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While Android and iOS users are having a field day, or days, over Pokemon GO, those in the Windows world who have neither kind of device remain left out in the cold. Despite garnering thousands of votes in a petition to bring the game to the Windows platform. Some say necessity is the mother of invention, but in some cases, … Continue reading
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Hillary Clinton offered a strong economic platform at last week’s Democratic National Convention. She promised to boost employment and wages with large-scale investments in infrastructure and green jobs. She declared her opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), said she would expand Social Security, and proposed tuition-free education for the middle class.
This agenda should resonate with voters. The analysts at Moody’s certainly liked it. But times have been tough for a while now, and Americans are in a skeptical mood. This time around, Democrats will need to convince voters they really mean it – especially if the bad news keeps coming.
The day after she accepted the nomination, as Clinton and vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine took their message to the Rust Belt, a new report showed that the economy grew by only a disappointing 1.2 percent last quarter.
There’s a recovery going on, but a lot of people can’t feel it. The middle class is dying. Inequality is getting worse. Wages are stagnating. Labor force participation remains low.
It’s true that Donald Trump’s economic proposals are a grab bag of false promises and giveaways to his fellow oligarchs. But his message is clear and direct: They’re screwing you, and I’ll make them stop.
What’s Hillary Clinton’s economic message? According to her acceptance speech,
“My primary mission as President will be to create more opportunity and more good jobs with rising wages right here in the United States.”
In normal times that message might be enough. But these are not normal times. A recent poll shows that Americans trust Trump more than they trust Clinton to create good jobs. Another showed that voters thought Trump would be more effective at “improving economic conditions.”
Findings like that seem to induce cognitive dissonance in some Democrats. A number of those I met at the convention seemed incapable of believing that their party could actually lose to a transparent grifter like Trump. Nevertheless, that’s a very real possibility. As Toni Monkovic wrote in a recent New York Times analysis, “it’s clear that Donald Trump has a realistic shot to become president.”
People haven’t forgotten that Wall Street’s well-documented criminality and greed caused the 2008 financial crisis. It has now been seven years since banks trashed the American economy – and got away with it. In those seven years we have experienced the slowest and weakest recovery, by far, than any since World War II.
A few positive signals in the statistical noise won’t impress millions of struggling Americans. Neither will the fact that cuts in government spending, driven more by Republicans than Democrats, contributed to these weak results. Many voters see the economy in starker terms: the status quo isn’t working for them.
They’re right about that.
Every major convention speaker paid tribute to Bernie Sanders’ message. But there were also overtures to Republicans who might be disaffected by Trump. The problem is, there aren’t that many of them. Polling shows that the number of likely Republican defectors to the Democrats (and vice versa) is no higher this year than last time around.
A more promising approach can be found in a recent Democracy Corps survey for the Roosevelt Institute. It found that “the public is hungry for politicians to internalize what they have known for some time” – namely, that “the rules of the economy have been written by the wealthy, corporate special interests … so the economy works for them, not the middle class.”
This theme was tested against one featured prominently at the convention, that of building on the progress made under President Obama. It was considerably more effective.
Hillary Clinton said last week that Democrats must do a better job convincing voters that “we get what you’re going through.” She’s not off to a good start. Last week Trump called NAFTA “the worst trade deal in history.” By contrast, when the Washington Post asked Clinton whether the country would have been better off without NAFTA and two similar pacts, she said, “I think that’s a hard question to answer.”
“I look at this from both sides,” she added.
Answers like this will only inflame voter mistrust. Clinton has a good chance of winning anyway, given Trump’s weaknesses, but it’s far from a foregone conclusion. Down-ticket races could also be affected.
in this climate, and given the renewed visibility of deep-pocket Democratic donors, Clinton and Kaine’s expressed opposition to the TPP could leave many voters unpersuaded. They could address that by promising to whip against it on Capitol Hill if, as expected, President Obama tries to push it through during the lame-duck session.
