New FCC Map of Nation's Broadband Coverage Relies on Self-Reporting by Four Major Carriers

At the minimum, at least what got published is not one of those 'Make-Believe' mappings that tries to state they have-it-all covered - there's no attempt to pretend it's got all the complete data consumers need. 

That accountability issue is cleared-up, addressed directly and noted right the start:  "As Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel pointed out on Twitter, it shouldn’t have taken this long for this map to be available. The law requiring that these maps be made, known as the Broadband Deployment Accuracy and Technological Availability (DATA) Act, was signed in March 2020, and the lack of details about broadband coverage has created confusion about the so-called digital divide for years.

The FCC finally made a new broadband map

of the US

0 New, 38 comments

It’s based on information provided by the four major carriers

By Mitchell Clark Aug 6, 2021, 2:35pm EDT

 

 

Insert copy

The Federal Communications Commission has launched a new map designed to show consumers what kind of cellular coverage they can expect in a given area from AT&T, T-Mobile, US Cellular, and Verizon. It’s been a long time coming, and it doesn’t address home internet availability, but it looks like an improvement over the agency’s woefully inadequate and inaccurate past attempts to show gaps in the nation’s broadband coverage.

PLEASE TAKE SOME MORE TIME TO READ ADDITIONAL POINTS:

It’s also worth noting that the map isn’t based on data that the FCC collected or crowdsourced. FCC acting chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a news release that the data was provided by the carriers who don’t have a great reputation for having the most accurate picture of where they do and don’t provide broadband (though the FCC is working on getting a better picture of home internet availability, and The Verge and Consumer Reports are working on examining how cost-effective broadband is). The map also doesn’t address the issue with home internet availability, which has been a long-running concern.

The FCC’s map (left) versus T-Mobile (right, top), AT&T (right, middle), and Verizon’s (right, bottom).

The interactive map lets users select which carrier’s coverage map they want to see, and it provides information about LTE coverage, voice coverage, or both. The FCC says the map is the work of its Broadband Data Task Force. The map is fairly user-friendly; instead of having to flip between T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon’s coverage maps, users can see all of the data in one place, overlaid on top of each other. The map also provides a distinction between data availability and voice availability — which is useful, as being able to make a call and being able to get online are obviously two very different things.

One big thing the map is missing is data about 5G coverage, or really any indicator of what kind of speeds users can expect. In a note about the map’s launch, Rosenworcel says the network has to provide at least 5Mbps down and 1Mbps up to qualify as 4G data coverage. If one carrier provided an area with 100Mbps speeds and another provided 10Mbps speeds, that could be difficult to distinguish on the map.

Data for the map is provided by the carriers

Rosenworcel also admits that this map is only a first step in the FCC’s work to improve the information available to consumers, but it’s an important one. It at least lets consumers know the minimum of what mobile coverage they should expect in a given area and gives them the tools to make more informed decisions about their cellular provider. Hopefully the FCC will be able to have a similar effort to map the availability of home internet connections in the future.

Update August 6th, 5:00PM ET: Clarified that this map doesn’t address home internet availability issues.

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3-Time Utah Governor Mike Leavitt Named Next President of The [Mormon] Tabernacle Choir @ Temple Square

From the seat of the highest elected office to answering a higher calling to speed-the-faith all around the world. Gosh that sounds great until there was this article about LDS Media altering appearances - No doubt 'a revelation' and visual testimony that appeared and was published in BARE RECORD OF TRUTH https://barerecord.blogspot.com/ Saturday, August 7, 2021

"Social media pressures us to look our best when we post photos. Photoshopping pictures before posting them on a social media has become a common thing among teenagers and even celebrities. Phone apps have been created to easily make you look better than you really are. While this innocent action might seem like a simple wish to enhance a look and appear our very best....let's just call it what it is.. VANITY.

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VANITY

Excessive attention in or admiration of one's own appearance or attractiveness to others

__________________________________

Some of the enhancements that people do to their appearance is to give themselves:

• Flawless and smooth skin
• Whiten teeth
• No more wrinkles or blemishes
• Removed age spots
• Contoured/adjusted facial features
• Enhanced eye color

While we might think this is just a fad with the self absorbed generation with cellphones, it might surprise you who else used photoshop techniques to improve their photograph portraits.

