With that in mind plus the frustration that is El Paso corruption I have brought back the El Paso Forum for political discussion, dissection and outright dissention. I fully expect all of the political operatives to attempt to make the El Paso Forum their own platform for their message, it is par for the course, but what I really want and what I crave is for the frustrated and disenfranchised masses to have a sounding board to quickly get their anger off their chests with quick drive-by messages to the world.

Will it solve the political crisis? No. Will it server a greater good, probably not. But it should at least give the oppressed a small outlet to work through the morass of political shenanigans in the community.

It is no secret that I believe the El Paso Times is corrupt and easily manipulated. My comments aren’t directed at the majority of the reporters because they are hampered by the corporate bureaucracy that sees El Paso as an insignificant little corner in world that generates no real revenues for the corporate owners. It also doesn’t help that print media revenues are under continuous assault by the new media that is the Internet. That is why it is no surprise that Bob Moore has once again been directed to run the El Paso operation as his shenanigans have no real impact on the corporate owners and it keeps them from having to fire him and deal with the legal ramifications of that.

It is incredulous to me that all major institutional organizations in the world, including political and security operators universally agree that the El Paso-Cd. Juárez corridor is a major transit point for the majority of illicit drugs that enter the American market, yet El Paso is a ‘safe’ city. Yet, the death merchants are waging a bloody war on the Mexican side of the border and the politicians on the American side of the border proclaim that it is one of the ‘safest’ cities in the United States. They would have us believe that once the drugs get past the border they magically disappear and no one knows how.

Of course, if that were my only argument then it would be just a crazy notion on my part. But we also have a former city representative, now running for Congress, Beto O’Rourke, who not only has publically advocated for drug legalization but has also written a book in support of it. Some of you would probably argue that it’s his opinion and he should be entitled to it. Sure, but like everything else follow the money.

O’Rourke doesn’t only advocate drug legalization but his mother pleaded guilty on behalf of her company to illegally hiding money from the government. Why would someone want to structure cash? The only people looking to structure large amounts of cash and thus hiding it from government oversight are those looking to avoid taxes or most likely, avoid having to explain to the government where the money came from. Hmmm, sounds to me like money laundering.

Let’s see, money laundering and a politician looking to take office at the federal level where drug legislation can be manipulated. Oh yea, let’s not forget that the local police department had to be put on probation because its drug laboratory failed basic standards and a police department that currently has officers being indicted for falsifying public records and the same police department that had a former high-ranking administrator accuse the department of colluding with drug dealers. Yes, that is the department that trumpets the loudest how safe the city is.

Oh, and I almost forgot, a former director of the local FBI incarcerated for hiding a friendship and receiving economic benefits from a businessman from Mexico without properly documenting it to the authorities. As if that wasn’t enough, a former County Judge, Dolores Briones, pleading guilty to corruption, a former El Paso Chamber of Commerce and non-profit darling, Bob Jones in jail for defrauding the federal government and thus the taxpayers. And the list goes on and on.

And through all this, the local political shenanigans involves an advocate of legalizing drugs, funded by big money with everything to gain and O’Rourke groupies; a sitting city representative, Susie Byrd, who co-wrote the book on drug legalization with O’Rourke, another sitting representative, Steve Ortega who has no business in Mexico documenting how long it takes to cross the border on the only day of the week that city representatives are required to meet and a married county judge who sees nothing wrong with getting drunk with Beto O’Rourke on a night out on the town and slapping him on the ass all tripping themselves trying to ingratiate themselves into O’Rourke’s friend circle.

And, we are expected to believe that drug dealers are so afraid of the local policing and government efforts of El Paso that they dare not bring their violence across the border? Please!

Or, as is more likely, the city of El Paso is so corrupt that the drug dealers don’t even have to bother to pay extortion fees on the US side, they just put the people friendly to them in office. With friendlies in government there is just no need to bring violence across the border as their drugs just mysteriously disappear into the rest of the United States. Why create a problem if there is no need to do so?

Through all this, and I’ve only mentioned a very small portion of the evidence of corruption rampant within the community, where has the El Paso Times been? When Bob Jones was the darling of the city, his corrupt money trickled down to the advertising sold in the paper and now that he’s in jail, what does the local paper need? Another benefactor to feed it. Would proper investigative journalism do the trick? Hmmm, no that might bite the hand that doles out the little money for advertising in a city where corruption rules.

Follow the money! Who’s vying for office and who’s funding campaigns? Who benefits the drug dealers? Who advocates for drug dealers? And, who does the local paper support? It can’t be plainer than that.

