Bond ratings don't necessarily tell you anything about the performance of an entity. They tell you about the ability of the parent entity (corporation, municipality, whatever) to make interest payments.

Here's a different take, opinion site (I tried to stink to links from news sites, rather than opinion sites in my original post.):

http://freestatefoundation.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-gift-that-keeps-on-taking-municipal.html

Not quiet. From the link I cited (which I viewed, overall, as positive): "The towns borrowed $92.5 million to create the company and, while MI-Connection is now in the black operationally, it doesn’t yet generate enough revenue to also cover the towns’ payment on the debt." The chairman of the company estimated that within 3–5 years, MI-Connection would be able to stop receiving further subsidies.

That's a lot of debt. We're not talking millions of potential customers in this area either, the cities are relatively small.

But here's the biggest problem for Davidson and Mooresville. AT&T fiber is coming to the Triad and Google is coming to Charlotte. AT&T and Google cost the cities nothing (or very little), and in fact they probably make money from permitting and taxes. What will happen to these municipal networks when there's competition? Will municipal fiber be competitive with Google or AT&T?

After having read about a lot of these municipal setups, 100 million debt is not uncommon. This is expected to be paid back over decades. I guess we'll see how often they become--or remain--truly profitable over that time period.

That's exactly the point. Governments (and corporations, to be fair! any suitably behemoth organization) are terrible at planning for this kind of project and event. It's really hard to predict the future (no shit, huh). A small municipality like Davidson, NC (population 10,000) being saddled with even a portion of 100 million debt, is a big deal. It doesn't take more than a few bad assumptions to seriously and very negatively affect the entire population of the area. Maybe they will be lucky and succeed, maybe not. It's a risk, and in my view, frequently one that is not worth taking when corporate fiber is in the process of exploding across the country.

With an initial install cost of 40 million funded by the denizens of Longmont, I hope a lot of you subscribe at $59/mon!

I'm looking forward to getting fiber as well. Funny how back in the day those who played network games from a university were LPB (low ping bastards). 80ms pings?! So unfair to those of us on dialup...

Actually, North Carolina is one of the most active states in the country in terms of upcoming fiber installs. All of the main populations centers--Charlotte metro area, the Triangle (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill), and the Triad (Greensboro/Highpoint/Winston-Salem) are currently scheduled to receive AT&T fiber, Google Fiber, or both(!) within the next year or two.

Disclaimer, I live in NC and generally support municipal broadband projects when communities are underserved. I'm a big fan of the Wilson fiber service.

First, there is no concept of a citizen of a city or municipality. People are citizens of a state. Cities, counties, municipalities are all creatures of a state, and thus are under the control of state government, not local or federal government. There's no hypocrisy because the general argument in favor of states rights is not about ultimately devolving power to the smallest possible unit of control, but about maintaining state legal authority from being assumed by the federal government.

The main argument against municipal broadband projects is that they frequently fail and leave the municipality saddled with debt. This becomes the responsibility of the state government. Thus, state governments have the power to regulate what projects municipalities embark on, because the state government is the ultimate guarantor.

The secondary argument against municipal broadband is that municipal projects are typically able to entirely bypass permitting and other planning approval stages (costly stages and costly permits; let's not forget the requisite greasing of the political wheels). They are frequently given rights of way and access that private companies do not have authorization to use. There is a good chance that a municipal broadband network would discourage other companies from making a significant investment facing this kind of unbalanced competition. If the project then goes on to be a significant money loser, the municipality is even worse off than when it began.

Examples of municipal projects that have failed or otherwise had explosive debt:

Provo, UT (saved by Google)
Lafayette, LA http://www.rstreet.org/2014/05/30/muni-broadband-the-gift-that-keeps-on-taking/
Davidson, NC and Mooresville, NC http://www.lakenormancitizen.com/news/news/item/6426-reinventing-mi-connection-an-inside-look.html
Utah UTOPIA alliance http://www.wsj.com/articles/municipal-broadband-is-no-utopia-1403220660

If you do that you have to double the used web space, and that can be expensive. I'm already almost at the upper limit for my site and will have to go to the next tier of hosting soon. As it is, only three of the well over a hundred pages on my site need a special mobile version, and I would imagine a lot of other folks are the same way.

Having it first look for m.sitename, falling back to mobile.html if it exists and m.sitename doesn't, then index.html if there are neither m.sitename or mobile.html might be a good idea, though.

Oh fuck that, everybody has ancestors that were kept as slaves; even in the US, Free Black's were proportionately more to be slave owners than whites. The sad truth is Blacks are far more likely to racialy discriminate against Blacks than any other race is.

That got a lol.

I posted most of this elsewhere. I don't mean to be disrespectful to you or your parent's experiences (I'm just a "newbee" myself), but a good bit of what you write isn't quite correct.

No. Most worker bees go through a predictable lifecycle. See, e.g., http://www.clemson.edu/extension/county/oconee/programs/beekeeping/Honey_Bee_Life_Cycle_in_Pictures.pdf

1-2 days old: Cleaning duty
3-5 days old: Feeding older larva (nurse)
6-11 days old: Feeding younger larva (nurse)
12-17 days: comb maintenance and production (wax)
18-21 days: guard bee duty
22+ days: field bee (foraging)

It's relatively rare for a bee to have only one duty over its entire lifespan, though this can happen. Sometimes phases are skipped in the spring if a colony really needs foragers, for instance.

More than 100%! Colonies expand rapidly in the spring and into summer.

