All these channels I hate to watch

If you are like me and spend way too much time and money on your in home TV entertainment, you are also as confused as I am why the providers of such aren't seen as monopolies. Way back when (1984), the telecommunications was hit by something called Divestiture. AT&T was a monopoly, they said. It must be broken up and competition would reduce costs and increase innovation.

And so it was done. Prices sure have come down, haven't they?

At that time, I thought it was a bad idea. I later changed my mind. I think it was a good thing but poorly implemented. For instance, Divestiture came with a "network access fee". This fee was supposed to pay for the local operating companies to upgrade their equipment to all digital. Thirty seven years later, telecommunications is all digital and the fee is still there and higher than it was. Why are we still paying it? It was basically a charge to allow the long distance companies to more easily access us, the consumers. It should end. Now.

Back then, we didn't have digital satellite. You had an ugly antenna on your house (or rabbit ears on your TV set) or you had cable. You know about cable? They would come into your region, set up shop and lobby for a monopoly to provide television signals. If your county commissioners weren't corrupt before the cable companies showed up, they certainly were afterward.

It made sense that the cable companies got a monopoly. After all, they had to run the coaxial cable throughout the area (what we call "infrastructure") and there wouldn't be much point to investing all that money if you had to compete with someone else. It was reasonable at the time to give them a closed to outside competition marketplace. But when AT&T lost its monopoly, I got the idea that we could tear down other monopolies and the one I thought about most was cable.

My plan was simple: Turn over the delivery of the cable signal to the local operating phone companies. All a competing cable company would then have to do is offer content. The infrastructure would be in place, the customer would have choices in who provided his entertainment services. Who knows? We might not have to buy all those channels we don't want in order to get the few we do. Competition would give the customers more power.

But no one listened to me. The cable lobby was too powerful.

Sad, isn't it?

Sure, digital satellite service is the competition right now for cable. You really think so?

It must be true, I got an email about it

I get a lot of my news from the internet. Ok, most of my news. Mostly from Google News. I read a little of this, a little of that. It takes me to the Huffington Post, the Washington Post, the NY Times, L.A. Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and so many more. A lot comes through AP and Reuters. A lot. I also wander off to a few of the less well known news sites if I see a headline that piques my interest.

For balance, I watch a little Fox News...

The facts are the same regardless of the source of the news. The difference is one of perspective and emphasis. And the spin. I used to watch CNN back when it was the only game in town for cable network news. I long ago stopped watching CBS, ABC, NBC news on a regular basis. There was very little depth due to time constraints. The cable news networks can devote more time to a story, give you more background. But they still lack quite a bit of detail.

What I have noticed over the last few years is the partisanship surrounding all of them. Many times, news articles from Foxnews.com are the best source but are treated with something like disdain and disbelief. I don't understand that. Facts are facts. If you cannot separate the spin from the facts, you're in trouble. There is nowhere you can go to get unadulterated news. If you think there is no spin, no editorial perspective, in the news stories, you are somewhat deluded.

I can understand people not liking the commentary shows on Fox News. Hannity, O'Reilly, Beck certainly present stories with a definite personal perspective and if you disagree with that perspective, you will be foaming at the mouth during these shows. But these are not news shows. They are there to provide commentary and that commentary is solidly infused with their ideological perspective. They use the news. And you, the viewer, should be able to see through that perspective. Just as you should be able to see through the perspectives of Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, and (formerly) Keith Olbermann. Even the Daily Show. They are selling us their point of view... or trying to.

Are we stupid? Can we not figure out what are facts and what is spin? And, if we can, are we unique? Are there so very few of us that can think for ourselves? When I run across people who hate Fox News so much that if it's mentioned in any way as a source, the person citing them, and his argument, is considered to be without any credibility at all.

This, my friends, is extremely dangerous. When we start dismissing verifiable facts because we are opposed to the prevailing ideology that we associate with the source, we are in deep trouble.

I suppose there is a danger of absorbing an ideological perspective from over exposure to one side. But isn't that true regardless of the ideological perspective? And if you dismiss one side out of hand and refuse to listen to them, aren't you engaging in a bit of voluntary brainwashing? Only hearing/seeing what is said by one side and what it says about the other side's position?

One of the things that seems to be true is that you and I know what's real and what is spin. It's those "others" that can be sucked in and misled so easily by the ideologues who run [insert news show or news channel here]. This is a constant...

"I am smart and aware, I am not fooled. It's the masses who can be manipulated that I worry about."

I know people are gullible. Most of them. Maybe all of us about one thing or another. I can't do much about that.

I get emails almost everyday from friends revealing something or telling a heartwarming story or providing advice about health or exposing some secret that "they" have kept from you. Most of it is just internet myth. I know most of it is because I check out whatever was said whenever my "spidey sense" warns me. Which is often.

I used to think, back when it was fashionable not to trust anyone over thirty (and when I was younger than thirty), that only my close friends and I were smart enough to not be fooled. And there were times I wasn't sure of my closest friends. Now I am older... much older... and I no longer care how smart or stupid strangers are. And I know some of my closest friends are borderline blithering idiots about some things. I don't care about that either.

We are all gullible enough to believe what we are inclined toward believing. I put it this way:

We all see what we want to see.
We all hear what we want to hear.
We all believe what we want to believe.

Call them my immutable truths. Remembering them keeps me from being suckered by scams and politicians.

Next, and last, item... It has just come to light that Apple's iPhone and iPad are storing data on where you go using the embedded GPS. I am not paranoid but I really don't like this very much. I am safe because I have neither of these gadgets and what gadgets I do have do not include GPS except for my Nuvi (which better have that!). I question why that data needs to be kept by these devices. marketing data for Apple, perhaps? Marketing data that can be sold to other marketeers without your consent or knowledge, perhaps?