Pennsylvania
Roadmap aims to guide broadband expansion in southwestern Pennsylvania – Farm and Dairy
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Funding for broadband enlargement has ballooned previously few years, because of billions of {dollars} funneling from the federal infrastructure invoice, some pandemic reduction packages and state and native packages.
Pennsylvania is amongst different states transferring in direction of higher broadband entry, with a brand new broadband improvement authority designed to direct federal funds, and the launch of native initiatives, like a not too long ago introduced $20 million effort in Beaver County.
To assist information broadband enlargement efforts in southwestern Pennsylvania, the Southwestern Pennsylvania Fee and companions like Carnegie Mellon College and Allies for Youngsters launched a Connectivity Roadmap April 25, specializing in 10 Pennsylvania counties and town of Pittsburgh.
The roadmap contains instruments for prioritizing initiatives and objectives and techniques for the area. It additionally gives a have a look at the area’s present broadband state of affairs.
“Throughout this undertaking, we had the chance to fulfill with residents by group conversations throughout the area to include the actual challenges confronted in day by day lives as a part of the roadmap answer,” mentioned Jamie Baxter, government director at Allies for Youngsters, in an April 25 press launch. “Most of the private tales we heard strengthened the mission of this initiative — that the web is crucial for our communities to attach and be taught, it’s costly and unreliable for a lot of residents, and rural communities really feel left behind.”
Present state of affairs
The fee, which focuses on metropolitan planning within the area it covers, began to see broadband as a serious want just a few years earlier than the pandemic.
“The difficulty of broadband actually got here to mild in 2018 and 2019 after we have been creating the area’s long-range transportation and improvement plan,” mentioned Andy Waple, deputy government director for the fee, in an April 25 webinar concerning the roadmap.
So, a couple of yr in the past, the fee and its companions began engaged on a plan for enhancing the area’s connectivity.
To develop the roadmap, they checked out web velocity take a look at information from greater than 3,400 respondents and held 5 digital workshops, 17 in-person group conferences and greater than 25 telephone calls with business leaders, web service suppliers and county planning administrators.
About 63% of survey respondents mentioned their households would profit from higher web service. Issues just like the group conferences helped validate survey and velocity take a look at outcomes, and offered context for a extra full view of the area.
Unserved and underserved areas the roadmap recognized included 36,000 households, 15,000 companies and greater than 500 group anchor establishments. The unserved and underserved areas are primarily rural.
However affordability is one other piece of the puzzle, and one which got here up extra typically in city areas. Greater than 87% of web prospects paid greater than $75 per 30 days for his or her service. Socioeconomic components, like earnings and digital literacy, play a serious half in who has entry. In some instances, points with infrastructure and socioeconomic challenges overlap.
“I believe the underlying difficulty is that there’s no requirement for transparency in both of those indicators,” mentioned Karen Lightman, government director of Metro21: Sensible Cities Institute at Carnegie Mellon.
The Federal Communications Fee’s maps have relied on self-reported information from web service gives on the census block degree, which has typically resulted in overstating entry, and suppliers are additionally not required to be clear about how a lot they cost for his or her service.
Roadmap
Waple added the teams needed to ensure the roadmap’s suggestions assist serve susceptible populations within the area equally. The 12 objectives the roadmap identifies are grouped underneath 5 classes, together with coverage, infrastructure, community, digital fairness and affordability.
The fee and its companions initially deliberate to establish a protracted listing of particular initiatives that would profit the area. However since coverage and expertise have been altering rapidly, they fearful initiatives they counsel now may very well be out of date by the point funding is secured. So as an alternative, they got here up with instruments for evaluating doable initiatives, and 14 instance initiatives.
These embody a decision-making software that implies particular options relying on whether or not an space struggles with a scarcity of infrastructure, affordability or digital literacy, methods of measuring how efficient a undertaking is — and components to contemplate in prioritizing initiatives, like the fee per person, how inexpensive service will likely be as soon as it exists, how a lot funding is required for a undertaking and extra.
A lot of the instance initiatives suggest routes to deploy extra fastened broadband networks in unserved areas — for instance, from the Beaver County line to Interstate 376 through U.S. 30 and State Route 576, in Allegheny County. The roadmap additionally provides an summary of the funding and kinds of funding at present accessible for broadband.
Going ahead
The fee and its companions are hoping the roadmap will assist native leaders develop and prioritize initiatives and packages to enhance connectivity within the area. They’re planning to work with county commissioners and different native leaders to maintain creating regional insurance policies round broadband.
“Quite a lot of the counties are doing an excellent job on their very own. You already know, we don’t wish to stand of their approach after they’re … making use of for funding and creating initiatives,” Waple mentioned. “We wish to be a useful resource to our counties and our members and the area.”
They’re additionally planning a regional advertising marketing campaign to advertise the advantages of broadband, and spotlight packages that may assist with affordability challenges.
To see the complete roadmap and different sources, go to spcregion.org/linked.
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Pennsylvania
Man tased after climbing into press area of Trump rally in Pennsylvania
![Man tased after climbing into press area of Trump rally in Pennsylvania Man tased after climbing into press area of Trump rally in Pennsylvania](https://mediaproxy.salon.com/width/1200/https://media2.salon.com/2024/08/trump-rally-johnstown-taser-2168550452jpg.jpg)
A man was tased by police after attempting to enter the press area of a Donald Trump rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania on Friday.
