I have a strategy for liberals to win some elections, but it relies upon their smartening up about an issue that is a "poison pill" in middle America. It's a strategy guaranteed to work, if they are willing to take the advice.
Let's start with the premise that there are more than enough gun rights supporters to swing an election. How do we know this? Because there are about four million NRA (National Rifle Association) members, give or take, and 99% of them will vote in an election -- they want to vote, will not miss an opportunity to vote. In the last election, the Democrats had their highest popular turn-out in history -- and lost by three and a half million votes -- or a half million less than the membership of the NRA alone.
There are other large grass roots lobby groups in Washington of course, one or two even larger than the NRA -- the AARP, for example. The AARP, we know, is a liberal front and favors gun control, but that is its management only -- among their grass roots, most members don't even know the AARP has a political agenda. I guarantee that nowhere near 99% of AARP's membership votes. And many who do, vote Republican -- because they joined the AARP for coupons, not politics. So out of the entire AARP, only management and an undetermined fraction of the membership can be counted on to vote liberal -- for its own gun control policy.
Let's go back to the NRA for a second. The NRA, with its four million voting members, is not by a long stretch the entire body of pro-gun voters. How do I know this? Because if you know many other gun owners, you know as I do that there are a large number of gun owners who refuse to join the NRA. And they are eager to tell you why: they think the NRA is TOO WEAK, too compromising, and has SOLD OUT. So a significant group of additional gun owners won't join the NRA because they claim to be EVEN TOUGHER on gun rights. They may join other organizations like GOA (Gun Owners of America), and you can bet they definitely vote, as well -- to prove they are tougher than the NRA, for one thing.
In short, there are many millions of voting pro-gun Americans, all of whom are alienated by gun control candidates. The Democrats push almost all of those candidates, and many of them lost handily in the last national election.
When gun rights supporters hear a liberal making promises, they hear an unspoken phrase at the end of every sentence: "and I'll ban some more of your guns." Democrat candidates promise to do better for you on jobs (and ban some more of your guns). They'll fix your health care (and ban some more of your guns). They'll give you better deals on health insurance, Social Security and peace on earth (and ban some more of your guns). Of course, they'll also rush to get out of the post-9/11 conflicts we entered -- something else most gun owners don't like. But even then, they can be counted on to ban some more of your guns, and if you're not careful, they'll even try to sell gun control as some sort of domestic "war on terror." Actually, of course, gun owners know it's a war on the Second Amendment. No one is being fooled.
And that's why we can't vote for Democrats despite what we think of them on "jobs" or "health care" -- we won't trade away the Second Amendment. What the Democrats aren't saying makes them appear dishonest -- hiding the facts of their rabid gun ban agenda while wearing camo vests and saying "nobody wants to take your guns." We see through the act.
The answer of course is therefore simple. One strategy for winning future elections is to drop their war on the Second-Amendment. All the Democracts have to do to win several million more American votes -- from voters who actually like some of their positions on jobs, health care, drug companies, and corporate greed -- is to give up on the failed policy of unconstitutional abridgement of gun rights. I don't mean to PRETEND to do so -- I mean to drop it. "Gun control" was more responsible for the Democrats' 2004 losses than perhaps they understand. By showing off John Kerry in a camo vest with a goose gun, the Democrats actually spotlighted the Big Lie -- it put guns at center stage, and NOBODY believed Kerry was no threat to guns. In fact, every time the Democrats bring up their supposedly happy relationship with the Second Amendment, they always add the same sinister, unmistakeable phrase -- "... but we ARE for REASONABLE GUN CONTROLS." They can't leave it alone. Perhaps they are addicted -- the definition of addiction being a "self destructive habit." Certainly, gun control continues to shoot Democrats in the foot -- because they can't seem to relegate it to the ash heap of history. And as long as there is a Second Amendment to go with the other nine, the law of the land will prevent the Democrats' policies from seeming "reasonable."
The votes are there to be had in Middle America, if we don't have to abandon our Second Amendment protections against gun infringements in order to elect a Democrat. Infringe is a word that means "around the edges." The Democrats would like to trample gun rights, as a matter of the party's perennial platform, a lot more than just around the edges (is there anyone who doubts that?) -- and the Second Amendment doesn't allow for any tampering AT ALL. We know, because we can read. We can read the amendment, which protects guns NOT for hunting but for SECURITY, and we can read the papers of the Founders which all confirm that the intent was an individual right of all citizens of good character to keep and bear arms IN THEIR OWN DEFENSE against enemies foreign and domestic.