And what about the Diario de Juárez? The Diario is so inept that news is nothing more than skimpily dressed women gracing its pages. Its El Paso operation is a disgrace to its Juárez counterpart because the local leader is too afraid to aggravate anyone lest he’s ignored by the powers-that-be at the local country clubs. He’s too busy ingratiating himself with the PDNG that he’ll throw his own father under the bridge if it means he’ll get a smile at the club house.

For those just tired of the political diatribe but too busy to get involved to make the community better or too afraid to mess with a hornet’s nest of corruption, the El Paso Forum is for you. Enjoy and make the best of it, at worst it just becomes another gripe outlet or at best it shines a light on the cockroaches that hide in the darkness enabled by the El Paso Times. It’s your playground. Enjoy!

http://www.elpasoforum.com

Other than “everything is free” or “cheap” on the Internet, the other problem I frequently encounter is the concept that websites are nothing more than marketing tools for businesses. Unfortunately this concept is driven by advertising agencies that have yet to fully understand or embrace the concept that a website is an extension of the client’s customer service process rather than a marketing gimmick. There are times that a specialized website for a promotion is appropriate and effective but for a company’s primary website the focus should be on customer service rather than on marketing the business.

I realize that this concept goes against the grain of the majority of web builders out there but it that does not make me wrong. A website is not a fancy brochure and it shouldn’t be used as such. A website should be a tool that your business uses to extend services to your customers, at their time and at their leisure.

Focusing a business website as a fancy marketing tool leads to situations where the focus is on the “bells” and “whistles” of the website and not on the technology of it. Frequently it is about making it as fancy as possible rather than as useful as it should be.

A client of ours asked us to create a link to a local hospital on the Internet for them. As is our custom, we first verified that the link was working before completing the task for the client. As I went to the link I was immediately chastised by the website with the following warning: “Attention, [w]e have determined that you are using a browser or mobile browser that is not fully compatible with this website”. The warning message goes on to let me know that certain features may not work properly for me.

I was intrigued by the message that at first seemed to be a warning about malicious activity on the Internet but, in fact, was telling me that I’m using incompatible equipment.

My browsing sin?

I was using Microsoft’s latest Internet Explorer 9, as is it has been out since last year and it is common practice to keep our software up to date. According to the website I visited, my browser did not meet its requirements that are that I use an older version of a browser to visit their site. As if that wasn’t enough of an inconvenience, I was given a very limited list of browser that I could use to visit this website.

I visited this website for a very specific thing, which is how most people land on a website, and I left it knowing only one thing about the company that this website represents; nothing.

That’s right, if it weren’t because I took the time to screen capture the messages I wouldn’t even be able to tell you who the site belongs to or what it does because I was so focused on the distraction of the warning message that everything else became secondary.

For Sierra Providence Health Network, the brand image that their website portrays is that you better come visit us with the right tools or don’t bother to visit our website. The unfortunate thing for the company is that they probably aren’t aware of this because their designer was simply too lazy to explain to management that they can have all of the bells and whistles they want but that they have to remember that technology drives the Internet so accommodations for all types of computers, Internet connections and browser types need to be made. Whether it is a website that accommodates the majority of what users are using or multiple versions of the site are required is something that the management of the hospital needs to be made aware of. That is the job of the web designer that took responsibility for designing this web page.

Whatever image Sierra Providence Health Network is trying to give visitors to its website is quickly replaced with a negative impression of the company because the person driving the website presence is stuck in a marketing mindset that has no place in today’s Internet driven consumer.

In today’s difficult economic climate, businesses are looking for ways to cut costs and many of those have resorted to free or very low-cost solutions for their Internet needs. There is nothing wrong with finding ways to cut costs but those cost cutting measures are putting many businesses in serious jeopardy. Stealing clip-art from a Google search result or using free online storage services is a dangerous business decision.

On January 26, 2012, the FBI, along with other policing agents in other countries shut down the file-sharing site MegaUpload immediately cutting off access to files stored by millions of users world-wide. According to the arrest and search warrants served on MegaUpload, it is accused of facilitating the illegal exchange of copyrighted material. Although the company is based in Hong Kong, those apprehended were arrested in New Zealand and some of the servers that hosted the files were located on United States soil, thus allowing the United States the opportunity to prosecute the operators of the service, the ultimate result is that millions of people are without access to their data today. It is very likely that the data will be lost before a final determination is made in this case.

