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NC Governor Allows Anti-Community-Broadband Law
zerocore writes "North Carolina governor Bev Perdue will not veto a bill that will limit small town municipalities' ability to create community broadband when private industry will not go there. 'The governor said there is a need to establish rules to prevent cities and towns from having unfair advantage over private companies. But she said she was concerned that the bill would decrease the number of choices available to consumers. The bill would require towns and cities that set up broadband systems to hold public hearings, financially separate their operations from the rest of government operations, and bar from them offering below cost services. They also couldn't borrow money for the project without voter approval in a referendum.'"
How about the Open Source crowd figuring a way to deliver broadband for free or close to free? Why not!
Is there a problem here? If the bill is truly what the summary (read the article? never!) makes it out to be, it sounds quite reasonable.
It sure would be terrible if those huge corporations had to compete with under served communities and their pesky unfair advantages!
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Not getting why a community can't build their own broadband, and at the same time allow private companies to compete on the same fiber (or add their own fiber).
'course, this isn't the first time that the cablecos/ISPs have banded together to push politicians to enforce mono/duopoly. See also UTOPIA. Comcast and Qwest raped quite a few cities (and bought more than a few politicians) to keep that network restricted, lest they have to compete on a level playing field...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
do the companies have the right to protect their abusive and unfair practices... Free market anyone? Is it not possible to create broadband associations like there are housing associations? I think company intrusion is reaching dangerous levels.
"I'm taking this loop off." - Jack O'Neill
The start of the summary and the title suggest that the law prevents the creation of community broadband, the quoted text following seems to merely say that there must be oversight and that they can't use the fact that it's run by local government to undercut private competition. Which sounds fair enough. Besides, if the earlier claim that this will be used to prevent municipal broadband in places "private industry will not go" then that's an irrelevance anyway.
I call TROLL on the whole peice.
I'm having a hard time understanding how it's a bad thing. The proposal should get voter approval in the municipality to be serviced. It shouldn't be run as a government agency, but more of a service to customers. The stipulation of the program not being able to offer services below cost doesn't even seem to be a bad idea. Where is the story here?
Sig not found.
If a town wants to start a new bus line, or double the number of stops, or open a new school, or put water fountains on Main Street, they just hold a vote at a city council meeting.
If a town wants to hang some antennas to offer a public amenity on Main Street, probably costing about as much as the water fountains, they gotta go through the equivalent of a consent decree. This sounds like broadband provider protectionism to me. That a municipal utility can provide better service than a private utility is an open question and a lot of cities do very well with publicly-owned electric grids and traction transit; adding hoops to jump through for broadband wifi in particular is just a way of protecting Comcast's fiefdom.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
"The campaign of Gov. Bev Perdue on Friday forfeited $48,000 for what it said were questionable campaign contributions from nine donors .. The contributors are all linked to Rusty Carter, who owns the Atlantic Corp., a packaging company in Wilmington". link
"NC GOP Shines Spotlight On Bev Perdue’s Campaign Contributions" link
I am so sick of seeing this happen. The municipal wifi project in my town was canceled by time warner. The end result was that 3 years later there is still no public wifi downtown, half of the surrounding neighborhoods still dont have coverage for anything but dial up and the people living here have exactly 1 choice for internet. My cable/internet bill is $178 a month for basic cable and 5/1 internet service.
Bev Perdue is very much a democrat, and seems to want government interference in everything else - just not where it might actually help the state.
There's a reason people and businesses are leaving in droves...
Someone should write an Onion article about states banning/hampering municipal water systems because Coke and Pepsi demand it.
...hold public hearings, financially separate their operations from the rest of government operations, and bar from them offering below cost services. They also couldn't borrow money for the project without voter approval in a referendum.
So, in face, it's not even close to banning community broadband. It just requires real voter approval and financial responsibility.
Preach it brother.
Can't people be content with a genuine internet (not a centralized monstrosity) where people are contributing to websites Peer to peer the way it was designed?
Imagine that, everyone writing articles and blogging in their own sphere of their town. Beautiful. It would be like a wiki but at the town-level. That's what the web should be like.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
I think the concern is that you can't subsidize the cost of the network by, say, charging extra for trash pickup or water and sewers.
Right. More public projects should have to comply with requirements like these. Transit systems being an excellent example.