Yet the Democrats so far won't abandon this poison pill as the failed policy it is. They won't take the plank out of the platform, even to win back the American people. That is especially telling. Surely, there are much more important concerns for the Democrats than stealing one of our liberties out of the Bill of Rights? Trust me when I say that there are many people who are listening to moderate Democrats and who would vote for some of them in large numbers -- IF ONLY IT DID NOT REQUIRE THEM TO UNDERGO ANOTHER TERM OF EGREGIOUS GUN CONTROL. Take guns off the table, or better yet, vow to re-visit and repeal certain unconstitutional infringements of the right to keep and bear arms which are already on the books, and the floodgates of Middle America will open.
Now that I've told my little secret -- we'll see just how addicted to destroying themselves in the vain effort to demolish the Second Amendment (while fighting to the death to defend the First, bizarrely enough) the Democrats are.
Side Note: Instead of always arrogantly reprinting the text of the First Amendment on their editorial pages, all American newspapers should print all ten articles of the Bill of Rights in rotation -- it may help them never to forget what should be obvious -- that if one article of the Bill of Rights is sacred, then all ten articles are equally sacrosanct in American life. And if one may be torn down little by little, the others will surely follow. In fact, the Second is the article which helps guarantee the other nine...
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Monday, March 28, 2005
Credit and Bankruptcy "Reform"
Credit card companies and probably the second mortgage outfits are modern-day loan sharks. Not too many years ago people went to prison for loaning money like this to needy, vulnerable Americans and demanding the kind of interest rates and penalties these shysters do. It is usury, and it is gangsterism on a national scale.
Bankruptcy laws were not in need of change, at least not so as to benefit credit card companies, and what Congress is now calling bankruptcy "reforms" are not reforms at all. They are a pandering truckload of new restrictions on the people of this country that accomplish nothing more noble than to make it harder for the average Joe or Jane to get out of the clutches of a credit card company or its hired thugs, the collection agencies. The only "help" being offered here is a fat handout to the already bloated plastic peddlers. Meanwhile, the loan industry helps itself with a new national campaign to sucker American consumers into exchanging their unsecured debt (which can be forgiven in a bankruptcy) for secured debt -- in the especially sinister form of a second lien on their homes -- which a bankruptcy cannot forgive. Not even Suzy Orman approves of the tactic of trading your credit card debt to a loan company in exchange for an easy lien on your house, to use against you if you default.
The whole affair is a shameful pander to the lobby of the meanest financial gang out there, and Congress should be ashamed of itself -- because their betrayal WILL BE recognized, sooner or later, and they WILL BE held responsible by history for this massive fraud. History will reflect the ruin of these politicians' legacies and reputations, because of their collusion in this scheme to keep Americans indentured to an abusive system while putting more millions into the pockets of the already Jabba-like "credit" companies. It is usury. It is loan sharking. And now the government is poised to become part of the conspiracy.
Bankruptcy laws were not in need of change, at least not so as to benefit credit card companies, and what Congress is now calling bankruptcy "reforms" are not reforms at all. They are a pandering truckload of new restrictions on the people of this country that accomplish nothing more noble than to make it harder for the average Joe or Jane to get out of the clutches of a credit card company or its hired thugs, the collection agencies. The only "help" being offered here is a fat handout to the already bloated plastic peddlers. Meanwhile, the loan industry helps itself with a new national campaign to sucker American consumers into exchanging their unsecured debt (which can be forgiven in a bankruptcy) for secured debt -- in the especially sinister form of a second lien on their homes -- which a bankruptcy cannot forgive. Not even Suzy Orman approves of the tactic of trading your credit card debt to a loan company in exchange for an easy lien on your house, to use against you if you default.
The whole affair is a shameful pander to the lobby of the meanest financial gang out there, and Congress should be ashamed of itself -- because their betrayal WILL BE recognized, sooner or later, and they WILL BE held responsible by history for this massive fraud. History will reflect the ruin of these politicians' legacies and reputations, because of their collusion in this scheme to keep Americans indentured to an abusive system while putting more millions into the pockets of the already Jabba-like "credit" companies. It is usury. It is loan sharking. And now the government is poised to become part of the conspiracy.
