Month: May 2006

  • The Foetid Stench of North Carolina’s Lottery

    The title of my post will be no surprise to those of you have read any of my many comments on OrangePolitics about the NC lottery. The lottery was birthed by trickery,

  • That old family jalopy…

    Xan, over at FORTH GO, reports on his Prius experience, including mileage, covering the first 8 months of ownership.

  • Fiber is Future Proof

    [ UPDATE: ] One of the best forums I’ve attended in the last 6 years! Kudos to Laurin for organizing the program, Casey, Lynda, Ray, Chad and Shannon! They all did fantastic presentations covering a broad range of muni-networking issues – NPO-model, governmental operational efficiencies, collaboration, school and community usage, etc. [ Original Post: ] […]

  • Utility Commission on the ball…

    Kudos to the folks running our NC Utilities Commission! When the USA Today story fingering Bellsouth’s complicity in the NSA scandal broke I called our North Carolina Utilities Commission to lodge a complaint. The receptionist told me a “consumer specialist” would call within the hour to get details about my case. “Sure,” I said, pretty […]

  • Technology Board: Raymond, Party of One.

    Town IT lead Bob Avery and I constituted the sole attendance at tonight’s Technology Board swan song. During the recently well-attended dissolution of the Horace-William’s Committee, the committee members wrangled out some excellent final advisory language for Council. Tonight, the tech board was supposed to discuss and pass on 8 final recommendations/observations to Council. Most […]

  • May 18th Chapel Hill Municipal Networking Forum

    X-Posted from OrangePolitics: Town Forum on Municipal Networking On Thursday May 18 the Chapel Hill Town Council will host a public forum on Municipal Wireless Networking. The event will be from 7 to 9PM and be held at Town Hall, 405 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. All are invited to attend. The event will be […]

  • Bellsouth Back from the Abyss? Denies USA Today’s NSA Charges.

    Bellsouth denies USA Today charge, claims no sharing of records. According to CNN and other news sources, Bellsouth denies USA Today’s claim that it participated in the massive NSA privacy breach. In several reports, Bellsouth spokesman Jeff Battcher claims Battcher said BellSouth’s customer service department had received only 26 complaints about reports that private phone […]

  • FCC to the rescue? Call Bellsouth’s CEO Ackerman about their FCC violations.

    [ UPDATE: ] Bellsouth denies USA Today charge, claims no sharing of records.

  • Bellsouth’s Billion Dollar Mistake

    [ UPDATE: ] Bellsouth denies USA Today charge, claims no sharing of records. According to CNN and other news sources, Bellsouth denies USA Today’s claim that it participated in the massive NSA privacy breach. In several reports, Bellsouth spokesman Jeff Battcher claims Battcher said BellSouth’s customer service department had received only 26 complaints about reports […]

  • Punish the Peeping Toms

    If you’re concerned about the widespread domestic surveillance telephone companies, like Bellsouth, have performed on innocent Americans for the last five years, please contact the following folk: Rep. David Price – Contact. NC Utilities Commission – Contact. NC Attorney General – Contact. NC ACLU – Contact. National ACLU – Contact. Electionic Frontier Foundation (EFF) – […]

  • Can you hear me now, NSA? Not if you’re the Justice Department.

    From CNN and the AP via AudioActivism and Daily Wireless. X-posted from Brian Russel’s AudioActivism Domestic spying inquiry killed AP is reporting that the US Department of Justice has stopped its investigation of the warrantless phone spying done by the NSA at the approval of George Bush. “We have been unable to make any meaningful […]

  • Can you hear me now, NSA?

    I like to keep it local on Concerned Citizen, but this report does have a local angle.

  • Whining at the cows…

    I wanted to add the following to the HWCC’s final memorandum to Council. We remind the Council of the scope of work proposed by the HWCC in January and suggest that the Council recognize the necessary lead time required to reconstitute a citizen’s group to explore the issues in that proposal. The decision-making apparatus of […]

  • North Carolina Justice: Law & Order or CSI?

    [ UPDATE: ] Via WRAL-TV, the NC Supreme Court has issued a stay pending DNA tests in the case. May 12th, the State of North Carolina is poised to practice justice Law & Order style. Law & Order, a popular television franchise using stories “ripped from today’s headlines”, combines 22 minutes of heavy-handed police work […]

  • More than a nickel…

    From today’s eventually-to-be-paywalled HeraldSun The town of Chapel Hill figures it spent about $134,700 on hosting this year’s Apple Chill street fair and handling events both during and after the official hours of the festival. That total includes about $85,700 in costs for police, although Town Manager Cal Horton said the figure for police costs […]