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C Spire recently connected its first customers in Trussville to its ultra-fast, fiber-based Gigabit broadband internet service, continuing the telecommunications and technology companys expansion in Alabama.

Trussville becomes the second Yellowhammer State city following Jasper in late 2020 to receive the game-changing services as part of C Spires FiberFast initiative.

The announcement was made at a press conference on Thursday at the home of Jerry Tortorigi, one of the first customers to receive the services in Trussville.

The installation at my home went smoothly, and the speed of my in-home internet is better than ever, he advised.

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Trussville consumers now have access to C Spires Gigabit fiber-based internet, Smart WiFi powered by Plume, Home Protection Plan and digital home phone service. Residents who want to order C Spire service can go online here.

We know broadband expansion is critical to Alabamas future, and its fantastic to see C Spire making such a huge investment in our state, said State Rep. Danny Garrett (R-Trussville). The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted this need more than ever before, and its rewarding to know C Spire is helping us bridge the digital divide.

With his city being one of the first in Alabama to receive C Spire Fiber, Trussville Mayor Buddy Choat explained that the municipality can leverage the new infrastructure to spur business development while also enhancing the quality of life for all residents.

Trussville is known for its unique blend of small-town hospitality and big-city convenience, and C Spires expansion into our city can help add jobs and diversify our economy, Choat remarked. That helps everyone.

Thursdays news was made possible by a partnership betweenAlabama Power and C Spire that was announcedin 2019.

Alabama Powers existing fiber infrastructure is being used for what is called the middle mile, while C Spire will in some areas build out the last mile, which is an industry term meaning the final portion connecting the service to a consumers residence or business (the length is not always a mile or even close to it it can be a matter of feet or several miles). This type of partnership between an electric utility provider and broadband services provider was enabled by 2019s HB 400; that years SB 90 was also a crucial piece of legislation expanding broadband access across Alabama.

Alabama ranks 47th in the nation in broadband connectivity, and state leaders have recently formed the Alabama Rural Broadband Coalition a group of community, business and governmental leaders dedicated to job creation, economic development and business growth to change this dire statistic. The coalition in 2019 championed HB 400 and SB 90.

One of the results of the coalitions work ultimately came to fruition in January, whenC Spire announced a $500 million investment in fiber broadband infrastructure expansion in Alabama over a five-year period. The companys deployment of all-fiber symmetrical infrastructure and ultra-fast broadband internet ultimately helps attract industry and improve Alabamians quality of life.

We see the benefits in every community, especially attracting new businesses or playing a role in an existing business deciding to expand, C Spire CEO Hu Meena commented. That translates into jobs, and C Spire is happy to play a role in creating a brighter future for each community we serve.

More communities, including Pelham, Helena, Northport, Tuscaloosa and parts of Mobile County, have already executed franchise agreements with C Spire and are on the drawing board for construction and service in 2021.

We understand high-speed, all-fiber broadband internet service can be a game-changer for Trussville and other Alabama communities, stated Ashley Phillips, general manager of C Spire Home. Our ability to provide symmetric speeds immediately solves real-world challenges associated with interactive learning, remote work and telehealth applications. Thats good news in Trussville, Jasper and other communities as our FiberFast initiative continues.

As part of its expansion efforts, C Spire is also is actively seeking interest from other Alabama communities and towns seeking more reliable and faster broadband internet service based on the firms crowdsourcing model, which relies on homeowner, business and renter demand to drive adoption.

We believe our ability to deliver high-capacity fiber broadband services will help everyone, from boosting home and business values to expanding local entertainment opportunities to improving the quality of life for professionals working from home or students learning through virtual education programs, Meena concluded.

Sean Ross is the editor of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn

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Democrats want to ease the burden on repeat offender felons - Yellowhammer News

To Democrats and their media megaphones, Jim Crow has risen from historys grave and stalks our land again. President Biden invoked the inflammatory racial imagery twice in his Thursday press conference, saying it described the Senate filibuster as well as GOP-led changes in state election laws.

He claimed the election changes make Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle, which makes no sense except to suggest hes got birds on his brain. Biden did it again Friday, after Georgias election changes were signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp, saying the changes represent Jim Crow in the 21st century.