Politicians Doing "The Right Thing?"
When a politician vows he will "do the right thing," be sure you ask him if he has contacted his constituents to find out what "the right thing" is.
If he hasn't asked them, he doesn't know. Politicians regularly exclaim that they are doing "the right thing" when they are just doing precisely whatever the hell they want to.
Politicians are elected to represent their own constituency -- not to get elected with lies, then grab power and suit themselves. There is deep-rooted rationalization in all three branches of government that some politicians use as excuses to overrule the folks at home, but a republic is a representative government -- which means we send our own elected representatives to Washington D.C. as well as Indianapolis, so that we don't all have to drive down there and vote on every bill and court decision, and approve or disapprove every political agenda item ourselves.
"The right thing" is not the product of a virgin birth out of politicians' brains. Most of the time, if politicians are really doing the will of the folks at home, they never have to make speeches to their constituents ASSERTING to them that they are doing the right thing. The people who voted for him or her will know.
It is a product of the constituents' will. Politicians are and will always be PUBLIC SERVANTS, and you should not let them ever forget that -- especially whenever they threaten to support policies AGAINST the wishes of the home community they campaigned to represent, including yours and mine.
If he hasn't asked them, he doesn't know. Politicians regularly exclaim that they are doing "the right thing" when they are just doing precisely whatever the hell they want to.
Politicians are elected to represent their own constituency -- not to get elected with lies, then grab power and suit themselves. There is deep-rooted rationalization in all three branches of government that some politicians use as excuses to overrule the folks at home, but a republic is a representative government -- which means we send our own elected representatives to Washington D.C. as well as Indianapolis, so that we don't all have to drive down there and vote on every bill and court decision, and approve or disapprove every political agenda item ourselves.
"The right thing" is not the product of a virgin birth out of politicians' brains. Most of the time, if politicians are really doing the will of the folks at home, they never have to make speeches to their constituents ASSERTING to them that they are doing the right thing. The people who voted for him or her will know.
It is a product of the constituents' will. Politicians are and will always be PUBLIC SERVANTS, and you should not let them ever forget that -- especially whenever they threaten to support policies AGAINST the wishes of the home community they campaigned to represent, including yours and mine.
The Second Amendment
It is a simple fact that the Second Amendment makes no mention anywhere of "hunting." It makes no mention anywhere of "sport," or "sporting purpose." Unless this is understood, no intelligent conversation can be had about the Second Amendment.
Careful reading reveals that the Second Amendment is exclusively concerned with one thing only -- the guarantee of individual arms FOR SECURITY. It is therefore terribly unfortunate that arms which are most suitable to win conflicts and defeat enemies foreign or domestic are those that gun controllers find most objectionable. The guns protected under the law are first and foremost those that banners love to ban. That is why so much of existing gun law is unconstitutional. What guns ARE most suited to state security, anyway? Ahhh. So you DO know the answer...
If you doubt my premise, please re-read the text of the Second Amendment carefully for comprehension, as if reading it for the first time. You will find no mention of or reference to hunting; no mention of or reference to sport. There was no national guard in 1790, so the only "militia" was the citizenry, ordinary people who used their personal arms to fight, then went home with their guns when the fight was over. The government of the day even gave the citizens MORE of the VERY BEST GUNS AVAILABLE for free (the Brown Bess was one state-of-the-art rifle issued to citizens at the time) to be sure they could WIN when defending themselves and their country.
Therefore, when someone dons a camo vest, shoulders a goose gun and claims to "support your Second Amendment rights," you should rightfully roll your eyeballs, because he doesn't understand what he is talking about. Hunting is another subject altogether. Hunting and sport are good practice, of course, but the second article of the Bill of Rights guarantees there will be no infringment of the use of arms for SECURITY. Hunting has NOTHING to do with the Second Amendment.
Either we have Second Amendment rights, or we don't. If we do, and nearly everyone agrees that we do have such a thing as Second Amendment rights, then the arms protected are arms suitable to win a fight against a human enemy. No one needs to prove his or her gun has any "sporting purpose" or can be utilized for hunting. Such tests are irrelevant and counterproductive.
