The intent of this blog is to promote human equality, human progress, human peace and justice, and optimism. To accomplish this, to encourage the discussion of ideas after identifying and discovering problems, and then creating positive solutions for "we the people," in order to provide for the "general welfare" and "domestic tranquility" of America now and its "posterity" into the future. To encourage an emphasis on separation of religion and state for all, no matter if this is for those "of faith" in a Maker / Creator (Deists, God-loving people, Christians, various people of spirituality) and atheists or agnostics.

Posts tagged ‘cable television’

Cable TV

While living in South Florida, we had choices for cable TV and Internet services. Here in Tioga County, we often have only one choice. For many of us, that one choice is Spectrum, unless we try HughesNet, Dish, or DirectTV through the airwaves of satellite.  Satellite services are not given a good review, particularly with Internet. 

The FCC has given favor to big business and corporate welfare and has nationalized (socialism) by way of corporate welfare and favors to the wealthy who run such services. Not only have we lost local content in newspapers which were once chock full of local news, information, and culture, we have lost control of local broadcasting.  Television broadcasting, especially in rural hilly areas has been made so weak by the FCC, that we are forced to subscribe to Internet and cable TV.  It’s all a strategy to nationalize by way of corporate welfare by way of money funding the government and favors done for the wealthy.  Radio broadcasting, too, is weakened.  When in my younger years here, we did not have difficulty in driving in a car and receiving the local radio broadcasts just about anywhere, whether AM or FM.  Today, to open up bandwidth for the thumbing on mobile phones which come nowhere close to what we had in local broadcasting, we are unable to have powerful local broadcasting stations in this rural hilly area. Oh, I forget. When we go on top of the hills where the density of population is lower (smaller audience to make money), we can get clear signals.  In the valleys, the reception sucks.  It might not be a huge number of people, but sure is more densely populated with a larger number than on top of the hills.  Perhaps we should be like Chinese communists and move populations to where they wish to have them located – on top of the hills?  This is ridiculous.

In the 1960s, in the hills of upstate New York and Pennsylvania, the cable television industry was born – on the local level.  The FCC did not micro-manage these things with regulatory authority. The regulatory agency involved the local authorities.  The FCC, doing favors for corporate welfare CEOs, has wrongly regulated cable TV and other local media outlets. 

To reiterate. In South Florida, we had a choice of cable TV and Internet. The old copper telephone lines into our home were used to deliver Internet by way of AT&T fiber optic lines up to the box and connected to the copper wires.  We also had the choice of copper coax lines by way of Comcast.  The lines within the home were all the same type of lines as what we had with telephone and cable TV in the past. 

In addition to these two options, a small and local firm named Laurie’s TV offered cable television and Internet within our Homeowners’ Association development.  We could pay extra and at a lower cost for this HOA cable / Internet access, in addition to the HOA fees we paid.  The speed for the Internet was not good, so we chose AT&T, delivered by fiber optics and copper.  We chose Laurie’s TV for cable TV.  (FYI: Laurie’s TV was sold to another firm). 

Explanation about this HOA.  The HOA was like an incorporated village, but run by a private organization based 60 miles away in Miami.  Residents had problems trying to pay their bills at such a distant location, but were treated like dirt by an attitude of “I’ll break your knees if you don’t pay,” even when a check was lost in the mail.  The one-party dictatorial fascist Republican control in that state put teeth into the ability of these private organizations, called “condo commandos” to run rough-shod over the people.  Even a retired NY State Trooper was treated like crap by an organization like this. 

Within the “mini-village” environment, they provided choices for local cable TV and Internet.  But the costs for us, per year, to maintain sidewalks, streets, public lawns, and social hall were about four to six times what Newark Valley village residents pay in government taxes in order to do the same thing.  And they were like Mafia bosses in attempting to collect, protected by Republicans who controlled the state. 

I say, to people who wish to move to Florida, be careful what you wish for.  I say to people here who complain about incorporated village taxes, be careful  what you complain about because I have seen it much worse when such village services are provided by PRIVATIZED HOA services.  After all, George W. Bush and his brother, Jeb Bush of Florida always said, “what’s good for [PRIVATIZED] business is good for America.”  Not so fast in believing such stuff because it sucks, like a Nazi Hitler-type in Germany. Like a communist Chinese. Like a Putin fascist dictator.  Be careful what you believe and dig in your heals in such regard.  Being humble means learning so as to overcome ignorance. Not being humble and refusing to learn means being a stupid idiot. 

