New Whitepaper advocates better broadband policies
The Communications Workers of America have issued a a new forty page whitepaper, Speed Matters: Affordable High Speed Internet for All [PDF, 330kb] In it they note that Americans pay far more for much slower speeds than most other developed countries. The Japanese, for example, "have 8.5 times the speed at 1/12 of the cost." A summary of the paper is on the SpeedMatters blog: New Report: Speeding Up Our Internet and Our Economy (January 22, 2007) More about SpeedMatters in our earlier post, The Digital Divide: Speed Matters Continue reading
2006 elections & the internet
The Pew Internet & American Life Project has once again released a thorough report: this time on a study of the Net's role in the 2006 elections. Here's the summary:
Twice as many Americans used the internet as their primary source of news about the 2006 campaign compared with the most recent mid-term election in 2002. Some 15% of all American adults say the internet was the place where they got most of their campaign news during the election, up from 7% in the mid-term election of 2002. A post-election survey shows that the 2006 race also produced a notable class of online political activists. Some 23% of those who used the internet for political purposes actually created or forwarded online original political commentary or politically-related videos.The full report adds a lot of context to this, of course. For example, 31% of Americans gathered info about the races online and talked about the elections via email. And for those under 36 who have broadband, 35% said the Internet was their main source of information about the races. And Republicans and Democrats were equally likely to rely on the Net for campaign news... In looking through their list of reports, there were several others of interest including:
- Robo-calls in the 2006 campaign
- More Americans turn to the internet for news about politics
- The Internet and Campaign 2004
- The Internet as a Resource for News and Information about Science
- The Future of the Internet II
Woman faces 13-year wait for public records
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) News, Canada's national public broadcaster, reported Monday, January 22, 2007 that
A woman from the Rural Municipality of Daly in western Manitoba faces a long wait — 13½ years, to be exact — for government records she requested about the province's livestock industry.Read the full story online: Woman faces 13-year wait for hog industry info. Officials from Manitoba Province were not available for comment on Monday. Continue reading
CRS Director Moves to Restrict Analysts’ Media Contacts
The FAS (Federation of American Scientists) blog on government secrecy posted an interesting article today on additional restrictions on CRS analysts' contact with media representatives. Supposedly, the new policy is being driven by CRS management fearing "that the agency may come to be perceived as having an institutional agenda of its own or that its impartiality will be questioned by members of Congress". That's a legitimate concern, perhaps driven from wanting to manage their reputation and the quality of their work. But, the author of the FAS blog entry suggests the new policy may have a negative effect on the employees --which may affect the quality of their work after all. Continue reading
Doing Legislative Research or Budget Research? Here are two helpful articles
- Testing the THOMAS Beta By Peggy Garvin, LLRX January 15, 2007.
The full January issue of LLRX is now online with Peggy Garvin's article (previously mentioned here) in which she runs the THOMAS beta test site through its paces, evaluating the new search engine and enhanced navigations features, accompanied by screen shots. - Authorization and Appropriation By Paul Jenks, LLRX January 15, 2007.
Paul Jenks explains the process of key Congressional activitiy: before money can be spent, Congress must authorize the expenditure first, and then must appropriate the money to do so.