FairPoint….happens

FairPoint Communications purchased all of Verizon’s landline business a few years in NH, VT, and ME.  They made a big deal out as well they should have – it greatly increased their subscriber base.  They also made a lot of promises, such as ramping up employment and rolling out “high speed” Internet, especially out in the northern part of the state.  However, they took on a ton of debt to do so – and it showed early on in carrying out those promises.

Personally, their customer service sucked.  Just as soon as they announced their “new website”, I went over to set up electronic payments – especially since they had to pay Verizon to continue to provision a number of software packages as FairPoint was not ready with their own when Cutover (when the line transferred from Verizon to FairPoint).  Accurracy and quality of response simply sucked when the FairPoint systems kicked in.  I CANNOT tell you how many hours I spent on the phone trying to get my online account to actually allow me to pay my bill.  I finally gave up and just recently tried again (and was quite surprised when it actually worked).

Yeah, that feeling lasted a whole long time.    I called them a bit ago on a billing question and ended up signing up (under NH’s deregulation of the electricity provider industry) to sign up for their electrical provisioning arm, FairPoint Energy (yeah, delusional at the time).  Kept paying the PSNH bill as normal – and I did see a small downtick in the cost.  But NOT enough to put up with this:

Fairpoint Energy -title-proc

Read more

So, Obamacare has just declared me to be a Winnah – a Trifecta even!

Heritage: Projected Premium Increases by State
Heritage: Projected Premium Increases by State

But this is more of the case of winning the “TSA Lottery” – and frequent fliers know EXACTLY what I mean.  You have just gotten the attention of theatrical security corps and they are about to go through your stuff and your junk and apply that micro-duster to your carryon.  Well, in the last couple of days, our HHS Bureaucratic Overlords (you know, the ones that have decided that Religious values has no place in THEIR Public Square) have announced a few more “features” that our pocketbooks are going to cringe over.  Most of us knew that the Young are going to be paying well MORE than their fair share in supporting Obama’s Socialized Medicine and that Oldsters would not be (mostly because they vote more frequently).  Those following this “train wreck” (great line, Senator Baucus!  Thanks for being the “Architect” for this – and now retiring as it comes into reality) pulling out of the station already knew that smokers are going to get hit REAL heard by this – their premiums may lead the pack (yes, pun intended).

But the news of the day is that there are now others in the Obama line to pay the Obamacare train wreck ticket prices:

  • If you are overweight – BMI, anyone?  (Check)
  • If you have high blood pressure (Check)
  • If you have high cholesteral (Check)

Yeah I win the Trifecta – even as the last two CAN be modified by weight loss, but EVERYone in my Mom’s family had the last two two – ya think the IRS will give me a pass on my paperwork (due to genetics)?  I CAN fix the first (yeah, I gotta start that diet again) but the genetics are already stacked against me there.  Hey, IT.JUST.ISNT.MY.FAULT!  But what about…

Read more

Speaking of Moral Ambiguity – yes, there is a War on Religion if it is not Secular Humanism

Marines Cross PendletonAdding on from “Moral Ambiguous” is this snippet from Imprimis (emphasis mine, I urge you to go read the whole thing – GRTWT) explains it well:

The idea seems to be that moral views historically supported by religion—which of course means all moral views other than modern secular ones—are constitutionally suspect.

Even as our Constitution was built, in no small part, on values from our country’s  Judeo-Christian heritage.  We are starting to live that phrase “a prophet has no honor in his own country”.

Here we come to the unifying feature of contemporary challenges to religious freedom—the desire to limit the influence of religion over public life. In the world envisioned by Obama administration lawyers, churches will have freedom as “houses of worship,” but unless they accept the secular consensus they can’t inspire their adherents to form institutions to educate and serve society in accordance with the principles of their faith. Under a legal regime influenced by the concept of public reason, religious people are free to speak—but when their voices contradict the secular consensus, they’re not allowed into our legislative chambers or courtrooms.

Freedom of expression, freedom of speech?  Only that which is allowed by Government which is to say, no freedom at all. Those Constitutional values…..

Read more

More thoughts on Republicans passing SB11

Grokster Susan has the list with the title of “All your water are belong to them….“; it is still GraniteGrok’s belief that the finger has been removed from the dike with respect to the right to private property concerning the water underneath one’s land and that this may well give the Taxaholics yet another revenue stream of taxing (you watch – 4% of income is a magic number) private wells and septic systems (either directly or via metering).  Grokster Steve points out that the idea of New Hampshire-ites being taxed for the rainwater falling on their land has already been breached.

My concern, however, was with the evolving process of Legislators creating more and more “enabling legislation” that creates more opportunities for “UnDemocracy” – as Rich Lowry points out (reformatted, emphasis mine):

It is appropriate that the worst scandal of the Obama administration— the IRS targeting of conservatives — is a scandal of administrators and bureaucrats, of otherwise faceless people endowed with immense power over their fellow citizens and running free of serious oversight from elected officials.

They are the shock troops of the vast bureaucratic apparatus of the federal government. Its growth has been one of President Obama’s chief goals, and the one he has had the most success in achieving. He has greatly enhanced the reach and power of regulatory agencies that are an inherent offense against self-government, even when they aren’t enforcing the law in a biased way.

The administration’s corruption isn’t bags of cash or lies about interns; it is the distortion of our form of government by sidestepping democratic procedures and accountability and vesting authority in bureaucrats. The Administrative State…

Read more

Tolerance?