After some 40 years living in Floridan and observing what happened there, I bring a different perspective to this community. Cable TV is one issue in which I bring a different perspective.  I have a different perspective on other issues besides cable TV.  It would be nice if somebody would listen, consider, and THINK about my perspective and the information I have to offer. Stop the BS about whether this is politics and my opinion. It is my experiences with facts to share.  Stop  scoffing at me in the same manner 19th Century NY Governor George Clinton was scoffed at when he proposed what was called by the scoffers, “Clinton’s Ditch.”  Stop the taunting of me because I give my perspective.  Cable TV in rural upstate NY really sucks, but so does the nationalization of cable TV and media, for the sake of corporate welfare, while social welfare and taxes for all are issues castigated with wishes to destroy, not reform. 

Side note besides cable TV:  What the people need is to take back local control which is good for all, not just for a group of white supremacists called Nazis.  The Republican Party is no longer the party of Abraham Lincoln, but should be re-named the Nazi KKK Party. 

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Commentary, Economics, Regulated Capitalism, Commerce, human-rights, If it's broke let's fix it TOGETHER, Journalism & Media

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SHORT & TO THE POINT: Thomas Friedman in Print

NOTE: it is quite possible that WordPress blocks this article from being sent to my personal email in Google. Damn WordPress for doing this and not being willing to help me out in stopping it.

The other day, I picked up a newspaper that was not from Binghamton. Binghamton has a newspaper which has scaled back its content, lost circulation in the process and now wants to fulfill its fat cat, Dickey’s plans to eliminate print copies and go exclusively to digital. The claim is a blatant false claim that “newspapers are dying, so therefore we need to only cater to the younger people with digital.” BS. That is a false statement and a blatant means of sabotaging the newspaper industry for the sake of more dollars i the individualist jackasses at the top dictatorial levels. It’s not true. Newspapers have reduced content and gone digital for one purpose only. To dictate and force technology and the COSTS of technology upon us all, the same as a lousy cable television industry has done to us without offering ala carte in choices of channels but DICTATING and FORCING Americans to pay huge amounts for television we don’t want to watch. It’s like going into a restaurant and paying for EVERYTHING on the menu, whether we eat any of it or not. Cable television making money from consumers with 250 or 350 channels or more, THEN making money from commercials from bastards like big pharma and lousy lawyers, all of them moaning and groaning about not making enough money. That is a boldface lie to which no Americans will speak proudly and bravely out en masse against. Newspapers, too, charging for digital and paper copies when many of us refuse to use the digital copies and COULD choose to purchase a huge number of archived newspapers from Newspapers.com. The newspapers make double the amount and force us to pay for the entire menu, like what would happen should we visit one restaurant. However, it was nice to recently read a newspaper from outside Binghamton and find an op-ed columnist which is no longer available in Binghamton in a print copy. Thomas L. Friedman, we were blessed to read your column once again and to LEARN (as Americans should be trying to do) from the overall bulk of information which is available out there, not the jackass shallow crap from a menu of entertainment on cable television. We want a print copy of a newspaper that contains op-eds from Friedman, George Will (conservative), Maureen Dowd (liberal), Paul Krugman (liberal), Michael Gerson (conservative), Kathleen Parker (moderate), Cynthia Tucker (moderate), Leonard Pitts (anti-white-racist and moderate-liberal), Jeff Jacoby (?), and many local columnists, religious writers, food and recipe writers, advice columnists, puzzle games (enough with the GD video games in which players on a basketball punch each other out) with interests tailored to people at the local level. America is being dictated and forced into accepting digital copies of newspapers and huge menus of lousy entertainment on cable television. We want the columnists and others back in the newspapers and stop the GD false claim, after eliminating and paring back so much of it, “no one is interested.” Of course, no one is interested and cancel subscriptions because these young whippersnappers taking over the industry following the Recession of 2008, have deliberately set up things this way – for their own individualistic, selfish, greedy, egotistical, snot Ayn Rand ways. Thank you for giving me a light at the end of the tunnel with a choice (“life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”) to enable me to purchase another newspaper. Only wish I could get the other newspaper delivered to me in print copy. But of course the snots like Dickey head of Gannett, and others, wish to snuff out that light at the end of the tunnel because, like jackass, Trump, they don’t like the criticism from loyal readers and newspaper subscribers of print editions. Dickey face and the others should go to plumb h-e-double-hockey-sticks and burn there in their own stench of evil anti-human-being styles. BTW. If you read this and are so low-life scum so as to reject lengthy detail in an op-ed or article, don’t bother reading the Thomas Friedman op-ed to which I just referenced. It might be too hard on your damn brain. Is this short and to the point enough? Tastes like chicken.

