Sprint, and Their Proposed Merger, Take a Hit Today

The Sprint company and the idea of its merger with T-Mobile takes a hit today in the New York Times.

Stop Creating Corporate Goliaths

A little of what they have to say.

Letting T-Mobile merge with Sprint would hurt consumers, workers and the economy

For years, T-Mobile’s chief executive, John Legere, has gleefully bad-mouthed his much larger mobile phone competitors, Verizon Wireless and AT&T, for their high prices and profit margins, and their low-quality service. Decked out in magenta sneakers and T-shirts, sporting long hair like an aging rocker, Mr. Legere promoted T-Mobile and himself to his 6.2 million Twitter followers as renegades — telephonic cool kids.

T-Mobile wooed customers by offering service plans with no long-term commitments, and by paying to free those customers from their old service plans. Rolling your unused data and minutes into the next month? T-Mobile did that, and AT&T and Verizon had no choice but to follow. More recently, T-Mobile vowed to match any discounts offered by competitors.

The fierce competition, and the march of technology, has rapidly reduced the cost of mobile phone service. Since 2009, the average cost of mobile service has fallen by roughly 28 percent, according to the Labor Department’s calculations. In 2017, at the peak of the mobile phone price wars, the Federal Reserve said prices were falling fast enough to meaningfully reduce inflation across the entire American economy.

That’s the beauty of competition. It’s been good for T-Mobile, too. Over the past five years, the company has added more subscribers than its larger rivals.

Now T-Mobile, the nation’s third-largest wireless company, wants to merge with Sprint, the No. 4 wireless carrier in the United States. The combined company would be in the same weight class as the two largest, AT&T and Verizon, with the three companies each controlling roughly a third of the market. Mr. Legere, who scorned the big guys, now wants to be one of them.

The Justice Department’s antitrust division staff has recommended that the federal government go to court to block the merger. That is good advice.

The proposed merger would harm American consumers. It would reduce the choice of service plans, and, over time, it is likely to result in higher prices and less innovation. It would also harm workers in the mobile phone industry, reducing competition for their labor. And it would increase the political power of the combined corporation...

On the one hand, this is coming from none other than The New York Times so it's going to carry some weight. It's certainly going to be on everyone's "radar", so to speak. 

On the other hand, boys will be boys and money buys all, especially in our current national government. This may be a conversation for a while--a few days?--but when all is said and done, the FCC and this administration will do what they will, customers and nation be damned.

Look for the Sprint-T-Mobile merger to go through. We hope not but these things usually don't go for the people.

But thanks, anyway, New York Times, for trying.

Huge, Ugly, Breaking Missouri News

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Editorial: Missouri's hunger problem gets worse and worse

If you are poor, hungry live in Missouri, you don’t need a report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to tell you how bad things are. Those Missourians who are more fortunate need to know.

Every year, the USDA issues its “food security” report, which analyzes hunger problems across the country. In Missouri, the news is very, very bad.

In a state that is getting used to ranking poorly in things that count — like education funding, poverty and health-care outcomes — Missouri is No. 1 in a dubious category for the second year in a row.

Over the past decade, as a percentage of population, more Missourians have fallen into hunger, defined in the report as “very low food security,” than in any state in the nation.

All of Missouri’s rankings in the hunger report got worse in 2013 compared to 2012.

Nearly 17 percent of Missourians reported being food insecure, meaning at least once last year, in most cases several times, they skipped meals for lack of money. That’s the fifth-highest percentage in the nation, up two spots from 7th the year before.

Worse, more than 8 percent of Missourians reported more severe hunger, defined as “very low food security,” second only to Arkansas in terms of the dubious ranking.

Here’s where the numbers get really bad, and they don’t show up in the USDA report: Over the past year, as Missouri’s hunger problems got worse, fewer Missourians had access to food stamps to help feed their families.

_______________________________

Worst hunger in the nation. Two years running. Got worse last year.

Not Mississippi.  Missouri

Those are some sick, sick statistics, Missouri. We need to do things about this.

Come November 4, vote blue.

For starters.

The Aiport people go to the Star

According to Yael T. Abouhalkah at the Kansas City Star, Mayor James and other proponents of a new, single building airport went to the Star's editorial board this last week and came up with 3 main reasons we should buy off on their very expensive boondoggle. They were/are:

• The new terminal would improve the image of Kansas City.
• It would help attract more businesses to the region.
• It would provide a better experience for airline passengers

Let's address each. (As in, apply logic and tear these things apart).