Bishop Gérald Caussé, presiding bishop of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. announced last week that our three-term Utah governor, Mike Leavitt will become the next president of The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square starting one Aug. 26.

For the media announcement, the Church posted a newly taken 2021 photograph of Leavitt with photo copyright to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I was surprised at how much the promotional photographed had been photoshopped. No wrinkles, no sagging under the chin, no age spots.

Here is the link to news story where the photo was published.  LINK HERE

 

If there is any doubt that the photo has been altered by the Church, here is side by side comparison with a photo that was taken of Mike Leavitt many years ago. LINK HERE.

The photo on the right was taken no sooner than in 2017.

The photo on the left was just recently taken for the Church with obvious techniques to make him look younger and better. (or at the very least, heavy amounts of makeup) Some might even say that it almost doesn't even look like the same man. 

 

THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF BOTTLED WATER

Introduction: “People trust bottled water because advertisers have done a good job of convincing people it’s a good option, so we need the effort on the other side.”

The lead author of the study, the ISGlobal researcher Cristina Villanueva, said: “Health reasons don’t justify the wide use of bottled water. Yes, strictly speaking, drinking tap water is worse for local health, but when you weigh both, what you gain from drinking bottled water is minimal. It’s quite obvious that the environmental impacts of bottled water are higher compared to tap water.”

Environmental impact of bottled water ‘up to 3,500 times greater than tap water’

the Guardian

In the US, 17m barrels of oil are needed to produce the plastic to meet annual bottled water demand. Photograph: Robert Smith/Alamy Stock Photo/Alamy Stock Photo

 

INSERT: The impact of bottled water on natural resources is 3,500 times higher than for tap water, scientists have found.

The research is the first of its kind and examined the impact of bottled water in Barcelona, where it is becoming increasingly popular despite improvements to the quality of tap water in recent years.

Research led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) found that if the city’s population were all to drink bottled water, this would result in a 3,500 times higher cost of resource extraction than if they all drank tap water, at $83.9m (£60.3m)a year.

Researchers also found the impact of bottled water on ecosystems is 1,400 times higher than tap water.

The authors concluded that the reduction in environmental impacts more than offset the small risk of bladder cancer associated with drinking tap water. The process of treating drinking water generates low levels of trihalomethanes (THM), which have been associated with a higher risk of bladder cancer. (THM levels in drinking water are regulated in the EU.)

> In the US, 17m barrels of oil are needed to produce the plastic to meet annual bottled water demand.

> In addition, bottled water in the UK is at least 500 times more expensive than tap water.

Villanueva added: “I think this study can help to reduce bottled water consumption, but we need more active policies to change that.

“For example, in Barcelona, (1) we could have more education campaigns to make the public aware that the health gains from drinking bottled water are minor compared to the environmental impacts.

(2) We need to improve access to public water, to public fountains, to public buildings where you can bring your own bottle and don’t need to buy one.

(3) We need to facilitate access to public water in public streets.

“People trust bottled water because advertisers have done a good job of convincing people it’s a good option, so we need the effort on the other side.”

 

 

 

 

2020 Census (Before-and-After The Data Release) Drawing Boundaries, Re-Mapping and Re-Districting Later

Appointed redistricting commissions have been selected. The State of Arizona has an Independent Redistricting Commission. Here in Mesa five 'non-partisan' members were approved by the city council on April 29, 2021 more than four months ago.

Related content from earlier posts on this blog are inserted farther down, but first some general

comments about the political proclivities for Republicans and Democrats

========================================================================

RE-DISTRICTING:

2020 Census Data

Due to Covid-19 and other impacts, the decennial census data has been delayed several months. The U.S. Census Bureau announced that local census data will be delivered by August 16, 2021.

The August release of data is called the “Legacy Format” and it will not be in a format for public use. We anticipate converting the raw data into a usable format for public use in early September 2021.

This is yet another reason your input on how you define your community, your Community of Interest, is so important! Having your input now will only help the process once data is released and in a usable format.

 

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Republicans poised to rig the next election by gerrymandering electoral maps

A supreme court justice described the last round of gerrymandering as ‘dishonoring US democracy’. Another round is about to start – will this be another ‘political heist’?

