David A. Swanson
Total lifetime comments: 120
Recent Comments by David A. Swanson
In the interest of showing their dedication to mazimizing corporate benefits, the city and county councils could team up with the Port to bring back ABC so that the cable and related scrap coming from all the homes forced to accept Starlink could be prepared for shipment to China.
Among his many other contributions, Kenneth Rexroth wrote a series of commentaries on books and compilations he considered to be important, ” ‘Classics’ Revisited” (New DIrections Books, 1965). In his review of the “Iliad,” he wrote
”...Greeks and Trojans are not the only protagonists of this tragedy. There is another community - the gods of Olympus, In the vast literature of Homeric criticism, I never read a mention of what kind of community this was, of where in Homer’s day he could have found an earthly parallel to such a group of people. The court of Zeus is precisely a court, like those to be found in the great empires of the ancient Near East in Egypt, Babylon, or Persia. After Homer, for a few hundred years, Greek society strove to rise above the tyrant and the court of the tyrant. The Greeks of the Classical period looked on the rulers of Persia and Egypt and their provincial imitators in the Greek world as at once frivolous and dangerous, because, in the Greek opinion, they were motivated not by the moral consensus of a responsible community, but by the whims of what we today we would call a collection of celebrities.”Written nearly 60 years ago, the last sentence in this passage by Rexroth fits to a “T” the administration poised to take power in the US. We will be ruled over by the whims of a collection of celebrities, who are as frivolous and dangerous today as their counterparts in the courts of Egypt, Babylon, and Persia were back then.Anybody want to take the bet that the main aim of the Trump Administration will be to “prove” that the 2020 election was stolen from him because as he constantly reminds everybody, he is “not a loser.”
Hi Mr. SIdhu,
While you may believe that broadband access is a benefit to all, there are more than a few who believe otherwise. In fact, there appears to be an anti-broadband movement that is gaining traction (Frank, 2018).
As a supplementary observation, it also may be the case that privacy concerns and declining levels of public interest in census and survey data collection efforts (see, e.g., McGeeney et al., 2019) have reached the point that any attempt to increase census response rates beyond increasing broadband access will yield at best only meager gains.
You may want your staff to do a more thorough job reasearching a topic before you put your name on a universal statement such as “...its benefits are undisputed.”
References
Frank, B. (2018). Don’t want 4G or 5G small towers near your home? Activists take the fight to Washington. Activist Post (https://www.activistpost.com/2018/10/dont-want-4g-or-5g-small-cell-towers-near-your-home-activists-take-the-fight-to-washington.html).
McGeeney, K., B. Kris, S. Mullenax, L. Kall, G. Walejko, M. Vines, N. Bates, and Y. G. Trejo. (2019) 2020 census barriers, attitudes, and motivators study survey report. U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC. https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2020/program-management/final-analysis-reports/2020-report-cbams-study-survey.pdf.
My very best regards,
David A. Swanson
Hi Randy,
The broadband data are found in:
DeSalvo, B., M. Frame, H. King, M. Martin, D. Mejia, S. Robinson, J. Scurry, and S. Szelpka (2024). Local Estimates of internet adoption: Feasibility report. U.S Census Bureau (https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/demo/technical-documentation/community-resilience/leia/2022_LEIA_Feasibility_Report.pdf).