First, a new terminal would "improve the image of Kansas City."

Really?

And why would that be?

Because we built one? Because we built another one? Seriously?

Heads up, guys, we have one. We have an international airport. And you know what? We like it. It works.  It's handsome. It's attractive. It's convenient. You can get in and get to your plane quickly, easily and conveniently. Why would we want to throw it away, walk away from it and only to--expensively--buy another new one?

Second argument:  A new, single building facility would "help attract more businesses to the region."

Again, seriously?  They're claiming that?

How is it more businesses would come to the region?

Again, WE HAVE AN AIRPORT. How is paying for and building a new one going to bring more businesses to the region? What company or companies is going to say or think "Gosh, Kansas City has a new, expensive airport. That's going to be good for us so we should take our business and company there"?

Here's the thinking, folks:  "Kansas City has had an international airport for, what? Decades. A new airport, single-building or no, changes nothing. It doesn't change our business or markets in any way. We don't need to move there, suddenly."

Third and final point of theirs: "It would provide a better experience for airline passengers."

Again, how is that?

Maybe, maybe, just because it's a "shiny new building"? That's about the most you can say for this idea.

But again, here's a thought, the thought that makes far more sense--instead of walking away from the existing facility that a) works very well, thanks very much and that b) the people like very much, again, thanks, WHY NOT UPDATE THE EXISTING FACILITY IN ALL ASPECTS? That could include lighting (LED to cut costs), heating, cooling, even energy-generating with solar photovoltaic energy cells, all of it, and make the most of all that updating and innovation. It would still be FAR less expensive than building new, some miles away, and starting all over again.

Then, you're just as likely, if not far more so, to provide that better experience for airline passengers. It only makes sense.

You'd have this cool, retro-fitted facility YOU DIDN'T WALK AWAY FROM AND THROW AWAY, it would have all the latest, modern amenities, including, possibly and even likely, new restaurants and shopping options.

It would be a total win for all--the airline passengers, the airlines themselves, the city and region, all of us.

We have to stop throwing away whole buildings. In this case, it would not just be a few buildings we threw away, either. It would be many.

A Star article this past week stated that the Airport Authority is going to close Terminal A later this year. This fits in with just what I've proposed. Instead of closing terminal A, close terminal B. Then revamp it and make it the facility for security and check-in. Then, add ramps out to Terminals A and C for going to the gates and our waiting planes.  All problems solved. It totally works, all the way around.  We save the existing airport, we save money, we get the improvements and updates and changes we need, everything.

This is very much like our Interstate 70 issue.

It needs updating and modernizing and widening, all of it.

At one point, the Missouri Department of Transportation floated the idea of abandoning it and building a new I-70, in effect, a few miles north of the existing. 

It was roundly criticized and shown to be the absurd, wasteful idea it was.

Same here.

We cannot walk away from and throw away our existing airport, just so we can be seduced by the "sexy and new."

That works for shirts and pants but not airports and buildings.

It's stupid. It's irresponsible. It's wasteful.  No, strike that, it's horribly wasteful.

And it's obscenely expensive and in a lot of ways, money and sheer cost being the biggest one.

Original article:  New KCI terminal’s biggest challenge: Will it be convenient?

Read more here: http://voices.kansascity.com/yael-abouhalkah/#storylink=cpy

The Wacko, Wacked-Out Kansas and Missouri Legislatures (guest post)

What I've been saying, time and again, but Barb Shelley of The Kansas City Star says so well:

Strange fixations of Kansas, Missouri legislators

Hey, Missouri citizen. When you woke up this morning and gulped your orange juice, did you obsess about United Nations resolution Agenda 21?

No? Well, you’d better believe your Missouri legislators did. Committees in the House and Senate have OK’d bills that forbid state and local governments from making any land use decisions that might be traced back to the non-binding 1992 environmental resolution.

It may look like a harmless list of suggested ways for communities to conserve natural resources, but none other than Glenn Beck has pronounced it a “global scheme that has the potential to wipe out freedoms of all U.S. citizens.”

