We never received our Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin. Again after how many days that this has happened? Yesterday the morning newspaper arrived by 2 PM. At least we received it. How many times have we complained? How many times has the customer service at Gannett made a promise to fix it? I really believe them, don’t you know, to be telling the truth?
I am the “man in the arena.” This “man in the arena” was described by Teddy Roosevelt in a speech he gave at the Sorbonne in Paris on 23 April 1910. This date was a number of years before I was born, but is on the same day in April which is my birthday. Teddy was disappointed in the Republican president, Taft, who had taken over after Teddy decided not to run for office again (1908). He did run in 1912 as a third-party candidate and became the first candidate to come close to winning the presidency by a third-party candidate. He proved that he was the “man in the arena,” but was fired upon by libertarian types whom they called, in those days, anarchists. TR had to curtail his campaigning. Some say, had the anarchists not shot at TR, he may have become the first 3rd-party candidate to win the presidency.
He did prove that his progressive ideas about capitalist supply and demand in a political arena of democracy were worth the effort because nothing ventured is nothing gained. TR exemplifies that man in the arena “whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood…” What TR accomplished made an indelible mark on America and the success of America for many years after the era of TR, the “trust buster.”
My words against Gannett, big business fat pigs, private insurance for health and other needs, and a really foul healthcare system designed for the wealthy and to suck taxpayer money from a costly court system based on greedy lawyers and the stench of their personal injury and workman’s comp frivolity.
My teachable moments in my writings reflect the ideas of the “trust buster,” TR. However, no one today wants to take such thoughts supporting ethics as being serious and support those of us in a collective voice. They likely have no idea of the success and greatness of the state of New York (TR once governor of NY) and nation.
I, am a man who has concern for all fellow Americans. With these thoughts in mind, I, too, am the man in this arena of contention with brutal forces in our nation who have no care or concern for one another but have only care and concern for their individualist selfish wealthy ideas based on the evil love of money.
I do plan to remain in that “arena” with tenacity and perseverance in order to make life better in America for we the people of all colors, ethnic groups, religions, sex, and sexual identities. We the people. All lives matter. We work to attain, for all, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” I shall be persistent in challenging the vulgar lies of those who make the most money from stocks and sit at the top of the big business hoodlum groups, fat cats (term coined back about TR’s days), and fat pigs who have no concern for their fellow Americans but just love to wallow in the mud and get nothing done for the good of America and its progress towards the future.
Print copies of morning newspapers need to arrive early in the morning, not at 2 or 3PM in the afternoon. They need to arrive. If I want digital copies, I can subscribe to Newspapers.com and find articles from many different newspapers, not just one. Those copies can go back a century or more. Being visually impaired, I cannot read digital copies on computers with my morning coffee. A MD newsletter from a major medical center recently reversed course and said we DO need to consumer caffeine. We are not going to sit at a computer, drink the coffee, and try to read the news.
In 2008, at the height of the Bush Recession, newspaper tycoon fat pigs decided to utilize this to the advantage of technology. They pared back the newspapers and many columns of interest to readers, kept the sports section, and had no surprise as readers left in droves. In this way, this idiocracy could make claim that “no one wants to read print copies of newspapers.” I’d say it was a deliberate sabotage by a younger group of jackasses taking control and putting love of money first. People I knew were laid off and I don’t believe it was due to a natural loss of money, but a effort to sabotage what was working quite well, making people believe that “it’s broken,” when it was not.
For me, I had lost my job with thousands of others, with a claim that “more money can be made” and manipulating the brains of people to make them think that the corporation was suffering, when, indeed, the corporation was considered a “cash cow” and was not losing money. I think these fat pigs use accountants and lawyers to cook the books and manipulate figures to the advantage of the fat cats and fat pigs. Meanwhile, the hard-working people lose their jobs and the stock in the process. And the fat pigs go running off with millions in the process, making everyone think it is for the better for all of us. NOT.
Thus, don’t have any care and concern for those who ended up losing out and work with a collective voice to make certain these things don’t happen again, including the lousy pigs with their lousy ideas about newspapers. Stop doing this incredible sabotage to newspaper delivery and give us our newspaper early in the morning. No excuses, you bastards. Just do it. As I speak as a man in the arena of contention “whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood…” while there are those who have lost their lives due to some of this crap, including loss of life and limb due to the fat pig leaders of a dismal American healthcare system designed for the wealthy. Tell me we are speaking about socialism and let me puke in your face because you are a liar with no proof, while I have proof that I am speaking like TR, the “trust buster” who recognized the economics of supply AND demand, even when it comes to large demands in healthcare or smaller demands in newspapers. For newspapers, these fat pigs make it sound like there is no demand and that is a lie. This describes my pet peeves while in the “arena.” Ignore them and you are a fool.
