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Save A Lot, the St. Ann-based discount grocery chain, has named a grocery and wholesale industry veteran as its new chief executive officer.

For years we've noted how broadband providers impose all manner of bullshit fees on your bill to drive up the cost of service post sale. They've also historically had a hard time being transparent about what kind of broadband connection you're buying. As was evident back when Comcast thought it would be a good idea to throttle all upstream BitTorrent traffic (without telling anybody), or AT&T decided to cap and throttle the usage of its "unlimited" wireless users (without telling anybody), or Verizon decided to modify user packets to track its customers around the internet (without telling anybody).

Maybe you see where I'm going with this.

Back in 2016 the FCC eyed the voluntary requirement that broadband providers be required to provide a sort of "nutrition label" for broadband. The idea was that this label would clearly disclose speeds, throttling, limitation, sneaky fees, and all the stuff big predatory ISPs like to bury in their fine print (if they disclose it at all). This was the example image the FCC circulated at the time:

While the idea was scuttled by the Trump administration, Congress demanded the FCC revisit it as part of the recent infrastructure bill. So the Rosenworcel FCC last week, as instructed by Congress, voted 4-0 to begin exploring new rules:

We’ve got nutrition labels on foods. They make it easy to compare products. It’s time to have the same simple nutrition labels on broadband. Everyone should be able to compare service, price and data. No more hiding fees in fine print.https://t.co/Jdc3fj4HgP

— Jessica Rosenworcel (@JRosenworcel) January 27, 2022

A final vote on approved rules will come after the Biden FCC finally has a voting majority, likely this summer. And unlike the first effort, this time the requirements will be mandatory, so ISPs will have to comply.

This is all well intentioned, and to be clear it's a good thing Comcast and AT&T will now need to be more transparent in the ways they're ripping you off. In fact, when AT&T recently announced it would be providing faster 2 and 5 Gbps fiber to some users, it stated it would be getting rid of hidden fees and caps entirely on those tiers. AT&T announced this as if they'd come up with the idea, when in reality they were just getting out ahead of the requirement they knew was looming anyway. So stuff like this does matter.

The problem of course is that forcing ISPs to be transparent about how they're ripping you off doesn't stop them from ripping you off. Big broadband providers are able to nickel-and-dime the hell out of users thanks to two things: regional monopolization causing limited competition, and the state and federal corruption that protects it. U.S. policymakers and lawmakers can't (and often won't) tackle that real problem, so instead we get these layers of band aids that only treat the symptom of a broken U.S. telecom market, not the underlying disease.

Due to budget constraints, Amtrak has only offered one daily train between Kansas City and St. Louis since Jan. 3.

ST. LOUIS - MoDOT officials say they need people to avoid travel as snow continues to accumulate so they can clear the roads.  MoDOT said they are focusing on clearing highways and high volume routes first such as I-64 here in Town and Country. They said it will take crews longer to clear main roads because [...]

More robots joined the U.S. workforce last year than ever before, taking on jobs from plucking bottles and cans off conveyor belts at trash recycling plants to putting small consumer goods into cardboard boxes at e-commerce warehouses.

SPRINGFIELD - Sangamon County Coroner Jim Allmon announced Wednesday the body of missing Greene County woman Randa Davidson, 39, of Hillview, was found Tuesday afternoon on Robbins Road in Springfield. A three-county search was underway for the woman after she was reported missing. Family members reported Davidson missing on Saturday, January 29, 2022. Davidson's cellphone was found in Scott County and her car later was discovered in Springfield, authorities said. The death is being investigated by the coroner and Sangamon County Sheriff's Department, and foul play is not suspected the sheriff’s office and Allmon reported. The Greene County Sheriff's Office said anyone with any additional information on this case to contact them immediately at 217-942-6901 or the Sangamon County Sheriff's Office at 217-753-6880.

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ST. LOUIS - A Winter Storm Warning for the St. Louis region remains in effect until noon on Thursday. National Weather Service in St. Louis meteorologist Jon Carney said early Thursday that snow has moved back in to expect several bands of snow over the next hours until 1-3 p.m. on Thursday when it will stop. “We are looking at another 6-8 inches of snow for the area before it is all over,” he said early Thursday. Carney said most portions of the region will receive close to a foot total of snow. The good news is Friday through the weekend the winter storm will cease and temps will move into the 20s and 30s.

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ST. LOUIS - A building was on fire Thursday morning in south St. Louis. The fire started at about 6 a.m. at a building located at the corner of Meramec Street and Ray Avenue. Flames were shooting through the roof of the two-story brick building when fire crews arrived at the scene. The building was [...]

More than 20 FBI field offices around the nation are investigating a series of bomb threats characterized as “hate crimes” against Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and unidentified “houses of worship” but have found no explosives at the sites, the agency announced Wednesday. The statement did not say whether the threatened houses of worship, […]

The post FBI probes bomb threats against HBCUs, campuses reopen after no explosives are found appeared first on Missouri Independent.

‘The positivity is still up there, so we definitely need to keep testing. We are not out of this yet.’

More low-income Missourians are now eligible to receive public health insurance following the expansion of Medicaid. That includes people leaving prison.

Dominic Weiss remembers the moment he realized Big Sky Café (47 South Old Orchard Avenue, Webster Groves; 314-962-5757) was more than just another restaurant. It was not quite a week into his tenure at the Webster Groves eatery, Weiss was twenty years old and though he'd waited tables at other places around town, he was admittedly green and had yet to experience a truly professional dining room.…

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The city wants to bring the number of new cases of HIV to zero by 2030. What will it take?

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The UAE was my home. Its policies could make it uninhabitable.

ST. LOUIS – A Winter Storm Warning for the St. Louis area has been extended until 6pm Thursday. The snow Thursday morning will be heavy at times and then it will begin tapering off by the afternoon. It will exit the area later at night. For areas along and south of I-70, the wave 2 [...]

Now comes the hard part.

According to the American Heart Association, reports estimate that hundreds of people in the U.S. die each year during or just after snow removal.