Paul Soglin: Waxing America

Why We Lost The Cold War

As a child growing up in the nineteen fifties there were plenty of reminders about the never-ending battle against Soviet Communism.

In and out of the classroom we knew of the value of our democracy, the freedoms we enjoyed as Americans.  We had open and free elections, though blacks could not vote in the South where the poll tax ensured the rule of whites. We could travel across our great country without having to show identification or answering to anyone as to our purpose, so long as there was no probable cause to stop us.

The differences were not limited to democratic values.

The virtues of capitalism were everywhere. In Poland, peasants stood in line for hours for a loaf of bread. In Moscow it took weeks, no months, to have a telephone installed. And the Soviet airline Aeroflot was a joke, United States Airlines Compete With Aeroflot - And Win :

At the height of the Cold War, Americans indulged in self congratulations when comparing our airline industry to the Soviet's Aeroflot. The rickety communist propelled travel provided images of a sweaty, husky commissar boarding an oversold but underfueled airplane, burdened with packages and a bottle of carry-on borscht.

As he worked his way into the seat, storing his chickens in the overhead compartment and his goats under the seat in front of him, he settled in next to an equally husky and sweaty peasant with a crying, soiled child -one  under each arm. If they were lucky, they would arrive at the scheduled destination city, and perhaps within twenty-four hours.

Onward

After the first of the year I was shopping at a big box store. The lines indicated it would take a half hour to check out. I asked the manager why there were so few clerks, "With the holidays over, no help to be had?" The response was frank and honest, "No, after the new year, we were instructed by regional to reduce our staffing to these levels."

My Facebook friends know that I spent over an hour on hold Monday with a life insurance company, a health insurance company, and a telephone company.

It was my fault trying to reach them on the first Monday after the holidays. Of course, I tried reaching them last week to no avail. There are only so many minutes one can waste on a cell phone.

Maybe the free-everything capitalists are right. We need competition. We need competition from the Communists. Then American corporations will start providing service.

Some of my friends probably think that the destruction of our Constitution under the second Bush reign with warrant-less search and seizures is a disaster. They probably think the telephone company turning over their phone records to the government without any legal authority is a travesty.

Screw the Bill of Rights.

The real travesty is the telephone company not answering the phone.

Praise Nordstroms. Praise the local Sundance 608 movie theater. Praise the Nitty Gritty. Praise the local Sentry.

 

 

 

Milwaukee Talk Radio

Bruce Murphy nailed it in his summary of the Milwaukee talk radio tempest, Why We Went after Talk Radio:

Conservative talk radio is a different animal entirely. Both Sykes and WISN afternoon host Mark Belling, the two top rated such hosts in town, have expressly declared they are entertainers and not journalists, and have no obligation to present both sides of an issue. Their appeal arises precisely from a lack of good will toward certain segments of the community...

Following the national format used by Limbaugh and the others dating back to the 1980's, these formerly effective mouthpieces built an audience on two bases, the extreme right wing, and undecideds who were looking for intelligent political commentary to guide their decisions.

The last four years through a variety of techniques from providing an alternative progressive radio voice to public exposure of these charlatans the base diminished.

Murphy notes, relying on Dan Shelley's original article, "Secrets of Talk Radio", that the hosts of right-wing talk radio have no intention of engaging in rational dialog.

The nice thing is that the audience for Sykes and Belling is diminishing to the point where no one listens to them, except the true believers and those of us looking for an occasional chuckle or fodder for our blogs. 

United Airlines Gets a Thumbs Up; So Does AT&T

Compliments are forthcoming for United Airlines and AT&T. Yes, two of the largest corporate giants that have felt the vicious sting of the pesky Waxing America mosquito are deserving of compliments.

On the final leg of the already chronicled journey, with unplanned stops in Denver and Fort Collins, I wanted to change my ticket which normally requires a $150 change fee. My first request was met with a 'no' but when I comply took up the matter with a supervisor, the fee was waived.

I explained that while I knew the fee applied at the time I purchased my non-refundable ticket, that two points justified waiving the fee. First I was coming down with a cold which would make it more painful to wait another day to fly. Secondly, and more importantly, United had failed on the other two flights to deliver me in a timely manner to my destinations when we ran out of fuel necessitating two additional stops.

The supervisor made an exception and, I might add, the tenor of the conversation was quite reasonable.