The failed storming of the press corral came after Trump criticized CNN’s interview with Kamala Harris as overly deferential, according to the Associated Press. In a video shared by CBS News’ Taureen Small, the man can be seen climbing the riser before being pulled down by a gaggle of sheriff’s deputies.
In the clip, Trump supporters can be heard jeering the man, with one attendee shouting, “Cut his head off.” Attendees also cheered when police escorted the man away, leading the president to remark from the stage “Is there anywhere that’s more fun to be than a Trump rally?”
Trump’s comments follow his campaign’s line of attack against the interview, which drew 6 million viewers to the cable news outlet. Senior campaign adviser Jason Miller told Newsmax earlier this week that Harris didn’t “look presidential.”
“There’s a certain threshold that you have to meet,” he said. “Can you lead this country? Other candidates in the past have had it. I don’t see that with Kamala Harris.”
The former president’s speech was full of inflammatory language directed at Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. He repeatedly referred to the vice president as “Comrade Kamala” and told attendees that she wants to “outlaw your car and truck and force you to buy electric vehicles” as part of a “radical left war on Pennsylvania.”
Trump worked blue at certain points throughout the rally, which was held less than 80 miles from the site of a rally where he was nearly assassinated in July. He told the crowd that “every place [Harris] has touched has turned to s**t.”
Pennsylvania
Police Tackle, Tase Man at Trump Rally in Pennsylvania
A chaotic scene—and police intervention—played out during Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on Friday, just 75 miles from the town of Butler, where a would-be assassin shot at the former president last month, killing one rallygoer and injuring two others.
As Trump spoke onstage, a man in the audience attempted to enter the cordoned-off press pen, according to multiple reports and videos from the scene. The individual was able to breach a barrier of bicycle racks surrounding the pen, and was climbing a riser on which reporters and cameramen were stationed when he was tackled and subdued by security officers and law enforcement officials, who eventually tased him.
Law enforcement officers detain a rallygoer who tried to climb onto the press riser during a campaign event for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on Aug. 30, 2024.
Brian Snyder/Reuters
The unnamed man was subsequently taken into custody, the Johnstown Police Department told the Daily Beast on Friday night, but has subsequently been released. No information concerning his identity or potential motive has yet been made public; speculation on social media has presented him as either an incensed Trump supporter or a radicalized counter-protester. Pick your poison!
(The Daily Beast has reached out to the Johnstown Police Department and the Cambria County Sheriff’s Department for further comment.)
At the time of the incident, Trump was criticizing the media for its coverage of his campaign and the election more broadly—and, in particular, attacking CNN’s recent interview with his opponent, Kamala Harris.
As the man was detained and removed from the rally, the former president quipped, “Is there anywhere that’s more fun to be than a Trump rally?” per the Associated Press.
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania Democrats quietly change website page recruiting poll watchers after GOP called out ‘disinformation’
![Pennsylvania Democrats quietly change website page recruiting poll watchers after GOP called out ‘disinformation’ Pennsylvania Democrats quietly change website page recruiting poll watchers after GOP called out ‘disinformation’](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/88525516.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=1024)
Pennsylvania Democrats quietly updated their website Thursday night after Republicans accused them of publishing “misinformation” on the site’s recruitment page, which appeared to be enlisting out-of-state poll watchers in violation of the battleground state’s election law.
The Republican National Committee sent a letter to Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt earlier in the day Thursday, pointing out that the Pennsylvania Dems’ “Voter Protection” page on their website said that poll watchers on Election Day “must be physically present in PA for their shift, but do not necessarily have to be PA voters.”
That language contradicted Pennsylvania election law going back to 1937, which states, “Each watcher so appointed must be a qualified registered elector of the county in which the election district for which the watcher was appointed is located.”
“The misinformation on the PA Dems’ website threatens the integrity of November’s general election,” the RNC’s letter to Schmidt reads, explaining that the Democratic Party cannot be allowed to “flood polling places with unqualified out-of-state poll watchers.”
The Pennsylvania Department of State told The Post that poll watchers are “specifically defined as individuals appointed by candidates or political parties to observe inside a polling place on Election Day,” not outside.
In other words, Pennsylvania poll watchers must not only be Pennsylvania voters, but they can also only serve in the polling place in the county they are registered to vote.
That’s a far cry from what Pennsylvania Democrats were telling potential volunteers, thus sparking Republicans’ complaints of “misinformation.”
In a statement to The Post on Friday, the Pennsylvania Dems clapped back at their Republican opponents.
“Our Party takes our democracy seriously, unlike the MAGA Republicans that are busy launching bad faith attacks on voters and our volunteers,” said Mitch Kates, PA Dems’ Executive Director.
“Poll watchers may be located inside or outside of polling locations, and outside poll watchers can be volunteers from any state,” Kates said. “We have always made this distinction in assigning our volunteers on Election Day.”
But Pennsylvania Democrats didn’t make this distinction on their recruitment page – until it was changed Thursday night.
Still, the Republicans are urging Schmidt, who was appointed by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, to correct the PA Democrats’ “misinformation and disinformation” on the state’s “Fact-Checking Election Claims” page, and order them to “cease and desist” from publishing inaccurate election information.
Both Democrats and Republicans recruit voter protection volunteers from out of state, and both parties are recruiting armies of volunteers to monitor polling places to make sure their team’s ballots are counted, and contest questionable ballots on the opposing side.
An Emerson poll released Thursday showed Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump tied at 48% support in the Keystone State.
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