Keep the conversations going! This is the place for your cheers and jeers on anything Erie or national media, so sound off!
If you need to make a private contact, email me at joel@nataliemedia.com or through twitter @pressandtower
Deep Background for Feb. 1-7, 2009
February 2nd, 2009 
joel 
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Kudos to the staff at WJET TV and Luke Simmons for some great local coverage of the Super Bowl. Their Photog was right in the end zone for Holmes’ game-winning catch.
Here’s a question. What will we lose once the digital transition has come and passed? It occured to me that we, myself included, have stopped turning a dial on our TV sets and on our stereos. We have traded in our dials and tuning knobs for remote control devices and push buttons. Another Question…. what will happen to analog signals and the electromagnetic waves that make sound possible once the analog transmitters are turned off? Will they cease to exist or will they continue to exist in space for an indefinate amount of time? Hmmmm. I wonder.
Dear Kathy Dahlkemper,
I wrote all over the place that you were the candidate to vote for. Phil English needed the ax.
You are new at the job.
There will be big issues and little issues over the years on the job. In the scheme of events going on in Washington, DC, analog TV seems a little issue.
And it is, compared to corruption in government, partisan politics still, Afghan amok, Iraq….we gave you blood…you gave us no oil, bank failures, no confidence in the system (and least of all government), bailouts ill thought out, companies collapsing, other companies leaving the USA for good, failed international relations, joblessness on a scale unprecedented since the 1920′s just beginning to get underway, a generation that can’t afford education, throw in housing hassles and health care too. And don’t forget the Wall Street crooks who learned from Kenny Boy Lay that cheating and Ponzi schemes make for Life 101 for them.
I am sure I missed some real relevant items still.
However, in Erie, PA….your district, you need to understand that we do not have Broadband Wireless in existance compared to the USA as a whole, and the entire planet.
Drug dealers with opium in Afghanistan have better options than we do in Erie, and conduct their market pricing worldwide via Broadband Wireless.
This is not to suggest we deal in opium here.
It is to suggest we could not if we wantyed to, but backwards Afghanistan CAN.
Moreover, the vast mountain ranges out west in the USA with NO population to speak of, have Broadband Wireless.
Individuals at home are teaching English to Koreans and being paid handsomely to use their talents at teaching their native tongue.
Many people in Erie speak English.
We can NOT teach the Koreans as Montana mountain folks can do. They have Broadband Wireless; we do not. Spots in Erie County are beginning to add it finally.
Everyone is waiting for the bands to open up and start supplying this money maker (Broadband Wireless is loaded to the max with taxes for the government).
When you vote “Yes” to delay the analog changeover, what you have done is extended the time, until those bands —–released from analog and made available for Broadband Wireless—-are available to help the citizens you represent.
Now, given the need to come up to spin on a new job, deal with all the Bush leftover fiascos, swat down the lobbyists, I can see the vote may not rank as a whopper in the scheme of things. However, in Erie, PA, the vote taken Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 hurt our citizens.
I urge you to tune into the Press and Tower (or one of your staff do it for you) and simply listen to your voters on this and many issues. Big and small issues.
ATT has said they will have Broadband Wireless to me personally every 3 months for the past year, with a new offer of April, 2009. Your “Yes” vote today made that meaningless.
Sprint will not share the towers they own from Ohio to New York. Competition is always more deadly to profits than monopolies.
Verizon Broadband Wireless managers have told me personally they do NOT have the product in Erie, and I get this from new managers there every two months as their staff turns over faster than Phil English in government did in his last month at work.
I am not speaking of grand HDTV viewing; I do not watch TV. I am not talking of the need for TV in any form.
I AM talking of conducting commerce in this town in your district being prohibitive as a result of the lack of this vital service. And the vital service can not be implemented locally until we get the folks off the current analog lines.
SO, the sooner we ditch analog, the sooner commerce can consider coming to Erie, PA and employing people by doing business here.
