Aggregator

The upstart chocolate maker, which uses raw honey instead of refined sugar, wants to build its brand in St. Louis and beyond. We took a peek inside its new 5,000-square-foot factory and retail store in Clayton.

For the second year, a St. Louis County lawmaker has put the earnings tax in the spotlight as an example of an unfair tax during the pandemic.

He reiterates that the release violated department policy.

ST. LOUIS (KTVI)--"Owning" the libs, or profiting off of a dark day in American history? This weekend in St. Charles at the Missouri GOP's annual Lincoln Days festivities, U.S. Senator Josh Hawley's campaign team was selling mugs for $20 with a picture re-creating Hawley's pumped fist directed at demonstrators in Washington DC on January 6, [...]

Top administrators in the House and Senate say it will cost an estimated $535 million to repair and expand the interior.

“This program offers teachers professional development that emphasizes hands-on learning, instructional strategies grounded in cognitive science, and personal finance content grounded in economic decision-making. Teachers in the program will use all of this to enhance classroom instruction,” said the St. Louis Fed's Mary Suiter.

With the completion of the acquisition, Mattoon, Illinois-based First Mid has approximately $6.7 billion in total assets.

The regional monopolization of U.S. broadband comes with all manner of nasty side effects. The lack of competition at the heart of the country's monopoly and duopoly problem contributed to high prices, comically bad customer service, slow speeds, spotty coverage, annoying fees, and even privacy and net neutrality violations (since there's often no market penalty for bad behavior). But it also results in "redlining," or when a regional monopoly simply refuses to upgrade minority neighborhoods because they deem it not profitable enough to serve.

The National Digital Inclusion Alliance has done some interesting work on this front, showing how companies like AT&T, despite billions in subsidies and tax breaks, routinely just avoids upgrading minority and low income neighborhoods to fiber. Not only that, the group has long showed how users in those neighborhoods also struggle to have their existing (older and slower) services repaired.

Again, defenders of the status quo will insist that these neighborhoods don't get upgraded because the return on investment (ROI) doesn't make it worth it, and that's a company's, like AT&T, right. But that (usually intentionally) ignores the billions upon billions of dollars we've thrown at regional monopolies for fiber networks that, time and time again, are only half delivered. Companies like AT&T routinely get to have their cake (billions in subsidies, regulatory favors, and tax breaks) and eat it too (only half deliver the upgrades they've promised for literally 20 years).

It's 2022 and the FCC has only just announced that it's going to take a look at the problem. Prompted by language in the recently passed infrastructure bill, the FCC has announced it's creating a task force to tackle "digital discrimination":

"Specifically, the Commission must adopt final rules to facilitate equal access to broadband service that prevents digital discrimination and promotes equal access to robust broadband internet access service by prohibiting deployment discrimination based on the income, racial or ethnic composition, and other agency determined relevant factors of a community. Additionally, the cross-agency Task Force to Prevent Digital Discrimination will oversee the development of model policies and best practices states and local governments can adopt that ensure ISPs do not engage in digital discrimination."

The problem, as usual, is that the real underlying disease here is regional monopolization. A company like AT&T not only faces little competitive pressure to expand service beyond the most profitable areas, it all but owns most state legislatures (and during Trump, federal regulators as well). As usual with broadband, if you don't tackle the regional monopolization and the corruption that protects it, you don't fix the real problem. And not only does the FCC (under both parties) not tackle this problem, you'd be hard pressed to find an FCC official capable of admitting the problem exists.

That's not to say this initiative won't do some good in terms of building awareness and creating some basic guidelines. But a program like this is only as good as its enforcement, and the idea some company like AT&T will face any serious penalties for 20 years of bad behavior on this front seems unlikely. The U.S. broadband monopoly problem has been obviously apparent for the last 20 years. 83 million currently live under a broadband monopoly, usually Comcast. You literally cannot find a single instance in the last five years where this problem was candidly acknowledged by regulators and lawmakers of either party, which kind of makes it hard to fix.

It's somehow gotten even worse during the (often justified) policy freak out surrounding "big tech." "Big telecom" has just almost completely fallen off the policy table, and even the idea of having some base levels of accountability for regional monopiles with 20 years of documented, anticompetitive behavior under their belts feels like a distant afterthought. You'll know things have changed when you see an FCC official clearly capable of acknowledging telecom monopolization and corruption are bad things. Until then we seem stuck in the age of half measures and incomplete solutions.

A St. Louis-based rigid container and life sciences packaging distribution group has expanded with the purchase of a Canadian business.

Today on TAP: And would that make a difference?

“Spire’s communications and marketing strategies created unnecessary panic and confusion,” the report says.

ALTON - Joe Rister performs what most consider heroic acts nearly every day he is on the job in his role as Ameren Illinois lineman. On January 13, 2022, Joe was driving down College Avenue in Alton finishing his day when a woman pulled abruptly into Rock Spring Park. Joe has been a lineman for Ameren Illinois for 35 years and is well-known around the Alton-Godfrey area. Joe immediately saw the woman had a problem and stopped and tried to help her and a passenger in her car. “I saw her jump out of the driver’s side door of her car and as soon as she opened the passenger door, I saw someone hunched over on the dash,” she said. “I asked her if I could help and she said, ‘please, my daughter is having an epileptic seizure.’” “The woman’s name was Lara Walker and her daughter’s name was Taylor. The woman couldn’t find Taylor’s epileptic medicine as it had dropped in between the seats. I found it quickly and handed

Continue Reading

Our Love Story: The Couple: Will & Katie from Jerseyville Date Met/Started Dating: October 27, 2018 Briefly Describe First Date: Dinner at a Mexican restaurant in our hometown. Date Married: October 9, 2021 Name Something You Enjoy Doing Together: We love going out to dinner, hanging out with friends, watching movies, and cuddling up together with a good book. Share Advice For A Happy Relationship: No matter how long you have been together or how many kids you have, always make time for each other.

Continue Reading

Lynette Henley needed one more year to receive her full pension after 40 years as a teacher, but she couldn’t convince herself it was worth the risk. So Henley, 65, …

Our Love Story: The Couple: Pauletta Kendig & John Betz from East Alton Date Met/Started Dating: February 8, 2016 Briefly Describe First Date: Had a small bonfire at my house with the kids. Name Something You Enjoy Doing Together: We enjoy hanging out with friends and family. We enjoy spending time together when we can. Share Advice For A Happy Relationship: Communication is the key to a happy relationship.

Continue Reading

Corbett, an award-winning travel and food writer, will be beating the drum on March 25 for her latest book, "A Culinary History of Missouri."