One of the key weaknesses of the Roman Empire was its reliance on tax farming (the actual term, by the way)–the practice of selling offices to private interests in return for a given sum of money to be obtained from the residents of the provinces governed. The tax farmers bought their offices and [...]

A message from the freepress campaign, working to keep the series of tubes a place where anyone can communicate. Once again, all categories checked, because keeping the Internet open is important to every issue:
Last week, a quarter-million people came out in force to tell the Federal Communications Commission to open the public airwaves [...]

Dear George,
Tell Your Story to the FCC
Read Other Stories
Phone and cable company lobbyists are attacking Internet freedom again in Washington. But people from every corner of the country are rising up to stop them. You can help by taking five minutes to save the Internet.
The FCC needs to hear your story about why an open [...]

OK, Measure 37 rewrite is going to the voters. It stinks, but it stinks far, far less than Measure 37, so we need to do everything we can to pass it.
Meanwhile, what do we concentrate on for the balance of the session?
If you like big-picture, long-term thinking, probably SB 838 (renewable portfolio standard for [...]

(This affects you no matter what substantive issues you are most interested in. Driving out small publishers will do to our discourse what Sprawl-Mart does to Main Street businesses in Oregon.)
POST OFFICE TO END 215 YEARS OF SUPPORT OF A FREE PRESS
BOB MCCHESNEY - The U.S. Post Office is in the process of [...]