Either my information is dreadfully in error (not likely after all the looking into this mess I have had to do by going deaf) OR, someone is selling you a bill of baloney in Washington, Kathy.
What’s done is done. We move on. We learn.
Please do not vote “Yes” to delay this vital need in Erie again. I do not point this out for TV; I could care less about HDTV.
But wouldn’t it be nice to have Erie folks teaching English to Koreans? Or some of our multilingual folks teaching their languages online via Broadband Wireless?
We need the JOBS, not the Prime Time shows in rich detail. Maybe you could call the President and tell him
“I screwed up” (he does that on the news when HE screws up, so it will be ok to say). Then, ask him to VETO the goofy delay so a job recovery can begin here sooner, if at all.
Go all out for the long pass and tell the President you want the converter boxes made in Erie, PA. We got plastic plants unemployed up the yin yang. We have Erie Technological Products gone, but revivable, and we have Spectrum Controls who would likely accept a big government order for converter boxes.
Check in here often Kathy and we will learn a new way to govern together.
For readers interested in Kathy learning on the job, and partisan politics trashing our country down the sewer, here is the vote:
http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/111/house/1/52
Well, Erie’s own, Harry Markopolis, chief whistleblower on the biggest Ponzi scheme in the course of human history, spoke with the Congress and they ask what they need to do now.
“Tell us what to do Harry…TELL US”
How about you appoint Harry to SEC Chairman and let him go loose?
His 65 PAGE testimony to Congress is here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/11613984/FOX-BUSINESS-EXCLUSIVE-Harry-Markopolos-Testimony
However, an interesting comment on Harry’s Congressional testimony came on Hacker News blog.
Harry told Congress this tidbit:
”
” by tokenadult 7 hours ago | link
Interesting content inside Markopolos’s prepared testimony to Congress is the revelation that the Wall Street Journal had the Madoff story early but never ran it. Markopolos’s suggestions for reform of financial industry regulation are detailed and thought-provoking.”
The Wall Street Journal HAD the story EARLY….and never ran it.
Never squealed on their friends.
Never performed investigative journalism.
Peggy Noonan writes for the Wall Street Journal each week. Someone of her renoun could easily draw hundreds or thousands of comments. She wrote a column last Thursday. Not a single comment appeared for days.
The Wall Street Journal has seen fit to take in ALL the comments, pick 14 for publication, and determine for the reader, what the reader could determine for themself, if the damn comments were printed in total.
14 comments is ALL the Wall street Journal wants you to know. It isn’t like the Internet lacks space.
Pelosi drew 3,401 comments this afternoon talking about 500 million Americans losing their job each month. She needs a copy of the Census read to her.
We do not have that many Americans in total yet, let alone working and losing jobs monthly. What does she think we are? China?
So the WSJ has room for comments and WILL NOT print them as THEY determine what YOU will be told. This has turned into a pretty poor newspaper.
I subscribed to the Journal daily years ago.
Having watched closely what they do to journalism, commentary, and the old boy network being protected over truth for the public, I am rooting for the Wall Street Journal to cease existence BEFORE Goerie.
If you read one line from them (WSJ), do not believe it.
That begs the question……WHY bother to read a single line of the WSJ.
Kudos to Markopolis and his awesome report to Congress. It is a MUST read document for anyone who cares about their country and where we stand today.
If Markopolis investigated the War on Terror, Osama would have been reported on his exact toilet seat, to the government, for a decade and ignored by the government.
He is making a fool out of the SEC, Congress, Wall Street, Investigative Journalism, and of course, the WSJ.
He should get some bailout money or an earmark or three ……just for the hell of it.
And, he has the integrity to turn it down.
First class citizen!
I Guess the Cheap skates at Time Warner decided to give its digital cable customers WJET-HD today its channel 404
I see in the ETN obits that Bernie Wrobel’s wife just died. Thought I would mention it here for those who remember Bernie, one of the “good guys” who worked at Channel 12 for many years before he passed away not too long ago. RIP to both of them.