One good Republican

Well it seems like there is at least one good Republican in favour of Municipal Wi-Fi - apparently John McCain is co-sponsouring a bill that would explicitly allow municipalities to set up their own broadband networks. This would turn the tables on States that have recently danced with the devil, formerly known as big-telco, and agreed to a state-wide ban on municipal wi-fi.

Now that Internet access has become as much an essential service as clean water and air, it seems to me to be nothing but a good thing that government should regulate in favour of allowing government the power to provide it, especially when private business is so busy gouging the market. If you want examples of commodity de-regulation gone wrong look no further than South American countries where water business was sold off to private (foreign) companies who then saw fit to gouge the local populace just because they could, and to California where Enron pissed its pants with pleasuret as it sucked $30+ billion from the State while exercising its "free market" rights (read greedy corporate monopoly) in an orgy of profit making excesses.