inkbluesky

anne hathaway and blues. ( updated 05-18-06) Sorry, I finally got around to sorting out the link problem. click here for large version.

8 People & Trends To Watch

3.The Diesel Governor
Montana’s coal fields hold the equivalent of 240 billion barrels of clean diesel, which almost makes the state another Saudi Arabia. Governor Brian Schweitzer has been hustling GE, Shell, South African Sasol, and the US military to invest in converting that coal into diesel; with oil at more than $40 a barrel (the price at which coal-to-diesel conversion becomes cost-efficient), they’re interested. Schweitzer also wants to jump-start a US biofuels industry by adding farm subsidies to alt-energy-producing crops like soybean, safflower, camelina, and canola. Schweitzer, a Democrat, picked up his agricultural self-reliance in Saudi Arabia, where he helped design the irrigation system that turned the kingdom from a wheat importer into a net exporter of wheat in the ’80s. The US, he says, can do the same for fuel. - L.M.

There are some interesting people at the jump, but I choose Schweitzer because he did what few thought he could do in a hard purple state like Montana, he put together a regular guy message that appealled to folks who’s interests are better served by Democrats. It didn’t hurt that Montana conservatives had plenty of power for years and got pretty corrupt and arrogant. They were ready for a change, a pro small business big D Democrat, a pro environment guy that showed the hunters and fishers of Montana that Big business didn’t care about their western heritage.

I’m just going to put up part of this, but if you care about open access to the internet you should read the whole article, Tim Wu on Internet Freedom and Net Neutrality

The problem faced here is actually not new at all–it is a familiar problem of market power on networks that government has grappled with since the days of the telegraph. What I want to make clear is the central economic tradeoff involved in these kinds of cases. Letting the internet or any infrastructure become discriminatory may offer marginally more profit for operators. But it does so at the cost of a tax on network competition and innovation. Whether it’s a nation’s ports, roads, canals, or information networks, discrimination comes at a price to the activities that depend on the infrastructure.

That’s why at nearly every stage in the history, governments have maintained at least a basic anti-discrimination rule to block the worst forms of anti-competitive behavior. And today, that’s all that’s needed - a simple ban on the worst kinds of behavior; a basic rule whose goal is simply to guarantee basic consumer rights and let the free market work.

Network Discrimination Problems in History and Today

Problems of network discrimination are nothing new. Network owners with market power have always been tempted to use their gatekeeper position to discriminate between favored and disfavored uses.

The history, in fact, goes as far back as the 1860s, when Western Union, the telegraph monopolist, signed an exclusive deal with the Associated Press. Other wire services were priced-off the network - not blocked, but discriminated against.2 The result was to build Associated Press into a news monopoly that was not just dangerous for business, but dangerous for American democracy. As telecommunications historian Paul Starr writes “Western Union had exclusive contracts with the railroads; AP had exclusive contracts with Western Union; and individual newspapers had exclusive contracts with AP. These linkages made it difficult for rival news services to break in.”3 The AP monopoly had an agenda: it didn’t just favor Google or Yahoo - it went as far as to chose politicians it liked and those it didn’t. As Historian Menahem Blondheim has documented, AP used its Western Union-backed monopoly to influence politics in the late 19th century, even going so far as to exercise censorship on behalf of the State. The method was simple: when faced with messages from disfavored politicians, the wires simply didn’t carry them.

Don’t Let Congress and the telcos Ruin the Internet

Don’t Let Congress Ruin the Internet
Right now Congress is pushing a law that would abandon the First Amendment of the Internet — a principle called “network neutrality” that preserves the free and open Internet. Congress needs to hear from you today or they will hand over control of what you do online to companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.

Politicians are trading favors for campaign donations from these companies. They’re being wooed by people like AT&T’s CEO, who says “the Internet can’t be free.” Sign this petition to tell your elected representatives to protect Internet freedom now. When you fill out the information and push submit, we will automatically send it to your Members of Congress.

There’s an e-petition at the link.