My cell phone shopping experience

We have become dependent on our cell phones – my wife and I, and I have been resenting the cell phone companies and looking for an alternative to their very expensive product. Here’s what I have found out: There are none. They have done the capitalist thing, and narrowed the choices down to a few competitors offering the same product on the same terms. While they are locked in this business model, the basic phone itself is crappy and over-hyped, much like the days when we were stuck with two phones from AT&T: The desk model, and the amazing Princess phone.

It took government action to break up Ma Bell, but these days corporations are our government, so there won’t be any anti-trust actions soon forthcoming.

Oh, I see all of the gimmicks and gadgets, the cameras and music players and directional devices (a government-provided service). But the basic service advantage is the ability to receive a call while away from home.

It reminds me of Marshall McLuhan’s dictum that every advance in technology carries with it a corresponding loss of freedom. (McLuhan gave the example of the telegraph – when eastern companies had branches in the frontier west, they had little control over their employees. With the new telegraph technology, employees had to be in the office to answer the tweet.)

Anyway, I’ve shopped around now. I thought the best alternative was the prepaid phone, as it carries no two-year contract, the industry version of the Model-T (any color you want, so long as it’s black.). Verizon offers prepaid alternatives, but get this – they want not only purchase of advance minutes, but also a daily charge for use – that is, your first call each day will cost you $1.00 or $1.95 (aka “$2.00”). Our local food store offers prepaid phones and minutes, but it’s only a little but cheaper and there’s uncertainty about the network. T-Mobile had the best deal – a reasonably priced phone and the ability to buy a large chunk of minutes that don’t expire at month’s end. But their coverage is limited, and if you are roaming, your phone simply doesn’t work. If we were to go to Montana, we’d have to find T-Mobile “hot spots.” It’s the modern version of the pay phone.

And here’s the catch – for so long as you do normal use – 4-500 minutes a month, prepaid phones are no bargain. Here’s why: With the exception of T-Mobile, the carriers all expire your minutes at month’s end. Given that scenario, where they actually take back the product you bought and paid for, there is still that monthly rent. And that’s all they really want from you – monthly cash flow. (Imagine that we bought cookies with the proviso that if we didn’t eat them by the end of the week, we had to give them back and buy new ones. Is this the best they can do?)

And, of course, we all wait for the wonderful bounteous free market to work its magic on another aspect of the cell phone business – the fact that whenever a call is made, two carriers are being paid for the same signal. C’mon, free market … someone, some competitive carrier – make the move – wait for it …. wait for it … drop the charge for incoming calls. Not happening.

Here’s my solution: I am taking my cell phone number off my letterhead. I am simply going out of reach. I managed before, and will manage now. What is so important that it cannot wait for me to check messages? Life and death matters? Very rare, and certainly not worth the price of dealing with the cell phone oligarchs.

(I experienced but one single life-or-death incident in the last twenty years. Two of our aunts died in a two-day period. My brother, the priest, needed to be on the scene, as the family was in need and he was the logical go-to guy for funerals. I could not reach him. He was in the mountains.)

Come back, Jaybird! Make the Cowgirl go away!

This place is getting interesting. This place is getting boring. This place is alive with writers and wit and wisdom and hackery, but always worth a visit.

Our place here never changes. We have 150-250 readers daily, and I have no idea what a “reader” is. I am told I don’t know how to “market” this blog. Since I don’t even know what that means, I assume it is true.

So tell me dear reader, how does one “market” a blog?

Mr. Pig, hold still! Mr. Obama has some lipstick for you. Mr. Citizen, hold still! Mr. Obama has some Vaseline™ for you.

I listened to a discussion yesterday on NPR, Brian Lehrer, I think. Who really cares? (Contrary to popular belief, NPR is not “liberal”, but rather “mainstream”, i.e., “corporate.”) In this discussion, a representative of either the health insurance industry or the Obama Administration (a distinction without a difference) launched into a common-sense discussion about the coming mandate that we all carry insurance.

The mandate is misunderstood, we were told, because we don’t really understand insurance. It only really works as intended when there is full participation. When we have full participation, costs will go down.

I suppose in a perfect world, that would be true. But it is not a perfect world, and this is the United States of America, where only one set of opinions gets an airing on “mainstream” media. So I did an on-the-spot translation: The health insurance industry wants the government to mandate that we all buy their crappy products.

