simplegeo dump, might get back to this

sgeo.py

import fiona

schema = {'geometry': 'Polygon',
 'properties': {'province': 'str',
                'city': 'str',
                'name': 'str',
                'country': 'str',
                'POP_CNTRY': 'float'}}

with fiona.open(
    'US.shp',
    'w',
    driver='ESRI Shapefile',
    crs={'no_defs': True, 'ellps': 'WGS84', 'datum': 'WGS84', 'proj': 'longlat'},
    schema=schema, ) as c:

f = open('places_dump_US.geojson')
line = f.readline()

while line:
    print line
    line = f.readline()
f.close()