How do we address surging bandwidth usage and bridge the digital divide in a...
Recent News
Will FCC Chairman Genachowski Allow More Job Destruction in a T-Mobile/MetroPCS Merger?
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has made job creation a top priority. Here’s a test: will he require conditions to protect jobs in the T-Mobile/MetroPCS merger? When merging companies talk about “transaction-specific efficiencies” and cost savings through “synergy,” the workers involved know that pink slips are usually on the way. That’s what we can expect if [...]
Should we tax content providers to fund broadband build-out?
How do we address surging bandwidth usage and bridge the digital divide in a country where tens of millions of families don’t have any high-speed access to the Internet at home – and everyone sees high prices often without the speeds for the most cutting edge uses of the Internet? Just this week, The Wall Street Journal highlighted how many low-income teens, a third of whom have no broadband at home, turn to places like McDonalds with free Wi-Fi to get their homework done. New money to bridge that gap is an obvious need cited by many political leaders, but the money needs to come from somewhere.
One question is whether content providers on the Internet like Netflix, Google and Facebook, who profit tremendously from the existence of a fast Internet, should be taxed to support the physical infrastructure supporting broadband?
The Right Embraces Sweden– and Misses the Point
There have been a number of stories this week around the online rightwing about how Sweden and the Nordic countries have moved right, probably inspired by this Economist story. The story describes nations that seem hardcore Thatcherite: * Taxes have been cut: the corporate rate is 22%, far lower than America’s. * [Sweden's] budget deficit is [...]
The Enduring Radicalism of Les Miserables
In discussing Les Miserables, most critics have focused on the spectacle (grand), on the acting (quite outstanding) or the use of real-time singing (quite effective), but far less has been written about Victor Hugo’s enduring radical politics being brought to the big screen. This is a case of a movie budget making poverty look nasty [...]
Lincoln and the Founding of America’s Second Republic
Americans often engage in the conceit that we have the oldest written constitution in the world. But that’s a false story, and a dangerous lie to boot. Yes, a Constitution was written in 1789. And it fell apart in 1861 under the weight of its uncertainty on whether the United States was a collection of [...]
Health Care Reform is THE anti-Poverty Program
A new study by the Census Bureau recalculates poverty based on a “supplemental poverty measure” that takes into account transfer payments by the government and various expenses that the traditional poverty rate misses. The headline number is that with this supplemental measure, poverty is higher than the oficial rate but the more interesting data is on [...]
The End of the Rightwing Coalition- And Where We Go From Here
The America of nostalgic visions of clean-cut suburban lawns, self-sufficient breadwinners, and homogenous communities heard its death rattle last Tuesday. To be fair, we’ve been hearing the hoofbeats of the Grim Reaper coming for the Silent Majority since Al Gore received the majority of the votes in the 2000 election. An extraordinary Supreme Court [...]
Recent Freelance Policy Reports
Networking the Green Economy 2011: How Broadband & Related Technologies Can Build a Green Economic Future. (June 2011 ) Updated report sponsored by the Sierra Club, Blue-Green Alliance, Natural Resources Defense Council and the Communications Workers of America. How To Raise The Phone Bill Of The Average New Jersey Family: What S 2664 Will [...]
Media Appearances and Video
Some clips from GritTV, policy panels and a few other events I have spoken at over recent years– plus some audio links as welll