In return for the mandate, they will take the clients they currently reject, who are the poor and working class, by subsidizing the insurance industry to offer them crappy coverage. They will also agree to stop refusing coverage to potentially unprofitable clients (preexisting conditions), and will allow them to go to insurance exchanges to buy extremely expensive crappy coverage. If they can’t afford it, again, the government will subsidize the insurance companies. (Many state exchanges currently offer such coverage to insurance industry castoffs – it hardly qualifies as a Band-aid.)

There will be no cost controls. It’s win-win. For them.

The encirclement is almost complete now. Single payer is long gone, as is a public option. “Cadillac” policies, known in other countries as “basic coverage”, will be taxed out of existence. We will all be faced with higher premiums and lower coverage. (We citizens are, I am told, tempted by a “moral hazard” of demanding too much care, while insurance companies, who profit by exactly $1.00 by denying exactly $1.00 in coverage, suffer no such hazards. We are tempted towards immorality, and so they are protected from us. We are offered no such protection from them.)

In a final insult, I presume that Obama will “compromise”, and allow the Republicans two of their cherished “solutions” to the problem. One, he will allow tort reform, thereby curbing an important disciplinary tool often used against insurance companies. He will also knock down state barriers, allowing insurers to gravitate towards the states with the lowest thresholds for coverage.

Obama yesterday did his professorial thing, lecturing recalcitrant Republicans and knocking down some of their more lame talking points. But let’s not be fooled here. Obama is now an insurance salesman, and appears to be trying to put lipstick on a pig. He’s also a Republican. Or a Democrat. One or the other. I’m not sure. And it doesn’t seem to matter. Buy one, get one free.

Lies of our times … like “bipartisanship”

Glenn Greenwald offers up a well-linked piece to an action that ought to set all party Democrats back on their heels – the Senate’s passage by voice vote of extension of key provisions of the Patriot Act. There was no debate, no threatened filibuster, no nonsense. They just got it done.

Contrast this with a list put out by Nancy Pelosi’s office” 290 pieces of legislation passed by the House that have stalled in the Senate. The reason? The filibuster rule, intransigence, and, of course, the blah blah blah.

The paralysis is indeed institutional in nature, but the key institution is not the House or Senate. (The House appears to be functioning quite well, but don’t be fooled – they have ease of action knowing that most of what they do does not matter). The key institution is The Party, our lone political party, the essential feature of our “democratic” society, and the fact that it is financed by one source, corporate America. We have two nominal parties, but when called upon to do anything of importance for the general public, such as regulation of Wall Street and banks or repair of our health care system, they are lost in procedural constipation. When called up to re-up one of the most totalitarian laws since Alien and Sedition, a simple voice vote gets it done.

As Casey Stengel would say, “Amazin.'”

When the Republican wing of The Party holds power, there is no talk of bipartisanship, and filibusters rarely happen. Legislation is rammed through – dammit, they just somehow find a way. When Democrats take power, the wheels grind to a halt. Nothing can be done, they tell us. The votes just aren’t there. (They really aren’t – that is, there are not enough progressives or liberals in the Democrat Party to pass an even mildly aggressive agenda.) The leadership of the Democratic Party (starting at the very top), and the punditry, cry out for bipartisanship. As Greenwald notes, some of the worst and most damaging legislation of the past decades was done on a bipartisan basis. When The Party wants to stick it to us, its two wings agree and move forward.

When something of importance is on the agenda, like health care, The Party splits into two factions, and nothing gets done. And we then get frustrated, and to vent our frustration, we replace one branch of The Party with the other branch of The Party. And we get screwed that way too.

As should be a commonplace, there is essentially one political party, the business party, and two factions. Shifting coalitions of investors account for a large part of political history. Unions or other popular organizations that might offer a way for the general public to play some role in developing programs and influencing policy choices scarcely function. The ideological system is bounded by the consensus of the privileged. In congressional elections, virtually all incumbents are returned to office. There is scarcely a pretense that substantive issues arise in presidential campaigns. Articulated programs are hardly more than a device to garner votes, and it is considered quite natural for candidates to adjust messages to audiences as public relations tacticians advise, another reflection of the vacuity of the political system and the cynicism of those who participate in it. Political commentators ponder such questions as whether Obama is too dependent on his teleprompter, or whether McCain looks too angry, or whether Obama can duck the slime flung at him by speech writers and pundits of the right wing. In the 2008 elections, the two factions virtually exchanged traditional stands, the Democrats presenting themselves as the party of Keynesian growth and state intervention in the economy, the Republicans as the advocates of fiscal conservatism; few even noticed. Half the population does not bother to push the levers, and those who take the trouble often consciously vote against their own interest.