Whew! How did a threat like this travel under the radar for 20 years? Fortunately for Kansans, their Legislature passed a proactive resolution aimed at foiling Agenda 21 domination last session.

Increasingly, this is what state lawmakers in these parts do best. They seize a cause from some out-of-state think tank or interest group or nut case movement and impose it on their constituents.

The fixation by tea party legislators with Agenda 21 mostly just wastes time. It’s rather unlikely that any Missouri communities are eyeing “policy recommendations that infringe on private property rights without due process and are traceable to Agenda 21,” as the proposed legislation describes.

But other agendas are much more harmful.

Take the push to lower the state income tax, which is in full throttle in Kansas and picking up steam in Missouri. This drive didn’t come from local business communities. Many local chambers of commerce have publicly opposed income tax cuts, which decimate state services and will likely have to be offset with sales tax increases.

The income tax abolition movement started with the flamboyant Arthur Laffer, who is one-third economist and two-thirds salesman. He found a home for his controversial theories in the American Legislative Exchange Council, known as ALEC, a group funded by corporate interests and free-market advocates. It holds great sway over Republican legislators around the country.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, whose political career has been entwined with small-government, free-market believers like the Koch brothers of Wichita, is a believer in Laffer and his no-income-tax gospel. Huge Republican majorities in both the Kansas and Missouri legislatures mean there are plenty of lawmakers to crusade for the cause, even though the supposed gains in job growth are hypothetical.

Another example: Legislators in Missouri and Kansas have spent hours debating bills intended to weaken unions.

Why? Most public- and-private sector unions in these states aren’t known for making trouble. In both states, many public-sector employees represented by unions barely earn liveable wages.

There’s been no outcry from businesses begging the legislatures to clip the wings of unions. No, the pressure comes from outside groups. Republican legislators are willing to poison relationships and demean their states’ teachers, public safety workers and others in order to please their out-of-state bosses.

These include the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and National Tax Limitation Committee, both of which sent operatives to Jefferson City this session to fire up Republican lawmakers. Some of the language in the anti-union bills in Missouri and Kansas is strikingly similar to model bills drafted by ALEC.

There are still plenty of serious lawmakers in Missouri and Kansas who work hard to promote the interests of their constituents and their communities. I’m always relieved to see that a newly elected legislator has served on a school board or city council; they are more apt to realize that ideology must sometimes yield to reality.

Increasingly, though, hard-working public servants are being shoved aside in favor of candidates with the right tea party and tax-hating credentials. Their loyalty is to causes, not constituents. But their causes will pay handsomely to see that they remain in office.

U.N. resolution Agenda 21 poses no threat to the people of Missouri and Kansas. The same cannot be said of the anti-tax, anti-worker, anti-government agendas being pursued by malleable legislators.

Original post:  

Strange fixations of Kansas, Missouri legislators | Midwest Voices

Read more here: http://voices.kansascity.com/entries/strange-fixations-kansas-missouri-legislators/#storylink=cpy

Surprising intelligence from a letter to the editor in the Star yesterday

One John Segale of Shawnee had a letter to the editor in the Star today that made reading the letters to the editor worthwhile yesterday, Sunday, which is so, so very rare.

He pointed out, so rightly, that the Republicans have a lot of nerve trying to de-fund NPR, PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting when, in fact, it was only NPR and PBS on radio and TV, respectively, that broadcast their national convention last week, almost completely in its entirety.

It seems that, besides the hypocrisy they're so capable of, they're also extremely capable of producing a goodly amount of irony, too.

God bless they're pointy little heads.

And great thanks to Mr. Segale. You built back up a little of my faith in humankind.

Link: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/09/02/3791269/letters-google-fiber-republicans.html

On those recent debt negotiations...

“Witnessing the Republicans and the Democrats bicker over the U.S. debt is analogous to watching two drunks argue over a bar bill on the Titanic.” --line in a recent editorial of the Idaho Statesmen.

This administration looks like the last here

Freedom of the press being a hallmark of our nation, this kind of treatment should be inexcusable and not allowed:

White House shuts out Herald scribe - BostonHerald.com

By Hillary Chabot
Wednesday, May 18, 2011

The White House Press Office has refused to give the Boston Herald full access to President Obama’s Boston fund-raiser today, in e-mails objecting to the newspaper’s front page placement of a Mitt Romney op-ed, saying pool reporters are chosen based on whether they cover the news “fairly.”

