Brian Bowman’s Wilson Fiber site has the text of the substitute HB 1587 that came out of the House finance committee today. Check out the PDF here and here is the text:
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Politics
Politics
There are 1,056 posts filed in Politics (this is page 100 of 106).
N.C. Bill Limiting Municipal Internet Effectively Killed!
Mark Kleinschmidt reports (and Wilson’s Brian Bowman confirms) that N.C. House Bill 1587, the so-called Local Government Fair Competition Act, has been moved to committee. This effectively kills it, thanks to the many citizens who let their opposition be heard!
Says, Kleinschmidt:
Reports from the committee meetings tell me that after the committee’s action, Chairman Luebke publicly thanked those who took part in the “tremendous grass roots effort, ” that “brought this bill to a halt.”
Money And Politics
Having just read how North Carolina’s “Bottle Bill” that would put a refundable deposit on canned or bottled drinks was shelved due to intense corporate lobbying in spite of its popularity with the public, I’m brought back to my idea of making some political television and radio advertising free.
Corporate interests are calling the shots in today’s political landscape. Legislators fear the stink that corporations might raise should these corporations not get their way.
Who can blame them? When it comes to politics, money talks. Money means speech. If a bill’s opponent has a large bank account, that opponent is formidable. Joe Public doesn’t stand a chance of receiving the same attention from his representative in the face of such resources. Ergo, Joe Public’s interests do not matter in the politician’s mind.
Somehow, money needs to be removed from the equation if our governments are ever going to serve the needs of their citizens and not just their corporate “citizens.” How can this playing field be effectively leveled? Is the dubious Santa Clara vs. The Southern Pacific Railroad case to blame for this mess?
Ebola: Now Available Locally
I once read a book called The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, a true story of an Ebola outbreak in Northern Virginia in 1989. I think its one of the most terrifying books I’ve ever read, particularly since I lived nearby around that time. So maybe I’m just being overly paranoid, but I’m not too keen about our government’s potential plans to set up a bioweapons lab in Butner. The NBAF would be playing with fun stuff like anthrax, Ebola, avian flu, and other deadly pathogens right on our doorstep.
The Butner facility is being deemed a replacement for the aging Plum Island facility in Long Island, NY. Plum Island has generated a lot of attention with books like these, detailing alleged safety violations at the bioweapons facility.
Hey, I like job growth as much as anyone. I just don’t like the potential of infecting the local population with some plague in order to get it. I’m thinking the NBAF is one Yankee transplant to which we can say “no, thanks.”
Jim Black Sentenced
I said last February that Jim Black should go, and now he will go … to prison! Black got his just desserts today when he was sentenced to 63 months in PMITA prison.
He earned it, too. Today’s paper says he took not just $50,000 in bribes, but $500,000 in bribes. That makes Meg Scott Phipps look like an amateur.
What we still don’t know is which lobbyist wrote the check. Come on, Jim. Who’d you sell us out to?
Cartoonist Doug Marlette Dead At 57
I was shocked to learn yet another of my cartoonist heroes has died a tragic death. Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Doug Marlette, author of the Kudzu comic strip, died in a car wreck today. He was 57.
While I thought Kudzu seemed stale as of late, it was the coolest thing back in 1986, my junior year of high school. This was Kudzu’s “moon pie” phase, a schtick that wound up decorating the signature pages of my South Meck High School yearbook. Continue reading
General Assembly Moves To Limit Cable TV Competition
I cringed when I learned that Bellsouth would use the AT&T name. Though the new AT&T has little in common with the AT&T of old (aside from wanting to own the world), the name carries baggage for me. When I was in charge of phones at one former company, I was shocked to discover that AT&T had slammed my company – switching fourteen of our phone lines to their long distance service without our approval. I was so furious that I immediately filed a complaint with the N.C. Public Utilities Commission, after which an AT&T lawyer called to soothe my nerves. Had my employer not imploded days later (making the whole matter moot), I would have pressed the Commission to drop the hammer on AT&T. A similar case in Texas had recently cost a slamming telco $1.4 million. Seemed like a good starting point to me.
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Cheap Thoughts: Taking Back The Tubes
Senator John Kerry (D-MA), speaking of an upcoming FCC frequency auction, reminded me of an important fact (emphasis mine):
With this auction, we stand at a crossroads—we can either provide extraordinary benefits to millions of Americans or tilt bandwidth policy to line the pockets of a privileged few.
There is a clear path I believe must be taken: the airwaves belong to the American people, and their use should serve the public interest.
See that part? The airwaves belong to the American people.
We own the airwaves. We own the tubes over which America’s media conglomerates make billions.
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See ya, Mike!
The world’s tiniest violin plays as embattled Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong is disbarred. I don’t believe he ever stopped thinking a rape actually took place.
In other news, the North Carolina State Bar actually does something useful.
N.C. Seeks To Join National Popular Vote Compact
There’s a huge change underway in the process of electing a President. I happened to stumble upon this N&O article announcing North Carolina’s proposed plans to offer all of its electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. The plan calls for state officials to tally the popular votes from all of the 50 states and the District of Columbia and offer all of its electoral votes to the winner of that tally.
The plan, called the National Popular Vote compact, would give smaller states like North Carolina more clout in presidential elections. Campaigns currently focus most all of their resources on the battleground states. This plan would change all that. North Carolina joins California, Illinois, Colorado, Maryland, Hawaii, and Arkansas in advancing the measure through its legislature.
State representatives have been falling over themselves to introduce the measure. Bills from Sen. Charlie Dannelly (S760) and Sen. Dan Clodfelter (S954) are moving through the Senate, while Rep. Melanie Goodwin’s (H1645) is working its way through the House.
More on the plan can be found at the National Popular Vote website, or the book Every Vote Equal, appropriately available online for free.
If states implement the National Popular Vote measure, no longer would a presidential candidate win the popular vote but lose the election. Makes sense to me!