The issue with MegaUpload for users is in the business model used by that service to provide services to its members. This business model is the same business model that drives popular sites such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and thousands of other websites that people have come to rely on. The business model is to bring as many eyeballs as possible to a targeted advertisement. The more traffic viewing the advertising the more successful the company is.

There are two ways to drive traffic to create the revenues that keep these massive operations going. The first is the legitimate work done by the investments of large amounts of money in traditional advertising to create awareness of the website. And, the other, is the quasi-legitimate and in many instances the illegal process of creating traffic. Thus we have the problem with SPAM and the prosecution of MegaUpload.

The times when someone could launch a website and traffic would significantly increase is long gone now that each website service is competing among millions of others. It is just not possible to promote a website without investing in advertising.

In the case of MegaUpload, the prosecution alleges that the service was used to share illegally copied movies in violation of copyright laws. For those that are wondering how can that be a criminal offense and why the FBI is involved must have missed the FBI warning that comes up right before you start watching a movie. In case you wondered if that warning served any purpose whatsoever, you now know that the FBI does, in fact, throw people in jail for illegally copying movies. Whether the US government will prevail in the prosecution of this company is still up for debate. What is not is that MegaUpload was used by millions of users.

Not all of those users committed a criminal offense and used the service to store legitimate files. Those users, nonetheless, are without access to their files today. They may never get them back.

According to the prosecution, MegaUpload had a small percentage of users who paid for the service of storing files in the cloud. The rest of the revenues for the company were made from advertising. In order for the advertising to generate sufficient revenues for the company, millions of eyeballs had to see them. And this is where the problem started for the legitimate users.

The legitimate users are not sufficient to generate the traffic needed, thus the company had to rely on the eyeballs looking for illegally copied movies to generate the necessary traffic to the site. Whether the company was complicit in this will be eventually determined by the judicial process.

The legitimate users whose files are not accessible and who may ultimately loose them have only themselves to blame for their predicament. Those businesses that continue to rely on online services for free services will eventually find themselves in the same predicament. Someone has to pay for the servers and the Internet connections to those servers. Relying on free website whose business model is to give away free service is unsustainable and will eventually collapse. How will that look to your company’s customers? Saving a few bucks today could and up costing you your business in the end.

On January 24, 2012, Congress will vote to pass internet censorship in the Senate and a similar bill is pending before the House of Representatives. Both, Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and PROTECT-IP (PIPA) in the Senate are misguided attempts to deal with online intellectual property theft. Unfortunately their approach is draconian and goes against the fundamental principles of free speech and fair and equal protection under the law. Furthermore the Acts, as proposed, unilaterally impose sanctions against citizens of other countries without giving them the benefit of the due-process so enshrined in the US Constitution.

Under the Acts, a properly worded letter is all it would take to force a company, like Google to stop delivering search results for a targeted website, or a payment processor to stop accepting payments for a website or an Internet provider to stop delivering service. That’s it, a letter is sufficient to infringe on the rights of a website provider without recourse to due-process. Most egregious is that the legislation targets foreign website operators while leaving US-controlled domain names; .com, .net & .org under the umbrella of the protections of due-process. Unfortunately in their haste, the supporters of the legislation didn’t realize, or maybe they did, that US citizens also own and operate the website addresses they are targeting.

If this is allowed to happen, American citizens could be subjected to retaliatory legislative measures from other countries simply by having a website. Here is an example of one country’s wayward laws targeted at American citizens and the personal cost to the individual.

American Citizen, Joe Gordon was sentenced to two and a half years of prison in December 2011 for insulting King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Gordon had translated “The King Never Smiles”, a book banned in Thailand, and uploaded it unto the Internet while in the United States. Gordon is now serving a prison sentence, while awaiting a Royal pardon, for exercising his right to free speech.

His crime? Insulting the Thai monarch.

The Internet has given us the power to express ourselves and we all benefit from it. As passive readers or active participants the Internet empowers everyone, including those in repressive nations. To espouse freedom and Democracy for other countries while attempting to implement draconian measures is duplicity at its best. Either the Congress is for open freedom of speech and the free flow of information or it is about protecting the self-interests of a small minority.

One need not go further than Rupert Murdoch’s recent Tweeter tirade in support of SOPA in order to understand the fundamental drive for it. Murdoch went on a Twitter rampage shortly after the Obama administration conceded that it had reservations over the controls proposed by the legislation.

Murdoch wrote; “Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery”. Murdoch called Google the “piracy leader” through his Tweets. Murdoch used the very system he wishes he could shut off to express his fervent need to control the Internet to his own liking, or that of his pocket book which is probably the same.