Those are actually words taken from a letter by Noam Chomsky to a now-defunct publication, Lies of Our Times. The letter was dated December 30, 1990. These are not unusual times we live in. Here’s what he actually wrote, picking up where the names of the actors are used:

…Political commentators ponder such questions as whether Reagan will remember his lines, or whether Mondale looks too gloomy, or whether Dukakis can duck the slime flung at him by George Bush’s speech writers. In the 1984 elections, the two factions virtually exchanged traditional stands, the Republicans presenting themselves as the party of Keynesian growth and state intervention in the economy, the Democrats as the advocates of fiscal conservatism; few even noticed. Half the population does not bother to push the levers, and those who take the trouble often consciously vote against their own interest.

Our choices? Join The Party, and enjoy the stage presentation, or leave The Party, and be marginalized.

Public opinion …

I ran across a footnote this morning that referenced an out-of-print publication and an article published in 1954: Saturday Review, “Who Tells the Storytellers”, by Elmo Roper. I vaguely remember a thing called a”Roper Poll.” Elmo Roper was a leader in the field of market research and public opinion polling. The article is not available, and (maybe a comment on modern culture) the rights to it and all of the old Saturday Review articles is owned by Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione.

The footnote caught my eye because it was an observation about American society from 56 years ago:

Elmo Roper’s classification of influential groups in the United States is well known: about 90% of the population is “politically inert”; they become active only accidentally, when they are set into motion, but they are normally “inactive, inattentive, manipulable, and without critical faculty.”

In other words, only about ten percent of us are paying attention. Once every two years the 90% are shaken awake and inoculated with intense agitation propaganda otherwise known as the “political ad” – sound and image-bytes meant to appeal to prejudice and emotion, constructed to manipulate, carrying no substance, and made with the understanding that the viewer is clueless but will soon vote. We then head in masse to the polls and present our views to our leaders, and our media dutifully analyze what the public “thinks.”

Let’s be honest – we can talk freely here, as that 90% of public will not be found reading political blogs. I noticed this as I went door-to-door night after night in 1996 in my run for state legislature – the faces were vapid, the “issues” meaningless, and the arbiter of all that was going to happen on election day was the television, always in the background. That 90% is a whale on the beach, breathing but unable to move.

The “public mind” is a joke – it “thinks” in the same manner as a voice recorder. It plays back the opinions of leaders (with a great deal of background interference). The methods by which opinions spread are subtle and covert. Only rarely does a voice on television say something meant for the value of its content. Virtually all news and commentary is meant for subtle effect. (Thus we have the apparent contradiction wherein most of the American public, and virtually all of the Fox News viewership, thought that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks. It was no accident – that message was sent out in subterfuge and coded clues, very deliberately. That is how public opinion is formed. There is virtually no useful information dispersed by television.)

There is manipulation going on right now – agitprop and an angry segment of the voting public being activated – to what purpose I do not know. But the “Teabaggers” are about as spontaneous as a prom dance. They are interesting not for the content of their message, which is typically muddled and incoherent. They are interesting because some group, some moneyed interest, plans to use them for some nefarious purpose. Stay tuned.

The Citizens United decision tosses another spice into our stew. It is based on the premise that “advertising” and “speech” are synonymous. That is a ludicrous notion. Advertising is subversion of the individual, psychological manipulation. It has power because it is effective to the exact degree that we think it is not. If we think ourselves immune to advertising, we are its slaves.

Now given the power to spread their message with virtually unlimited funds on a population that is “politically inert, inactive, inattentive, manipulable, and without critical faculty,” we are pretty much screwed. Public opinion is now owned by corporate masters, and by extension, so are all virtually politicians (with the exception of odd and out-of-the-way places like Boulder, Missoula, and Vermont).