A politician who will take a gun away from you because it may be too good at winning conflicts, and leave you with a six shooter (or worse, a phone number) to defend your family and your neighborhood against human predators, is not your friend nor the Constitution's friend.
The Second Amendment enunciates a liberty of the people, not of governmental departments. Institutions do not have "liberties." Only people can have liberties and rights. In our country we affirm that "all men are created equal," and that each has inalienable rights. This language informs us that there can be NO special class of citizens, with rights that the others do not have. Law abiding U.S. citizens all have the same liberties. There is no higher level than "U.S. citizen."
All ten articles of the Bill of Rights were written in part to assure us protection against our own government, against "all enemies foreign and domestic." Government may not infringe upon its citizens' ability to defend themselves against it -- because that would be a conflict of interest of the first magnitude, in light of the Constitution. We have gun rights partly to insure the reasonableness of our republic.
The Second Amendment is the law of the land. Liberals wish it were otherwise, but it is the law, and part of the Bill of Rights at that, requiring a constitutional convention to alter. It is among our basic liberties -- the right to arm ourselves against aggressions of all kinds -- that is the constitutional law. This means that if you don't like gun rights, or would like to abridge them, you can't just pass an ordinance. You would FIRST have to repeal the second article of the Bill of Rights -- which protects not just the guns liberals like, but all the guns liberals hate, too. We are not talking about a difference of opinion. We are talking about respecting the Constitution, or undermining it. A gun control advocate hopes to subvert constitutional law -- in collusion with other liberals, sometimes he succeeds. That activist wants to criminalize citizens who have arms he would like to prohibit. You may not like guns, or perhaps freedom of speech or freedom of religion. But they are all protected EQUALLY in the Bill of Rights and stand shoulder to shoulder within it.
Many unconstitutional gun laws are already on the books of course, and those are in need of redress. It has been estimated that there are 40,000 gun laws in the United States. Let me ask: If there were 40,000 laws "regulating" freedom of speech, how large would be the outcry? Answer: Journalists would have taken to the streets long ago. Regularly, federal, state and local laws which attempt to infringe the freedom of speech are struck down. Newspapers proudly quote the First Amendment on many of their editorial pages. They should be able to print the Second Amendment with equal vigor of course, given that it is another clause in the same document. Yet few do. That difference in respect can only be termed hypocritical, schizophrenic double-think.
In the 1960s, a body of law carrying out an unconstitutional doctrine called "separate but equal" was set aside and judged to be a violation of Americans' civil rights. Some day, the body of law which infringes gun rights can, should, and will be set aside by a similar method. If state and local infringement is not to be permitted for the First Amendment, it CANNOT be lawful for the Second. If you know and proclaim the First Amendment is sacrosanct, you recognize the same status for the other, co-equal paragraphs of the Bill of Rights.
Remember, the Second Amendment makes no reference to hunting nor sport. It concerns itself ONLY with protecting arms for security -- security of individuals, their family, and their larger community against other people. Shamefully, those guns most appropriate to win in a seige by other humans bent on your harm are the very guns the gun controllers love most to prohibit. These activists are misguided, and they are patently, objectively and empirically wrong. Arms most appropriate to our defense and security are protected first, not last. Doubters need only read the existing papers and letters of the Founding Fathers to confirm this clear intent. No guesswork needs to be done. No wheel needs to be re-invented. The Founders' intent is clear and the documents confirming this plain fact are plentiful in the Library of Congress.
Careful reading reveals that the Second Amendment is exclusively concerned with one thing only -- the guarantee of individual arms FOR SECURITY. It is therefore terribly unfortunate that arms which are most suitable to win conflicts and defeat enemies foreign or domestic are those that gun controllers find most objectionable. The guns protected under the law are first and foremost those that banners love to ban. That is why so much of existing gun law is unconstitutional. What guns ARE most suited to state security, anyway? Ahhh. So you DO know the answer...
If you doubt my premise, please re-read the text of the Second Amendment carefully for comprehension, as if reading it for the first time. You will find no mention of or reference to hunting; no mention of or reference to sport. There was no national guard in 1790, so the only "militia" was the citizenry, ordinary people who used their personal arms to fight, then went home with their guns when the fight was over. The government of the day even gave the citizens MORE of the VERY BEST GUNS AVAILABLE for free (the Brown Bess was one state-of-the-art rifle issued to citizens at the time) to be sure they could WIN when defending themselves and their country.
