Disqus - Latest Comments for lcarliner

Re: Malone: Content Consolidation Coming

Louis A. Carliner — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 08:00:31 -0000

Just a little bit of recent history. I just hope that John Malone does not manage the about to expand Charter Communications the way he ran the old TCI into the ground, especially when the Tampa Bay area Florida Bright House Networks continue to set a splendid example that a cable company with superb customer service and reliability can hold its own against the fierce competition from Verizon's FIOS system. Back in the early 90's, Bell Atlantic (now Verizon) was on the verge of buying TCI. However, its due diligence examination found the TCI plant to be so badly dilapidated that it walked way from the deal. Later, the old AT&T, having failed to do proper due diligence study, fell for the deal lock, stock and barrel. Because of huge loses arising from having to deal with the neglected maintenance and update, it was soon forced to dump TCI at huge loss onto Comcast, which knows how to operate cable systems.

Re: Will Microsoft's Surface line ever make a profit?

Louis A. Carliner — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 13:23:32 -0000

Only Apple is able to get away with pricing policies "rotten to the core". Back in 1983, when Apple first introduced the Macintosh and had been willing to engage in aggressive to predatory pricing packages, like Microsoft then was struggling to get out the door its first viable GUI operating system, it would ave greatly shrunk $oft's size and future prospects. Maybe it is time for Microsoft to visit those days.

Re: Big Pharma Buys Off The Senate

Louis A. Carliner — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 09:13:26 -0000

That five hundred million dollar gift extorted from Medicare to Amgen could have been put to far better use, like paying for prostate biopsies needed to prevent unnecessary deaths from prostate cancer for those that could die if the age of eligibility for Medicare is raised by two years and for the early retirees without any form of health insurance because of very stringent eligibility requirements for Medicaid in mostly southern states. In my case, before the Moffitt Cancer center would consider me for "charity care", a very costly prostate biopsy with pathology report was required, and without any form of assistance, it would not have been done. If I had to wait, back in June, 2006, when I first became eligible for Medicare, and had to wait another two years, I may very well not be alive to pen this post!

Re: Are Wal Mart and Big Food Lobbying the FDA for a GMO Labeling Law?

Louis A. Carliner — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 17:18:06 -0000

What is downright scary is that some of the GE engineering changes done by Monsanto to make commodity crops more tolerant to high levels of herbicides have not been tested to see if the alterations may be toxic over the long term to humans and livestocks! What about GE alterations that would produce dairly cattle to produce omega-3 fats instead of saturated fats? This may be needed is environmental short term exploitation kills off production of wild salmon in commericallyt viable quantities. We consumers need to know the nature of the GE changes and what testing is being done to verify that it will not be toxic over the long run!

Re: Nokia starts rolling out Windows Phone 7.8

Louis A. Carliner — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 10:42:42 -0000

There are two reasons that Nokia has lost its way: The first is the company was concentrating on boutique phone styling with ergonmics from the Salvadore Dali school of art design and stratopheric price levels. The second, which is still going on it to leave early adopters thrown to the side of the road without a reasonable and affordable upgrade or migration paths.

Re: Some good news for Microsoft's Surface tablet -- it may finally sell at retailers

Louis A. Carliner — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 13:37:32 -0000

Apple's pricing policies are still "rotten to the core"!

Re: Don't Cut Medicare Benefits—Tackle Drug Prices

Louis A. Carliner — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 16:38:05 -0000

The idea of raising the elibibility age to 67 will surely cost lives, as in my case, back in June, 2006, I would certainly would have either been dead or left with a stage 3 prostate cancer condition if I had to wait another two years. Single persons without minor children cannot qualify for Medicaid in Florida, and to qualify for any form of charity care from the regional Moffitt Cancer center would have required me to pay some $2000 out of pocket (which I in no way had) for the needed prostate biopsy with integral pathology report, as for over 2 years proper to June, 2006, my PSA ranged between 9 and 11, and the county public health nurse could only wince in pain and frustration over the circumstances. I would like John Boehner and Mitch Connell look me in the eye and explain why you will tolerate preventable and unnecessary death and morbidity. If anything, raising the eligibility age of Medicare will cause huge increases in expenditures later on because of delayed treatment or chronic care management of hypertenstion, high cholesterol, and type 2 diabetes that would likely result in increase number of recipients requiring kidney dialysis, amputations, stroke rehabilitation and skilled nursing home care that could have been prevented if the age of eligibility for Medicare were decreased to 50 to 55. To draw an analogy, it is far cheaper to repair minor leaks in a building roof or later having because of preventable mold infestation, gutting the building or even demolishing it! Periodic checkup visits, generic blood pressure and cholesterol medication plus pils of requisition slips for lab test are far, far cheaper and humane than having to manage severe mobidity and disability later on!

Re: Don't Slave Your Life Away: Why America Should Embrace a 4-Day Work Week

Louis A. Carliner — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 12:50:58 -0000

The four-day workweek would be a huge tool for economic stimulation. Travel, education, leisure, and craft business would realize a influx of new customers! Back in the 1980's, the company that marketed electionics in DIY kit form (Heathkits) went out of business, citing a sharp decline in available leisure time as a major reason. Also, low pay minimum wage jobs, especially in the fast food industry would enjoy increased availability of labor!

