Wampum

Pat LaMarche is running for Governor. Again. She pulled 6.8% in a four-way in 1998 against Angus King (I-XDEM), Jim Longley (R-NUT), and Tom Connolly (D-HAT). In 2002 Jonathan Carter pulled 15%, picking up Single Payer Dems like MB and I, with secondary messaging on his prior Northern Forests (species diversity and sustainabile cut) work. This morning I took a look at her campaign website. One item that caught my eye was this:

How can we expect our Maine-based businesses to survive when the state jobs are exported as quickly as the private sector jobs. Thousands of Maine jobs have gone everywhere from Massachusetts to India. If Maine's government won't give business to Maine companies, how can we expect the private sector to believe us when we say that "Maine is good for Business." Exporting jobs is, as my mom would have reminded me, "penny wise and pound foolish."

OK. I'm a member of the Maine ISP Association, and I know what we're up against -- predatory pricing by facilities-based broadband ISPs (Verizon, TimeWarner and Adelphia), all of whom restrict access to their physical plant while benefiting from regulatory regimes that encourage monopoly, and predatory pricing by tier-1 ISPs (AOL, EarthLink, MSN) who have access to restricted access customer bases (Verizon, TimeWarner and Adelphia), and predatory pricing by Verizon back-hauled modem-pool virtual dialup ISPs (Juno, etc.), and predatory pricing by national exchange point colocated ASPs (webhost operators). This is why Maine has an inter-operator exchange point at 1 City Center, Portland, yet most intra-Maine cross-operator traffic goes to Boston and points south.

So where is Pat LaMarche's on-line property in the Great Chain of Being or Non-Being in Maine?

Q0: Is she using a Maine or Northern New England or New England or simply "Green" registrar and what is the hosting provider?

wampum.wabanaki.net % whois pat2006.com | grep -e Registrar: -e "Name Server"
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.
Name Server: NS2.RACKSPACE.COM
Name Server: NS.RACKSPACE.COM
A0: No. No. No. No. Original monopoly registrar in Reston VA. Hosting by Rackspace.

Q1: What is pat2006.com's ip addr?
wampum.wabanaki.net % ping -c 1 pat2006.com | grep -e icmp | awk '{print $4}'
72.32.31.193:

Q2: What is in the pat2006.com zone?
wampum.wabanaki.net % dig @NS.RACKSPACE.COM pat2006.com any | grep -e 72.32.31.193 -e MX
pat2006.com. 86400 IN MX 10 mail.pat2006.com.
pat2006.com. 86400 IN A 72.32.31.193

Q3: What is mail.pat2006.com's ip addr?
wampum.wabanaki.net % ping -c 1 mail.pat2006.com | grep -e icmp | awk '{print $4}'
72.3.133.32:

Q4: Who does the host at 72.3.133.32 think it is?
wampum.wabanaki.net % telnet 72.3.133.32 25
Trying 72.3.133.32...
Connected to votecobb.org.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 nashcorp1.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.12.11/8.12.11; Sat, 10 Dec 2005 10:47:38 -0600
quit
221 2.0.0 nashcorp1.com closing connection
Connection closed by foreign host.

Finally where are 72.32.31.193 and 72.3.133.32?
wampum.wabanaki.net % traceroute 72.32.31.193
traceroute to 72.32.31.193 (72.32.31.193), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 65.99.1.1 (65.99.1.1) 0.492 ms 0.376 ms 0.329 ms
2 bos-edge-02.inet.qwest.net (65.120.112.13) 7.228 ms 7.260 ms 7.284 ms
3 bos-core-01.inet.qwest.net (205.171.28.13) 7.111 ms 7.152 ms 7.109 ms
4 ewr-core-02.inet.qwest.net (205.171.8.114) 14.000 ms 13.973 ms 14.396 ms
5 ewr-core-01.inet.qwest.net (205.171.17.1) 13.995 ms 14.030 ms 13.938 ms
6 nyc-brdr-01.inet.qwest.net (205.171.17.62) 14.619 ms 15.048 ms 14.578 ms
7 204.255.173.26 (204.255.173.26) 14.714 ms 14.805 ms 14.821 ms
8 0.so-6-0-0.XL1.NYC4.ALTER.NET (152.63.21.78) 14.786 ms 14.799 ms 14.758 ms
9 0.so-7-0-0.XL1.DFW13.ALTER.NET (152.63.103.218) 59.492 ms 59.448 ms 59.407 ms
10 0.so-6-0-0.GW3.DFW13.ALTER.NET (152.63.100.73) 59.529 ms 59.631 ms 59.465 ms
11 rackspace-gw.customer.alter.net (157.130.130.50) 59.411 ms 59.407 ms 59.381 ms
12 vlan901.core1.dfw1.rackspace.com (72.3.128.21) 59.343 ms 59.441 ms 59.346 ms
13 aggr1a.dfw1.rackspace.net (72.3.129.3) 59.408 ms 59.497 ms 59.356 ms
14 72.32.31.193 (72.32.31.193) 59.175 ms 59.163 ms 59.482 ms

wampum.wabanaki.net % traceroute 72.3.133.32
traceroute to 72.3.133.32 (72.3.133.32), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 65.99.1.1 (65.99.1.1) 0.523 ms 0.399 ms 0.346 ms
2 bos-edge-02.inet.qwest.net (65.120.112.13) 7.227 ms 7.796 ms 7.352 ms
3 bos-core-01.inet.qwest.net (205.171.28.13) 7.109 ms 7.400 ms 7.108 ms
4 ewr-core-02.inet.qwest.net (205.171.8.26) 16.243 ms 13.378 ms 13.302 ms
5 dal-core-01.inet.qwest.net (67.14.2.2) 56.586 ms 56.636 ms 56.566 ms
6 dal-edge-12.inet.qwest.net (205.171.25.146) 56.444 ms 56.596 ms 56.571 ms
7 65.115.193.78 (65.115.193.78) 58.456 ms 57.552 ms 57.511 ms
8 vlan901.core1.dfw1.rackspace.com (72.3.128.21) 57.575 ms 57.549 ms 57.515 ms
9 aggr1a.dfw1.rackspace.net (72.3.129.3) 58.524 ms 57.696 ms 57.745 ms
10 votecobb.org (72.3.133.32) 57.559 ms 57.542 ms 57.549 ms

ARIN's whois server (authoritative for address to address space allocation in North America) has the distinct impression that Rackspace is in ... San Antonio Texas. Both the 72.32.0.0/19 CIDR that pat2006.com maps to, and the 72.3.128.0/17 that mail.pat2006.com (alias votecobb.org) maps to. The router one hop upstream (Maine POV) claims its in Dallas-Ft. Worth.

So the Cobb campaign hosting assets, located Texas, are hosting Pat's Mom's message. I'm going to send this to the Maine ISP mailing list. I won't have to explain anything. Pat's using Maine's Clean Election fund. I guess that is one area where the law could use a Buy in Maine where possible clarification.