Vermont Leads America!

Don’t hold your breath waiting for GOP Gov. Jim Douglas to issue a press release proclaiming his pride that Vermont is #1, but, ladies and gentlemen,  Vermont is #1.

Just caught it on the AP wire. The numbers don't lie.

The Green Mountain State of Vermont has the highest percentage of women serving in its legislature of any state in the United States - 37.2 percent.

The national average is 23.5 percent.

South Carolina has the lowest percentage - 8.8 percent.

Copy&paste: http://www.ncsl.org/programs/wln/WomenInOffice2007.htm

The numbers make a good argument for women running the world, eh?

Speaking of Gov. Jim Douglas, his Press Secretary Jason Gibbs emailed out a "press release" on Sunday announcing his appearnce at the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Springs, Maryland this Monday morn':

Governor’s Speech to be Webcast Live

WHAT: Gov. Highlights Economic and Social Value of Universal Broadband and Wireless

Montpelier, Vt. – Governor Jim Douglas on Monday will highlight his “e-state” initiative in the opening speech of the Freedom to Connect (F2C) conference.

According to the conference website, “F2C is a meeting of people engaged with internet connectivity and all that it enables.”  The topic of the conference is “how universal connectivity and plunging capital requirements of information production are changing fundamental economic and social assumptions.”

Gov. Douglas said his speech would focus on his e-state initiative and its ability to revolutionize telecommunications by making Vermont the nation’s first state where quality data and cellular voice coverage and high-speed broadband internet are available to everyone within Vermont’s borders—by 2010.”

Great.

Only one little problem.

I clicked the link to the live stream of the Douglas speech on two different browsers and got this:

"Requested File not found. The link you followed may be outdated or inaccurate."

The F2C webpage says it is streaming only in Quicktime, then insists on sending a Real Player file that won't open.

Obviously they don’t have a woman running things at Freedom-to-Connect, eh?

What is the governor of Vermont doing there anyway?

Comments

[the decider]

Bah hah! Nice catch Peter. The "E-State" whose own Executive Branch pr hacks can't post links correctly. Can you say "lead by example?"

[raccoonradio]

>>the highest percentage of women serving in its legislature

Speaking of women, today WTWK AM 1070 in Burlington switched from the prog talk format to "women's talk".
The Greenstone Media network has hosts like Rolanda,
the Radio Ritas, Lisa Birnbach, and "Women Aloud"

[Tom Evslin]

Peter:

The Governor was invited to speak because the scope of Vermont's e-state initiative makes us a leader nationally in planning for a future where connectivity is a necessity. People from other states have the same needs and want to hear about how we're planning to address them.

The value to Vermont in the Governor addressing the conference is that the industry leaders who are there can be and may well be a source of help in the tough job of providing connectivity to everyone in the state everywhere soon and that we need people to know that they can locate their connectivity-based businesses in Vermont. He was well-received (my view) when he suggested that entrepreneurs trial their new new connectivity products in (or even move their businesses to)what will be the first e-state.

Getting better connected can't be done purely from within the state.

The link in the press advisory was correct and leads to the conference page (I just tried it again to be sure). The conference did, however, have some technical problems and you may have experienced them as my wife did. Whenever the stream was not going out, the link from the conference page returned the "web page not found error" as it does now that the conference is over and there is no live straem. Ironic for a conference of telecom experts but such things happen.

I also found that some Vermonters could not get a good connection to the webcast even when it was working: examples of why we need better broadband in Vermont in a hurry.

[squeakywheel]

Given Douglas's pre-occupation with his whole "e-state" agenda, I'm guessing there must be some wealthy GOP campaign contributors looking for some compensation for their help during the last election. "We can help you with those telecom lines Jim." Is is an issue? Sure. But is it THE issue? Not even close. Personally, I'd like the State to explain ALL about the recent rash of system hacks it has experienced and how it can improve that security. Don't put the proverbial "horse before the cart." Making Vermont the nation's first e-State is pie in the sky and probably not something most ordinary Vermonters really care much about, except the ones with a lot of money. How about job creation and tax relief?

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