By then it was clear Jim Crow was the partys official talking point. Stacey Abrams and Atlanta protesters both labeled the Georgia law Jim Crow 2.0. One activist called it Jim Crow with makeup and cologne. Another called it Jim Crow in a suit and tie.

The list goes on, but you get the point. The left is eager to racialize any dispute and, for shock effect, dredges up dark pages from out history that bear zero resemblance to the current situation.

In their playbook, any election-law change they dont support is racist and proves America has not made an iota of progress in 150 years.

Like their endless comparisons of Donald Trump to Hitler, the attacks are a form of extremism designed to evoke horror and spark anger. They lack only facts.

Yet even sympathetic voters may get tired of hearing about the second coming of Jim Crow because efforts to tighten sloppy election laws are underway in a reported 43 states. Are all of them run by racist governors and lawmakers who represent racist citizens?

In fact, most of the efforts involve fixing lapses in ballot security that became obvious during the 2020 election after states rushed to relax safeguards during the pandemic.

Most of those changes were pushed by outside activists and approved by Democratic governors and state courts. Although claims by Trump and others of widespread fraud failed in the courts, the new efforts are led by GOP lawmakers who were asleep or sidelined during last years revisions.

Despite the lefts outrageous comparisons to Jim Crow, the name given to post-Civil War laws in Southern states that used poll taxes and literacy tests to block black voters, the new rules are hardly onerous. Georgia, for example, actually expands early voting in some ways, requires it on two Saturdays and makes it optional for counties on Sundays.

No-excuse absentee voting remains available, though applicants must show a state identification card, as in-person voters do. For last years election, absentee ballot-checking relied on signature matches, which are less reliable.

The law, Gov. Kemp said, makes it easier to vote and harder to cheat.

The facts seem to bear him out. And does anyone honestly believe it is racist to ask black absentee voters, along with all others, for identification? If it is, airlines, federal office buildings, banks and motor-vehicle laws are Jim Crows descendants.

Yet the most troubling question is what the hell happened to Joe Biden? Although he campaigned on the promise of civility and unity, he now repeatedly uses false, incendiary language designed to divide.

Biden, for instance, called the Georgia law un-American and said it would deny people the right to vote. He claimed, It adds rigid restrictions on casting absentee ballots that will effectively deny the right to vote to countless voters.

But as others have pointed out, voting laws in Delaware are stricter than the new law in Georgia, yet Biden never said peep about his home state.

Because there is no truth to the presidents odious claims about the Georgia law, we are left with two options. Either Biden has totally taken leave of his senses, or he has an ulterior motive.

While we cant rule out the first choice, I believe the correct answer here is that his attacks on the Georgia law are a pretext for abolishing the Senate filibuster. Recall that it, too, shares, in his words, a Jim Crow lineage.

As a Wall Street Journal editorial notes, breaking the filibuster would allow the Senate to pass with just 51 votes a House bill that would nationalize all election laws and remove most safeguards. The logic for taking that dramatic step is boosted if the left can persuade the public that changes in Georgia and elsewhere are racist and aim to suppress votes rather than protect the integrity of results.

In other words, Biden and his party are digging up Jim Crow for purely partisan purposes. Politics doesnt get much dirtier or destructive.

The episode illustrates Bidens late-in-life habit of reflexively resorting to charges of racism to score points. Recall that campaigning in 2012, he told a black audience in Virginia that if Mitt Romney were elected president, he would put you all back in chains.

Early last year, locked in a tight race with Bernie Sanders for the partys nomination, he made pitches for black votes by declaring that America itself is guilty of systemic racism. Following George Floyds death while in police custody in Minneapolis, Biden began using the phrase frequently, including against law enforcement.

Before he was vice president, during his nearly four decades in the Senate, Biden praised Sen. Robert Byrd, a former member of the KKK, and cited his friendships with segregationist Dixiecrats. He was a regular participant in uses of the filibuster to slow down legislation and in a 2005 speech, embraced it as essential to the Senates conduct and character.

Barack Obama, while a senator, also used it in the effort to block the Supreme Court nomination of Justice Samuel Alito, and Dems repeatedly used the filibuster last year yet suddenly its a relic of Jim Crow?