That is the fundamental flaw in the legislation in that it punitively punishes innocent infringers by the actions of their membership without giving them the opportunity to respond via the time honored tradition of your day in court. Murdoch’s stance is understandable; his revenues are under heavy stress because his revenue model simply cannot compete in a connected world. Rather than adapt to a digital world, he would rather have Congress pass legislation that he can wield to hold the tide back for him.

Intellectual property theft is a serious problem not only for single-man bloggers but for multi-national conglomerates as well. Intellectual property is the single most important asset the United States is able to actively complete in the world market with, but to create legislation contrary to the fundamental guarantees to the US Constitution is not only foolhardy but dangerous to American citizens.

Wikipedia and Reddit, among other notable websites will go dark tomorrow, January 18, 2011 for twenty-four hours to protest this misguided attempt by Murdoch and his cohorts. You can do your part to thwart a would be attempt to censor the vehicle we have all come to rely on by calling or writing to your Congressmen to let them know you do not support these bills:

Click here for a Directory of Representatives.

The following is a list of cosponsors of the SOPA bill:

H.R.3261
Latest Title: Stop Online Piracy Act
Sponsor: Rep Smith, Lamar [TX-21] (introduced 10/26/2011)      Cosponsors (31)
Related Bills:S.968, S.1228
COSPONSORS(31), ALPHABETICAL
Rep Amodei, Mark E. [NV-2] – 11/3/2011
Rep Baca, Joe [CA-43] – 12/7/2011
Rep Barrow, John [GA-12] – 11/14/2011
Rep Bass, Karen [CA-33] – 11/3/2011
Rep Berman, Howard L. [CA-28] – 10/26/2011
Rep Blackburn, Marsha [TN-7] – 10/26/2011
Rep Bono Mack, Mary [CA-45] – 10/26/2011
Rep Carter, John R. [TX-31] – 11/3/2011
Rep Chabot, Steve [OH-1] – 10/26/2011
Rep Chu, Judy [CA-32] – 11/30/2011
Rep Conyers, John, Jr. [MI-14] – 10/26/2011
Rep Cooper, Jim [TN-5] – 12/12/2011
Rep Deutch, Theodore E. [FL-19] – 10/26/2011
Rep Gallegly, Elton [CA-24] – 10/26/2011
Rep Goodlatte, Bob [VA-6] – 10/26/2011
Rep Griffin, Tim [AR-2] – 10/26/2011
Rep Holden, Tim [PA-17] – 11/30/2011
Rep King, Peter T. [NY-3] – 11/3/2011
Rep Larson, John B. [CT-1] – 11/30/2011
Rep Lujan, Ben Ray [NM-3] – 11/14/2011
Rep Marino, Tom [PA-10] – 11/3/2011
Rep Nunnelee, Alan [MS-1] – 11/3/2011
Rep Owens, William L. [NY-23] – 11/14/2011
Rep Quayle, Benjamin [AZ-3] – 12/13/2011
Rep Ross, Dennis [FL-12] – 10/26/2011
Rep Scalise, Steve [LA-1] – 11/14/2011
Rep Schiff, Adam B. [CA-29] – 10/26/2011
Rep Sherman, Brad [CA-27] – 12/7/2011
Rep Terry, Lee [NE-2] – 10/26/2011
Rep Wasserman Schultz, Debbie [FL-20] – 11/3/2011
Rep Watt, Melvin L. [NC-12] – 11/3/2011

Freedom of Speech needs to be protected and nurtured or we will lose it. Take action and let them know you care.

As the public commentary rages on, the issue of new urbanism has interested me. Coupled with my interest in the movement, my frequent cross-country travels and my previous experience living in other major cities; the façade of “walk able communities”, “cost-cutting savings” and “better communities” has begun to peel away to reveal the ugliness and failures of a design movement designed to fail from the onset.

My recent experience in San Francisco, my recent move to Orlando and my Thanksgiving trip to South Beach crystalized for me the failure that is “new urbanism”. The Achilles heel for the walk able communities is the fact that people are not meant to be concentrated on top of each other.

If humans had been meant to concentrate themselves together in dense groupings then we would never had ventured beyond our original borders in search of greener pastures. Yet, our history continues to show that we strive to expand our influence across vast spaces in search of some distance from each other. Although we build communities and linkages among ourselves, these are not indications of our need to live on top of each other, rather they are support mechanisms designed to pool our resources while keeping our remoteness from one another.

