September 2011

A bipartisan group of 75 House members are calling on the US Postal Service to revamp its business model instead of closing post offices.

In a letter sent to Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) Chairwoman Ruth Goldway, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) Don Young (R-Alaska), joined 73 other lawmakers in urging Congress to remove restrictions such as 100 percent retirement prefunding requirements and freeing up the agency to sell other items that aren't mail-related, such as hunting licenses. “We have been presented with a false choice of closing post offices and slashing the workforce or letting the Postal Service go bankrupt,” Connolly said. “There are better alternatives. The Postal Service’s unparalleled retail network is a competitive advantage, but that advantage can't be leveraged because of the 2006 law that prohibits the Postal Service from even selling many postal-related products. We need to change that law.” The Postal Service has proposed closing more than 3,600 offices nationwide.

Billionaire Ted Turner said News Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rupert Murdoch will probably have to leave the helm of his media company after a phone-hacking scandal that began at one of its newspapers.

“I think he’s going to have to step down,” Turner said. “He hadn't survived anything like this. This is serious.” Murdoch’s statements that he didn't know about phone-hacking or police payments aren't sufficient, Turner said. “Well, he should have known,” said Turner, who sold his Atlanta-based Turner Broadcasting, owner of CNN, TBS and the Cartoon Network, to Time Warner in 1996. “He was chairman of the board. He’s responsible. I took responsibility when I ran my company. You never heard me say, ‘Well, I didn't know.’”

In much of the country, access to affordable, high-speed Internet is taken for granted. However, in vast sections of the United States broadband Internet is either unavailable or too expensive for low-income families.

The Federal Communications Commission, the Small Business Committee, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have all urged service providers to expand to rural areas. But the companies contend that it would cost far more to run lines or install wireless towers in these remote areas than the profits that could be made from the few low-income families that live there. Most of the areas with slow or nonexistent Internet access are indeed in remote regions with tiny populations. On the West Coast and in the Northeast, where the average population can by anywhere from 200 to 1,200 people per square mile, providing service makes sense for companies. In areas like Wyoming, Montana and Alaska, the average can be fewer than 10 people per square mile. In addition to a lack of concentrated paying customers and rocky and mountainous terrain, which often goes hand-in-hand with sparse population, complicates the cost of developing broadband networks in these locations. Here's the bottom ten: Missouri, Alaska, Nebraska, Arkansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho.

Zeeland (MI) Public Schools have replaced textbooks with iPads -- one for every high-schooler in the district. That's 1,800 iPads between two high schools in the district. But that's just beginning. The district embarked on an ambitious project this fall that will give a tablet to every student in grades 3 to 12 — the only district this state to do so. The program represents one of the most aggressive in the country. The school uses the iPad for assigning classwork, testing and communicating with students. Some teachers have gone paperless. Just two weeks into the experiment, administrators already are calling the iPad program a game-changer.