Monthly Archives: April 2005

Verizon CEO – Muni Wireless a “Dumb Idea”

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Todd Wallack visits with Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg:

The head of the country’s largest phone company ridiculed San Francisco’s interest in building a municipal Wi-Fi network that is designed to offer cheap or free Internet service throughout the city.

“That could be one of the dumbest ideas I’ve ever heard,” said Ivan Seidenberg, chief executive officer of Verizon Communications, during a meeting with Chronicle editors and writers on Friday. “It sounds like a good thing, but the trouble is someone will have to design it, someone will have to upgrade it, someone will have to maintain it and someone will have to run it.”

I might agree with Seidenberg IF the incumbent telco’s provided true broadband, which they don’t (we’re stuck at very slow, costly speeds compared with Japan & Korea).

Paradox: WSJ: Skilled Labor Shortage: Milwaukee Journal: State Short on Jobs for Graduates

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Jason Stein writes in the Wisconsin State Journal that there’s a skilled labor shortage here:

Colleges and training programs aren’t keeping up with the demand for skilled workers in a variety of industries, the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development has found. Rough state projections show Wisconsin needs 2,430 registered nurses to enter the work force each year until 2012. But in 2004, only 1,755 nursing graduates took the state exam to become registered nurses.

Wisconsin’s construction industry needs a projected 1,020 new carpenters a year, but only 340 carpentry graduates are coming out of the state’s apprenticeship and tech college programs.

Meanwhile, Joel Dresang writes in the Milwuakee Journal-Sentinel that we don’t have enough jobs for graduates.

“In many cases, the jobs aren’t here,” says Karen Stauffacher, assistant dean and director of the Business Career Center at UW-Madison.

As of last week, more than a third of the job offers accepted by the business school’s spring graduates were with companies based in Minneapolis (18% of the accepted offers) and Chicago (17%).

Only 31% of accepted offers were from Wisconsin employers, mostly in Madison (13%) and Milwaukee (8%). On average, the Chicago employers offered salaries $10,000 higher than in Madison, and Minneapolis companies offered about $7,000 more.

The Legacy of Jules Verne

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Brian Taves:

Jules Verne died 100 years ago this spring. We’ll talk about his legacy to literature and science, and take a look at two research projects he might have appreciated: drilling to the center of the Earth and finding the right place to live on the Moon.

audio

Is Cheap Broadband Un-American?

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Tim Karr:

We have Big Media to thank for saving Americans from themselves. Just as the notion of affordable broadband for all was beginning to take hold in towns and cities across the country, the patriots at Verizon, Qwest, Comcast, Bell South and SBC Communications have created legislation that will stop the ?red menace? of community internet before it invades our homes.
And to think that Americans might want to receive high-speed access at costs below the monopoly rates set by these few Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

Slashdot discussion

AMT Snaring More Taxpayers

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Avrum Lank takes a look at the AMT – extensively discussed here:

“It’s just another example of smoke and mirrors,” said Paul S. Wickert, owner of Acc-U-Rite Tax & Financial Services Inc., a tax preparation firm on Milwaukee’s south side. “They show you a 20 percent rate with one hand while their other hand is in your back pocket” grabbing more. The AMT tax rate varies from 26% to 28% of earned income, while regular tax brackets go from 10% to 35%.

The impact is especially great for large, middle-class families in states with high income and property taxes, such as Wisconsin. The AMT disallows deductions for local taxes, and does not take into account all of the personal exemptions allowed under the regular tax law.

Running Out of Cheap Gas to Guzzle

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James Howard Kunstler:

A few weeks ago, the price of oil ratcheted above fifty-five dollars a barrel, which is about twenty dollars a barrel more than a year ago. The next day, the oil story was buried on page six of the New York Times business section. Apparently, the price of oil is not considered significant news, even when it goes up five bucks a barrel in the span of ten days. That same day, the stock market shot up more than a hundred points because, CNN said, government data showed no signs of inflation. Note to clueless nation: Call planet Earth.
Carl Jung, one of the fathers of psychology, famously remarked that “people cannot stand too much reality.” What you’re about to read may challenge your assumptions about the kind of world we live in, and especially the kind of world into which events are propelling us. We are in for a rough ride through uncharted territory.

The Walker Reopens

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Holland Cotter:

The Walker is one of the country’s liveliest and most personable museums. It has been collecting shrewdly and imaginatively for the better part of a century. Of the several hundred works from its permanent holdings that make up its reopening suite of seven inaugural shows, many are being shown for the first time, and very few strike me as expendable. And now there is room for more.

Election Lessons from the Mainstream Media…

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Stewart Rieckman:

Lesson No. 2 from Election ’05: Yes, whether I like it or not, chat rooms and community Web sites will be a factor in politics and may even set the agenda. But it will always be the mainstream press that will be the unbiased fact checker. [emphasis added]

We certainly have no shortage of fact checking examples from the mainstream media. My view is that the true fact checkers are an engaged public working in combination with writers, whether internet only or from the legacy media.