Hayseeds No. 221

City Schools to Crack Down on Student Athletes Using Drugs.

The city's tough new policies would ban students from participating in atheletic programs for up to a year if they were caught using or selling drugs.

This policy makes sense in many ways, but also is discerning. We don't want anybody using illegal drugs, particularly those which could hurt oneself or others. At the same time, we don't want to cut people who have fallen pray to drugs to be cut out of their social network or their ability, and fall more to the evils of drugs.

A more balanced program might simply require student athletes who have fallen victim to drugs to participate in a program to help them get un-addicted. It might be expensive for the school to do this, but the alternative will end up costing taxpayers far more in the long run—be it for incarceration or more serious treatment.

League of Conservation Voters Ranks Legislative Successes.

In short they are happy and not-so-happy with the things Albany did during the past year. Then again, aren't we all.

Dial Up in Rural America?

There are few options for inexpensive high speed internet access in rural areas. This has always been the case, and with declining populations in many rural areas there is little incentive for telecommunications companies to promote high-speed access.

From the article:

As population density drops outside of metropolitan areas, it's impossible for telecommunications companies or cable service providers to justify the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars per mile it can cost to bring fiber to every rural community, let alone every home. The result: Today, just 17 percent of rural U.S. households subscribe to broadband service, according to the Government Accountability Office. And a recent report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says the U.S. dropped from fourth in the world in broadband penetration in 2001 to 15th place in 2006.

Rural areas need broadband. But deregulation has freed carriers from any real obligation to offer it. The market will never provide universal broadband access without regulation or subsidies, but the U.S. lacks both a coherent policy and the political will to address the issue. Even as the telephony infrastructure itself is absorbed into the Internet, some policy-makers still fail to view broadband as the new critical infrastructure.

Interesting. One alternative is public Wi-Fi in rural towns provided by muncipal entities. The idea would be to offer access in certain public areas (town greens, parks, libraries), which at minimal cost provides citizens a way to get on the internet, even if it's less then ideal then having it at home.