Re: Walmart Retaliates Against Black Friday Activists

Louis A. Carliner — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 16:12:56 -0000

What is needed is an "impact fee", modelled after ones imposed by many localities to pay for the infrastructure needed to support new residential development, for business that based on the number of workers requiring any form of public assistance. That way, these business are not being unfairly subsudized by sub-living wages and lack of humane benefits.

Re: Israel's War on Gaza

Louis A. Carliner — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 13:49:37 -0000

What is urgently needed now is the same type of international inspection teams to go through Gaza looking for rockets and other related material with the same thoroughness that the same teams did in Iraq and were not able to find any weapons of mass destruction. International monitoring teams are needed at the tunnels and ports of entry to deter smuggling from Iran and Hesbalah controlled Lebanon such weapons of potentially mass destruction!

Re: Why Karl Rove's New Plan to Save the Republican Party Will Fail

Louis A. Carliner — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 08:58:11 -0000

To those pushing Mario Rubio in 2016, I say, "Give me a break!". The economic and political views of Rubio are as much out of touch with the Hispanic/Latino community, as with the African-American community, the likes of Allen West, Herman Cain (Mr. 9-9-9) and Justice (?) Clarence Thomas are! They all are insults to both major communities!

Re: Inside a Gaza Hospital as Israeli Military Attacks Escalate: 200 Air Strikes

Louis A. Carliner — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 15:47:18 -0000

What about the deaths from the rockets of Israelies? Hamas, egged on and supplied by Iran has deliberately chosen to place their rocket launching sites buried among locations with dense number of civilians, like schools, hospitals and other venues, making it almost impossible for Israel to avoid the death and wounding of civilians!

Re: No, Mexico’s Not Winning the ‘Drug War’

Louis A. Carliner — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 04:30:19 -0000

The best and only way to end the drug wars is simply to use the free enterprise system in reverse! This would involve full decriminalization addiction through a registered addict program, with the drugs dispensed through Government centers, universal availability of state of the art treatment programs and aggressive research into breakthrough treatment systems that is one step ahead of the perveyers of the stuff, even the most dangerous types, like meth and speed. Allow controlled but limited recreational use of marijuana, and end restrictions on medical use of marijuana, dispensed in a manner not unlike alcoholic beverages.. What this will do is to take way any profit incentive for drug cartels and gangs!

Re: Danger Ahead: The Oligarchs Don't Understand That Economic Collapse Happens When They Get All the Money

Louis A. Carliner — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 12:48:08 -0000

The loss of customers due to the "starving of the beast" is already happening to the cable media companies! The effects of creaping poverty on cable company business revenue has already been acknowledged in one of their trade publications!

Re: The GOP's Enduring Obstructionism: There's No Bargaining With These Republicans

Louis A. Carliner — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 01:38:23 -0000

Not only should President Obama NOT GIVE AN INCH to McConnell, he should use all of the power he has to TAKE DOWN Mitch! The Holy Bible, for which the hypocritical Repubs cite so effusively holds the key! It is to recall the passages in 2nd Samuel in which King David was punished by GOD for sending Basheiba's husband, Uriah into a battle assignment in which death was certain. At least King David was man enough to confess and accept rather severe punishment. Now, in this century there was that horrible Central Canyon mining disaster in 2008 when even rescuers trying to attempt a recovery operation lost their lives, only to be permanently entombed with the miners. Guess where Mitch McConnell's wife, Elaine Chao, the only 2nd Bush Department of Labor Head to serve out the entire eight years was during the disaster aftermath? Not at the department headquarters or on site at the mining disaster coordinating or otherwise assisting in dealing with the aftermath! No, she was allowing herself to be dragged around the state of Kentucky, like a smirk-faced ragdoll on his reelection campaign trips! All that would be needed for the takedown would be uncover any documents, emails and other forms of communications related to decisions, rulings and communications with big coal mining moguls concerning gutting and otherwise hobbing mine safety regulations through rulings, resource starvation through budget cuts, and the appointment of political hacks and other "Brownie" types to critical positions, and timing and ammount of monetary contributions and other favors to Mitch'es reelection campaign back in 2008 and earlier and the timeline therof with Labor Department actions thereof.

Once this is done, Mitch'es head will roll as well as any other key Repubs, as the American people will not stand for this!

Re: Profit is Samsung's best revenge against Apple

Louis A. Carliner — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 18:55:18 -0000

The reason that Apple has to worry about patent "integrity" is their pricing policies still continue to be "rotten to the core". Had Apple back when the first Macintosh came out was willing to engage in some "loss leader" price cutting when WIndow 3.0 first came out, it would have really decimated Microsoft!

