The post earlier today in RRAM about the new address on the ARRL
website for AR licensees piqued my interest.

I clicked -on the ARRL web page to look at the numbers.

One thing led to another, and I pulled up some state population
numbers of states with roughly the same populations and compared their
per-capita numbers.

Some quick numbers:

State # of hams State population Ham/resident ratio

Alaska 3466 698473 1/201
Wyoming 1696 544270 1/320
Vermont 2137 621760 1/290
Guam 487 178430 1/366
Wake Island 1 300 1/300
DC 407 599607 1/437

What I found is that there is a significant problem in Washington,DC.

There seems to be a very low number of hams in DC for the size of its
population, both absolutely and per capita.
There are less hams per capita than any other state.
Even tiny Wake Island, way out there in the Pacific Ocean, has a
higher ratio.

There are all sorts of people with professional degrees in DC,
(lawyers, accountants,journalists,etc.)i.e. all of the chattering
classes.
Why do so few of the people in DC have any interest in technical
matters that would cause them to be hams?

This led me to look at the FCC Website and the Commissioners and
their personal staffs' biographies.
It seems they are all lawyers of one type or another.
Not a one who has any technical or operational electronics
experience.

Even the Chief of Amateur Radio Enforcement does NOT have an Amateur
license.

Could this have been a significant factor in the BPL fiasco of the
last few years?

This lack of technical experience or knowledge to me is a serious
problem.

How can the Commissioners their staff's at the FCC ,NTIA, and other
federal agencies adequately manage the nations telecommunications
infrastructure if they don't have any technical experience?

What is it about DC that causes a lack of interest in technical
matters?

What can be done about this problem?
Require the FCC Commisioners to hire Engineers on their staffs like
one congressman is proposing?
Require FCC commissioners to have some technical experience?

WHAT????