Transit systems are a completely different beast. The cost savings for the city are only found when you look outside the system. More productivity when workers can get to work because they aren't in traffic. less road rage. less accidents. less emergency runs for car accidents meaning police have more time for looking for criminals. less road repair. Firemen putting out fires instead of carrying the jaws of life to cut some guy out of his SUV rollover.
If you don't understand how the system works, go to New York. Or Shanghai, or London. Just try owning a car in one of those cities.
Wouldn't a more free-market solution be for the municipality to take the money that they would have used to provide broadband and offer it as a subsidy for anyone who is willing to provide broadband (with a set list of criteria and possibly a limited term for the subsidy)? This would encourage private companies (who we have seen time and again are more efficient at almost every type of business than government is) to provide the service. If the municipality wanted to, they could even form an independent non-profit organization to initially provide the service which would qualify them for the subsidy, provided other private businesses could still receive the subsidy if they later entered the market.
Where in the constitution does it say business has a right to profit from societies needs?
I call shenanigans on $178 for BASIC cable and internet. I bet any money you have a cable box that is probably a DVR as well as supports HD channels. None of that is basic cable. Your 5/1 service cant be more then $50/month in the US
Good-bye
Can we jsut get community wide IT infrastructure labeled as public works please? During the New Deal era, were toll road operators suing to prevent the national highway system? The idea that we should worry about private enterprise profits at the cost of public works is retarded.
Good-bye
Same things apply to telecommuting. You can also apply the same logic municipalities use for improving infrastructure (attracting business), funding schools (education) and a bunch of other things to installing broadband.
So we either vote on everything, or let the city council make some judgments on their own.
Have gnu, will travel.
...say the opposite of what is happening....
The municipaities would have no unfair advantage at all, but here she is pretending that the unfair advantage she gives to private businesses is making things fair.
Someone please start the shooting where it matters.
any group of people who band together and form a 'company' have the right to privately fuck all other people as they will. and, if they are not even wanting to come to your locale and screw you over privately - you shouldnt do anything - because their right to fuck you whenever they want, however they want should be preserved over what YOU want. crooked ? that's capitalism. until a capital owner decides to fuck you over, you people should just shut up and wait.
Read radical news here
Public hearings - local governments hold these for everything. Proposal to change the date for holding the public hearing on changing the amount of dues for sewage fees? Yeah, let's hold a hearing on that, too.
Financially separate operations - I'd honestly be angry if they weren't separate.
No below-cost service - Again, reasonable. Because doing so would either mean other tax money is being used, or that the government is borrowing to support it. Neither is good.
No borrowing without a referendum - A bit restrictive, but not too much so. Besides, since when has democracy been a bad thing?
I can easily imagine private companies being able to compete with this without absolutely dominating. Community broadband will likely be relatively slow - there's no incentive to go beyond what most people will use. A small business could probably work by providing higher-speed access at higher cost - those who want more speed will pay for it, but those who just need "good-enough" internet will be fine on community broadband.
Now, the one thing I am worried about is potential censorship. Certain highly-conservative communities might try to ban, say, pornography. Hyper-liberal communities might try to limit other things (a gaming curfew, similar to the recent Korean law, might be one of them). As far as I'm concerned, both are completely unacceptable. And also very likely to be tried - American politics tends to be very polarizing, even in homogeneous-party communities. I imagine most courts will throw the laws out, but you never know.
Everyone's talking theoretical, when there is practical precedent: waste collection. In Finland, waste collection was privatized, but in most municipalities, with a catch: the market leader is a municipal corporation. In itself there's nothing wrong with this, except when municipalities interpret this so that the municipal corporation has the right to tell where to place different trashcans, and to force each household to pay their rate. In fact, there is a case where a municipality forced a private corporation to remove their sorted waste collection points (i.e. collecting glass, metal, and paper separately) since it was competing with the municipal corporation. The municipal corp's corresponding point was kilometers away. So, the effect was that the municipality forced people to walk miles and miles to dispose of their sorted waste. This is harmful to both the environment - since people won't care about waste sorting if the gov't is hostile to that - and market fairness. The really *wrong* thing about this is that the legistlature and the courts think they have the democratic right to regulate this in this manner. I think that a municipality should have the right to provide a broadband service, but not with special legal protection.
