The Hill reports that the tussle over Google Voice continues. Google Voice gives people the chance to claim one number (from Google); Google then directs phone calls coming to that number to land lines or mobile phones. With Google Voice, you can have one phone number (the one from Google) that will be forwarded to any kind of phone you might have. Trouble is, Google doesn't serve all phones. In particular, Google has cut out numbers in rural areas served by companies Google believes charge exorbitant access fees.
This has caused a stir in Washington, D.C., and The Hill reports that "(p)ressure is growing on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to come down on tech giant Google for blocking access to certain telephone numbers with its Google Voice service....Google admits that it is blocking some numbers to rural areas with high connection fees, including adult chat lines and some free conference calls."
The system for assigning rates is complicated. Google says it's not subject to FCC regulation since it is an Internet-based phone system. The FCC is studying that one. Phone conferencing companies direct calls to rural areas where they can share in the higher fees. (The Hill tells us that the Obama campaign used these conferencing services extensively during the '08 campaign.) But blanket blocks of regions affect the local rural user along with the conference call providers. We thought this was getting clear up, but it remains a royal mess.
Dairy farmers in Hungary placed the severed heads of 12 cows in front of the nation's Agriculture Ministry Thursday as part of what is a worldwide protest against low prices for milk producers. The farmers also dumped milk on the street and were promptly charged with defacing a public space. Farmers in the European Union, as in the rest of the world, are selling milk for considerably less than what it costs to produce.
These kinds of protests and fights are happening all over the world, including Tasmania. Here's a story from this week about a Pennsylvania family facing low milk prices. Dairy herd buyouts have been held to try to reduce the herd in the U.S. in order to reduce milk supply. “The past year has been the most difficult since I began farming in 1973,” said Paul Toft, a Rice Lake, Wis., dairy farmer and president of the Associated Milk Producers Inc. “Some say these times rival those of the Great Depression.”
What's bad for the producer on the farm, however, is good for the processor. Dean Foods Co. announced this week that its third quarter net income jumped 32% as the cost of milk declined. The company, the nation's largest dairy processor, increased its profit estimate for the full year. Meanwhile, the U.S. Justice Department is looking into claims by U.S. farmers that a lack of competition in the milk market is keeping prices low.
BioFuels and Energy | Environment | Growth and Development
The recession is putting the squeeze on rural public transportation.
Job losses are increasing the number of rural people in Georgia who want to use public transportation, according to the Associated Press. But the economy is also making it harder for local governments to pay for transportation systems.
The main source of funding for rural "dial-a-ride" programs is the Federal Transit Administration. This funding has increased in the last three years. But local governments in Georgia are having a hard time coming up with the remaining funds to keep their systems running.
"The recession is making riders out of laid off workers who never depended on public transportation before, but now need it for everything from a doctor's visit to a job interview," reports the AP.
" 'They may have a car, but they just don't have the gas money,,' said [Southwest Georgia Regional Commission director Dan] Bollinger, who's seen ridership go up roughly 15 percent since the recession started."
Justin Rowlatt is traveling the U.S. for the BBC network at the Ethical Man. He's been trying to cut his carbon emissions. Now he's back to "save the world" -- his words, not ours. He asks recently, "Can rural American hold the world to ransom?"
Rowlatt is in West Virginia where he finds there is much coal mining. It's a place of poor people, but rich in the minerals that established America as an industrial power. Coal is king here and coal rules the state's politics. As a result, Rowlatt reports, the state's two Democratic senators will not vote for the climate change bill now pending in the Senate. The Democrats need those two votes to pass the bill and, as a result, Rowlatt writes, they will have to either cater to West Virginia or water down the bill in some other way that will attract a Republican or two.
"That, in turn, will dilute any deal done at Copenhagen," at the world climate change summit next month, Rowlatt writes. "It may seem extraordinary that a sparsely populated, rural state like West Virginia could hold such sway in international politics, but the logic here on the ground is compelling. 'What would you do if the mines closed?' I asked the miners. They shook their heads: There aren't any good jobs outside of coal here", they told me, 'West Virginia is coal.'"
When the federal government brought electricity to rural America, it worried more about cost to farm families than construction. There's a lesson here for broadband.
Free mail delivery began nationally in 1863. It began in 44 northern cities. (The South was not the place to begin a new federal program at that time, to say the least!) Following the Civil War, the service grew to other urban residents. Providing mail delivery to rural areas was debated, and in 1896, Congress allocated funds to test rural delivery in West Virginia. People loved it and the service spread.
The Smithsonian's National Postal Museum has put up a very good on-line exhibit showing (and telling) the history of rural delivery. It can be found here.
Great pictures and good history. Rural delivery allowed rural residents to receive newspapers (and weather reports.). Interestinly, one of the early proponents of rural delivery was John Wanamaker, a Philadelphian who created the modern department store. Doing without rural delivery, he noted, "obliges people to go or send for mail, and that means, in the winter or stormy seasons, and for families of aged people, the depredation of going w/out letters & periodicals (hardly less valuable) that lie in post offices for long periods not called for. We shall look back with astonishment before many years that the present system had to be suffered so long."