The empirical evidence is clear, large cities designed vertically beget community problems socially and health wise that rarely, if ever, manifest themselves in rural communities. Although urban sprawl is the “ugly word” du jour, my experience is showing me that the movement is being driven not from a need to be socially conscious but rather, it is being manipulated by some that stand to make money from forcing “new urbanism” into community policy.

Take for example South Beach. Displaced community members were the original developers of the community. Once the community was made sustainable, the pioneers were forced economically out of their established communities where they had chosen to build a legacy for themselves. The evidence supports this as well as in San Francisco. Once the South Beach community was established, the erosion of the pioneers was again begun and today, the original settlers are nowhere to be found.

They were not forced out by overt displacement, but rather they were displaced economically as South Beach was reinvented to serve well-heeled residents looking for nostalgic playgrounds for themselves. And so the cycle repeats itself again, the pioneers, that attempt to build a legacy for themselves are forced out economically only to be replaced by nomadic, temporary settlers looking for another playground to place temporary roots on.

If “new urbanism” created “sustainable communities” then I would be hard-pressed to condemn them. But San Francisco and South Beach have clearly shown me that “new urbanism” and “sustainable communities” are nothing more than a façade designed to mask the reality of its failure. Peel the first layer of the fancy hotels in South Beach and look beneath the surface and the fallacy of “sustainable communities” clearly manifest itself. Dilapidated buildings and homelessness, not to mention health and social ills are clearly a result of concentrating people into denser populations.

Once you look closely at urban renewal projects, the urbanism movement reveals itself as nothing more than a façade covering its failures in post-card ideals of comfortable life. But what the proponents of the movement ignore, possibly purposely, is that new urbanism takes away from the poor and displaces them even further out of the community’s mainstream further disfranchising them from the comfort of membership in the general community.

Those that argue that denser communities brings lower costs due to lowered transportation requirements and somehow creates a sense of community membership for the good of the village ignore the evidence of the communities that have already tried and failed at urban renewal. The evidence is clear, the displacement of the members that built the quaint postcards that so many in the vertical cities lust for are eventually driven out by the locusts taking over their homes.

Both South Beach and San Francisco have proven to me that new urbanism is a failure, but far more egregious, for me, is that it appears to be designed to serve well-healed silent minorities pulling the strings in re-inventing communities for their delight while taking away from the citizens, like Segundo Barrio in El Paso, who strive to make themselves a better home. El Paso is one of the latest battle-grounds and the battle lines are clearly drawn out between the two antagonists, the poor wishing to make a better life and the weasel proponents conveniently serving hidden masters in their agenda to remake a community into yet another playground to play in.  The question is, who will ultimately prevail, or will, yet another economic displacement happen again?

One of my company’s core services is to provide managed telecommunications solutions to our customers; as such I have dealt with AT&T and its counterparts by requisitioning telecommunications services from simple, single-line telephone numbers to broadband internet connections. Therefore I have many years of experience dealing with the telecoms and their processes.

I have seen and dealt with the idiosyncrasies of giant conglomerations in Mexico and the United States and especially their monopolistic attitudes in the 80’s and 90’s. What AT&T is doing now is nothing more than a fraud designed to milk as much money as they can from consumers before their monopoly completely erodes and they have to figure out how to make money honestly.

The scam, like all scams, works on people’s busy lives and the concept that if only a few fall for our scam then it lines our pockets.

It starts with the friendly telephone operator happily taking your telephone order constantly trying to upsell you an additional service you really don’t need but hey, it’ll save you money in the long term; “who knows you might need it”. If you insist that you just need a “plain, simple telephone number with no call waiting or long-distance service”, the operator will happily fill your request not once telling you that there will be early termination fees in the future. In fact the term is never mentioned.

As with any scam, the less information you give the customer up-front the less chance they have of starting to price and feature compare, which is where AT&T will always fail.

Then you begin to deal with the monopolistic attitude of a monolith whereby getting a telephone line installed at your office requires that you wait patiently for a four-hour window where the tech might stop by to install the line; “time permitting”. Notice that at no time was the “Early Termination Fee” mentioned.

I know perfectly well that the more complex telecommunication connections such as T1s and cellular service require term contracts and therefore Early Termination Fees are amply spelled out. I have no problem with those because, as an informed consumer, I make an affirmative decision to contract and pay the penalty for moving before the term expires. The key, here, being an affirmative decision to enter into a contract that requires a penalty for cancelling before the term expires.