Citizens United is a master stroke, a calculated pandering to power masked as reasoned jurisprudence. It will plunge us into darkness.

Where is hope, oh gloomy one? Certainly it is not in that 90%. C/U merely formalized the ownership of them and electoral politics by the corporations.

But we are still left with the 10%.

But who are “we”? We are intellectually alive, diverse, and stuck in the mud. Assume that every living is ideology expressed to some degree within our numbers. What is the mainstream of thought among the thoughtful? Right now it is “free markets,” but that cannot last as it relies on the fictional man as its mainstay. We are not the simple economic beings they think us to be. Soon to return is the community man, the generous and caring citizen, the man willing to give of himself in return for the good of his family and friends and community. That is our better nature. These are indeed dark times, but that nature does not change. We have been sidetracked by free market economics, but will get back on track after another economic disaster or two. Takes time …

In the long run we are all dead, and yet, in the long run, there has always been progress towards a better society.

American marketing 101

A friend of my daughter’s has two W-2’s and some student loan interest. She went to H&R Block to get her tax return done, and they wanted $150. She shopped around a bit more and found that the tax preparation business is pretty much like the cell phone business or health insurance … there’s very little competition, and a whole lot of gouging going on.

We have a couple of cell phones … one of them is functional. When they were both working, I got lured into a Verizon store by their Internet promotion of their Druid device. As I read it, the phone would cost $150, and the monthly service fee would be $70. That’s what we were paying for two phones, and I thought it would be worth it to have one phone with Internet access. So I went there – maybe I misunderstood, but the price of the phone was $250, and monthly service $100. That monthly service fee just happens to be exactly, to the penny, what Apple/AT&T wants for an IPhone.

As long as I was there anyway, we dropped one of our phones, saving us $30 a month. That was the best deal Verizon offered that day.

There are basically three cell phone carriers now – Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T. Their price structures are virtually identical. We are crazy to pay full price for a phone, as we pay the same monthly service fee whether we are under contract or not, and there is no incentive to switch from one carrier to another. They all want two year contracts.

Their phones cannot be used with any competitor’s signal. There has been very little innovation in recent years, and they do not allow applications on most devices. Every little extra service – music, email – costs extra. Accessories are made in Switzerland by the same people who make Rolex’s -that’s all I can figure. Why else would a $1.95 wall charger cost $35? And nothing works with anything else – each phone has it’s own unique little plug-in hole, and they keep changing them.

But that’s basically the marketing game in a nutshell – they must teach it at Harvard and community colleges alike – segment the market into low and high end, never undercut a competitor’s price, annuitize, and never cut a customer a break – Apple works as hard at monopolizing their customers as it does at innovating. The only way they try to distinguish themselves from competition is by advertising. Each has its own pitch for the same product.

It’s really boring, this American consumer capitalism. If it really worked like they say it does, we would be able to buy a phone at Target, and we would be able to switch from one carrier to another and add apps and make them earn our business. This is not competition.

Anyway, I did my daughter’s friend’s return – it took about 15 minutes. She offered me $50, but I did it for $15 – the cost of an e-file. I try not to be in the tax preparation business, but cannot avoid it. If I were in it for serious, I’d be doing those W-2 returns for $50, and clearing $35. It’s tempting.

But it brought to mind one other thought – those W-2 returns are so easy that a child could do them – why do these kids not learn something about it in school?

PS: I keep hoping that this strange un-American company, Google, will break some china here soon, both in cell phones and Internet service. Is the Google phone a new concept, or are they just trying to enter the market without disrupting the price structure?

Imagine

I had an interesting exchange below which has nagged at me. In the post, I noted that American scientists had studied the possibilities for weaponizing the Ebola virus, but that doing so only meant that if such a weapon could be developed, it would be the U.S. using it. It could be no other way.

Further, I offfered the following hypothetical:

Imagine the following passage from a book written, say, in 1943:

“The splitting of an atom can release massive amounts of energy, and can be potentially deadly. American scientists at White Sands, New Mexico, have tried to see if there is a way Nazi scientists would be able to come up with a way to make a bomb capable of destroying entire cities.”

In the exchange that followed, a commenter said

To our great detriment, nuclear weapons _are_ feasible and therefor, inevitable. I’m very glad the Nazis did not succeed.

