There's a battle brewing between the telecom giant of yore and the tech giant of now, AT&T and Google, over little old us. AT&T is demanding that the FCC require Google to stop blocking some calls to rural telephone numbers on the relatively new Google Voice application.

Last Friday, the FCC launched an inquiry into Google Voice's blocking of calls and began an review of whether the application should be regulated as a traditional telephone service, also known as a common carrier. Google has rejected such claims, saying in a blog posting that Google Voice is a Web application and not a telecom service.

That is from the Washington Post's tech blog. Read it all here. AT&T claims that Google has blocked calls to an ambulance service, a community center and a tribal center. (Out here in the sticks, we are more expensive to connect up to the grid. Ergo, phone companies - including AT&T - have tried but failed to find ways around the rules that say they have to connect to the more expensive numbers.)

The FCC's answer to the question of whether Google Voice is a telecom carrier or an Internet site might already be available in how the federal agency has structured its inquiry. It is investigating whether Google has violated telecom rules but has declined so far to do the same when it comes to net neutrality and other rules designed to make sure all Internet users can access the same websites and tools. I say, If it looks like duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck ...

The outcome of this FCC inquiry will matter immensely to states like South Dakota. Should Google get a pass on this, it would probably be less than a decade before we Dakotans would be living parallel lives to our big city brethren, suffering a similar fate to those towns bypassed by the railroads or the interstate highways. There are a smattering of hollowed out buildings near Ellsworth Airforce Base that illustrate the importance of an on- and off-ramp.

Google's apparent intentions to prevent some people from using its voice app raises the question of whether the company is violating its own mantra - Don't be evil. What might not seem so terrible in Palo Alto must seem downright cruel and inhumane in Eagle Butte.

And, as a fan of Google fan and tech enthusiast Jeff Jarvis, I wonder where he is on this one? So far, radio silence.
 

In a national media moment that would make PP proud - of a Democrat, even - SD state Rep. Garry Moore, D-Yankton, stood up for Gov. Mike Rounds in his veto of a law that would have required young children to ride in booster seats. Read/listen to the NPR report here.

I'm to the point anymore where I firmly believe that maybe government should just take the children at birth and raise them for us, Moore said. They're not letting parents make their own decisions anymore. And it just seems ludicrous to me to make these laws telling parents what to do.

Moore was speaking to increased pressure coming from the National Transportation Safety Board trying to get three hold-out states - SD, Arizona, Florida - to pass booster seat laws.

If they use a booster seat and a seat belt, rather than a seat belt alone, they reduce their risk of injury by 59 percent. said Deborah Hersman, head of the NTSB. And what the data and the facts tell us is that it's much safer to be in a booster seat that restrains your child properly in the event of an accident.

The NPR report did not mention Project 8, Gov. Rounds' program to promote the use of child seats and distribute them for free to some families. I had our little David's seat checked out by this program, and I understand it is Rounds' idea to "educate not legislate." For South Dakota's sake, I wish this information had been included as I think it's a valid, non-hayseed policy position to try to increase the use of booster seats through this kind of a program rather than through tickets and fines. (Anyone know of any data on child seat use in South Dakota versus other states?)

In any event, we can be sure this one will be with is during the law-making months of January and February. I don't look for Rounds to change his position.
 

"My name is Jim Abourezk, and I used to work for the government." That was the opening line - and an applause generator - at a Friday night fundraiser in Rapid City. The local labor temple, a favorite of local Democrats, is a dimly lit cinder block cavern made cozy by well-worn vinyl flooring and metal folding chairs. This makes it an unlikely venue for a statewide barnstorming tour of not one but two iconoclasts.

What the place lacked in warmth former Sens. Jim Abourezk and George McGovern delivered - Abourezk in a fiery, unapologetic screed against a corrupt GOP and McGovern in a heart-warming, professorial, self-effacing essay about the greater good. (Disclosure: I'm assuming that's all that McGovern's speech was, as I had to leave in the middle of it - baby's bed time and all. That's what it was up until my departure, and that's McGovern's signature style.)

Above, Abourezk addresses the Friday night crowd.

The event was a fundraiser for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Scott Heidepriem, the state's Senate minority leader of Sioux Falls. Neither Heidepriem nor his campaign manager Steve Jarding were on hand.

(I had expected to be late to the party when it came to publishing a report on this event, as weekend activities kept me from the blog. However, even though Mount Blogmore's Kevin Woster, Dakota Day's Sam Hurst and robbinsdale radical's Curtis Price were in the house, they are apparently even busier than me. No other published reports as I write this.)

Here's a closer look at Abourezk.

We need a government that is honest, Abourezk said. This one-party system is ruining South Dakota's clean reputation.

Gasps, tsk-tsks and here-heres came from the crowd.

Among the unforgivable crimes committed by South Dakota's GOP, according to Abourezk, are the following:

• Gov. Mike Rounds and the governor-appointed Board of Regents allowing SDSU President David Chicoine to serve on the board of directors for Monsanto, "one of the dirtiest chemical companies in the world," for $400,000 per year - in addition to a state salary Abourezk says is $300,000 per year. (A Google search seems to confirm these numbers - they're often-quoted - but I did not find original source documentation.) As the crowd tsk-tsk'd, Abourezk said: "You can see the conflict, but they can't."
• A too-friendly relationship between the state Department of Envirnment & Natural Resources / governor-appointed Board of Minerals and Environment and Hyperion company officials, as Hyperion seeks to build a huge oil refinery in the middle of pastoral Union County farm territory. Abourezk named Hyperion top dog Albert Huddleston cited a dinner out among Hyperion officials and the state officials who were considering whether to grant the permits needed to build the refinery. "It's so pervasive they don't even notice it," Abourezk said.
• A $300,000 state grant to former state legislator and 2008 GOP US Senate candidate Joel Dykstra, for a Dykstra business venture. (Again, a Google search lends support to this accusation, although it appears this was originally a loan, and $200,000 was later converted to a grant. This also matches what I remember having been reported at some time in the middle-past.)
• More than 1,800 no-bid state contracts. (One might assume this implies that a Dem governor would not have no-bid contracts? Just wondering.)

Abourezk did conclude with this:

Scott Heidepriem is tough enough to resist the desires of cronyism.

That would make him the rare politician indeed. Even the rare human being.

McGovern reviews his notes before speaking Friday night in Rapid City.

I don't have nearly as incendiary quotations from McGovern. Most of what I heard involved a story about how, as a US House member, he got sent to speak on behalf of Hubert Humphrey to the great disappointment of the fellow who picked him up at the airport and then introduced him with: "My fellow Minnesotans, I have some bad news."

The Abourezk-McGovern tour is a fascinating bit of political sociology/archeology on many levels. The contrast in styles is stark - tour organizers are wise to have Abourezk wind up the crowd and then have McGovern put warm, fuzzy smiles on their faces. Perhaps this leads to bigger checks being written? The sheer history wrapped up in this idea, both to South Dakota and the nation, is cat-nip to us junkies. The wisdom of putting up these two unapologetic liberals to campaign in a South Dakota gubernatorial race is a question that will be debated for the next year. There is the danger that they might overshadow Heidepriem himself, who is a mix of the two personalities.

For all that, I love that this political odd couple is on the road.