In terms of landlines, AT&T doesn’t want to clearly spell out Early Termination Fees because then the scam will not work. You see, if you tell the consumer that they need to contract with a pre-determined period of time, then getting a landline is no longer a simple matter, but one of, wait maybe I should shop around a little before I commit.

So how do they get away with it? Obviously there is an upside to this for AT&T, if not why bother. It’s simple; businesses are in transition today, going from the traditional fixed-land line to converting to other providers via cellular or VoIP service for their telecommunications. During this transition businesses are still trying to determine the best course of action. This transition is the reason why AT&T is relying on a scam to shore up their eroding revenues because their infrastructure is unable and their corporate culture is unwilling to compete fairly in the marketplace.

The scam works this way. Sneak in the language of Early Termination Fees buried in pages of legalese and little post cards advising you; “thank you for being a valued customer” and, by the way, we are happily renewing your service for another year, oh and guess what, since we value you as a customer so much, we are letting you know that if you decide to cancel we’ll tack on an Early Termination Fee.

There is no affirmative agreement on your part or consent to accept the Early Termination Fee, but after all it is a scam so why bother with business ethics and fairness? As a business owner you make the move to improving your bottom line and make the switch to another telecommunications provider to be more efficient. Sure you asked AT&T if they could match the price point or even provide the service and they could do neither. So after spending hours jumping from AT&T representative to AT&T representative to make the switch, you finally convince them to cancel your account. The helpful AT&T representative takes the cancellation order and conveniently tells you that you will receive a final bill in the mail.

A few weeks later, it arrives. It conveniently tells you that you are paid up for services rendered since AT&T, like all telecommunication companies, charges you for service BEFORE you actually consume it, but wait, there is a balance due any way. It is a fee for “agreement termination”. Yup, it’s an Early Termination Fee for canceling a landline.

Here is the genius to scam. Most businesses contracted their telephone lines years before and paperwork and the person that contracted the service is probably no longer with the company. And even if they were, it is probably the owner who is too busy with the business day to day operations that recollecting who they spoke to or what they signed is not worth the effort.

But guess what, there is no paper signed by the business that says; “yes, I agree to pay Early Termination Fees”. Most companies would rather pay the outrageous fee rather than face the threat of being referred to an outside collection agency. You see, AT&T is so egregious about their scam that they conveniently mention on their bill that this is your final bill and that “it is IMPORTANT that you pay the final balance no later than the DUE BY date” or there will be consequences.

The scam, like all scams, works on ignorance and therefore AT&T doesn’t want you to take the time to scrutinize the bill, much less think about it. So most companies pay and move on. The fact that some companies choose to pay the scam does not make it right.

The economy and the business world are in a state of ever evolving flux as technology and world-wide economic stresses have made it necessary for businesses to streamline their operations in order to remain relevant in today’s economic climate. Giant conglomerations struggle, like small businesses, but as industry giants their resources mean that they can get away with scams individuals will likely face jail time for.

In the case of AT&T’s landline Early Termination Fee scam, the most likely outcome is that eventually, if ever, they will be faced with a class-action lawsuit where they pay cents on the dollar to settle the case, with the majority of the monies going to attorney fees. The consumers who paid the fees will get no relief and AT&T, even after paying the penalty, if any, will still have benefited from the monies it collected from the scam through increased stock options/prices, interest earned from banked money and “legal fees” deductions on their corporate tax returns.

And, if an enterprising attorney doesn’t decide to pursue a class action lawsuit then the monies collected are banked for AT&T’s shareholder benefits. AT&T benefits from the scam regardless of, and if, they are ever called on it.

Can you do anything about it?

As a realist I know that there is really nothing anyone can do about it. It is the nature for government to perpetuate consumer fraud by ignoring it or paying lip service to it. It doesn’t do government any good to go after the same people that feed it on a daily basis, so it continues. A small business man would likely face jail time for the same fraud, but a giant, like AT&T, will be ignored by government oversight therefore further encouraging them. It is easier to throw an individual, with little resources, in jail rather than to hold a company, like AT&T accountable for the same scam.

The only thing we can do, as consumers, is to call them on their fraud and demand written proof of your company’s “affirmative” agreement to enter into a contract with AT&T whereby your company agreed to pay Early Termination Fees. Absent that, well, would you pay a person that walked up to you and told you; “you owe me $100 for walking on my street”?

That’s exactly what AT&T is telling you when it demands an Early Termination Fee for a land-line you cancelled that doesn’t have a signed contract attached to it. But, as a giant unethical conglomerate, they have the resources to make your life difficult by legal terrorism through threats of lawsuits and referrals to collection agencies.