• How US politicians bend redistricting rules – a visual guide

Illustration: Guardian Design

"Ten years ago, Republicans pulled off what would later be described as “the most audacious political heist of modern times”.

It wasn’t particularly complicated. Every 10 years, the US constitution requires states to redraw the maps for both congressional and state legislative seats. The constitution entrusts state lawmakers with the power to draw those districts. Looking at the political map in 2010, Republicans realized that by winning just a few state legislative seats in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, they could draw maps that would be in place for the next decade, distorting them to guarantee Republican control for years to come. 

Republicans executed the plan, called Project Redmap, nearly perfectly and took control of 20 legislative bodies, including ones in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Then, Republicans set to work drawing maps that cemented their control on power for the next decade. Working behind closed doors, they were brazen in their efforts.

> Just a coincidence or not, here in Mesa February 2019 there was Project Red Hawk.

The area is a minimum of 160 contiguous acres - the Red Hawk property is approximately 187 acres - the project has been known to insiders by a code name, “Project Red Hawk,’’ for more than a year because Mesa signed a confidentiality agreement.

(That may or may not be consequential for people moving into surrounding residential communities in District 6)

___________________________________________

Back to some statements from the article > . . .This manipulation, called gerrymandering, “debased and dishonored our democracy”, Justice Elena Kagan would write years later. It allowed Republicans to carefully pick their voters, insulating them from the accountability that lies at the foundation of America’s democratic system. Now, the once-a-decade process is set to begin again in just a few weeks and Republicans are once again poised to dominate it. And this time around things could be even worse than they were a decade ago.

> The redistricting cycle arrives at a moment when American democracy is already in peril. Republican lawmakers in states across the country, some of whom hold office because of gerrymandering, have enacted sweeping measures making it harder to vote. Republicans have blocked federal legislation that would outlaw partisan gerrymandering and strip state lawmakers of their authority to draw districts.

Advances in mapmaking technology have also made it easier to produce highly detailed maps very quickly, giving lawmakers a bigger menu of possibilities to choose from when they carve up a state. It makes it easier to tweak lines and to test maps to ensure that their projected results will hold throughout the decade.

“I’m very worried that we’ll have several states, important states, with among the worst gerrymanders in American history,” said Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a law professor at Harvard, who closely studies redistricting. “That’s not good for democracy in those states.”

> In 2019, the supreme court said for the first time there was nothing federal courts could do to stop even the most excessive partisan gerrymandering, giving lawmakers a green light to be even more aggressive.

> And because of the supreme court’s 2013 decision in the landmark Shelby County v Holder case, places with a history of voting discrimination will no longer have to get their maps approved by the federal government for the first time since 1965.

It’s a lack of oversight that could embolden lawmakers to attempt to draw districts that could dilute the influence of minority voters.

> ". . .Democrats and grassroots groups have spent the last few years educating citizens about the process and building up an army of volunteers across the country to closely monitor mapmaking. Part of that effort has been teaching people how to use publicly available technology to draw their own electoral maps.

> “It’s an entirely new world than 10 years ago in terms of public mapping software. The capacity for the wide public to draw their own maps and identify their own communities,” said Moon Duchin, a mathematician who leads the MGGG redistricting lab at Tufts University, which has built publicly available mapping tools.

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BLOGGER INSERT

This time around, many states will have redistricting commissions for the first time, putting a bit more distance between the legislature and the process. And many states will be experimenting with collecting more and richer public input than ever before. Try your hand at redistricting! Make plans of your own and share them widely—in some cases, you can submit them as public input in your state.

You draw the lines.

If you’d like a custom module for your locality, fill out our request form. If you are interested in partnering with us or sponsoring a voting rights project, reach out to us at Districtr@mggg.org.

YOU CAN DRAW YOUR COMMUNITY

Communities of Interest (known as “COIs”) are groups or neighborhoods with significant shared interests that deserve consideration by representatives. Many states have rules that indicate that COIs should be kept whole by districting plans whenever possible.