“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.”   —Gilbert K. Chesterton

Not So Easy

Staples, the Office Supply chain, has denied a local gun store its application to participate in a contest for small businesses.  Yes, I know.  A Town of about Staples not so easy if you own a gun shop9 square miles with the population of Merrimack New Hampshire (Fremont Nebraska), happens to have (a least one) gun store in it run by two Army veterans; sounds like a small business to me.  So why can’t this small business participate in a contest for small businesses?

Staples has rules for its contests and their bureaucracy appears to be as intellectually agile as any other.  That is to say, not at all. In a denial letter to the gun shop, from staples, (excerpted here) we find the fly in the ointment.

Entry contains content that promotes alcohol, illegal drugs, tobacco, firearms/weapons (or the use of any of the foregoing); promotes any activities that may appear unsafe or dangerous; promotes any particular political agenda or message; is obscene or offensive; or endorses any form of hate or hate group.

But Staples not only sells “weapons”…it allows them to get into the hands of convicted criminals.

Read more

UK Citizens Overwhelmingly Want A Repeal Of Handgun Ban

“We don’t let them have ideas. Why would we let them have guns?”   —Joseph Stalin

parliament_000UK Mail Online’s James Slack reported on the soaring gun violence sweeping the country.  Slack wrote in his article entitled, “Culture of violence: Gun crime goes up by 89% in a decade,”

“Gun crime has almost doubled since Labour came to power as a culture of extreme gang violence has taken hold…In some parts of the country, the number of offences has increased more than five-fold.”

Read more

You Think?

One satisfied customer am I.  The peanuts I bought today…have peanuts in them.  So any of you peanut allergy people who were thinking you might find some peanuts without peanuts in them.  These are not the peanut-less-peanuts you are looking for.

When police violate our rights…

…do they become the enemy? In Medford, Oregon recently, police arrested a man and confiscated his weapon for firing a warning shot to stop violent felon (wanted by the law) who was breaking into his home. No one, including the criminal, was hit by a bullet. Read on….

Read more

“Morally Ambiguous” – And Secularists everywhere go “Amen!”

New Boy Scout Oath

That used to be “Morally Straight” – kinda hard to be (or teach) as our society becomes more and more Secular – which is already leading to “situation ethics” or “relative morality”.  This will result in a time there will be no absolute right and wrong – so how to hold people accountable for something that is obviously wrong but they simply say “No, it’s NOT!”?

There a tight connection between Cultural Marxism (aka Political Correctness) and being Morally Ambiguous in this case.  Simple, really.  Throw out the old religious tenets, which for centuries formed our moral foundation, and replace it with what ever we (Progressives) want it to be.  After all, it’s what we do, we on the Left.  How ELSE can we redefine Government in our own image if we don’t give society a new set of values that are favorable to us?  We HAVE to pick off and subsume those institutions that promulgate those old standards.  That way, OUR Government will be the only institution left that can dictate what is right and what is wrong.

Read more

The Real Agents of Change

Democrats like to promote themselves as change agents.  Agents of change.  And this makes them hip.  Modern.  Progressive.  But nothing could be further from the truth.

Democrats promote the politicization of everything and by extension the bureaucratization of everything.  To them government is the best arbiter of progress.  But the process of making government the dispatcher of innovation has exactly the opposite effect.  It creates barriers to entry, reduces choices, dries up resources or locks them away, and leaves a few cumbersome behemoths who plod along beside big government, benefiting from their shared monopoly on “progress.”

Read more

Sequester Jester, Furlough Schmurlough – BigGov Is Hiring!

credit: sodahead.com

Turns out the administration and Democrat news peddling about the sequestration leveling utter destruction on our country is apocryphal nonsense, though its not because they didn’t try.  And it’s actually a little disappointing.

Here I was ready to witness the collapse of a functioning society because government would have to spend a little less.   Ready for neck tied government bureaucrats leaping from windows upon hearing that they’ve been furloughed and no longer able to afford their standard of living without a few days of their low 6 figured salaries.

Ready to marvel at the metaled gleam of congested runways below lazily collapsing spirals of jets gradually descending to the strips for a landing every two to three hours because adequate numbers of Air Traffic Controllers were simply unavailable to field requests for landings and takeoffs.

Not quite ready, but was accepting that the hospitals and sewage systems would be overflowing from the results of the massive consumption of food not receiving the proper safety inspections.

What do we get? 

Read more

Now That SB11 Has Passed…

SB 11 was widely embraced by the New Hampshire House, which means there will be plenty of blame to go around.  While we wait, let us reminisce about an effort back in 2010 to do one of the things we suggested that SB11’s broad language might empowers new intermunicipal water districts to do. From CNHT.org … Read more

Yes

Here’s something you probably have not seen yet.

You Really Have Nothing Better To Do?

The Washington DC Whiners are at it again, trying to get the NFL’s Washington Redskins to change their name.  The Owner of the team is on the record claiming he’ll never do it, but the Capitol City PC Police just wont let up. But not everyone agrees. Speaking on Sirius XM NFL Radio’s “The Morning … Read more

Share to...
BufferCopyFlipboardHacker NewsLineLinkedInMastodonMessengerMixPinterestPrintRedditSMSTelegramTumblrVKWhatsAppXing