Another toolbag who didn't read the article, much less the summary beyond the first sentence. It does not prevent municipalities from creating community broadband. It requires them to get public input before getting involved and to set up the finances to reduce the chances of it becoming a money sink.
We have reached a point where Internet service should be considered a utility, much like electricity, gas, water, sewer, etc.
Municipalities are allowed to provide these other services to their citizens; why not Internet service? Doesn't make sense to me.
Couldn't the municipalities just build out the fiber and switches and then lease it to a separate entity to provide the "management and service"?
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
I've felt for some time that companies should be barred from running ISPs and handling the underlying infrastructure. The infrastructure in given areas should be owned by the government and rented to companies to manage. Those companies would be granted access for fixed periods of time and required to bid for it to continue the contract.
Or better yet, treat it like the electric company and make the infrastructure be run like a utility. Our electricity rates are low and the service in general is quite good, I cannot say the same about our broadband options. Seriously, duopolies of private firms suck.
Basic cable probably refers to the selection of channels not the equipment. Today in a lot of areas you HAVE to get digital cable and a box, it's the lowest option the cable company provides.
There's a blog with more information: http://savencbb.wordpress.com/
It may also be interesting for people to read about the project that caused so much angst among ISPs: http://www.greenlightnc.com/
then they have no right being in business.
really, you couldnt come up with something that competes against a base government service, even with the cost advantages that government has?
UPS and Fedex would like a word with you.
Do you seriously want to get your internet service from the government? If the local government provides the broadband, I guarantee no telco is going to bring in their own service and compete with something not under the same market controls they are. So by allowing this you are basically ensuring that your only choice is government supplied internet. If you're ok with that, then fine... I certainly agree that ISPs are pretty much shit nowadays... but replacing them with the government? I just dunno.
I consider Internet access a utility like electricity or water service. If a community doesn't have broadband Internet access, they will be left behind. They will be unable to fully participate in society. If a private utility is unwilling or unable to provide a community with broadband Internet, the community should have to right to step up and do it themselves. If that scares the private utilities, good. It should. If a private utility wants to get and keep customers in an area where there is community broadband, then provide value for money and don't treat customers as cash machines. If you look at communities where there is competition for broadband Internet access, prices go down and speeds go up. Look at Verizon FiOS vs. Comcast or Time Warner vs. AT&T U-Verse. When a utility knows they have a monopoly, they have no incentive to upgrade infrastructure and will just sit back and milk the consumers, because they can. I can currently get 6Mb DSL for $40 or 10Mb Cable for $54.95. I chose DSL because it is less expensive. Some people don't have that choice or even an option for broadband. What are they supposed to do?
To me 'basic' cable is hooking the wire to the tuner on the back of the TV. Anything above that is not 'basic' cable. The era of basic cable having 70-80 channels died around 2003-2005.
Good-bye
Community broadband? More like COMMUNISM broadband. Thank God America still have some people like Bev Perdue to protect it from the reds.
Tell me about it. I got DirectTV about 3 years ago and at that time I had to buy the DVRs etc. The ensuing questions regarding why I would need to "rent" equipment that I had just bought seemed to bounce around the empty head of the sales guy.
Network connectivity is a utility like water or electric power. If more people and corporations in a city have access to high quality network connections, that's obviously to the benefit of the city as a whole. Why would it be more wrong to have local government in control of network infrastructure, and use tax money to build and maintain it, than to do the same for power lines, clean water and sewers?
Bev Purdue is a Democrat.
Prius sales aren't helped by their lack of availability. There was a month-long wait for one at my local dealership when I was looking at new cars a year ago, and I wasn't interested in waiting.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
"there is a need to establish rules to prevent cities and towns from having unfair advantage over private companies."
Bail on the USA - it's gone to the dark side.
There's already the Free State Project, but I suspect most internet libertarians are content to just knock other people on internet fora and can't be bothered to really go somewhere and get involved in the civic process, which is admittedly hard work.