So, if you decide to embark in this assertion of your rights and correct a wrong, document, document and document everything. More importantly respond to each and every letter you receive and do not engage anyone in a discussion about the merits of your argument. Rather force them to contact you via correspondence in order to properly document your actions.

Like all scammers, documentation is the worst nightmare for the scammer, so once AT&T realizes that you are on to them they will quickly move on to the next victim.

On, Thursday, October 13, 2011, RIM’s co-CEO, Mike Lazaridis apologized to his customers for the service outages. The apology, all though well-intentioned, seems to gloss over the fact that a company that is entrusted to keep the lines of communications open has failed because of one device.

According to an article in the New Your Times, RIM’s chief technology officer, David Yach, stated that he believes the world-wide failure was caused by a single switch that brought the entire system down. Apparently, although backup systems were designed to avoid this potential problem, they apparently failed as well.

This latest system failure for RIM is a wake-up for businesses to start evaluating their dependence on third-parties to provide critical collaboration tools for their business operations. In the technology world, it is not a question of WHETHER a system will fail; rather it is a question of WHEN it will fail.

Businesses today have jumped on the bandwagon of social media tools for their customers by relying on free third-party tools such as Facebook. Although free of charge, the reliance of a single third-party tool under the control of someone else is a ticking-bomb waiting to go off without warning, potentially wreaking havoc over a company’s customer relationships to the point that they may not recover. Just as Research in Motion is currently demonstrating, a single-point of failure can have devastating effects across many facets of a company.

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As I watched the people around me on the airplane I couldn’t help but see how things have gone from a culture of self-sufficiency to one of needy people. Stewardesses, although there to facilitate the security and to some extent the comfort of the traveling public are not babysitters but there they were baby-sitting spoiled adults. I understand that Southwest Airlines’ primary goal is to attract a fickle traveling public in order to excel in their industry. As such they force their stewardesses to keep a smile on their face regardless of the circumstances or the childishness of the people they are dealing with. They have a hard job and I do not envy them.

It all starts at the boarding gate, my favorite kindergartener can count from one to fifty without missing a beat. Why can’t the adults lining up to board, not understand that “A” group boards first with other group “A” members in numeric order? “B” group does not board until after “A” group. “ABC”, get it? And just because you have a child, or two, does not mean you should get special treatment and the right to check-in late and still expect to board with group “A”? A child does not extend special privileges.

Oh and don’t get me started on luggage. It is a simple concept; there is a finite amount of space for your luggage inside the aircraft. And, there is a limit to the number of carry-ons you can carry on board. That means, that a purse and a computer are each one item and therefore that over-sized suit case and backpack means you are carrying four items on board, instead of two. Remember two plus two equals four, not two.

And, more importantly, a protruding backpack, especially an overloaded one on your back means that if you turn around to wrestle your oversized wheeled suitcase down a narrow aisle means you slam someone in the face every time you turn around to tug on that suitcase that is not meant to be carried on the plane.

If the over-sized bag that is too heavy for you to lift doesn’t fit down the aisle, what makes you think it will fit in the overhead bin? It is simple geometry, it just doesn’t fit! And for those that insist on sharing your snoring sound-effects with the rest of us, remember that regardless of whether your spouse may or may not enjoy your comfort sleep, the fact remains that they chose to share it with you, not us. Go to sleep the night before and save us from your snoring sound effects. That also means bathe and wash your clothes, the rest of us on the plane do not want to partake of your cooking smells emanating from your clothes or your body scent. It’s a shared ride, not your private plane.

That goes for fat people. Yes, I wrote “fat”. Part of being a society of needy people is that we have accepted the notion that we do not call things what they really are, rather we should refer to them in a nice way, as if nice fixes the problem. Fat is a personal choice, whether psychological or medical it is still a choice we make by accepting it. If you choose to be fat, do not expect to be given preferential treatment to board the aircraft or park in handicap areas. Loose the weight or fix the problem, do not ignore it. And if you choose to ignore it, remember that it is your choice and not anyone else’s, so guess what, you need to buy two tickets, not just one. If you need a belt extender you need two tickets. It is as simple as that!

Unfortunately the saddest thing is the children that are shuttled from city to city on an airplane because parents just can’t seem to take personal responsibility for their own actions. You chose to have child. If you can’t afford to travel with them, then sacrifice and live in the city that the other parent is at. Stewardesses are not baby sitters and should not have to deal with a child, period.