By that standard, so is Joe Bidens entire career.

Finally, recall that polls showed most blacks and most whites believed race relations had grown worse during the Obama-Biden years. Some people never learn or dont give a damn.

Reader Alan Jones offers advice to timid journalists, writing: While in the service, I learned many life lessons, one in particular involved a sergeant. When I said I had some questions he might find stupid, he glared at me and said, There is only ONE stupid question, and its the one you dont ask!

With Andrew Yang leading the citys Democratic primary race for mayor, his closest rival, Eric Adams, went nuclear with personal attacks against him.

Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, said, Yang never held a job in his entire life, and accused him of trying to disregard the people who make this city work.

Its a risky move because ranked-choice voting will pick the winner if nobody gets to 50percent, leading most candidates to hope they will be the second choice for their rivals voters. Adams personal attacks, as opposed to policy disagreements, could lead Yang supporters to leave Adams off their ballots.

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The scare-Crow tactics of Democrats: Goodwin

If the Democrats dont pass H.R. 1 and the new VRA, there is a very good chance that America will wind up under an extended period of minority rule in which the party that represents 4546 percent of the country can have a majority of power in Washington, Drutman told me. Which is not only fundamentally unfair, but it contravenes any set of democratic values and creates a sense of fundamental illegitimacy [that] is deeply destabilizing for a democracy.

Merkley, the principal sponsor of the Senate companion bill, is no less emphatic. Especially with Trumps efforts to subvert the election, the American vision of representative government has slid over the cliff, and [its as if] we caught a root, and we are just holding on by our fingertips, he told me. We must find a way to pass this bill. It is our responsibility in our majority to defend citizens rights to participate in our democracy. There is no other acceptable outcome.

Still, passing the bill, and perhaps the new VRA, will almost certainly require every Senate Democrat agreeing to end the filibuster in some fashionand at least two of them, West Virginias Joe Manchin and Arizonas Kyrsten Sinema, have been adamantly opposed to that action. Merkleys strategy for convincing Democrats to reconsiderat least for the democracy-reform legislationis to encourage an extended debate on the bill, both within the committee and on the Senate floor, and to allow any senator to offer amendments. If Republicans still block final passage with a filibuster after that process, Democrats could either vote to carve out election-reform legislation from the filibuster, or require Republicans blocking the bill to actually filibuster in person, he told me. Democrats could change the rules to tell Republicans you better be here day and night, because we are going to go for weeks and if you are not here, we are going to a final vote on the bill.

Read: This is the future that liberals want

Whatever mechanism Democrats employ, its clear the voter-mobilization groups that worked to produce their unified control are prepared to erupt if the party allows procedural constraints to block passage of H.R. 1 and the VRA. The New Georgia Projects Ufot told me that when Biden and Harris campaigned in Georgia just before the twin runoff elections, they promised big change if the states voters gave them the Senate majority. They didnt add an asterisk that change would be possible only if McConnell somehow chooses not to filibuster their agenda. The filibuster never made it into any of [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumers campaign ads; the filibuster was not a part of President Bidens stump speeches, or Vice President Harriss when she was down in Savannah, Ufot said. Their campaign rhetoric was on full blast, on 10, about why we needed to send them to Washington, D.C., to work on a progressive agenda.

Saying we cant make progress on that agenda, because of existing rules that they have the ability to change will ring like a hollow argument, and it wont bode well for this coalition, Ufot added.

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Democrats' Biggest Decision: Nuking the Filibuster - The ...

Many liberal economists say there are good reasons to raise taxes, starting with using those funds to invest in workers and help build economic opportunity. Spending on physical infrastructure, like roads and water pipes, or on programs like education and child care that are meant to help people earn more money could help curb persistent inequalities in income and wealth. The economists also say that tax increases that are properly set up would provide incentives for multinational companies to keep jobs in the United States and not shift profits to lower-tax foreign countries.

The purpose of the tax system is to both raise enough revenue for what the government wants to do, and to make sure that as were doing that we are encouraging activities that are in the national interest and discouraging ones that are not, said Heather Boushey, a member of the White Houses Council of Economic Advisers.