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Commentary, Journalism & Media

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THREE-PENNY OP-ED: American Big Business is Supply Side Economics, not Capitalism

George W. Bush once said, “what’s good for business is good for America.” I never liked it when he said it in the past. It has gotten worse today. What he TRULY means is that what is good for supply-side economics in America is good for America. In other words, what’s good for fat cats at the top, with a love of money, taking and hoarding the money for themselves and working “trickle-down” economics otherwise, like WE THE PEOPLE are a bunch of slaves designed to get a pittance of money to live on. At least we get more than the Africans who were brought to these shores beginning in 1619.

What’s good for America is good business and capitalism with supply AND demand side considerations, with competition and regulation by government. This was actually what theologian and economist, Adam Smith, a contemporary of our Founding Fathers, said was best, due to the natural human tendency to be greedy and selfish.

For example. Local newspapers in America no longer feel compelled to compete, especially where there is a less dense population, such as the areas around Binghamton, Ithaca, and Sayre, PA. Three newspapers serve this area, but only ONE newspaper, from Binghamton, will deliver to an area situated DIRECTLY BETWEEN ITHACA AND BINGHAMTON, as the CROW flies. Communist style Moscow Pravda runs it all from Virginia and at offices of Gannett. They don’t find good delivery people, in the midst of a population which is crying out, due to the lack of money. So we constantly get screwed and feel po’d about the services and get no satisfaction. The lazy bums at the tops of the corporations simply write it off as no problem and insist we read it in digital copy. BS. Most people do not want to read it that way, but it is the way the freaking fat cats can horde more money, proclaiming that “they cannot make as much otherwise.” Sure. THEY, the FAT CATS cannot make more money, so they push a LAZY MAN’S way of delivery – electronically, which uses MORE energy to do so and they proclaim they are “saving trees.” BS. I have an answer. Publish on RECYCLED PAPER and you can save more TREES and use LESS ENERGY. You BS artists with a love of money.

Then there is Verizon Wireless in this low-density population area. We can look out of our yard and can see the Verizon tower. No hills to interrupt it. Hell. There were more high-rise buildings in Palm Beach County to block the signal there and we COULD NOT VIEW the damn tower from our home. But the service was far better and we seldom had connections in which people keep repeating, “Did you say something? Hello? Hello?” Constantly on Verizon Wireless in this little town in America. One can travel down the road and receive NO service at all. That sucks and I am here to say, “I am sick and tired of this BS and ain’t going to take it anymore.” Will anyone join me in saying this?

No one wishes to join collectively and say anything about this in loud voices. Instead we are forced to listen to the BS of QAnon or Proud Boys with their damn guns of the NRA. Instead, with regard to Verizon, which has a tower near my home, this is what people say. “Well, it gets worse when the leaves are on the trees.’ REALLY? In Florida with high rise buildings blocking signals there is one more thing. THEY HAVE LEAVES ON THE TREES 12 MONTHS OF THE YEAR, DAMN IT ALL. That is making excuses for big business and their love of money attitude which pays no attention to the DEMAND SIDE of the market and MEETING the demand. They put money in the pockets of Claudia Tenney, the bitch who won a congressional seat by only 100 votes and into the wealthy of fat cat Mitch McConnell who uses his money to sabotage efforts of Biden and the Democrats to accomplish something. While wimps among the damn Republicans GO ALONG out of fear of being attacked. Poor people. Feel sorry for such wimps.

Then there is Spectrum which also contributed heavily to BITCH Claudia Tenney who won by only about 100 votes. They are in denial about attacks online against their customers and do nothing. Their streaming service sucks big time as we get constant buffering all the time. CONSTANT. Are they interested in giving more than, “oh, we apologize,” and DO SOMETHING? Nope. The dopes of Spectrum with fat cats at the top, trying to preserve their supply side trickle-down economics, while in denial to the DEMAND SIDE of the market. At least in Florida, there was Laurie’s TV which provided us with a Community Antenna TV (CATV) option which was far better than the crap from a monopoly here. And get Haefele TV or others to COMPETE effectively with Spectrum with CATV? Forget it. We take more than just one step back in this situation, when one considers the BETTER service we received back in the 1960s and 1970s, due to LOCALLY OWNED cable television. We did not have hundreds and hundreds of channels, as what is provided by Laurie’s TV in Palm Beach County, but we on the demand side were happy. It was a capitalist competitive means, too, of selling homes in the community which had Laurie’s TV. Capitalist competition at the local level.