40,000 is on the low ends of most estimates I read for summer population. Some estimates are up to 100,000 bees!

When you buy "package bees" to install in a hive, the typical size is 3 lbs of bees. This is over 10,000 bees, and is a small "starter" colony. So, I think your estimate of 10,000 to 40,000 bees for full, established summer population is very low.

Finally, FAR more than 300-400 bees survive the winter. I do not think a colony that overwintered with only 400 bees would be viable.

A. Mellifera Carnica is the "Carniolan" bee. It's another somewhat common breed of honey bee, but nowhere near as common as the Italian bee--Apis Mellifera Ligustica.

Colonies death in spring is not at all uncommon. Colonies are actually at very great risk in the spring. When the queen starts breeding again and the hive starts growing, resources that have been stored since the previous summer are used up very rapidly. The bees leave the cluster and start moving around. A few bouts of bad spring weather that disrupts the early nectar flow or an unexpected hard freeze can destroy a colony that survived all winter long. If a spring colony has depleted all reserves and there's a nectar death and cold weather, things go bad fast!

Colony death in summer is more unusual.

Somewhat. Effective treatments have become available only in the last several year. Near constant monitoring is still required.

Feral bees have come close to being wiped out nationwide. This is by no means a problem that is linked to just the much vilified commercial beekepers.

Speculation and hyperbole. There are thousands of reasons hives can die. I do not believe the neonic connection has yet been proven, though with Europe banning, we should have some good data coming in over the next few years.

I keep bees as well, though I am not hugely experienced. I don't mean to disrespect the other post, but it's riddled with errors.

So you don't have to actually read all of my post--do you have ANY citation for hives that normally and naturally survive decades or centuries? I am not familiar with this claim and would like to read more.

No. Most worker bees go through a predictable lifecycle. See, e.g., http://www.clemson.edu/extension/county/oconee/programs/beekeeping/Honey_Bee_Life_Cycle_in_Pictures.pdf

1-2 days old: Cleaning duty
3-5 days old: Feeding older larva
6-11 days old: Feeding younger larva
12-17 days: comb maintenance and production (wax)
18-21 days: guard bee duty
22+ days: field bee (foraging)

It's relatively rare for a bee to have only one duty over its entire lifespan, though this can happen. Sometimes phases are skipped in the spring if a colony really needs foragers, for instance.

More than 100%! Colonies expand rapidly in the spring and into summer.

40,000 is on the low ends of most estimates I read for summer population. Some estimates are up to 100,000 bees!

When you buy "package bees" to install in a hive, the typical size is 3 lbs of bees. This is over 10,000 bees, and is a small "starter" colony. So, I think your estimate of 10,000 to 40,000 bees for summer population is very low.

Finally, FAR more than 300-400 bees survive the winter. I do not think a colony that overwintered with only 400 bees would be viable.

A. Mellifera Carnica is the "Carniolan" bee. It's another decently common breed of honey bee, but nowhere near as common as the Italian bee--Apis Mellifera Ligustica.

Colonies death in spring is not at all uncommon. Colonies are actually at very great risk in the spring. When the queen starts breeding and the hive starts growing, resources that have been stored since the previous summer are used up very rapidly. A few bouts of bad spring weather that disrupts the early nectar flow or an unexpected hard freeze can destroy a colony that survived all winter long.

Death in summer is more unusual.

Somewhat. Effective treatments have become available only in the last several year. Near constant monitoring is still required.

Speculation and hyperbole. There are thousands of reasons hives can die. I do not believe the neonic connection has yet been proven, though with Europe banning, we should have some good data coming in over the next few years.

I'd be preaching what I don't practice; my favorite phone was the Razr. Tiny thing. Big phones are fine for those who carry purses, but mine stays in my pocket. The one I have now is about as big as I can stand.

I'm about to post a journal with a suggestion for the W3C and mobile browser makers.

It should work. I don't see how it would mess up the charging circuit unless that circuit was poorly designed. It's the same as a TV degausser.

My day was a lineman working around AC at 90,000 volts. If he wore an analog (wind up) watch to work the watch would get magnetized by those high strength magnetic fields and stop working. He probably could have fixed the watches the same way.

Citation needed? I would be interested to read your sources about this, as I have never encountered this claim before.

The term "lifespan of a bee colony" is also somewhat interesting. Are you talking about one continuous genetic line of bees with successive daughter queens existing in the same location for decades or centuries?

Bee swarms do, very frequently, take over unused, abandoned, or dead hives, though there's no reliable genetic relationship there.

hiatus /haets/
noun (pl) -tuses, -tus
1.(esp in manuscripts) a break or gap where something is missing
2.a break or interruption in continuity
3.a break between adjacent vowels in the pronunciation of a word
4.(anatomy) a natural opening or aperture; foramen
5.(anatomy) a less common word for vulva

After weazeling around with doctored and/or adjusted temperature records, they say that warming is on hiatus, or stopped. If warming stops, Climatologists don't get paid, if it's warming but it's natural variability, they don't get paid, they're going to see anthropogenic global warming until the next ice-age.

Skeptical science edits posts after comments have started without notation, and deletes comments without explanation, they are an unacceptable source for almost any purpose; when I have mod points anybody referencing to either SS or WUWT almost automatically get modded overrated as either insights irrational reactions and turns conversations into flaming-troll fests. If you find a supporting reference more authoritative than the IPCC's AR5, please feel free to post it for my perusal.

Dude there has been an 18 year cessation of increase.