But this has been one of the hardest to handle of all the priorities in the redistricting world—if you show up at a meeting to say your community matters, how does that information make its way to the line-drawers?Districtr lets you put your community on the map (literally!) by marking places that matter to make your shared interests visible.This year, more states than ever will be collecting community input in the redistricting process.                    

Districtr is a free, public web tool for districting and community identification, brought to you by the MGGG Redistricting Lab.

 

Origin story: The goal of Districtr is to put the tools of redistricting in the hands of the public, with an emphasis on meeting the needs of civil rights organizations, community groups, and redistricting commissions.

Districtr came about from a conversation with Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR), the Boston arm of the national Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. LCR was describing their work with community members in Lowell, MA, who were frustrated about not having a voice in the city council

Reference: We are also asking the public to identify their communities using DistrictR, an online public mapping tool at https://districtr.org/tag/mesaaz. 

This allows you to share how you think city council districts should be drawn to best represent your community. 

All maps submitted will be carefully reviewed by the Redistricting Commission. 

The map of Mesa's current council districts is available at www.mesaaz.gov/redistricting.
Mesa residents can submit questions to Redistricting@mesaaz.gov. 

The Redistricting Commission's recommended map is expected to be delivered to Mesa City Council on Nov. 15, 2021.
Contact: Kevin Christopher
(480) 644-4699
Kevin.Christopher@mesaaz.gov 

 

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Empowered with those maps, members of the public can better challenge lawmakers on their justification for drawing strange-looking maps, said William Desmond, a redistricting expert who advised Arizona’s redistricting commission in 2010 and is working with California’s this year.

“Members of the public and interested parties, there’s going to be a lot more avenues open to them if they want to try their hand at drawing their own districts,” he said. “If they want to test the claims, like, ‘OK you said you can only do this if you split these counties, let’s see if I can take a whack at it.’ There’s lots more ways you can do it this time, and a lot higher level of quality.”

 

These points: Adam Kincaid, the director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, a GOP group focused on redistricting, downplayed the effects of Project Redmap.

“Redmap has kind of taken on this mythos about what it was and what it was not. The reality was Redmap was a campaign to raise money to fund state legislative races around redistricting,” he said. “The best guardrails for gerrymandering have always been the American electorate. Shifting electorates break gerrymandering.”

>Some states - Arizona is one - have chosen to strip lawmakers of their ability to draw districts altogether.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

RELATED CONTENT

What you can do is outlined farther down with links, contacts and phone numbers

All maps submitted will be carefully reviewed by the Redistricting Commission. 

 

 

Public Workshops Scheduled for Mesa City Council Redistricting

Every ten years, local governments, including the City of Mesa, use new census data to redraw their City Council district lines to reflect how local populations have changed. Mesa's nonpartisan Redistricting Commission, a five-member panel created by mandate of the City Charter, has scheduled a series of public workshops to get input from our residents:

Public Workshops Scheduled for Mesa City Council Redistricting

July 21, 2021 at 1:18 pm

Every ten years, local governments, including the City of Mesa, use new census data to redraw their City Council district lines to reflect how local populations have changed. Mesa's nonpartisan Redistricting Commission, a five-member panel created by mandate of the City Charter, has scheduled a series of public workshops to get input from our residents:

> Thursday, Aug. 12 at 6 p.m.

Webster Recreation Center, 202 N. Sycamore

> Saturday, Aug. 14 at 10 a.m. 

Fire Station 218, 845 N. Alma School Road

> Tuesday, Aug. 17 at 6 p.m.

Eagles Community Center, 828 E. Broadway Road

> Wednesday, Aug. 18 at 12 p.m.

Red Mountain Library, 635 N. Power Road

> Wednesday, Aug. 25 at 6 p.m. - Virtual Zoom meeting (link coming soon)

> Thursday, Aug. 26 at 6 p.m.

Cadence Community Room, 9760 E. Cadence Parkway

> Saturday, Aug. 28 at 10 a.m.

Madison Elementary, 849 S. Sunnyvale

All of the public workshops will have translation services in Spanish.
We are also asking the public to identify their communities using DistrictR, an online public mapping tool at https://districtr.org/tag/mesaaz. 

This allows you to share how you think city council districts should be drawn to best represent your community. 

All maps submitted will be carefully reviewed by the Redistricting Commission

02 August 2021

 

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