to say: Richardson will openly employ a litmus test. Because if you think Bush or Clinton or Reagan or Taft were unconcerned with the results of their nominees, then you are a fool.

What will be interesting to watch is the pressure this places on the other candidates. NARAL and other pro-choice groups will, no doubt, try to extract similar pledges. If they get it, that’s good; it moves the center of the party firmly to where the country is (this is a pro-choice nation, after all). Even more interesting is whether the GOP field will have to answer similar questions, with the opposite pledge, of course. That would be even more helpful, since the “mainstream” GOP position (criminalizing virtually all abortions) is so far to the extreme right of America that whenever they debate abortion amongst themselves, we win.

Gov. Richardson has unveiled his high school reform plan for New Mexico. It looks good. It creates a high school “diploma of excellence” for high-achieving students, raises graduation requirements (in MATH!), adds funding for teacher training and AP courses, adds funding for pre-AP courses for kids in underserved areas, and other stuff.

The year of the child continues. Education is, hands down, one of the smartest investments you can make as a state. The money you put into educating children will pay off in the most unexpected and immeasurable ways. Education is a core issue of the Democratic party, an issue of national importance and moral depth, and it is one on which this governor has been absolutely, positively excellent. Bravo; here’s to more to come.

There are components of Richardson’s ethics package moving through the Senate right now. Among the proposals:

1. People who do business with the state may not contribute to statewide officials, including the governor;

2. Officials, and their family members, must disclose interests in firms seeking state business;

3. Public officials, their employees, and businsesses may not sell goods or services to state agencies the officials are associated with

There are more but these are good, common-sense measures. I’m proud of the Governor for lending some muscle to these steps. “Good government” moves like these are morally required from democratic officials. As people see how deep the corruption in D.C. can get, with the Abramoff scandal and so forth, it’s good for the Governor to take a stand.

It’s tough to figure out where to file this item–”foreign policy” seems appropriate, but misleading… well, no matter how you categorizee it, I’m very impressed with the move by Gov. Richardson to expand the New Mexican space infrastructure. Briefly: New Mexico has a huge budget surplus coming, and Richardson is making a big push to re-invest some of that money in infrastructure that will help the whole state. It’s a great idea.

In the mid-20th century, space was essentially a curiosity. We sent guys to the moon not to do anything in particular, but to demonstrate that it was possible. And that was very interesting and very good, because it broke down the first barrier: “can we do this?” As the century wore on, and we got into the 80’s and especially the 90’s, commercial exploitation of space in the form of telecommunications satellites, consumer GPS devices, etc. became routine. The next logical step was taken with SpaceShipOne, the first privately-funded peopled space flight.

Now, it seems that Richardson is determined to keep New Mexico at the forefront of what is, in a few decades (perhaps a century at most), going to be the most profitable industry in the history of humankind: the commercial utilization of space. The article indicates that already about $20 million in fares have been paid by people that want to take privately funded trips to space, just to hang out in zero-g. This isn’t some pie-in-the-sky thing. Real people are plunking down $200,000 each for a ticket on SpaceShipTwo. That’s not nothing.

The cool thing, though, is that it’s obvious that Richardson gets how much more this can be beyond just space tourism:

But Richardson expressed hopes for the spaceport — to be constructed on the high desert near the White Sands Missile Range — that soar far beyond Branson’s sightseeing trips. … The governor predicted cargo service from New Mexico to Paris in “a couple of hours” and “orbital hotels” where space fliers could take a vacation of cosmic dimensions.

Darn right. New Mexico beat out Texas, California, and Florida for the spaceport. This shows real vision, and I like it. Fits well with the “frontier” image of the West, too.

My favorite tidbit: since the flights will be operated by Virgin Galactic, travelers will receive frequent-flyer miles on Virgin. Hilarious. I wonder how far that policy will flex as these space trips get longer–it’s about 239,000 miles to the Moon…

Dear Editor,

I paged through this year’s 100 Most Influential Hispanics with great excitement, only to have it turn to disappointment when I saw who had been left out: New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. I was shocked that Hispanic Business would name Hispanic senators and judges to the list, but overlook the country’s only Hispanic governor, a man with a stellar domestic and international resume who may be our first Hispanic presidential nominee in 2008.

I tried to come up with an explanation: were you downplaying those without Spanish surnames or those with one white parent? Both would be unfortunate, but the presence of Cathy Lyons, Frankie Muniz, and Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez indicated to me it wasn’t so. I can’t get my head around it! I just hope in the future you give this incredibly successful, influential man his due.

Sincerely,
Andrea
Cambridge, MA

The list is actually quite interesting and well-done; it’s worth a read. It’s just inexcusable to write a list that includes Sen. Mel Martinez, Sen. Ken Salazar, federal appeals court judges Carlos Lucero and Sonia Sotomayor, and L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, but forgets Bill Richardson. Que lastima. Another omission: 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jose Cabranes, who is probably more influential in legal circles than 2nd Circuit colleage Sotomayor (who is also very important.) If only they’d gone a little lighter on folks like Malcolm in the Middle’s Frankie Muniz, who is neither involved with the Hispanic community nor is particularly influential. Teenage sitcom stars v. state executives moonlighting as nuclear weapons negotiators? Here at the BRB, we know the real story. ]]> http://billrichardsonblog.com/my-letter-to-hispanic-business/feed/ 0 http://billrichardsonblog.com/the-gov-does-korea/ http://billrichardsonblog.com/the-gov-does-korea/#comments Thu, 13 Oct 2005 11:35:12 +0000 Ian http://billrichardsonblog.com/?p=28 North Korea, that is.

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a United Nations ambassador in the Clinton administration who has long maintained contacts with North Korea, will travel next week to Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, for talks aimed at persuading the North to give up its nuclear arms program, Mr. Richardson’s office and the Bush administration said Thursday.

Check out the NYT article.

This is a perfect example of what Andrea wrote about below. Most governors simply do not have this kind of experience, nor would they be able to handle themselves in a situation like this. But Richardson’s experience makes it possible and desirable.

Earlier today, I was getting worried because it seems like Mitt Romney (who, in many ways, is a Republican parallel–a governor of an opposite-party state trying to garner some mo’) is working harder to get attention than the Gov. Then Richardson drops this on me and I’m like, oh Bill, this is why I like ya.