New Mexico’s Silly Supercomputer

Back in early March, the Albuquerque Journal published a glowing editorial about New Mexico’s supercomputer. I responded to this with a blog posting saying, in essence, that the jobs produced by the computer were minimal and that taxpayers are still getting ripped off.
How quickly times change! On Sunday, the Journal changed its tune completely with this front-page, above-the-fold story which detailed how the computer is “living on state handouts” and explaining that “$115 million will be required over a seven-year period for recurring and nonrecurring costs.” Yesterday, the Journal continued its full-court-press against the supercomputer with this editorial which argued that the state needs to “do better” when it comes to this deal or we might have to “pull the plug.”
For the record, we first criticized the supercomputer back in 2007 and included it among the porky items in our 2008 Piglet Book. Too bad no one consulted us before embarking upon this boondoggle.