Thank you, United Airlines.

We had sixteen people with cell phones west of Estes Park, not far from the infamous Stanley Hotel.  I was the one of only six with consistent reliable cell phone service. Like most of the others who had good service, my provider was AT&T.  I may not be pleased with their policy on cable deregulation in Wisconsin, but the cell phone service has been great.

Thank you, AT&T.

Madison Storm February 17, 2008. Blogging Unless the Power Goes

The storm moved in after midnight. It started with rain.

7:00 am No Sunday newspaper. We have great people doing the delivery but even they know not to venture out in this mess.  The street is covered with ice. I doubt we will get the cars unlocked today-they too are covered with ice. All the utility lines and tree limbs are sagging under the weight of the water and ice.

8:00 am Showered and then rinsed the bathtub and filled it with water. If the water pumping stations loses power we will have enough H2O for the dogs and cats; I plan to drink Crystal Light.

8:45 am A tree limb went down and with it the telephone line. We still have service.  The anchor in the house came out and the line is laying across the line.

8:47 am The rain turned to snow.

8:50 am Boris is out there in the snow and rain having a grand time. He is trying to carry the six foot limb that broke of the birch tree.

9:00 am Called the AT&T. The representative answered in three minutes and told me that crews would be out by Tuesday. I told her her "Tuesday if we were lucky." She smiled through the phone line and thanked me for being understanding. She said I could pick up the limb and that it was all right if I wanted to get the downed line out of the snow. I am thankful i did not get someone in the Philippines.

9:05 am It is back to rain.

9:10 am I am dressed for when hell freezes over and headed out the back door.

• Removed the downed limb.
• Put the step ladder in the yard and laid the line over it. Hooked the end of the line to the fence. Now the line is four feet off the ground.
• Moved fire wood close to the back door in case we need it later.
• The dogs want to play. Threw the ball and Frisbee for ten minutes to Boris and Roxy. Sara opened the door and told me that I was an idiot. The dogs are having a grand time. I am wet.
• Knocked icicles form the edge of the roof. I know better than to try to remove ice from tree limbs - it only breaks them.

9:35 am It appears the precipitation has stopped or slowed to a drizzle. I am going to go check the flashlights and get out some fresh batteries. Boris is still ruling over the backyard.

11:15 am It can't decide what to do. It could be a drizzle, it could be sleet, I know it isn't snow or sunshine. The dogs are having a grand time. But I have a feeling that the weight of the weather on the branches is going to start taking a toll soon.

11:45 am Another small branch, about six feet long, 3 inches in diameter, separated from a birch tree.

11:59 am Definitely a mixture of sleet and snow.

12:06 pm Definitely snow. A good day to read. Along with the campaign to expose WMC, I meant to read Judicial Elections: Robe Warriors by Zach Patton in the March, 2006 issue of Governing Magazine. Join me (this merits its own post later in the week; thanks to Jim Rosenberg @ Random Thoughts for the reminder):

The real power player on the business side is the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, which has dedicated millions of dollars in recent elections
to reshaping the state-level judiciary with business-friendly judges.
The chamber, which represents the interests of more than 3 million
businesses across the country, has reportedly spent $120 million in
just the past four years, most of it through the Institute for Legal
Reform, a tax-free affiliate. All that spending is paying off: In
2004, the chamber won every single contest in which it was involved.
Those triumphs all but guaranteed that spending by groups on both
sides of the tort overhaul debate would continue to rise. "We're going
to see more of the same for 2006, if not worse," Weiss predicts.
One reason judicial campaigns are costing so much is that they're
being waged more and more on the television screen. From 2000 to 2004,
the number of states that saw judicial TV ads quadrupled to 16,
meaning there were ads in four out of every five states in which
candidates ran head to head. Spending on TV ads in 2004 totaled $24.4
million, obliterating the previous record of $10.6 million set in
2000.

2:00 pm  No cars on our street since 9:35 am. No bicycles either. Oops.

The snow is piling up and I have no clue as to whether switching from rain to snow is better.  I think it is. Rain would have formed more ice increasing the likelihood of bringing down more trees and power lines. I think.

According to DANE 101 the Hillary Clinton event is canceled.  They think.