We’re mad as hell and ain’t going to take it anymore. Anyone with us, collectively, or do you continue to be a bunch of wimpish people afraid of confrontation and retribution and who won’t do one damn thing to maintain America’s capitalism and democratic forms of government?

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Commentary, democracy, Economics, Regulated Capitalism, Commerce, New Comments, Op-ed

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TV Land in America

“God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy.” – Lyrics of a popular country song.

Choices.  People believe those in the GLBT community have a choice NOT to be GLB or T.  The only choice such people have is to determine whether we wish to condemn ourselves to the conformity of the majority of people who are straight or live a life according to our own beings. Perhaps if we live life according to what we are, there is also the choice to be promiscuous or monogamous.  There are those who wish to force all of us to make the choice of being straight, thus condemning us to a hell for which morons have no right to condemn one another.

Choices.  TV Land today.  Another conundrum established by the “majority” who are shallow people in America today, thanks to the education rug which has been pulled out from beneath Americans.  If we to watching the drivel of entertainment, religion, sports, and politics delivered by the – what we are told to believe – huge multi-channel “wonders of the modern world” called cable and satellite television, we are personified as fools who don’t recognize “life is good” and we should appreciate these “choices.”

Choices?   OK.  So the technological modern “wonder world” provides remote control devices which allow us to “program” out the undesirable stuff.  Believe me, I am so impressed by such technological “wizardry!”  I can whittle my channel selections back to about a dozen or so channels – perhaps two dozen.  Maybe.  I can whittle my choices back to just a handful, out of how many total I am paying for?  200?  300?  Did you catch the part about, “PAYING FOR?”  I have the choice, for sure.  But when I inquire about also having a “choice” for what I pay, the customer service reps are well trained to twist this all around and tell me about all the wonderful “tiers” of service.  “You can get a through g channels.”  But this does not include channel bbb.  “Oh, well, says the rep, then you go to the next tier – for $40 more.”  HOW EXCITING!  For channel bbb, I can pay $40 and the rep never blinks an eye (or, I suppose there is a “blinked eye,” because the person is probably in India and I cannot see he or she) when stating this.  What a FOOL I am, so I order $40 more, in order to receive the ONE channel I want.   The rep is like the Jedi knight in one of the first Star Wars adventures who uses mental telepathy to convince a man he did NOT want a cigarette.

And then I ask about providing a package which fits my needs and at a lower cost, then give me options to pay for any other channel on a “pay as you go” basis (Comcast calls this, “On Demand”).  Response.  “But we do not offer this and you can get x,y, z.”  But I don’t want “x,y, z.”  Rep repeats:  “But we do not offer this and you can get x,y, z.”  But I don’t want your damn “x, y, z” for some astronomical price per month.  How about if you CHANGE and offer what I propose?  “But we do not offer this and you can get x,y, and z – perhaps at a special introductory rate!”  Fine!  Take your introductory rate and shove it where Santa Claus put the Christmas tree.

People – consumers – are crazy to accept this sort of crap from the cable / satellite television industry who all collude on prices.  Try to get a better package in a so-called “competitive capitalist” market, something the FCC and Congress like to think we are getting (does the “opiate of the masses” come to mind?).  Here is a twist on this situation.  The conformity forced upon us by greedy, selfish, pension-raiding, executives who de-value human labor to make slaves:  TV Land today is similar to what Karl Marx proposed as the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”  We have all these shallow people, many without productive jobs, who make decisions for us.  These are decisions based, not on reason, responsibility, and what makes sense for our HUMAN nature, but what makes sense for lining the pockets of executives – and that’s it.  End of story.  No other criteria whatsoever for deciding what the “opiate-inspired” masses should view on television.

Add to this the fact that Rupert Murdock has stated his intent to put local “free” broadcast television “out of business.”  So, then we don’t have MORE choices, but less choices – in a supposed capitalist economy.