Re: 10 Steps to Break Up the Wealth of the Super Rich

Louis A. Carliner — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 18:38:47 -0000

There is a biblically based solution that is described in the Judeo/Christian bible! It is the holiday of Jubilee! With that holiday that is supposed to occur every 50 years, all debts are cancelled and slaves freed. It is very much anologous to the process of doing a clean install and reboot of your computer when things get so out of whack that interim measures were either not viable or that was too long delayed in being put into effect or never was! For the economic system, the activities of the Jubilee is the devinely conceived reinstall and reboot of the economic system. With the U.S. deficit of some 16 trillion plus dollars, and an estimated corporate stash of some 21 trillions dollars hidden offshore, Jubilee is an appropriate activity to restructure and rebuild the economic system!

Re: Who Will Fight for Affirmative Action?

Louis A. Carliner — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 08:30:18 -0000

What SCOTUS fails, by their pointedly hostle questioning, to realize is that admission to a pretigious state law school is not a merit based entitlement, but rather a precious resource that needs to be directed to the needs of making the justice system work for ALL MINORITIES. With African Americans representing a disproportionate percentage of penal incarcerations, there is a desperate need for more Affican Americans (not the Clarence Thomas types) providing legal representation and influence as state attornies to counter the effects of the Pam Bondi's and the like, and being able to deter rampant miscarriages of justices and unfair sentencing.

Re: Big Money Knocks Paid Sick Leave Off Florida Ballot

Louis A. Carliner — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 20:07:51 -0000

Maybe, if some of the opponents of paid sick leave becomes infected in their favorite eating establishment by a back kitchen "Typhoid Maria" with a virulent case of Hepatitis B infection, they may feel differently.Not only for health and safey's sake paid sick leave need to be mandatory, but so should paid health insurance coverage for the treatment and followup of communicable or contageous diseased be provided!

Re: Right-Wing Crafts?? Hobby Lobby Sues for Right to Deny Employees Birth Control Coverage

Louis A. Carliner — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 19:13:19 -0000

What is even more scary would be a scenario in which the owners (employer) are of the Jehovah Witness sect, which, by the way, does not believe in any form of blood transfusion to the point of death, could choose to have excluded coverage by its company health plan any form of coverage that involves blood transfusions. Why should my life be endangered for the sake of the "religious freedom" of others?

Re: Bain Capital Workers Face Down Mitt Romney Over the Outsourcing of Their Jobs

Louis A. Carliner — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 18:30:25 -0000

What Obama needs to do at the Democratic Convention is to use this situation to set a trap for Mitt Romney. This is the essence of what President Obama needs to present: "Mr. Romney, you claim you have a plan to save or create 12 million jobs. Here's your chance to demonstrate your ability and willingness to do this. All you have to do is to meet with company management and use a bit of jawboning to stop this one hemmoraging of jobs. This will be a far easier assignment now than those you would encounter as president! If you cannot perform successfully this easy test, then you have shown yourself lacking an essential ability to assume the highest post in the land!"

Being forced to train your replacement is not much different from when Jewish and other World War II Nazi concentration camp victims were forced at gunpoint to dig their own graves prior to being gassed. Mr. Obama, your Secretary of Labor can issue a simple ruling that do do much to slow down this ugly outsourcing and force companies to bear the real cost of job destruction. It is to issue a ruling to the effect that refusal to train your replacment under these circumstances cannot be used as grounds for disqualification of receiving unemployment insurance benefits!

Re: How to Put Cork on a Wall

Louis A. Carliner — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 15:12:39 -0000

Assuming the availability of a Mitt Romney sized kids room, the ideal would be, instead of painted walls, one or a portion of one would be devoted to amply sized cubbies, for which each project could have all the material group in individual cubbies by project. This would be ideal for office at home for freelance software engineers and programmers. Other wall spaces would be covered with replaceable whiteboard panels and, of course cork and pegboards. There would be no worry about need to clean or repaint walls!

Re: Harry Reid Calls Out Hypocrisy of Romney Camp's Louisiana Tour: 'Their Policies Would Leave Those Affected Stranded'

Louis A. Carliner — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 20:45:45 -0000

I had a bad quip sometime ago. The 2nd Bush Administration with respect to Hurrican Katrina created a major problem for all the bakeries in the US. It managed to turn "Brownies" into pieces of poop! They surely did a heck of a job!

Another quip: What could be said concerning the name of the vacation town in Maine where the Bush family summer estate is located when the Bushes are not in town? Ans. Kenneport without the Bunk!

Re: 4 Easy Ways We Can Tax the Rich to Fill Government Coffers

Louis A. Carliner — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 07:21:51 -0000

A major benefit of the transaction tax is that it would discourage much of the nanosecond computer-based flash trading that periodically gives rise to confidence eroding periodic flash crashes!

Re: Pledge to Resist Fracking: Writer-Biologist Sandra Steingraber Issues a Call for Action and a Warning to the Gas Industry

Louis A. Carliner — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 07:18:03 -0000

Before fracking is allowed in New York State, Mr. Cuomo, how about INSISTING that ALL FAMILIES whose lives and properties have been devastated by fracking be MADE WHOLE as rapidly as possible. This would be a strong test for the sincerity of the big energy companies!