Sara is watching something about Yellowstone on the History Channel. Natasha is with us and will probably not go back to her dorm tonight. Alex came in from Milwaukee Friday to join Natasha in auditioning for an extra role in the Johnny Depp Dillinger film. She went back to Milwaukee last night to beat the storm.  Good move.

We have enough Crystal Light to get through Tuesday. I love the raspberry.

I have an appointment at the Labor Temple at 1:00 tomorrow followed by another across the street at Coffee Cargo. I plan to make both of them.

3:00 pm First phone call of the day since 9:00 am. It is from Hillary Clinton. At least it sounded like her.

4:00 pm Another phone call. Hillary again.

4:05 pm Another phone call. Natasha's roommate is ill and stranded in the dorm. Sara and Natasha go out and spend 15 minutes scraping the ice from the car.

5:00 pm Sara and Natasha are back from picking up the prescription and dropping it off. Sara says the roads are better where there is no plowing. The car gets traction in the snow. No snow, and it is ice. Another phone call. It is Hillary Clinton.

6:00 pm  Dinner. Sara, not too subtlety suggests that maybe I overreacted and the danger from the storm was not all that great. Sara and Natasha have been drinking the Crystal Light.  There is only enough to get us through Monday.

10:00 pm  Power is out to the west of us. I am vindicated.

Another Reason to Kill Your Television: Logo Overload

It started with those little logos at the bottom right hand corner of the screen.  The logo of the network you were watching.

Then the logos evolved.

Some start moving.

Some started advertising the next hour's programming or next season's shows.

Some even moved and jumped and marketed other shows.

Networks suck.

You are their prisoner. You pay them for the right to watch their shows and then on your dime they shove advertising into the format with no respect for those who created the programming you are watching. Or you.

Forty years ago, we heard about subliminal advertising. Millions was spent on figuring out how to flash messages to viewers without their knowing it.

Then some genius figured out subliminal was unnecessary.

Bite me.

Senator Russ Feingold. Why He Is the Best

I found it on Wisopinion.com

It needs as much exposure as possible.

Russ Feingold on the New FISA Legislation

 

AT&T's U-verse in Wauwatosa: "Fire to the Node"

Maybe somehow you missed the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's story last week by Rick Barrett:  "AT&T Replacing Batteries - Device Blamed in U-verse Equipment Cabinet Blast in Tosa."

You probably didn't see the pictures from the 'Tosa Fire Department in telecom blog LightReading, but you should. Here are a couple:

 
Even Wigderson got in the act: "Cable Competition Could be Deadly."

But the best line came from Jeffrey Hevey, the Wauwatosa fire marshal:

"It's not like these things are blowing up left and right every day," he said. "Would I want to set up my granddaughter's play set next to one of these cabinets? Probably not. But if I were mowing the lawn, I wouldn't be looking over my shoulder, worried that the thing is going to blow up."

But Christmas Eve, when you're not mowing the lawn? Not to worry. AT&T told us last year, when these were exploding in Texas, that its testing showed the problem was a manufacturing defect and an isolated event, and the batteries were safe and stable.

Or maybe not.

 

-Barry Orton

Edwards Campaign Living in Leo Hindery's Corporate Glass House

John Edwards' campaign rhetoric has been harshly anti-corporate, but he's throwing stones from the sundeck of his key economic advisor's corporate glass house.

A New York Times story over Christmas weekend comparing Mitt Romney and John Edwards views of wealth and the role of government in its creation had a small mention of "Edwards' senior economic adviser," Leo Hindery, Jr.

I couldn't believe it.

Leo Hindery, Jr., formerly head of scandal-ridden Global Crossing, who walked away from that stockholders' disaster with $250 million? Leo Hindery, who as George Steinbrenner's head of the YES cable channel, squeezed Yankee fans out of every last dollar to watch their games?  Leo Hindery, who as head of cable television giant TCI, then arguably the country's worst cable operator, managed to con AT&T into buying the company at a premium price?  That Leo Hindery?