It’s not enough to say, “Wall Street can never, ever be allowed to wreck Main Street again.” That, too, will be met with skepticism. Clinton could give that pledge some teeth by promising not to appoint anyone from Wall Street to a senior position in the Treasury or Justice Departments.
It’s not enough to propose raising the minimum wage. Clinton and Kaine could show their support for “15 and a union” by walking a picket line if the opportunity arises.
There are other steps the campaign could undertake to win skeptical voters. Most importantly, they need to understand that voters are skeptical.
“We begin a new chapter tonight,” Clinton said last week. That’s the right approach. But some voters may need to be convinced they’re not just hearing the same old story.
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Lowell McAdam, Verizon Communications’ Chairman and CEO, second quarter, 2016 earnings call, July, 26th, 2016:
“You saw the first fruits of this strategy in April, when we announced our One Fiber strategy for the city of Boston.”
In April, 2016, Verizon announced that it was going to spend $300 million over six years to bring FiOS, the company’s fiber to the home cable TV and broadband service, to the city of Boston, finally. Boston had been begging the incumbent phone company, Verizon New England, to get off its butt and upgrade the existing copper wires with fiber optics for years – and Verizon just shrugged.
But Verizon never mentioned this ‘One Fiber’ strategy in April, and it is now becoming known as “Faux FiOS”, because it is really a plan to have the wired customers of Massachusetts pay for a bait-and-switch, in plain site, to fund and roll out Verizon’s wireless services.
In fact, Boston is the focal point for Verizon’s plans – to put in a fiber optic wire , which is really for ‘fixed wireless’, with lots of antennas, also known as “DAS”, — and to NOT wire the City of Boston with fiber to the home–but focus on ‘fiber to the antenna’.
Read our previous articles: More Exposed: Verizon’s FiOS-Wireless Bait & Switch in Boston
And while we’ve written a number of articles already about this, new documents have surfaced, and new statements were made by Verizon senior management that should piss of the entire East Coast of America–Verizon has no plans to wire cities anymore with fiber to the home, and is holding off on doing any other city until this ‘test’ in Boston is underway.
In short:
Worse, this is a model for the rest of Verizon’s East Coast state utility holdings; and AT&T is doing similar, if not identical things.
Some background
In 2010, Verizon had announced that it was stopping their FiOS deployments, which had only started around 2005-2006 and it would only finish areas where there was an existing franchise agreement. And, I note that this doesn’t include all homes and businesses in the municipality since the franchises that were granted do not require universal service to all, unlike their wireline utility service agreements with the states.
Verizon is the incumbent phone utility for the East Coast, from Massachusetts to Virginia and it left a trail of broken promises – passing less than 50% of locations in their territories – a ‘location’ being a home or business. But it’s worse because Verizon also stopped properly upgrading and maintaining the copper networks as well, causing complaints up and down the East Coast about service quality problems.
And this was all done on purpose as in 2010, Verizon decided to become a ‘wireless first’ company. It appointed Lowell McAdam to be the CEO, who was then the CEO of Verizon Wireless, (which is actually named “CellCo Partners” and was a joint venture with Vodaphone, the British telecom firm.) And unknown to most, Verizon started diverting the wireline capital expenditures to have the wireline company pay for the build out of wireless towers, which needed to be upgraded with fiber to offer 4G service, throughout the East Coast. Thus, low income families, customers in rural areas, and anyone else with phone or special access service was subsidizing these build outs.
In New York, we tracked how Verizon was granted multiple rate increases on basic phone service and ancillary services for ‘massive deployment of fiber optics’ and losses, starting in 2006. By 2010, the deployments, as attested to by the New York Attorney General’s Office, had been diverted mainly to fund the capEx for the wires to the cell sites; the losses were created based, in part, on this financial cross-subsidy.
So, in April 2016, (and timed to influence the Verizon worker’s strike) Verizon announced it was going to spend $300 million in the City of Boston over the next six years to bring fiber optic FiOS to homes.