This shouldn't be tolerated any longer by the American public, certainly, absolutely and finally.  We saw this kind of treatment from the last administration and we all thought poorly of it.  

We voted this president in, wanting and expecting better in virtually all ways.  This is one of the most important ways in which we expect this president and administration to take a far higher road.

Since President Obama is in the midst of his re-election bid, he shouldn't do this anyway, but granting favor or disfavor to the press by what they write should never be allowed or tolerated again.

It's censorship of some of the worst kind.

On why we need NPR

From an op/ed column from The Washington Post (by Leonard Downie, Jr. and Robert G. Kaiser):

...Americans benefit when powerful institutions and important issues in their lives are scrutinized by good reporters on their behalf. Yet this kind of ambitious local news coverage by commercial media has diminished in community after community in recent years.

Recognizing that, NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — the government-created nonprofit institution that distributes federal dollars to public television and radio stations — have begun helping public radio stations do a better job of news reporting in their communities. CPB is funding Local Journalism Centersthat will enable dozens of public radio and television stations to work together in seven regions of the country to produce in-depth coverage of such subjects as education and the impact of the Gulf oil spill in southern states and coastal cities, economic change in the upper Midwest and Upstate New York, health care in central Florida, the environment in the Pacific Northwest, immigration and cultural change in southwestern cities, and evolving agribusiness in Great Plains communities.

NPR is working with local member stations on similar initiatives, including investigative reporting, as well as digital content sharing and Web site development that help stations stretch their limited resources. NPR also intends to begin a multiyear experimental partnership with selected member stations to cover the impact of state government actions in each of the 50 states, after many newspapers cut or closed their state capital news bureaus. Some individual stations are collaborating with nearby stations and new nonprofit news organizations to provide more local news to listeners.

And that's just part of the reasons we need NPR, locally and nationally.  How can we protect ourselves if we don't know what's going on?  It's as I said here earlier, if we don't have NPR, who's going to watch over government and corporations and report back to us what they do together, out of our sight?  

It surely isn't going to be Fox "News".

Link to original post:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-gap-we-need-npr-to-fill/2011/03/17/ABhu3Jm_story.html?fb_ref=NetworkNews

A lesson for the leaders of Kansas City. And the country

Besides the excellent article yesterday in The New York Times on the need and intelligence of cutting the US' defense/military budget, there was another terrific one by Thomas L. Friedman (a last, before his 4 month sabbatical so he can write a book) on the hard choices we, as Americans, are going to have to start making if we're going to have balanced budgets.  And a working society.

He cites one Kasim Reed, Atlanta, Georgia's relatively new Mayor and what he's done for and with the city.  It's an important article and one which I'd recommend you read (see link below).

Rather than cover the article, I want to merely quote Mr. Reed here, as a lesson for mayors of cities, legislators in state and federal governments and even for you and me--"Mr., Mrs. and Ms. America", as it were:

“We are not going to be what we have been for the last 50 years if we don’t change, and everybody in a position to have more than two people listening to them needs to be saying that, because the time we have to make the adjustments is running out. We need to get on with it. Whether it’s the deficit, education or investing in young people or immigration — we are not tackling [them] in the fundamental ways required. We’re just doing it piecemeal. We’re just playing and surviving. And we need to be very clear where just surviving takes you: it takes you to a lifestyle of just survival.”

“The bottom line is that for the country to do and to be what we have been ... there must be a generation tough enough to stick out its chin and take the hit. ... It is time to begin having the types of mature and honest conversations necessary to deal effectively with the new economic realities we are facing as a nation. We simply cannot keep kicking the can down the road.”

I hope people are listening and paying attention.

Link to original post:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26friedman.html?src=me&ref=general

Quote of the day--on transition

"We are leaving an era where to be a mayor, governor, senator or president was, on balance, to give things away to people. And we are entering an era where to be a leader will mean, on balance, to take things away from people. It is the only way we’ll get our fiscal house in order before the market, brutally, does it for us."     --Thomas L. Friedman, Columnist, The New York Times


Link:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26friedman.html?src=me&ref=general

Quote of the day--on sacrifice

The nation’s richest taxpayers just got a windfall in the federal tax deal extorted from President Obama by Republican senators. States should not shy away from asking for more help from those most able to pay.

