Thanks again Red States

Still trying to get my head around the factoid, cited in a recent Nation article by John Nichols and sort of discussed in this space previously, that in the last election, all cities larger than 500,000 voted for Kerry.

List of all cities over 500, 000 behind the jump, if you are curious. Quite a few are in states that voted for Bush (Houston, Miami, Nashville, etc.)

I was reminded of this oddity while reading an article in today's NYT about the phone companies penchant for sticking it to their customers via various line item billable items.

The phone companies say that the surcharges are legal and that they have the right to keep them out of the advertised price of calling plans as long as they are explained on Web sites and in service contracts.
All the while, the fees keep growing. Subscriber line charges - fees that local phone carriers charge users of their networks - on residential bills, for example, have grown by 64 percent in the last decade even though average monthly local phone bills have grown just 23 percent during the period.

In 2003 alone, companies collected more than $12 billion in subscriber line charges from their customers, according to the F.C.C.

Surcharges have proliferated, in part, because most consumers do not challenge as misleading or incorrectly calculated small amounts that look like taxes on a bill. And those who do generally find that they have little or no recourse
...The F.C.C. responded to the growing tide of customer protests by expanding its “truth in billing” rules in March to include wireless as well as landline carriers. The rules, first put in place in 1999, require that bills be “brief, clear, nonmisleading and in plain language;” that carriers not misrepresent optional fees as taxes; and that they properly recover government fees.
But there is very little enforcement; the F.C.C. has rarely penalized carriers for violating these rules.

Anyway, one of these fees is a direct subsidy of rural, Red Staters via residents of urban communities mostly, ie, Blue Staters:

Part of the problem is that the rules give phone companies ample leeway to determine what goes on a bill. Most phone companies, for example, are obligated as a cost of doing business to contribute to the Universal Service Fund, which provides services to rural communities, schools and libraries. Most companies pass along that contribution to their customers as a separate line item - even though they could add that cost to the advertised price of the calling plan, or simply absorb the cost.

Yeah, screw you too.