In July the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) stirred up a hornets’ nest by announcing it might overturn state prohibitions on municipally owned broadband networks. Republicans protested that Washington should keep its grubby hands off state authority. Giant cable and phone companies contended that local governments are incapable of managing telecommunications networks and the resulting failure will … Read More
David Brancaccio is a solid reporter. Perhaps the cognitive dissonance of talking about public ownership on a program called Marketplace caused him to go astray. Nevertheless a few days ago he did his listeners a disservice when he commented on the city of Somerset, Kentucky’s new venture: Selling gasoline directly to city residents. Somerset’s entrepreneurialism got … Read More
Section 702 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act requires the FCC to report annually on whether “advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion.” The FCC kicked off its tenth such report on Tuesday by releasing a “Notice of Inquiry,” (NOI) in effect asking individuals and groups around the … Read More
A single-payer system is one in which the government, rather than private insurance companies, pays all health care costs. Some on the left have long harbored hopes for a national single-payer system, but the odds that Congress would ever extinguish the private insurance industry have never been anything but long. Vermont is different. Vermonters proudly bring … Read More
Half a year after Newark Public Schools launched an “agenda to ensure all students are in excellent schools,” the plan has come under a federal civil rights investigation to determine whether it “discriminates against black students.” An in-depth look into the district’s ultimately unsuccessful attempt to close one South Ward school reveals how real estate concerns … Read More
Hilary Wainwright’s booklet – The Tragedy of the Private, the Potential of the Public – describes water, health and education as “the commons” and illustrates a quiet process of remunicipalization is taking place all over the world. There is a palpable momentum to these ideas. Last summer saw the formation of the We Own It campaign … Read More
Less than a year after Michigan shifted responsibility for feeding its prisoners to a private contract with international food services conglomerate Aramark, the state Department of Corrections (DOC) is warning the company that it may yank the contract. The DOC says Aramark has violated terms of the contract hundreds of times since December. The violations include … Read More
By the time you read this, Congressional Republicans will have overwhelmingly voted to violate one of their most cherished guiding principles: A service should be paid for by those who use the service. If we don’t fully pay for services, Republicans usually insist, markets can’t work effectively. We undervalue and overuse services, resulting in wasteful overspending. … Read More
The United States Postal Service (USPS) management just ran into a possible game-changing obstacle to its shameful pursuit of a fully privatized post office: labor solidarity. Here’s the background. For a decade the USPS has been aggressively shrinking, consolidating, and outsourcing the nation’s postal system. In July 2011 management upped the ante by announcing the rapid … Read More