Oh, and by the way, ObamaCare wouldn’t even be an issue today if people understood that the high cost of medical health is not about the quality of life but rather our own irresponsible behavior. We are obese and sick because we refuse to take personal responsibility for our lives. Children are taught at a young-age that anything that ails them is fixed by going to the doctor or taking medicine. Scrape your knee and the first thing the parent does is take out the non-stinging ointment. How about plain old simple soap and water? That always worked, why not now? Oh, that’s right, because the kid may cry louder because it stings. The lesson for the child is don’t worry; if you screw up I’ll still make it better. We all learn from our failures. It stings because we are not supposed to do things that lead to injuries. That’s how we learn from the pain that accompanies our own stupidity.

In a world of personal responsibility there wouldn’t be a need for psychologists because we wouldn’t need someone to tell us that its ok, all will be all right soon regardless of our own stupidity. In a world of personal responsibility there wouldn’t be Barney Madoff stealing money because those that ignored the warning signs because they were making more money than logically possible because they were greedy are not victims. Labeling them victims is ignoring the fact that they expect the world to watch out for them rather than them taking personal responsibility for their own actions.

This leads me to the nexus of the whole problem and that is that parents are bringing up needy people. It is a world-wide problem where children are taught from an early age that personal responsibility is not an important part of their lives. Schools no longer allow sports where scores are kept in primary school because the child’s feelings may get hurt. Deal with it! Life is full of disappointments! There are winners and there are losers to everything. The sooner a child learns that, the better we all are.

Schools are reluctant to give grades out because a child shouldn’t know that they are a looser. Bull-crap, if a child is failing he or she needs to know that. How else is a child going to understand that it takes hard work to excel? A child is never too young to learn the meaning of failure. It is part of life and we should all strive to avoid it but we all need to understand that sometimes we fail while other times we win. The sooner we learn that, the better, as a society, we all are.

Children need to be taught that church, or other public places are places that have certain behavioral standards. At the grocery stores or at the church services, parents seem to have the notion that catering to the child’s wishes teaches them responsibility. You don’t have to beat a child to teach them personal responsibility you just have to take the time to deal with them. If the child fidgets in church, talks or doesn’t pay attention the solution is simple, teach them not to do it again. For every action there is a reaction. Parents, now-a-days, think that little “Johnny’s” antics in public are cute, rather than a lack of personal responsibility.

Parents are perpetuating the concept of needy people.

Parents have decided to forgo their responsibility and instead plop their children in front of a television set, a computer or both and let their children grow up on their own. Sometimes they expect the babysitter to do the parenting. And then they complain that society is all screwed up.

Making a better world starts at home with you. Lead by example and teach your children that personal responsibility is the only way to live. Living that way eliminates the excuses that ail the world today. This notion that it “takes a village” to raise a family is cop out designed to make people dependent rather than free. It is personal responsibility that makes us free.

Yesterday, Municipal Clerk Richarda Momsen declared that the signatures submitted for a recall election of three members of council are valid. Momsen rightfully stopped validating the signature at the point where the required number, plus a comfortable cushion, had been validated in order to expedite the process. Therefore, it can be assumed that the actual number demanding the recall of the three politicians, who think they can ignore the electorate, is much higher than the 7,000 signatures verified.

There is no hiding the truth; over 7,000 registered voters demanded that the three politicians, who assumed that they could obfuscate the will of the voter through voter apathy, need to explain themselves before the electorate in order to keep their office.

It cannot be any clearer than that!

Unfortunately, the three compadres aren’t about to listen to the constituency, after all, they feel that they know better and will now attempt to stop the recall process through legal challenges to it. That’s right, unfortunately, the three-amigos aren’t about to start listening to the electorate because they know that when it comes down to it, the truth is that the electorate has been clear from the beginning about the whole episode; it is they who determines the road the city takes and not the three amigos.

Although the certification of the recall signatures is clear as daylight, unfortunately, the shenanigans from the three-amigos will continue.

Led by self-anointed ruler of El Paso, John Cook, the recall process and the electorate’s control of the city will have to wait for more legal maneuvering intending to slow it down long enough to allow them the ability to survive their terms in office. After all, they know full well that in an election, the message will be clear to them as they are shown the door back into the obscurity of nothingness for them.

The unmentioned factor in this whole episode is that the process has been thwarted from the very beginning through legal maneuvering designed to silence the electorate. The question is who is the legal mind strategizing the legal maneuvering and why? Is there a financial benefit to the protagonist by thwarting the electorate’s will?