Boston.comwrote:
“Verizon to build $300M fiber network in Boston”
“Verizon will bring its fiber-optic FiOS network to Boston over the next six years, city and company officials announced…”
Verizon also said that it was not going to do any other cities until the work was underway – i.e., a $130+ billion dollar company is going to spend $50 million a year on Boston –chump change, and was not planning on doing the entire East Coast.
Ironically, as we pointed out, Verizon has announced its intent to purchase Yahoo for $4.8 billion and bought AOL for $4.4 billion last year. We argue that this should never be allowed until the states are upgraded and maintained properly.
There is also an ugly truth – Verizon Massachusetts had made commitments to replace the existing copper networks with fiber optics starting in 1995–yeah, 20+ years ago, and got state laws changed to give the company additional financial ‘incentives’ to do the work. The company pocketed billions and the state never went back and said – Excuse me–but where’s the fiber optic future?–or have the company pay back the billions collected.
Exposed: Verizon’s Cable Franchise Filings with the City–They don’t care about wireline.
Verizon never mentioned this ‘One Fiber’ strategy to the citizens of Boston, much less the politicians, but now it is clear–the wires being deployed are for wireless, first.
Lowell McAdam pointed out in the latest second quarter investor calls that – I paraphrase: ‘Well, wireless is so much cheaper (and more profitable), why bother doing fiber to the home? (“ONT” is an “Outside Network Terminal”.)
“From a pure cost perspective, again I think it’s a little too early to tell, but what I will tell you is about half of our cost to deploy FiOS is in the home today and the next biggest thing outside the home is the drop. And so our take is that with the router roughly costing the same — and, remember, we wouldn’t have to have an ONT as we think about it today.
“So when we deploy 4G and densify the small cell cantennas (to provide) 5G (service) for very little incremental cost. With the router in the house being probably less than an ONT and router combination today and losing the wiring in the house and losing the drop, we expect there to be a significant cost reduction.”
During the writing of the articles a number of documents have surfaced about Verizon’s real intentions and their dealings with the city.
Verizon originally filed to offer FiOS by taking years old materials from other filings– and the city noticed.
The City of Boston wrote:
“(c) Form 100 and Exhibit F: The Fiber-to-the-Premises (“FTTP”) Network description appears to be a number of years old and includes information that appears to have been phased out. Please identify any outdated elements in Exhibit F and describe what is in use currently now.”
The Boston Faux-FiOS Bait and Switch
First, Verizon is doing three areas first with fiber to the home and then will do a ‘wait and see’. These areas were selected because a) Mayor Walsh lives in one and b) the wires are on poles, as opposed to having to do a lot of digging to put them into underground conduit.
Boston asked: If the proposed service area is not the entire municipality, specify the nature of the area (e.g., neighborhood) and explain why the entire municipality will not be served.
Verizon Response – If successful we may ‘seek to amend’ the license and add other sections.
“The initial service area is for the Dudley Square area of Roxbury and the West Roxbury and Dorchester neighborhoods of the City. If Verizon is granted a cable License for the initial service area and is successful in providing cable service to that area, it may seek to amend its License with the City to add other sections of the City consistent with 207 CMR §3:07.”
The Boston Globe, in April, 2016, wrote that this deployment was for the whole city and it was supposed to be wired fiber optic service.
“Verizon is finally ready to offer its high-speed fiber optic service to Boston — a victory for city officials who have long sought meaningful competition for high-speed Internet and TV service in a city dominated by Comcast Corp.
“Mayor Martin J. Walsh announced the Verizon move Tuesday, a $300 million investment that will roll out in select neighborhoods beginning this summer but will take six years to cover the whole city. Boston has also agreed to speed up permitting for the infrastructure upgrade and to begin the process of licensing Verizon as a cable TV provider.”