I live in a small town a few miles outside the DC Metro area. With an hour's drive or so, I can be to one of the Metro lines. The ONLY option we have for "broadband" here is either 3MB DSL through Verizon, for around $40/month, or DOCSIS2-level Comcast Cable for about $55/month. For years I petitioned for FIOS in the hopes of seeing affordable 50MB connections in my town, but I found a document back from 2007 saying basically "Yeah, residents there are basically brainless country bumpkins that can barely use a rotary phone, so no way in fucking hell are we rolling fiber all the way out there. Lets uh...put it on our long term plan. We'll get it in by oh..2009 or so". Well, now its 2011 and I have the same 3MB DSL and DOCSIS2-level Comcast because business has decided its not worth the cost to give us any infrastructure. Of course, both these companies whined and complained until they got exclusivity agreements in my county, and installed FIOS and DOCSIS3 down where all the councilmen live. I've spoken to my town council and have been told they don't have the resources to go to war with Comcast and Verizon if they wanted to lay their own fiber.
I see a lot of posts around here that "Government is evil, it lets business do evil things because its evil. It also never does anything right", but this is exactly what private enterprise wants you to think. Look at how much in this nation is privatized, from overcrowded brutal prisons to the military-industrial complex, "Oh that kooky Gov't couldn't do anything without us!". Government doesn't work because the people who pay to elect representatives into said government do not WANT it to work. So, they box it up in red tape so that they can go back to their campaign financiers and say "Oh please Mr. Private Industry! Save us from this! Little ol government just can't get it right!", which has the alternate benefit of swaying the populace to believe government is by very nature incapable of doing anything right.
Moneyed private industry is in a WAR with government services. They don't want there to be options. They don't want to compete with anyone they can't buy out or bribe. They want absolute control and they've crippled our entire nation lusting after such avarice. This is why we can't even have a "public option" for healthcare, lest the peasants find out exactly how fucked they are by insurance companies. This is why cities are sued by telecoms when they just want to spend their tax dollars to put in infrastructure that isn't profitable for big business.
However, the most egregious of all recent examples is the Post Office. Talk to your Postmaster if s/he's over 40 sometime and you'll learn a lot. Did you know that the USPS is BY LAW forbidden to have its own fleet of planes for delivering mail? Every single one of those Express Mail/Priority Mail packages, is paying for a seat on FedEx aircraft! Really puts it in perspective when FedEx Overnight is more than twice the price of USPS Express sitting right next to it, doesn't it? In addition,the USPS is the only quasi-government agency that receives NO government money - they are expected to operate like a business and stay in the black, ever since they stopped being the Department of the Post Office. Despite this, they are still saddled with old regulations like a mandate to deliver mail everywhere, keeping post offices in bumfuck, LA open for the 3 people that go there, and it takes an act of Congress for these things to change. Why did this happen you ask? It was a carefully constructed plan of whining via the private couriers UPS and FedEx, who contributed big to campaigns a few years back crying that "Waaaaa we can't compete with the Department of the Post Office. Its so damn efficient and we don't want to change our business plans or offer anything new we just want money WAAA", thus spurring their purchased policy-critters into action. Soon the Post Office was mired in red tape and bullshit and the agency that basically existed since the beginning of the US that "just worked" even when
The bill doesn't limit anything. It just doesn't put the tax payers on the hook for municipalities' possible mismanagement. They can still do it. They just need to make sure it's what the taxpayers of the town (who would be responsible for paying off these bonds) actually want it. The only possible problem might be the line that says they have to offer it at market prices, but if all that means is that someone's land taxes won't be used to undercut competing broadband services of their neighbor, then it's not a problem. Of course, it could create a situation where the muni's service is sooo efficient that it could profitably offer a better service than private competition, but in that case the bill would just force them to be more profitable than the competition by offering the service at the same price as the competition.... presumably, the private one would eventually compete with them by offering a lower price. Which would also lower the "market" price. Really, don't see why the slashdot is knee jerking against this. Sounds like a bill which would allow the private providers to keep operating without having to compete with tax-subsidized services.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I get your point, I really do. If you feel this way about property taxes, how do you feel about eminent domain? How do you feel about easements? What about squatter's rights?
Also, I know of medium-sized towns where every square inch of property in the town is owned by one family. Let me assure you these places are not bastions of freedom where the blessings of liberty apply to all. How would you feel if $some_trillionaire bought an entire state? An entire country?