Tioga Herald 
One More Time: Big Business Monopoly in America is a Joke
Best Buy Geek Squad people, upon a visit to fix computers at home, told me that my laptop, purchased from Best Buy in early 2019, had to be fixed by setting up an appointment at the local Best Buy. It has taken me some time, but today, I made the attempt schedule an appointment by calling the Vestal store of Best Buy. I was told the local store is not answering the phone and was transferred to centralized scheduling. I can’t talk to a human being about what is happening. No. I have to speak with someone who is sitting in a chair somewhere. Not that person’s fault, but if I mention that I don’t like this being tossed somewhere else and not able to speak with the local store, I get hit with, “I am having trouble hearing you.” Thanks. Thanks Verizon for your lousy American phone system, too, because I face this quite frequently. They don’t face such problems with Internet and cell phones in socialist democracy, Denmark. They don’t face such problems in capitalist democracy, South Korea or Taiwan (yet communists in China wish to take over Taiwan and do to those people what they have done to people of Hong Kong). The American feudal system modeled after Medieval economics with supply side economics really sucks when considering big business in America.
But this customer service person at Best Buy, who actually spoke with me with an American English accent, was mean and rude to me for my wishing to speak to a local person. She ignored me when I said that there is a better return on investment for Best Buy if they worked that way. Another example of people of America who don’t know one damn thing about what capitalism is about and just brush it off.
I have the appointment and now have to drive to Vestal. A monopoly called Best Buy and I will be damned if I can find local businesses who will compete with Best Buy and provide better service.
According to Barbara Ehrenreich (i.e., books, Nickel and Dimed, Natural Causes, Bait and Switch, Living with a Wild God, Had I known) discussed how much Americans are being nickel and dimed, yet they think everything is peachy when it comes to the cost of goods and services. Ehrenreich makes me think about this current situation I face. She also makes me think about my dad’s small business which big monopolies have destroyed, as well as others which are similar to my dad’s business. In other words, Americans, blinded by big business conglomerates, go for supposed enlightenment regarding “high-volume purchases in retail and the wonderful idea (false) that it’s all about selling at a lower price.” Wrong. This is true about lower prices. But in the process, big corporate monopolized industries have ended up jacking up exponentially the cost of servicing such products with “warranty” coverages and at-home visits with a minimum of $100 or $200 per visit, plus jacked up prices regarding parts and services. The big fat cats and fat pigs at the top and those owning most of the stock end up making a bundle, as they close local offices, ship jobs of customer service overseas, and doing centralized customer service with no concern for “bedside manners” (to borrow a phrase about medical doctors) and give praise and honor to the thought of being like used car salesmen.
Corporation after corporation does this. And this is supposed to be good for American consumers when corporations no longer provide the products and services in one bundle (to borrow a phrase from Progressive Insurance which “bundles” its insurance). Instead, some very good corporations, one which is facing bankruptcy and uses the bundling situation as an excuse (any excuse will do, right?), hiring third-parties to do the service and nickel and diming the customers in the process. Meanwhile, customers believe they are doing so well in paying “lower prices?” BS. They are losing out, while small businesses which bundled products and services together, are being trashed by big corporate conglomerates and no one has the balls to challenge the big corporations. Thus, with Best Buy, we don’t have local competition to give the company a run for its money, so the customer service can treat its customers like dirt (or s**t?).
And the “third-party” approach for service does not accept credit cards and insists on same-day payment, rather than a bill and then pay it. They evidently think they are HMOs or PPOs which ask for a set co-payment price at the time service is rendered. However, even in cases of health providers accepting HMOs or PPOs, they accept credit card payments.
And consumers face the sublime to the ridiculous. Those who insist on immediate payment for services rendered and those who refuse to divulge the cost of the services and let them pile up, perhaps to see how much they can grab at the financial balls of the consumer and strangulate them?
Once more. An America with no concern for fellow Americans, allowing the “bedside manners” to go to hell. One more time and I am speaking out against this development in America, the land where I saw many of these things in a much better light than today. America needs an attitude adjustment. Sad to say, but I definitely don’t like a reliance on the lawyers who make themselves careers from ambulance-chasing and government politicians in government. Lawyers who make so much money, even like McConnell in the U.S. Senate, from ripping off the taxpayers while having huge salaries, the best health benefits, and the best retirement benefits. May they go to hell as they get delight out of pitching one American against another. As I said. America needs an attitude adjustment, but no one seems to care to pursue the solutions to make this happen. I am mad as hell and ain’t going to take it anymore. These are lawyers on the take from big business/industry monopolies who destroy capitalist competition and then support this lousy status quo.
Category:
New Comments