Key Democrats are trying to bring the party to consensus. The top tax writer in the Senate, Ron Wyden of Oregon, is drafting a series of bills to raise taxes, many of them overlapping with Mr. Bidens campaign proposals.

Ill be ready to raise what the Democratic caucus decides is required to move forward, Mr. Wyden, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said in an interview.

Mr. Wydens plans include big changes to the portions of Mr. Trumps tax cuts that overhauled how the United States taxes multinational companies, including the creation of a minimum tax of sorts on income earned abroad. Mr. Wyden and many Democratic economists, including some inside the Biden administration, say that the tax was devised in a way that it ultimately incentivized companies to continue moving profits and activities offshore to avoid American taxes. Republican economists and some tax experts disagree and say the law has allowed U.S. companies to better compete globally.

A report from the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation this month showed that multinational companies paid an average U.S. tax rate of less than 8 percent on their income in 2018, down from 16 percent in 2017. The report also found that those companies did not slow their practice of booking profits in low-tax havens like Bermuda.

Mr. Biden, Mr. Wyden and Mr. Sanders have all drafted plans to raise revenues by amending the 2017 law to force multinational companies to pay more to the United States. One of the most lucrative ways to do that, according to tax scorekeepers, would be to increase the rate of the global minimum tax, forcing those companies to pay higher U.S. tax rates no matter where they locate jobs or profits.

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Biden Poised to Raise Taxes on Business and the Rich - The New York Times

Author and conservative commentator Candace Owensjoined "Life, Liberty & Levin" Sunday to discussDemocrats' hypocrisy on election reform legislation, as well as theborder crisis under President Biden's watch.

Owens told host Mark Levin that "over the last four years, it really has been my mission and my purpose to make sure Black Americans and all minorities in this country recognize that" the Black community is being used as"cover" for the imposition of a radical leftist agenda.

"I feel that the Democrat Party represents Black Americalike plantation owners represented slaves,the irony here being is that the Democrats were the slave owners [in the 1800s]," she added.

On Friday, Biden called a new Georgia state election law"Jim Crow in the 21st Century." The law strengthens voter identification procedures,shortens the absentee votingwindow, and prohibits distributing "money or gifts, including, but not limited to, food and drink" to people waiting in line to vote.

"They're using language, referring to things like Jim Crow," Owens toldLevin. "Who was the party that implemented Jim Crow in this country? It was the Democrats."

She also accused Democrats oftrying to "rewrite" history and make the public believe that they have always been the champion ofminority communities.

"That's the deep, sinister evil of the Democrat Party, that they're really just rewriting what they authored in the beginning," she said. "These were the slave-masters, and they understand the system better than anybody else because they wrote it. It is it is the fabric of the Democrat Party."

The "Blackout" author compared the practice of critical race theory in America's public schools to 19th-century slave codes that prohibited Black people from learning how to read or write.

She compared critical race theory to the way the Slave Codes in the 19th CenturySouth prohibited Black people from learning how to read or write.

"They understand that an educated mind can not be enslaved," she said. "They need to make sure there are no educated minds. What better way to ensure that than to pretend that you're educating Black Americans, but instead you're filling our minds with absolute filth, making us see the world in Black and White?

"And itmakes me so angry that they are still doing this and that they're now broadening their reachand saying, you know what, not just Black America ... [because]the growth rate population-wise, is not significant enough. So now they're bringing in a new class of voters."

She pointed to the flood of migrants and illegal immigrants from Central American countries coming across the southern border from Mexico.

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Owens said the border "crisis" is not a crisis, but an intentional "border plan" by Biden and the Democrats to import a new electorate and displace American citizens.

"They are trying to import a new class of voters. They are trying to say to the [migrants]coming over the border,'We will help you. We'll give you free stuff like we gave Black Americans free stuff ...after Jim Crow ended, we're going to welfare-ize you'."

She said the Democrats plan to "marry" the new migrants to the government: "like we married Black Americans to the government."

"It's pure evil," she concluded.

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Candace Owens: Democrats gaslighting with 'Jim Crow' election law claims; trying to 'import' new voters - Fox News