Also, if the government (government, as in We the People, of by and for) doesn't ultimately control the land, then what is your claim to it? You say this is your acre of land? How? Oh, you paid someone for it? How did they get it? They paid someone for it, and so on? Hmm, Mr. Running Crow here says you've received stolen property, that he was driven off his land by force, by the Government. Just because you paid for stolen property doesn't mean you haven't committed the crime of receiving stolen property, else we'd have to let every professional fence out of jail.
Oh, you live in Europe? In say, Scotland? Clan MacDonald would like a word...
Thank you, Ms. Palin. Yes, you live in Alaska on land so barren no human being has ever laid claim to it, not even the Inuit? This land is yours because you got to it first? OK, so the Moon, or at least the Sea of Tranquility, belongs to the United States? How do you lay claim to this land? Did you make it?
Oh, you claim it because you have lived here so long, and your family has worked this land and has fought for it. Fought for it by serving in the government's army, you mean?
You've stumbled into an old, old argument the philosophers have been chewing over for literally thousands of years. Ultimately, it boils down to this. You own this land by agreement. This is your land because everyone else in the group agrees it is, and if they don't, then the best you have is a house under siege. The ability to demand, defend and grant rights over real estate is in fact referred to as sovereignty, and that is a function of government. Those few individuals on Earth who can claim that they own this land, and can back that claim up without appealing to some other authority, are referred to as "kings."
Like it or not, "private property ownership" is a function of government. Ultimately, this is your land because the guys with the most and biggest guns say it is. The only other logically consistent argument is the one Thomas Paine espoused, basically that no one can claim to own any part of a world that they had no hand in creating.
Yeah, I know, this means Ayn Rand was a spoiled little rich girl who sat around bemoaning the loss of the family fortune and smoking crack. Shocking, I know.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Here it is:
sovereignty
"Sovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a geographic area, such as a territory.[1] It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided."
The first law, of course, if always "This is my land..." :-)
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Now that you've been corrected as to the political affiliation of the perp, your response is?.......
Are you nuts? Government services are subsidized by taxpayers. Do you seriously want all your consumer choices to be controlled by an entity you pick once in 4 years?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
This is really about the small town of Wilson, NC and its community project Greenlight. http://www.greenlightnc.com/ It provides broadband, tv and phone to customers in Wilson for less than Time Warner. Immediately time warner and Embarq began lobbying to shut it down. Time Warner was forced to keep prices lower in nearby areas. It has been an ongoing story for years: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/TWC-Embarq-Wilson-Greenlight,7610.html
In all you anti-Bush fever, you forget that government has coercive powers. You think cutting off people who too much bandwidth is bad? Try a town which decided to raise revenue by sending tickets to people who use too much bandwidth. "No one would do that," you say? Sure. Just like NYC would never double parking tickets simply to increase revenues (as opposed to ensure public safety). It would never happen 5 years ago. Nor would your Internet connection be cut off because of a union negotiation.... it is a public service after all. I must be fear mongering because there is no examples of this actually happening to other public services. Never mind that the bill simply disallows undercutting private businesses by using tax money. It DOESN'T ban towns from setting up the services where none exist (read the summary again). This article summary is a prime example of a certain propaganda mechanism propaganda at work. Use some key terms that people don't like (eg, "limit choices") to describe something that actually serves the people. It does limit choices -- bad choices, destructive choices. By using the emotionally-charged terms, you get people to respond emotionally. At that point the reality doesn't matter anymore. Vast majority of the people have already made their knee jerk decision and have become emotionally invested in it. Well, given that this is news for geeks, how bout doing what geeks do: examine the details.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Do you not understand that "forced to" and "are willing" are mutually exclusive?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Boeing wants to operate in South Carolina. Unions, acting through the federal government, are trying to prevent that.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I believe NC is a red state. And she's probably a Democrat in name only.
Are you Autistic, or just a moron who can't comprehend simple English?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It will take one or two citizens to open a company to do what the town wants to do. The shareholders may be funded by the town buying shares as an investment, or by guaranteeing the loans of the private company. Where there is a need and there is a will to do something, there is a way.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
If the community sets up a private corp, and there are volunteers to run it, the costs would be very very low. A Verizon type of company, where 34-50 cents of every dollar goes to marketing is the reason for their high costs, but if there is no marketing and there is diligence about expenses, it should be possible to comply with the law and also serve the community.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Thank you for pointing out what should have been made know in the article. I've read two stories about this today on web site; neither one bothered to mention her political party. If she were Republican, it would have been (properly) affixed after her name in brackets. And the person who responded to you that she's "probably" a Democrat in name only is just trying to justify his own world view.
