Broadband internet and rural economic development

The juxtaposition of a story about New York state's failure to deliver broadband internet to the North Country and the story about the closure of Dannemora and Watertown prisons is insightful.

State prisons were added in the north country in the 1980s by the current governor's father and Republican Senator Ron Stafford as a rural economic development program.

Now with the prisons being closed as the inmate population plummets, the state and localities have to come up with a sensible and sustainable rural economic development plan(s). Broadband internet is essential to any such plan.

With the pandemic (and terrorism concerns before that), many people have been looking to get out of densely populated urban areas. The Adirondacks' stunning natural beauty is a great draw. But they're not going to move somewhere without access to high speed internet... even less so when they are working and their kids going to school from home.

Bits and pieces

"When I give food to the poor, I'm called a saint. When I ask why they are poor, I'm called a communist." -Archbishop Dom Helder Camara.

-ABC News takes a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a documentary on the NGO Doctors Without Borders and the truly heroic work they do.

-The Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, which focuses on isses relating to rural America, published a report exploring the particularly high rates of young child poverty in the southern US. Carsey also released an interesting report on Challenges in Serving Rural American Children through the Summer Food Service Program.


-A piece on Alternet 6 shocking ways conservatives have caused the economic destruction of America... or more specifically, the conservative ideology.

-Speaking of harm caused by the Supreme Court-sanctioned corporate takeover of government... I noticed an AP piece highlighting how many judges in the Gulf Coast (where lawsuits related to the BP oil catastrophe will be heard) have close ties to Big Oil... 37 of 64 federal judges in the region, to be exact. (And this doesn't even take into account state judges, many of whom are elected and thus raise money) Then, I caught an item about how one of those federal judges struck down the Obama administration's temporary ban on deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Please move along... nothing to see here.

(Also see: MoveToAmend.org - a project of the Campaign to Legalize Democracy)

-Sadly, this area has seen the death of not one but two local soldiers this week in Afghanistan, the latter 19 years old. The deaths of these young men occured the same week that a report by Congressional investigators issued a 'shocking' (not sure I'd use the adjective) report that the US is funding Afghan warlords.