The city of Rockport, Maine, population 3,321, has built a community broadband network that's 20 times faster than any offered by a big corporation. They built it with about $60,000, half of that coming from "unused town tax funds," which, yes, still exist in These Interesting Times -- largely in places that haven't handed out very much corporate welfare, I bet. Teabaggers may want to note that Rockport contracts with private corporations to provide the broadband service to -- nah, never mind. Haters gonna hate.
ProPublica notes that the Obama Adminstration's SEC Chair, Mary Jo White, hasn't done very much good. Some of that has to do with a hostile House in a defunding mood, and some of that has to do with the workload mandated by Dodd-Frank, but still, to have alienated the SEC's most liberal Commissioner to the point where she votes with Republicans against your rules takes a special talent. This is the agency, after all, which will either prevent the next economic armageddon or won't.
Colorado Republican U.S. Senate candidate claims that "Obamacare" pushed him off his health insurance -- but that's not very likely, since Mr. Gardner actually declined the health care coverage offered to Congressfolk before the Affordable Care Act's exchanges even came online, and then bought rather expensive coverage in its place. And the "335,000 Coloradans had their plans cancelled" bit is just a scare number -- since at least 300,000 of them were actually able to keep their plans.
I gotta hand it to David Sirota; he really breaks it down, here asking, in re campaign finance, "Is Corruption a Constitutional Right?" His article mostly concerns Wall Street managers of state pension funds making campaign contributions (which actually violates federal law), but we could well call any opponent of campaign finance reform "objectively pro-corruption." Also, money isn't speech.
Alaska Senate candidate Joe "I've got my own police force!" Miller, currently running third of three in most Republican primary polls right now, apparently hopes to rectify that with this incredibly racist mailer, which includes plenty of images of tattooed brown-skinned men, so he can come off as the "100% pro-gun, 100% against amnesty" candidate. I shudder to think how "100% pro-gun" relates to immigration law, but if I were Democratic Sen. Begich, I'd be making sure this mailer gets into the hands of every Republican voter in Alaska, because that'd be my best shot of facing Joe Miller in the general election.
Finally, the Republican National Committee denounced the College Board's new AP History exam framework, because it's not positive enough. I sure wouldn't want any of these idiots in my foxhole -- what whiners and weaklings they must be, apparently unable to accept that Americans have ever done anything bad, or that a reasonable person could find patriotism in speaking out and fighting for change.
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