Benton RSS Feed

President Barack Obama called the We the People website “a direct line to the White House on the issues and concerns that matter most” to citizens when it went online in September 2011.

Anyone can launch a petition on the site and promote it through social media. The White House pledged to respond formally to petitions that receive more than 25,000 signatures. It increased the threshold to 100,000 signatures in January. We the People is basically about broadcasting two messages to the world. A citizen makes one statement when she writes up her petition. If that petition reaches the threshold of 100,000 signatures, someone in government will pen a response. That closes the loop. Everyone else only has the choice of signing onto the original petitioner’s statement or passing it by. Instead of writing a blanket reply to the secession petitions, says Harvard University professor Archon Fung, the White House could have invited a delegation of secessionists for a chat with Administration officials. Through deliberation, he says, the group might have come up with some less fundamental conciliation the White House could make. At the very least, it would have shown the White House is seriously listening to their concerns. One of the chief barriers to civic discourse, Fung says, is that the more politically charged an environment is, the more likely people are to descend into hostility and refuse to compromise. Simply because it was built and promoted by the White House, We the People is bound to draw a heated crowd, Fung says.

The New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission on Jan. 29 approved a proposal by FairPoint Communications to use $2.8 million in service quality penalties incurred in 2009 and 2010 to expand high-speed Internet to under-served parts of the state.

As part of the agreement, the company will invest an additional $500,000, bringing the value of the project to $3.3 million. That's enough to bring broadband Internet to 2,500 homes, business or schools throughout the state that now only have access to much slower and less-reliable Internet connections, according to a company spokesperson. FairPoint incurred the penalties for problems that arose when telephone and Internet service in the state was transferred from Verizon. The penalties were based on such measures as how long it took for a customer to get an answer at a call center; how long it took to get dial tone installed; how long it took to get a problem fixed; and how many network problems were reported per 100 access lines.

The Federal Communications Commission released an updated version of the Longley-Rice model and TVStudy software it will use to calculate TV station coverage areas and interference as it repacks TV stations into smaller spectrum quarters after the FCC's incentive auctions.

Higher costs at ESPN and lower DVD sales resulted in a 6 percent decline in quarterly profit at Disney. But Disney’s video game and Web unit finally swung to the black and the conglomerate steered attention toward potential future growth fueled by the “Star Wars” franchise. ESPN had a significant impact on Disney’s quarter, with programming expenses increasing for football and basketball. Those costs held back results for Disney’s media networks unit, which houses the cable sports behemoth; operating income there increased a tepid 2 percent, to $1.21 billion. The growth came from Disney Channel, ABC Family and higher ad sales at the ABC broadcast network. Interactive media, a business unit that includes video games and Disney.com, swung to an operating profit of $9 million after 16 consecutive quarters of losses. The company cited growth from Disney-branded cellphones in Japan as part of the reason.