One more thing.  In the midst of all this, the shallow, opiate-inspired consumer is mesmerized while being raped by cable / satellite.  In other words, let us accept this stuff on television and PRETEND we REALLY have choices.  But many of these same people balk at the ideas of Obamacare providing healthcare from pooled resources of the people.  In one case – cable / satellite – Marx’s ideas are accepted.  In the other case, Obamacare is falsely attacked for taking into account all the people being served with “multiple healthcare channels” from money we pool together (as we are doing with cable / satellite) and speak loudly and falsely about Obamacare.  Let me figure this out.  In the one case (cable / satellite), this is a WANT for our lives, not a NECESSITY.  In the other case (healthcare), this is a NECESSITY for everyone.

Silly me.  But I would prefer pooling a larger sum of money for healthcare – a NEED in my life – than to pool such a large sum of money in order to provide entertainment for my neighbors – a WANT, not a NEED.   I know what happens with healthcare by the individual.  Those 55 to 65 pay astronomical prices at a time of layoff and no money in an individual’s life.  Those in the younger generation pay far less – individually.  Again, silly me for noticing there is a better way – by RESPONSIBLY WITHOUT CORRUPTION – pooling our money and making it all more equitable for a NEED in our lives – healthcare.  Perhaps then, we can reduce our overall USA per capita costs for healthcare, bringing these in line with other Western CAPITALIST nations.

I repeat:  “God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy.”

Douglas W. Cornwell

Tioga Herald

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Political Commentary

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Broadcast Media

Rupert Murdock once pronounced free broadcast television and radio as being as good as “dead,” due to cable television.  Did anyone notice the smile on his face?  After all, Murdock makes tons of money from cable television.  That’s money that you and I pay in expensive cable television bills and no choice for lower-cost subsets of cable television channels which would exclude Murdock’s channels and be more palatable to us.  And people complain about the small amounts of tax dollars (in comparison to what I probably pay Murdock) used for PBS and NPR?  Give me a break.

Murdock might as well have been explicit and said, “I intend to destroy free local broadcast television.”  For this is his intent – destroy his competition, as are the secret missions of Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, and other big box retailers.  Don’t compete, but destroy – like a Roman warrior and the Mafia which identifies with the Roman Empire.

So someone says to me, “you have a choice if you don’t like cable television, you can cancel it!”  Oh, I can, can I?  So, my choice is like black and white.  Receive everything or nothing?  I am abrasive to that thought that “I have a choice.”  I don’t have a choice.  And the one choice I do have, the big guys like Murdock wish to eliminate that choice, too!

I don’t have a choice.  Sure, I can turn the channels I don’t enjoy off.  I can even set up my remote to bypass such channels and only move to channels I enjoy.  But I still pay more for the bundled packages than I would if offered a package with a more delightful menu – and paid less.  It is not right for my dollars to go to something I don’t agree – particularly for politics and religion for which I disagree.  I also don’t figure I should pay for the bundling of sports into my packages either.  Give me the ones I DON’T want to receive as “pay as you go.”  I attended Syracuse University football games in Syracuse.  It was pay as you go.  I had a choice to purchase a bundle for season’s tickets or pay as you go.  Even the bundled season’s tickets were “pay as you go” – for one team only.

Sports have become far too commercialized, due to this boondogle called cable television.  And while on this subject, consider how much more of my tax dollars have paid for stadiums than for public broadcasting!  Yet millions of us never watch sports!  Where is the justice in this?  Where are the supposed “choices?”  There are none.

And now Rupert Murdock, with the finger prints of paranoid Tricky Dickey on his actions, wishes to eliminate free local broadcasting.  Better to control the “herds” of animal slaves, don’t you know?  When will we the people stop this jerk and others like him?  We won’t, as long as we continue to dismiss what I say with, “you DO have choices” and brush my main point aside.  I do not have choices when I am precluded from purchasing what is acceptable to me.  That is elimination of a choice.  Preclude me and make me out to be troublemaker and you are all working for big business, not for the people.

Imagine the creation of “family-friendly” cable television packages – just for James Dobson and his looney tune worshipers.  It’s a win-win situation for right and left wing – as well as spreading the wealth, rather than concentrating it in the hands of a few people like Rupert Murdock.  Imagine what I could do with the extra money NOT wasted on cable television shit which I don’t wish to view!  The only ones who lose are greedy selfish monopolists – and I don’t give a damn if they lose.

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Commentary, New Comments

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