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.

The Danes' shift to renewable, local energy sources have revitalized former textile towns and turned blacksmiths into wind-power entrepreneurs.

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.'"

Commodity prices are stagnant — and crummy credit markets and bad investments may lead to the sale of rural non-profit hospitals.