Evil exists. We can’t wish it away.

I suppose that we are all glad that the Nazis did not succeed. Who knows -might they have done something crazy, like incinerate two cities?

Rest assured …

Stella Liebeck was the winner in the infamous McDonald’s coffee case. She was awarded $2.86 million for serous burns and vaginal surgery she endured due to spilling 180-degree coffee in her lap. Coffee at that temperature can generate third-degree burns in two to seven seconds. (She only asked McDonald’s to pay the hospital bill, but they refused, ergo, the lawsuit.)

Few people understand why such an incident, even where there is negligence, should generate such a large award. The amount approximated the amount of money McDonald’s had made selling too-hot coffee over a two-day period. They wanted to punish the company, and so awarded “punitive” damages. It may be true that Liebeck did not endure damages anywhere near that amount- perhaps a civil penalty is a better route in these affairs. Nonetheless, the impulse is a good one – companies should not profit from antisocial behavior.

Jennifer Latham of LaFayette, Colorado, took out an individual health insurance policy from Assurant Health, also known as Time Insurance Company. Latham and her husband (uninsured) were subsequently seriously injured in an auto accident, not their fault, and she incurred $185,000 in medical bills. Saying that Latham had committed insurance fraud by not reporting an emergency room visit for shortness of breath and treatment for uterine prolapse on her insurance application, the company rescinded her policy and refused to pay the bills.

The jury awarded Latham $37 million in punitive damages. This is a crystal-clear case of insurance fraud by an insurer – the omissions on the application were clearly unrelated to the incident for which coverage was denied. But most rescission cases are a little bit grayer than this – people do commit insurance fraud, not that I much care. We don’t need health insurance companies, after all.

But the jury could have been a little more thorough – they could have estimated how much money Assurant has made from policy rescission over the last, say, 20 years, and awarded her that amount, which would have run into the hundreds of millions. After all, the company has employees who do nothing but rescission. Punishment in that amount would be appropriate, and might perhaps discourage Assurant from further antisocial behavior. As it is, they are chastened, but will likely carry on as before. Investors demand no less. Rescission is profitable.

Beyond that, they might have invoked the corporate death sentence. Since corporations are legal persons, they should do as all of us must do some day … die.

Latham and her four children are currently living on Social Security, and Assurant will appeal the decision. It will be years before they cut a check.

Footnote: Tort “reform”, or limiting of such damage awards, would further encourage the Assurants of this world to abuse the Lathmans of this world. Such an award, in a tort-reformed system, would not be allowed.

News from Democratville …

President Obama today makes a stop in Denver – this is unusual. He is doing a Big Foot in the Democratic primary on behalf of appointed Senator Michael Bennet over State Representative Andrew Romanoff.

Bennet is a former investment manager for the Anschutz Investment Corporation. (Philip Anschutz made his fortune in oil). He was a Rahm Emanuel-inspired appointment, and has distinguished himself in the senate with the speed at which he filled his campaign coffers with Wall Street and health insurance money. He replaced Senator Ken Salazar, who was elevated to Secretary of the Interior by Obama.

Romanoff is campaigning for a public option and elimination of the antitrust exemption for the health insurance industry. Bennet strongly supports some things, and is passionate about other things. But he is realistic about what can be accomplished, and doesn’t really expect to do much if elected except to be a really good senator. At a debate last night in Auroria, he expressed a wish that they not debate, telling Romanoff that he loved him.

It’s really odd for a Democratic president to weigh in heavy in a state primary, but given Romanoff’s seeming liberal credentials, I suppose it is to be expected.

In other news, Obama has appointed former Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles to head his new commission on the Deficit. Bowles is an investment banker by trade. This is the “left” side of this balanced bipartisan commission. The “right” side, as usual, will be occupied by a true right winger, Alan Simpson, former Wyoming Senator.

This is America, where the right is right, and the left is right too, and everyone else is marginalized. But Alan Simpson is a good man, an honest man, a smart man, a witty man – at least there will be some entertainment as the commission studiously concludes that the fiscal problems in our land are the result of Social Security and Medicare. This commission will report to the president after the 2010 election, and there will be thereafter yet another attack on Social Security.

It’s scary, however, as when Democrats attack Social Security, the chances of success are better. It’s called “triangulation.”