Civil Liberties

Recently the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has been working on rolling out what could be the largest public wireless network in the USA. That momentum was interrupted when Pennsylvania house bill 30, a.k.a. the "Verizon Bill," was introduced to the Pennsylvania legislature in Harrisburg.

Simply, Verizon doesn't want competition from the Wireless Philadelphia Initiative on providing wireless internet access. The key part of Verizon's argument is that the City of Philadelphia would be charging the citizens to construct the wireless network, pay for its long term maintenance, and supposedly for access to the wireless network itself. Verizon claims it would not charge citizens for the CREATION of a wireless network. But it is clear they would have to charge for ACCESS to the network once this future private network was constructed.

Guest Post by Matt Compton

Bob Dumas, the host of radio-station G105's morning "Showgram" is organizing a "Heterosexual Pride Parade" to be held in Chapel Hill a week from Saturday. Anyhow, he's already gone through the proper legal hoops, and if I heard correctly on the radio this morning, he lacks only a central meeting location in order to attain permission from the Town of Chapel Hill.

Apparently, this is for real. Dumas told his listeners that he was expecting a huge crowd to show up for the event, including "hundreds of students." A listener of the Showgram is even manufacturing apparel for the event, which the disk jockey plugged on the radio program this morning.

Dumas and the Showgram are no strangers to controversy. Just months ago, a Durham minister circulated a petition calling for Dumas' resignation after he heard the disk jockey insult American Idols winner Fantasia Barrino as "ghetto" and "low class."

I know, I know. Richard Florida's work on the so-called "creative class" has been one of the most over-used studies of the year. But he does have some good points. And one of the facts he most likes to put out there is that diverse regions with tolerant attitudes towards minorities. Our area became that much more appealing to gays last year when it became harder for the state to enforce laws that restricted what citizens could do in the privacy of our homes (Lawrence v. Texas). However, that could all change when/if the state legislature and voters pass a bill to further encode the discrimination by the state of gay people? That might just happen. There are 67 co-sponsors on a proposed amendment in the house that would not only ban gay marriage, but might also restrict the rights of municipalities and even private companies from offering benefits to unmarried partners. I wonder what the economic impact of such a move would have on some of our major cities?