Today’s ‘Read the Whole Thingers’ (052407)

Former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey, who served as a member of the 9/11 Commission, has occasionally made a lot of sense. This is one of those times.

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You too, can swear off the sensationalist doomsday prophets by joining Apocahaholics Anonymous. The link has a nice rundown of many of the flawed predictions of calamity in the past 50 or so years.

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Moving on to a legitimate problem (HT CincyNation; bold is mine) –

May 21, 2007

Report: City lags economically
Named 1 of 8 financially weak in Ohio

Cincinnati is one of eight “economically weak” large cities in Ohio, and one of 65 nationally, that lags behind the rest of the country but could benefit greatly if state governments got behind efforts to revive core urban areas in the industrial heartland.

That’s the conclusion of a report ranking 302 cities across the country based on economic data released Sunday by the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

The data is from 2000, the latest available for all the cities studied.

….. The data by which Cincinnati was determined to be “weak” was confined to the city itself (or, for some data, Hamilton County).

By contrast, the much larger Cincinnati metropolitan area was rated “moderate” based on stronger economic conditions in areas outside the urban core.

Obviously sobering note ignored by writer John Newberry: The city was “weak” even before the 2001 riots.

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On “Net Neutrality,” from the Institute for Policy Innovation — here are the final four paras from its May 17 TechBytes offering (”If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It”):

But what if we were to apply to private tollroads “highway neutrality” regulations along the lines of the “network neutrality” regulations that are being proposed for our privately-owned broadband infrastructure?

What if tollroad operators could not charge higher prices to tractor trailers because of their heavier use of the infrastructure? What if they could not offer an “express lane” to people willing to pay a little more, or who agreed to certain terms such as carpooling? What if they couldn’t adjust tolls based on demand?

It would make no sense, and all of the benefits of having a privately-managed infrastructure would be out the window. Consumers wouldn’t benefit, and the operators of the road wouldn’t benefit, so we’d be back with a stagnant infrastructure.

Fact is – operating infrastructure costs money. The best case scenario is private ownership and control of infrastructure, with markets setting prices, and with the owners free to innovate and to try new business models. We already have the best case scenario in our broadband infrastructure. And if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.