And after the sale, in a coup of tremendous chutzpah, Hindery then talked AT&T into making him head of the new company. The new AT&T Broadband then made TCI look like a public service enterprise as it screwed customers, employees, and its corporate parent, lost billions, and debased parent AT&T to the point that SBC was able to buy the remaining corporate shell for a song.

it's not as if Hindery's background is a mystery. Back in 1998, when the TCI deal was in the works, Leo Hindery, Jr. was the subject of a highly unusual New York Times profile which debunked his frequent claims of a boyhood out of Dickens: leaving home at 13 to fend for himself, Horatio Alger-style, at a series of menial jobs. Fact-checking Hindery's self-serving bio, Geraldine Fabricant found that despite Hindery's insistent declarations otherwise,

"Mr. Hindery's widowed mother, sister and brother all said that Mr. Hindery lived at home until he graduated from high school...

His wife said that living with her husband was rather like having an eccentric uncle in the attic. 'You get used to it after a while,' she said."

A 2005 book about the AT&T Broadband debacle, End of The Line: The Rise and Fall of AT&T, by Leslie Cauley, then a Wall Street Journal telecommunications reporter, and now USA Today's senior reporter on the same beat, was even more pointed about Hindery's shaky relationship with the truth. She called him a "carnival barker" whose standard operating procedure in dealmaking was always to be "sprinkling a little stardust," as longtime media mogul John Malone phrased it.

It was never clear to AT&T executives if Hindery stretched the truth on purpose, or if he just dwelled in a very grey world where black wasn't always black, and white wasn't always white.

I first personally witnessed the Hindery version of stardust sprinkling in 1995, when Hindery's Intermedia Partners was seeking approval from my client, Metro Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee, to buy Viacom's cable franchise there. In response to my concerns, Hindery promised the Metro Council that Intermedia minority partner TCI would never have a role in operating the Nashville system. Two years later, Nashville was  amalgamated with other TCI systems in the region, and by 1999 it was sold to AT&T by TCI, whose President by then was... Leo Hindery.

In 1997, Hindery promised my Chicago-area municipal clients that new owner TCI would finally upgrade and modernize their old-fashioned cable systems to allow broadband services, and that TCI had no intention of selling them. By 1999, new owner AT&T Broadband was struggling to upgrade those same systems that were in far worse shape than Hindery led buyer AT&T to believe. Stardust!

On the political side, Hindery has been funneling money to centrist Democrats for years, but earned a place on many activists' permanent shitlist by being a key funder of the Osama Bin Ladin ads placed on behalf of Dick Gephart that helped sink Howard Dean in Iowa in 2004. While Hindery has already maxed his contributions to the Obama, Clinton, and Edwards campaigns, Edwards has been a frequent flier on Hindery's corporate jet, reimbursing over $15,000 to Hindery's Intermedia Partners for charter service at the first class ticket rate.

Besides his deep pockets, Hindery's other campaign role has been to assuage the corporate community that John Edwards, despite his rhetoric, isn't really so hostile to them.  But considering his track record, is Leo Hindery's economic advice any more useful than his standard operating procedure of "buy low, pump it full of 'stardust,' and then dump it?"

Can't the Edwards campaign do any better than this?

- Barry Orton

UPDATE: Cross-posted at the Huffington Post.

Media Covers "Video Competition" Bill Signing and Partial Vetoes Despite Timing Designed To Bury Story

If you are Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle, and you must sign a bad bill pushed heavily by one of your biggest financial supporters, and you've line-item vetoed some of the bill's worst provisions, which contained language that its legislative proponents specifically voted in both chambers not to amend, what do you do?

How about skipping a public signing ceremony, and releasing the veto message on, say, the Friday afternoon before Christmas, while doing a "feed the hungry" event at Second Harvest? That way, the story misses most television news on Friday, which had already overstuffed its audience with the "NFL Network and Big Ten Network at the Legislature" story the day before. The signing and vetoes story then lands in Saturday's newspapers, and sits largely unread as Wisconsin frantically shops itself into a stupor over the weekend in preparation for Tuesday's Holiday To Save the American Economy, formerly known as Christmas.

So Friday afternoon, my phone heated up with interviews from the working press trying to scope out What It Means, file a coherent story, and go home by dinnertime. Having read the veto message and the text of the actual vetoes, I was ready. This morning I was able to find out what it was I said to each reporter.

Despite the Governor's effort to bury it, the story ran page one above the fold in the Capital Times and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and page one in the local section of the State Journal.

As usual in this story, The Capital Times' coverage was solid.  Jeff Richgels and Judith Davidoff ("Prof: Don't hold breath for new services under state cable law") led with my prediction that:

Gov. Jim Doyle's signing of the state cable franchising bill isn't likely to mean AT&T -- a leading backer of the bill -- will bring its U-verse TV service to the Madison area anytime soon, one prominent observer said.

