Paul Soglin: Waxing America

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

Republicans Push Socialist Agenda, Telephone Company Dropped From Capitalism

In yet another effort to destroy the marketplace and  capitalism, Republicans are again using government regulation to advance their social of agenda of redistributing wealth and crushing the entrepreneurial spirit.

As the United States Senate moves towards a vote on the Telephone Company Bail Out and Subsidy Bill, otherwise known as the Telephone Company Immunity Plan (FISA)*, Senator Christoper Dodd (D CT) may be the only pillar of democracy and free enterprise left in Congress.

The Bush foisted plan was simple. Enlist the phone companies to illegally turn over private records of subscribers without a warrant or a court order. Now the errant capitalists are fearful of numerous lawsuits which might cost them millions of dollars.

Rather than let the marketplace work things out, the Republicans are trying to use legislation to immunize the telephone commies companies against liability.

A bunch of self-righteous, politically-bought hypocrites who dare not talk or shoot straight.

They do not believe in the Constitution or capitalism. They believe in their own fat wallets.

Update 8:22 am: Using classical doublespeak, these treacherous termites use fancy names like Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act  when they are really doing domestic spying. As noted in the comments below, Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold deserves great credit for a five year struggle to protect out democracy against these Bush and Cheney lead subversives.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: AT&T Accused of "Cherry Picking"

Today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has it on p.1, top of the fold, but the online  p.1 headline and lede is more pointed than the actual story headline.

Online: AT&T Accused of "Cherry Picking"

AT&T in Milwaukee is being questioned about "cherry picking" areas where it wants to offer its new U-verse service, with little access in low-income areas.

Newspaper: AT&T U-verse Access Debated

City's low-income areas often lack cable alternative.

Rick Barrett and Ben Poston took the locations of AT&T's U-verse boxes and plotted them on a Milwaukee map of census tracts split out by income.  The result?  There will be 240 of AT&T's "service cabinets" in all; only 15 of them are in census tracts with median income of less than $24,130, which is the federal poverty threshold level for a family of five.

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett says he's worried that AT&T will exclude some parts of the city from U-verse.

"I don't want to see a service map with a huge doughnut hole in it," he said.

That's what the map in the Journal Sentinel has on the North Side of Milwaukee, with several other
holes elsewhere in the city.

Critics and cable companies say AT&T has targeted more affluent, more densely populated areas. That's in contrast with cable companies that have been required to build their networks broadly, including low-income neighborhoods.

"The reality is that block by block, with no recourse or explanation, AT&T will decide who gets this wired video service," said Barry Orton, a telecommunications professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison and a paid cable-television consultant to municipalities.

Not offering the service to neighborhoods based on income or race would be illegal.

But consumer protection in the Assembly bill has "so many loopholes built into it, that it makes Swiss cheese look solid," Orton added.

State Sen. Kathleen Vinehout (D-Alma) said she's worried that the proposed cable bill gives AT&T a defense for redlining because the company would have to meet only minimum service requirements for low-income neighborhoods.

After that, she said, the company could ignore service areas it doesn't think are profitable.

Exactly.

The Wisconsin Assembly is scheduled to approve the "video competition" bill today.  This story should not significantly change their vote.  The Governor may see the bill somewhat differently now, although he is expected to sign it.

- Barry Orton

Jane Lawton: A Great Loss of an Extraordinary Public Servant

(This one's personal; sorry for minimal Wisconsin content.)

Yesterday the Honorable Jane Lawton, a Maryland House of Delegates Member and the head of the Montgomery County Cable Communications office, died of a heart attack immediately after speaking at a US Justice Department symposium on telecommunications issues. Her work on behalf of telecom consumers, the environment, woman's rights, and schools had real impact locally in Maryland and nationally.

I've known Jane well from her work in NATOA, an organization I helped found. She was on its national board in the 1990s, and its president in 1998-1999. She also had served as mayor of Chevy Chase, Maryland, was a tireless advocate for local governments, and had been scheduled to be honored last night by the Maryland Municipal League for "outstanding service."

As a person, Jane was warm, personable, capable of charming her enemies, but a pistol: prepared, knowledgeable, and hard-working. She was a worthy opponent for cable and phone companies; so much so that DC-based political snark-site Wonkette created a dark humor post about her death, writing that police claims of natural causes are "suspicious" because of all the cable company representatives at the symposium and her many battles with them.

Information about her memorial service, contributions in her memory, and more details about her life are here.

May her memory be for a blessing to her family, friends, and colleagues.

- Barry Orton