With more than four in 10 Americans working for the government, leaving just six of us to pay for those four as well as our own, I tend to be amused at rules the four promulgate. The latest was the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service rules about sand blowing across county roads in south central Utah.  The sand is undisturbed earth. Therefore, Wayne County road maintainers were prohibited from moving the sand off public roads. Forest Sims continued this story, saying that he suggested the county put signs up warning travelers if they get stuck, it’s the fault of BLM or the NPS. Wayne County checked with the state attorney general’s office. Asked if they could put up said signs. Sure, no problem. They did. We understand the feds got rather upset. Shortly after, the signs got pushed over. The county regarded the evidence of malicious actions as a serious crime. Sheriff’s deputies investigated. They drove to Hanksville and matched up the tire tracks with a BLM vehicle. The county road honcho Ted Taylor thought, “Well, it figures.” NPS caved. County put the signs back up. BLM resists. Gotta protect government sand.  Homeland security My telco filed an application for a microwave site on Frisco Peak, Utah. BLM suggested we co-locate in their nearly vacant building with a nearly empty tower. OK. But the BLM radio tech resists. Might degrade the input sensitivity of his repeater. And, maybe, because of Homeland Security, the FBI won’t want us in the same building. And, and, and . . . Good tactic. The negative objection. Always more expensive. So we’ll build adjacent. ROR guaranteed investment. Protect that sand. Ethics With recent findings about cooking the books and self dealing, I read the 118-page First Interim Report of Dick Thornburgh, the bankruptcy court examiner, about WorldCom. At page 57, he reports MCI’s internal audit department was understaffed and underpaid. No kidding! It’s average cost per auditor was $87,000 where peer average is $161,000. This leads me to question self dealing as relates to EAS vs. forcing customers to pay toll to a wholly owned subsidiary toll carrier. For example, Frontier offers one-way EAS by its Wells or Elko, Nev., customers for two or three bucks a month. They can then call toll-free from the one town to the other. Otherwise they pay their PIC’d toll carrier and buy the access by the minute. Frontier offers to complete the calls for 9 cents a minute using their EAS circuits. Other companies also have their own long-distance operation. They do not want to make it easy for customers to establish EAS (for all the economic benefits it gives to link communities together) because it will disrupt and reduce profits they get from selling the service by their own long distance operations which — because they own the circuits and equipment on both areas — can be very profitable. I submit that this self dealing is also anti-competitive. It might be considered as reprehensible as Enron and other capers where billions speak loudly; my tiny voice just questions how companies object to EAS with their whispered loss of non-regulated thousands and to hell with benefits to the community at large which would benefit with nearly zero additional telco costs. I suppose part of this culture is due to failure of state regulatory to free local rate of return telcos to adjust local rates without hearings. Doing that would eliminate honest rational from this self dealing. Buildings Level 3 bought the assets of McLeod USA , a former large CLEC. LEC of Cedar Rapids disposed of large numbers of not now needed pre-fab concrete buildings and other stuff. I bought some. Beautiful. The delivered price, including crane travel and time to re-set the 40,000 lb buildings, came in at 50% to 65% less than new. Not to mention some had chargers and 2-year-old battery plants installed. They came from California, Nevada, Arizona and Idaho. Two of the 36 footers had 440 volt 3 phase A/C compressors. We can rewire the heaters, but those compressors need major changes. Bush Electric got us $70 transformers to make 227 V overhead lights work off 120 V.   Copyright 2003 by A. W. Brothers and Americas Network magazine. All rights reserved.   © Beehive Telephone Co.