One thing about the HOA. By federal law they cannot prevent you from putting up an antnenna except in special circumstances. Here is a link http://transition.fcc.gov/mb/facts/otard.html
Good-bye
You feel your opinion is correct. Of course you do. Here's why you feel this way.
You feel you have an inherent right to exist, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," etc. You have that self-evident inalienable right, you absolutely do.
Whether you've articulated this or not, you have an instinctual understanding that Life on Earth springs from control of real estate. Crops, meat, minerals, literally all wealth of any kind ultimately comes from the agriculture and mining of land. "Intellectual Property" is just "I'll tell you a funny story or count up the bags of corn if you'll give me some."
You have a right to live. To live, you need some access to land either directly or by proxy.Therefore, you feel you should be able to have some land that no one can ever take away from you.
Here's your dillemma.
If you're like most people in America, you were born without property. This means you need to trade labor to live, either as a janitor or a surgeon. Now, this often get framed as "You need to be willing to work and not be lazy," but that's not entirely true. Being willing and able to work doesn't get you anything, as our current armies of the overqualified and overeducated unemployed will tell you. What you need is to get a job, and this has two problems. First, there aren't enough jobs to go around, and second, needing a job makes your life subject to someone else's approval.
Yes, yes, yes, this is the time some 17-year-old Horatio Hornblower will barge in and say "Start your own business in your garage." This of course assumes you have a garage, but more importantly, most small businesses do nothing more than give local employers an excuse to peg you with a 1099 instead of a 1040. When people talk about small businesses being the engine of employment, what they overwhlemingly mean are franchises which are "independent" only by sophistry. I've been an "independent contractor." I've even run a small business that was wonderfully successful until the local major employer moved operations to the third world and I realized I'd been laid off just as surely as my customers had.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I'm not saying Tony Stark couldn't build something from nothing. I'm just saying that the people who could are so rare they end up in the comics books. Most genius inventors today end up like Preston Tucker and Philo Farnsworth, not Thomas Edison. Our drunk and bitter friend the Betamax would like to to know that business doesn't choose the best technology -- it chooses the best "connected" technology, and I don't mean networking. OK, OK, J.K. Rowling and Dean Kamen do exist. Tell you what, let's call the few geniuses "outliers" and concern ourselves with the 99.9% of the population who can't sit down in a coffee shop with a blank stack of paper and write themselves a billion dollars like Stephen King.
We can agree you have a right to "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit..." even if you're not a genius, yes? Good. Here's what's bothering you. If someone doesn't agree to hire you -- whether that's your fault or not -- then you and almost all Americans are homeless within 18 months. It's actually illegal to be homeless in pretty much every square inch of America now, so life as a bum is unpleasant. Yes, it's even illegal to sleep in your car. Let the highway patrol catch you twice at a rest stop and see what happens.
Now, you and I want to be able to tell ourselves, "Well, then I'll just grow crops and hunt deer on my land," which is exacly what my grandparents and father did as a boy. 30.06, a hoe and a line in the water, and that's good eatin'.
Property taxes screw that up. You can't pay property taxes with the racoons and possums my grandpa ate. Property taxes kick that feeling of "A Country Boy Can Survive" right to the curb, and it's no end of unsettling to realize that it'll be the local Sheriff come to your house with a shotgun to tell you "Git off mah lan'."
Of course, it's even worse than that. Hunting and fishing licenses came into being specifically beca
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Basic cable like that hasnt existed in my area in years...the lowest package they offer is $65 without the box, $85 with the box, I have 2 boxes one in the living room and one in the den, the internet package I have is the "upgraded option" at 5/1 the basic one is 1.5/512.
yes its triple play...the most obscene thing about it is that after your 2 year contract runs out they automatically "renew" the contract for you unless you call 2 months before the contract is about to expire and completely cancel the service. The new contract is at a higher rate and when that one expires they again do you the favor of renewing it...im now in a situation where after 6 years as a customer I have to pay an $250 termination fee to get out of a contract I didnt sign in the first place.