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Starting in November, all New Mexico families, regardless of income, will be able to enroll their kids in pre-K for free. The governor announced they will be investing in more early education programs and facilities. “Universal access, free childcare for every New Mexico family in the state of New Mexico, that starts in New Mexico for the country,” said Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-New Mexico).

It’s an announcement that Governor Lujan Grisham said will change lives across the state, especially for families struggling to make ends meet. Starting in November, the Early Childhood Education and Care Department will implement free childcare across the board. “It is the backbone of creating a system of support for families that allow them to work, to go to college, and do all of the things that they need to do,” said Governor Lujan Grisham.

In recent years, the state expanded no-cost childcare to more households, so, for example, a family of three making less than $100,000 a year would qualify. But, the governor saidm that still left many New Mexicans straining to cover childcare. Now the state is lifting that income cap.

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[–] Powderhorn@beehaw.org 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

I applaud the idea, but did a fucking LLM write this?

Let's start at the top:

NEW MEXICO (KRQE) – New Mexico is becoming the first state in the U.S. to offer free early childhood education to every family in the state. Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham announced a universal child care plan that includes higher pay for pre-K educators.

OK, so NEW MEXICO is not a dateline. You can go a bit more vague under certain circumstances, but that's generally when you're en route to somewhere. "ABOARD THE ..." is acceptable, because you don't know where the fuck you are while writing. This is a story about state government, so the correct dateline is SANTA FE, and my god, you're writing this from Albuquerque, 90 minutes away in bad traffic, so everybody already fucking knows they're in New Mexico.

Not quite sure why "Governor" is spelled out here, when AP Style calls for "Gov." ahead of a name, but we'll circle back to that.

Then we get an interstitial set of refers, including "Taos County Sheriff speaks after second suicide at Rio Grande Gorge Bridge in less than a week." Well, was he fucking mute up to this point? Nobody cares that he can vocalize sounds; that is absolutely not the story, and moreover, if you go over the Gorge Bridge without a bungee cord, a paraglider or some other method of avoiding terminal velocity, you die.

This is already known.

It's patently irrelevant what the Taos County sheriff has to say about it, given that the only useful info in the hed is "suicide." Which means a (not to be crude here, but ...) post-mortem on this situation from law enforcement is literally useless if they have both already been deemed suicides. That two of them happened in under a week is coincidental, not news. People have been jumping off that bridge for decades. Flip a coin enough times, and you'll get suspicious-looking patterns of heads and tails, but that doesn't indicate a trend.

Now, in case you're unaware we're in New Mexico, we get this next gem of a graf:

Starting in November, all New Mexico families, regardless of income, will be able to enroll their kids in pre-K for free. The governor announced they will be investing in more early education pograms and facilities. “Universal access, free childcare for every New Mexico family in the state of New Mexico, that starts in New Mexico for the country,” said Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-New Mexico).

There's only so much you can do with government press releases, but one option is simply not running a stupid sentence. "New Mexico" is called out five times in a single graf (and remember, that was the dateline), inexplicably giving Lujan Grisham a second first reference that includes the state she's the governor (still not abbreviated) of -- the state the very outlet is in.

Things improve marginally until this point:

The governor also announced initiatives to build and renovate childcare facilities through a $13 million low-interest loan fund, along with an additional $20 million she’s asking lawmakers to approve in next year’s budget.

To be abundantly clear, funding has not been secured for this initiative. It won't even come up for a legislative vote until next year, but the hed confidently asserts -- as does most of the rest of the "story" -- that this is a done deal, funding has been secured, usw.

After another worthless quote, it turns out the funding situation may be even larger than this piece begrudgingly admits earlier on:

The governor said both state and federal funds will be used to pay for the initiative, as well as the state’s early childhood trust fund. She is calling on lawmakers to approve another $120 million to fully fund the program. The state estimates an additional 5,000 professionals are needed to fully run the universal child care system. They said they are launching a campaign to recruit providers.

Well, which is it? $20 million or $120 million?

This is such stunning incompetence that I can't believe a human wrote it.