"I don't see it in Madison in any widespread way in 2008," said Barry Orton, a UW-Madison professor of telecommunications who has advised many communities in their dealings with cable companies.

Orton noted that AT&T has been reducing its rollout projections for U-verse in recent announcements.

"Every single estimate cuts back on the previous one," he said.

Richgels and Davidoff also nailed, in plain language, what Doyle's vetoes did and the likely impact on local access channels.

Mark Pitsch's Wisconsin State Journal story also did a very good job in outlining the vetoes, and covered the access angle as well.  I was happy with my quotes, which Mark used to frame the story:

Doyle 's vetoes hold the potential for substantial state oversight of the industry -- whereas the bill the Legislature sent to his desk sought to eliminate state regulation.

"The state will be a legitimate overseer of this industry rather than a rubber stamp to whatever the industry wants to do, " said Barry Orton, a UW-Madison telecommunications professor who urged Doyle to issue the vetoes on behalf of local governments and some lawmakers who opposed the bill.

"It means the cable companies and other providers won't be able to run roughshod over consumers. "

..."He's made a ridiculous bill only pretty bad, and that's good, " Orton said of Doyle.

Over at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Steve Walters and Stacy Forster managed to cram in a list of all the vetoes, cover the impact on access channels,  add my framing ("Barry Orton, a University of Wisconsin-Madison telecommunications professor and consultant to local governments, called Doyle's vetoes courageous."), and then advanced the story by quoting Senator Jeff Plale, a chief sponsor, that there wouldn't be any attempt to override the vetoes.

Walters and Foster also skillfully managed to put the whole bill in context while quoting one of its most effective opponents, Rep. Gary Hebl, and its most effective shill, Thad Nation of TV4US:

Legislators who fought the bill said Doyle's vetoes improved it but predicted that rural areas will not be helped by competition and new telecommunications products.

"People in many areas of the state won't see any competition . . . because companies such as AT&T have no plans to provide service beyond their existing service footprint, which covers less than half of the state," Rep. Gary Hebl (D-Sun Prairie) said in a statement.

Thad Nation, executive director of TV4US Wisconsin, which ran hundreds of TV ads statewide pushing the bill, predicted that "prices will fall, services will improve and companies will have incentives and bring consumers new, exciting technologies."

TV4US reported $44 million in contributions in 2006 - including $43.9 million from one contributor it refused to identify on its Internal Revenue Service disclosure report.

A "small percentage" of that money was spent in Wisconsin in 2006, said Lizanne Sadlier, a TV4US official.

Sadlier said AT&T was a "significant contributor" to TV4US in 2006.

So maybe millions in advertising from "grassroots" TV4US had some impact on this process?  Could be.

- Barry Orton

(with apologies for lengthy and self-centered post)

Wisconsin Governor Signs "Video Competition" Bill: Partial Vetoes Put Lipstick, Mascara & Rouge on Pig

Without ceremony, Governor Jim Doyle signed AB 207 into law today, using his partial veto power to mitigate some of the worst aspects of the bill. 

The Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions (DFI) was given significant powers the original bill restricted: rulemaking, setting the franchise term, state fees, applicant qualifications and revocation standards. So instead of being a rubber stamp, DFI will have some real oversight capability.

The cities didn't fare as well.  The Governor's veto message bragged that he restored municipalities' power to charge permit fees for use of public rights-of-way, but failed to mention that he didn't veto a provision that such fees could be deducted from other fees due the cities. He vetoed a bad limit on auditing fees, but also inexplicably vetoed a good provision added in the Senate that allowed municipal control of the aesthetics of facilities placed in the rights-of-way. So, in all, not much help.

Public, educational and governmental (PEG) access channels didn't get whole lot of help either.  The word "noncommercial" was vetoed, theoretically allowing them "the ability to air revenue-generating commercial programming," but the veto provides no specific help on funding cuts, technical signal quality or channel location.  Expressing concern and urging the Legislature to deal with the issues PEG channels present in follow-up legislation gives new meaning to the phrase "lip service."

AT&T is delighted by the signing, and seemingly unconcerned with the vetoes.

More reactions in the media tomorrow...stay tuned.

- Barry Orton