Next, Verizon was asked to provide maps of the areas. Verizon response is that this is just a network upgrade of the existing copper “Title II” networks, and it doesn’t have to provide maps.
Then, Verizon appears to have just lied to the City. The City asks whether there will be any other ‘non’ fiber to the home -FTTP, components – meaning– Are you planning on using wireless? Verizon claims it is doing FTTP – when its plan is to substitute the fiber to the home with fixed wireless.
Lawyers could parse this as ‘Well, the initial three locations are FTTP so, technically…
Verizon does provide one map where they state that they are ‘considering’ all or part of other adjacent areas and it shows other areas but the map says it is only ‘illustrative’ of potential future deployments.
And Verizon continues saying it is considering all or part of some neighborhoods for the next deployments.
And then we have the kicker – Verizon doesn’t want to be tied down to any serious commitment.
The word ‘disingenuous’ does not begin to cover Verizon’s responses.
In contrast, in our last article, we uncovered that Verizon was more interested in fixed wireless than wireline to the premises. On March, 31, 2016, Verizon Cellco Partners, D/B/A Verizon Wireless, signed a full, 71 page, detailed agreement (and appendixes) to offer wireless services, including DAS, (Distributed Antenna System; small cell, fiber-to-the-antenna)–in the City of Boston.
Getting Rid of those Pesky Competitors and the Unions–Paid for by Low Income Families, Rural Areas, etc.
5G doesn’t exist today. Period. It may or may not ever show up, and who knows what it will be able to do as currently it has a distance limitations of 300-500 feet and can’t go through walls and has trouble with even lots of trees.
And 4G LTE was supposed to originally do 100 Mbps and the US average is less than 10 Mbps, according to multiple sources.
But that doesn’t seem to matter. Verizon’s plan is to shut off the residential and business end user wires, keep the ‘broadband data services’ for private use – for wireless, and in the end, charge more for less.
However, the ‘cost savings’ and getting rid of the unions are a high priority. If there are no fiber optic wires to be installed or maintained — i.e., if the fiber to the home and the wiring in the home, etc., or to maintain and provide services over the copper wires (as the majority of wires are still copper) –are all going away–then the union jobs are slashed.
Moreover, getting rid of the wires gets rid of competitors who rely on the wires.
Who’s paying for the wireless deployments? And the kicker here is that the fiber optics that will be installed are part of the state utility as “Title II” and are funded via local rates and special access excess profits – i.e., the wireline side of the business has been and will continue to ‘cross-subsidize’ the wireless expenses.
Interestingly, the reality of what happens in Boston has implications in both Massachusetts as well as the rest of the East Coast.
Fierce Telecom writes:
“As Verizon moves forward with its Boston plans, the call to get FiOS in more cities will grow even louder.
“Calls to bring FiOS to other Massachusetts towns and cities continues to rise. The mayors of Peabody and Salem sent Verizon a letter pleading with the telco to build out its FTTH service in their towns. With Comcast and satellite services being the only two service options, the city leaders of these North Shore towns say they continue to get requests from residents for an alternative service choice.
“Outside of Massachusetts, 14 mayors on the East Coast called on Verizon previously to expand its FiOS FTTH network into more areas that have limited access to high speed services.”
And it appears that what’s going on in Boston will make a whole bunch of cities that care about broadband and cable competition have a serious ‘wake up’ call.
Unfortunately, this is the plan for the entire East Coast of America, and most of the country, as AT&T has similar, if not identical plans.
I’ll sum up and add more to this tale in Part 2: Kick the Wireless Cantenna.
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Who do you want answering the White House phone at 3 a.m.?
“The Simpsons” answered that question from the 2008 Hillary Clinton campaign ad by envisioning how Clinton and Donald Trump would take that call.
This clip may answer some of the questions you’ve had about Trump ― and scare you more than any of the show’s “Treehouse of Horror” episodes.
Check it out above.