Therefore, when someone dons a camo vest, shoulders a goose gun and claims to "support your Second Amendment rights," you should rightfully roll your eyeballs, because he doesn't understand what he is talking about. Hunting is another subject altogether. Hunting and sport are good practice, of course, but the second article of the Bill of Rights guarantees there will be no infringment of the use of arms for SECURITY. Hunting has NOTHING to do with the Second Amendment.
Either we have Second Amendment rights, or we don't. If we do, and nearly everyone agrees that we do have such a thing as Second Amendment rights, then the arms protected are arms suitable to win a fight against a human enemy. No one needs to prove his or her gun has any "sporting purpose" or can be utilized for hunting. Such tests are irrelevant and counterproductive.
A politician who will take a gun away from you because it may be too good at winning conflicts, and leave you with a six shooter (or worse, a phone number) to defend your family and your neighborhood against human predators, is not your friend nor the Constitution's friend.
The Second Amendment enunciates a liberty of the people, not of governmental departments. Institutions do not have "liberties." Only people can have liberties and rights. In our country we affirm that "all men are created equal," and that each has inalienable rights. This language informs us that there can be NO special class of citizens, with rights that the others do not have. Law abiding U.S. citizens all have the same liberties. There is no higher level than "U.S. citizen."
All ten articles of the Bill of Rights were written in part to assure us protection against our own government, against "all enemies foreign and domestic." Government may not infringe upon its citizens' ability to defend themselves against it -- because that would be a conflict of interest of the first magnitude, in light of the Constitution. We have gun rights partly to insure the reasonableness of our republic.
The Second Amendment is the law of the land. Liberals wish it were otherwise, but it is the law, and part of the Bill of Rights at that, requiring a constitutional convention to alter. It is among our basic liberties -- the right to arm ourselves against aggressions of all kinds -- that is the constitutional law. This means that if you don't like gun rights, or would like to abridge them, you can't just pass an ordinance. You would FIRST have to repeal the second article of the Bill of Rights -- which protects not just the guns liberals like, but all the guns liberals hate, too. We are not talking about a difference of opinion. We are talking about respecting the Constitution, or undermining it. A gun control advocate hopes to subvert constitutional law -- in collusion with other liberals, sometimes he succeeds. That activist wants to criminalize citizens who have arms he would like to prohibit. You may not like guns, or perhaps freedom of speech or freedom of religion. But they are all protected EQUALLY in the Bill of Rights and stand shoulder to shoulder within it.
Many unconstitutional gun laws are already on the books of course, and those are in need of redress. It has been estimated that there are 40,000 gun laws in the United States. Let me ask: If there were 40,000 laws "regulating" freedom of speech, how large would be the outcry? Answer: Journalists would have taken to the streets long ago. Regularly, federal, state and local laws which attempt to infringe the freedom of speech are struck down. Newspapers proudly quote the First Amendment on many of their editorial pages. They should be able to print the Second Amendment with equal vigor of course, given that it is another clause in the same document. Yet few do. That difference in respect can only be termed hypocritical, schizophrenic double-think.
In the 1960s, a body of law carrying out an unconstitutional doctrine called "separate but equal" was set aside and judged to be a violation of Americans' civil rights. Some day, the body of law which infringes gun rights can, should, and will be set aside by a similar method. If state and local infringement is not to be permitted for the First Amendment, it CANNOT be lawful for the Second. If you know and proclaim the First Amendment is sacrosanct, you recognize the same status for the other, co-equal paragraphs of the Bill of Rights.
Remember, the Second Amendment makes no reference to hunting nor sport. It concerns itself ONLY with protecting arms for security -- security of individuals, their family, and their larger community against other people. Shamefully, those guns most appropriate to win in a seige by other humans bent on your harm are the very guns the gun controllers love most to prohibit. These activists are misguided, and they are patently, objectively and empirically wrong. Arms most appropriate to our defense and security are protected first, not last. Doubters need only read the existing papers and letters of the Founding Fathers to confirm this clear intent. No guesswork needs to be done. No wheel needs to be re-invented. The Founders' intent is clear and the documents confirming this plain fact are plentiful in the Library of Congress.