Many governors claim tax increases are ill-advised during a recession, but more experienced economists say it is better to raise taxes on the rich than to lay off workers and cut spending, in effect offsetting Washington’s attempts at stimulus. The federal government missed a chance to begin to act rationally about its long-term deficit by giving away the store to the rich in the tax deal. States should not make the same mistake.     --Editorial, today, The New York Times

Link to original post:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26sun1.html?src=un&feedurl=http://json8.nytimes.com/pages/opinion/index.jsonp

Thomas McClanahan: wrong in so many ways

In yesterday's Star, Thomas E. McClanahan--the paper's resident Conservative--outlined more of his reasons for being against the Health Care Reform Act passed earlier this year.

Naturally, he utterly ignored the fact that US District Court Judge Henry Hudson's ruling against the reform was highly biased and should have been dismissed since Judge Hudson is a part owner of a company, apparently, that worked openly and against this same reform.  Recusing, anyone?

But no, Mr. McClanahan didn't address that issue.

We'll go on from there.

Next, he says "At issue is the personal mandate, the part of the law that says everyone must buy health insurance or pay a penalty."


Okay, so if this is an issue, then how can government tell us to buy car insurance, then?  How is this a problem?
No one gets the connection?  One is allowable but the other isn't?  How wouldyou explain that?


But here's what he says is the crux of his issue with the health care reform:


During the health care debate, it was common to hear people piously assert that health care should be a right, perhaps unaware of the full implications. The ongoing strikes and riots in Europe, however, represent the long-term risks of the progressive vision, in which government-delivered social benefits are portrayed as personal rights.

No wonder they’re rioting in Europe. They believe their personal rights are being violated by budget cuts brought on by the sovereign debt crisis.

Well, okay, right, the people are rioting---actually it's the university students because their costs have been rumored that they are to, I believe, double.  That's not a health care problem, for one.  

Secondly, not all of Europe is rioting, for sure. 

Third, Europe is decidedly, absolutely not rioting on or about health care in any way.  The societies over there wisely decided, decades ago, that health care is, indeed, a "right" and that it shouldn't be tied, endlessly, as we have, to profit and profits, ad infinitum.  That our system has is true lunacy.  It's indecent.  It's obscene.

The fact is, the claims Mr. McClanahan makes in his column yesterday are the same, old and very tired claims that are virtually always made about progessive policies, politics and laws, be it Social Security or Medicare or whatever.  It's always "the end of the world" with these people.  In this case, Mr. McClanahan claims that "The problem is that elevating benefits to the level of rights confers an unlimited grant of power to the government. In the legislative process..."

Right.  If this passes, the sky is definitely going to fall.  You know we'll all turn Communist, don't you?

He goes on:  "From government’s point of view, positive rights are marching orders. Heaven and earth must be moved to deliver the promises. The state grows rapidly and ultimately it outruns the capacity of the tax base to pay for it all, endangering the financial security of everyone."

The fact is, Mr. McClanahan, if the "public option" had also been included in this health care reform, all it would do is give the insurance agencies some competition, in a direct effort to help keep insurance costs down.  More than anything, that's what's killing our health care system--the costs, the high, high costs.  

So there's the rebuttal to the column and that's all well and good.

But the fact is, our health care system is utterly, completely, totally broken.  More than 50 million of us here in the US have no health care coverage.

It's clear Mr. McClanahan and lots of Conservatives and Republicans are against what he derides as "Obamacare" but which is really the Health Care Reform Act of 2010 and it's for the people of the US, of America.

Fine, they're all against it.

What would you, Mr. McClanahan, and all your kind who are so against this, do FOR the American people, to help fix our health care system?

No one on the other side has offered any solutions yet.

And of it--the system, our costs and our individual and collective health--just keep getting worse, in the meantime.

Link:  http://www.kansascity.com/2010/12/18/2529544/obamacare-and-the-risk-of-positive.html

Quote of the day--on US imperialism, and more

"Let us rid ourselves of the superpower fallacy before the superpower fallacy rids us of more American lives, American influence and American credibility." --Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. in a June 17, 1987 op/ed piece in The New York Times Link to original post: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/09/25/opinion/opedat40-wars.html#Our-Central-American-Misadventure