“The Simpsons” is on summer hiatus, but returns to television on Sept. 25 for its 28th season.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
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To vacation or not to vacation — that is the question. At least, that’s the question this highly scientific flowchart can answer for parents of a preschooler. Take a look at the chart, which we put together in partnership with Walt Disney World, and find out if a vacation is in your near future:
Now is the perfect time to take your preschooler on a vacation! Celebrate the magic and create a lifetime of memories by booking a family trip to Walt Disney World.
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Suffragist Lucy Stone and Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton wearing the pants
In the past week, two men, arguably the two men closest to Hillary Clinton and her presidential campaign, have offered public revisionist takes on her public persona.
The less egregious was running mate Kaine who, in his co-interview with Hillary on “60 Minutes,” interrupted her reasoned dismissal of Trump and GOP-ers’ unrelenting attacks on her, with his own defense:
“She’s done a good job of letting the, you know, water go off her back on this. That’s not the way I feel. When I see this, you know, ‘Crooked Hillary,’ or I see the, ‘Lock her up,’ it’s just ridiculous.”
Caine edges right up to assuming the role of protector – even though she’s just said (and has said repeatedly) she doesn’t want or need this. Even though she’s proven herself over and over that she’s perfectly capable of defending herself.
And then hubby Bill. Bill, Bill, Bill:
“In the spring of 1971, I met a girl.”
Bill Clinton goes on to paint Hillary (at length) as the object of his romantic pursuit, framed as a determined male quest (in which of course the outcome must be that the man gets the object he desires). In his story, Bill wins big time when she finally agrees to marry him. He calls her a girl more than once and – I just checked the transcript – never refers to her as a woman. Rachel Mallow called his words “shocking and rude.” I found them downright demeaning.
When did Hillary get demoted from intelligent, assertive, powerful woman to girl? When did she go from being object of opponents’ hate and derision to soft, fluffy, potentially vulnerable female who just may need a big strong man to take care of her? (I apologize to Kaine – he did not step over the line – but his jumping to her defense suggests he might at any time.) Moreover, when did her team – at a critical time when nobody is taking a single step in this campaign without thinking many chess moves ahead – decide her public image needed a little touch-up to make her more feminine, perhaps more “appealing?”
Hillary Clinton has been criticized for nearly everything in the universe, in particular for being cold, calculating, and brazen (all words that would be less critical if applied to a man), but the strong public persona she has crafted and held onto has gotten her this far. Does she have to reveal a softer side now to be elected – even worse, does she need to have it revealed by others?
The women’s movement emerging when Hillary was coming of age argued that available options for smart, ambitious women were dismal. The traditional route to success – acting like a man – denied any value to her own gender. The acceptance of traditional female roles – frilly and feminine – risked her ability to be taken seriously. Women of Hillary’s generation (I know because it was my generation also) were urged to reject both options and instead to create genuine personas. More importantly, they were cautioned to resist any attempt to be defined by others.
I’ve always thought that the pantsuits Hillary wears are her chosen in-your-face signature – an wink-wink acknowledgement of what many think she wants to be – the woman who wears the pants, just as the bloomers worn by 19th-century suffragists who donned their imitative male clothing were putting others on notice that they were ready to assume roles and gain rights previously denied them because of their gender.
The bloomers were more than a statement; they were also utilitarian, making the women who wore them more mobile in their quest to enjoy, of all things, riding a bicycle. But the suffragists, wisely, didn’t go the whole route of adapting actual men’s clothing – that would have been false. Similarly, Hillary’s pantsuits do not make her a man, but they do make her more mobile: look how she’s climbed all the way to the glass ceiling – without showing her girly panties.
Bill says we’re getting the real Hillary, not the cartoon Hillary that Trump and GOP-ers love to demean, but the Hillary portrait he has drawn is just a cartoon of a different flavor. Hillary Clinton doesn’t need to be dressed up like a girl to get elected president, not by her husband, not by her running mate, not by anybody but the woman herself.
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This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