Cable Industry's Bait 'n Switch Is Not for Me
We're being shafted by the cable industry.
"Pay TV" was originally hyped as a superior alternative to over-the-air "Commercial TV." You would pay a monthly fee to receive quality programming, commercial-free.
That's right. The big selling point for pay TV was -- no commercials. Commercial TV was being received by antenna, over the air, free of charge, but with those pesky commercials -- including the three networks, Fox, and local PBS programming (which substituted pledge drives for commercials). Pay TV sold itself to us by promising the following: To eliminate the need for commercial interruptions in exchange for our subscription fee. One way, the sponsors paid for the programs; the other way, we paid for the programs in our monthly subscription.
When cable first came to town they told the city government they needed extra money, just during the set-up phase, while the cable was laid. But the price never came back down. Then the cable company claimed they needed extra money for a while longer, in order to lay fiber optic cable. Again the price never came back down. Meanwhile, more and more channels turned up on pay TV with commercials. At first, it was just the "superstations," commercial channels riding free on the cable signal. But then came commercials on cable's own product --Not just commercials -- MORE commercials. REALLY BAD, LOW CLASS, ANNOYING commercials. Worst of all perhaps, channels that used to be commercial-free started interrupting their programs with commercials too.
A funny disconnect occurred -- Cable companies gradually began keeping ALL the fees you gave them for themselves, and started letting -- you guessed it -- SPONSORS pay for the programs. Just like the rabbit ear days. God help us. Meanwhile, that basic fee krept up, from about twenty bucks to fifty bucks a month. That's a car payment for some folks.
Now, of course, cable is a sinkhole of commercials, a ghetto of interruptions, a junkyard of hard breaks -- with rare exceptions like Turner Classic Movies. They're hoping we've forgotten where we came from. I have not.
What's even worse is that the baseline product from cable isn't keeping up with progress. The basic cable you may be paying for isn't even square with technology. Signals are available in digital, but unless you're paying Comcast extra, you've still got analog. Cell phones went all-digital years ago, of course, but cable is behind the times. Your new TV set will shortly have to have a digital signal, and its receiver will no longer be robust enough to receive over-the-air signals -- but basic cable's digital signal will still be priced as an option. In a few years, the FCC says all television broadcasts must be HDTV -- yet cable will, I guarantee you, want you to pay a surcharge for that new HD signal as an "option," even when it's the national standard and there is no more analog or low-res digital to be had.
Keep in mind that hard-wiring went out the first time with the telegraph. A wire hanging from a tree or buried in the ground is NOT the most modern way to transfer data. And now that cell phones are in, land line telephony is going downhill. With the rise of the direct link satellite dish (which really replaces the old rooftop antenna in a satisfactory way), cable is now well on its way to extinction.
Cable could have wired every TV set in the country by now, but, strange as it may seem, they don't want to. If you ask your cable representative why their utility now costs as much as your gas bill, and has more accessory charges than the sticker on an American car, they will inform you that despite the hundred bucks a month you're paying, they are NOT a new utility; they are a luxury option. Yes, your TV has become a non-essential, folks.
If you ask them how, with an attitude like that, they manage to provide service to places like Appalachia, they will tell you that isn't what they are in business for.
They will even insult you (I know firsthand) by saying that if you don't like their prices, "you can always go back to rabbit ears." Hmm. I wonder if the city fathers who contracted for them to wire our town know about this option to go back to rabbit ears.
Yes, we all thought that cable was the modern replacement for the old antenna. When our city contracted with Comcast to string wire throughout the town -- twice -- we sure THOUGHT it was a utility -- a means to upgrade our television signal-- a grid, like the power, gas or phone company. But no.
So now that Comcast has its vampire fangs poised over our throats -- I'm bolting. Who needs telegraph poles when you can grab what you want off a satellite? We're already using them for everything from GPS to OnStar. So why pay a hundred a month -- or more -- to Comcast for something that used to be free? That is, COMMERCIAL TELEVISION?
No reason in the world. I can live without the golf channel, trust me. I don't have the time or the need to spend three hours watching a 2-hour movie. And if I want to watch a movie, DVDs are cheaper, they come in widescreen, and there's not a commercial interruption in the whole disk.
Oh, and I'm going to encourage local producers to start up another over-the-air channel or two, or three... We need them.
"Pay TV" was originally hyped as a superior alternative to over-the-air "Commercial TV." You would pay a monthly fee to receive quality programming, commercial-free.
That's right. The big selling point for pay TV was -- no commercials. Commercial TV was being received by antenna, over the air, free of charge, but with those pesky commercials -- including the three networks, Fox, and local PBS programming (which substituted pledge drives for commercials). Pay TV sold itself to us by promising the following: To eliminate the need for commercial interruptions in exchange for our subscription fee. One way, the sponsors paid for the programs; the other way, we paid for the programs in our monthly subscription.
When cable first came to town they told the city government they needed extra money, just during the set-up phase, while the cable was laid. But the price never came back down. Then the cable company claimed they needed extra money for a while longer, in order to lay fiber optic cable. Again the price never came back down. Meanwhile, more and more channels turned up on pay TV with commercials. At first, it was just the "superstations," commercial channels riding free on the cable signal. But then came commercials on cable's own product --Not just commercials -- MORE commercials. REALLY BAD, LOW CLASS, ANNOYING commercials. Worst of all perhaps, channels that used to be commercial-free started interrupting their programs with commercials too.
A funny disconnect occurred -- Cable companies gradually began keeping ALL the fees you gave them for themselves, and started letting -- you guessed it -- SPONSORS pay for the programs. Just like the rabbit ear days. God help us. Meanwhile, that basic fee krept up, from about twenty bucks to fifty bucks a month. That's a car payment for some folks.
Now, of course, cable is a sinkhole of commercials, a ghetto of interruptions, a junkyard of hard breaks -- with rare exceptions like Turner Classic Movies. They're hoping we've forgotten where we came from. I have not.
What's even worse is that the baseline product from cable isn't keeping up with progress. The basic cable you may be paying for isn't even square with technology. Signals are available in digital, but unless you're paying Comcast extra, you've still got analog. Cell phones went all-digital years ago, of course, but cable is behind the times. Your new TV set will shortly have to have a digital signal, and its receiver will no longer be robust enough to receive over-the-air signals -- but basic cable's digital signal will still be priced as an option. In a few years, the FCC says all television broadcasts must be HDTV -- yet cable will, I guarantee you, want you to pay a surcharge for that new HD signal as an "option," even when it's the national standard and there is no more analog or low-res digital to be had.
Keep in mind that hard-wiring went out the first time with the telegraph. A wire hanging from a tree or buried in the ground is NOT the most modern way to transfer data. And now that cell phones are in, land line telephony is going downhill. With the rise of the direct link satellite dish (which really replaces the old rooftop antenna in a satisfactory way), cable is now well on its way to extinction.
Cable could have wired every TV set in the country by now, but, strange as it may seem, they don't want to. If you ask your cable representative why their utility now costs as much as your gas bill, and has more accessory charges than the sticker on an American car, they will inform you that despite the hundred bucks a month you're paying, they are NOT a new utility; they are a luxury option. Yes, your TV has become a non-essential, folks.
If you ask them how, with an attitude like that, they manage to provide service to places like Appalachia, they will tell you that isn't what they are in business for.
They will even insult you (I know firsthand) by saying that if you don't like their prices, "you can always go back to rabbit ears." Hmm. I wonder if the city fathers who contracted for them to wire our town know about this option to go back to rabbit ears.
Yes, we all thought that cable was the modern replacement for the old antenna. When our city contracted with Comcast to string wire throughout the town -- twice -- we sure THOUGHT it was a utility -- a means to upgrade our television signal-- a grid, like the power, gas or phone company. But no.
So now that Comcast has its vampire fangs poised over our throats -- I'm bolting. Who needs telegraph poles when you can grab what you want off a satellite? We're already using them for everything from GPS to OnStar. So why pay a hundred a month -- or more -- to Comcast for something that used to be free? That is, COMMERCIAL TELEVISION?
No reason in the world. I can live without the golf channel, trust me. I don't have the time or the need to spend three hours watching a 2-hour movie. And if I want to watch a movie, DVDs are cheaper, they come in widescreen, and there's not a commercial interruption in the whole disk.
Oh, and I'm going to encourage local producers to start up another over-the-air channel or two, or three... We need them.
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