Gooserider said:
keyman512us said:
senorFrog said:
What we do is determine how much squeeze the town gets from the cable company - primarily in the form of money and channel allocations for the local “Access Channels”, along with stuff like drops to municipal buildings, service to schools, libraries, etc. - Note that all this is passed on to the ratepayers so the cable co really doesn’t care.
What a scam!
SenorFrog..."It's a Massachusetts thing"...lol
(The Movie)Goodfellas' could have easily been "set" in Boston "Whitey B. and crew"and the other "orginazations here" could easily make the rest look like 'snow white and the seven dwarfs"...
True on both counts, but I will say that a great deal of this comes from state and federal law that defines what we are and aren't allowed to do.
It is also worth noting that if Verizon was just doing Internet and Phone over that fiber, they could install it tomorrow and there isn't a single thing the Town could do to stop them other than being nasty about supplying detail cops (another Mass. scam - anybody working on the street has to hire a police officer to "control traffic" (often that of the coffee and donuts in their cruiser) for $30/hr plus, 4 hour minimum - Every other state in the US works fine with flagmen for minimum wage...) and otherwise being a pain about infrastructure access. This assumes the town wanted to be difficult, which I have no reason to think they would be.
Verizon could then do programming on demand type service piping the video down that bandwidth as a data stream - but this would get the media companies upset, as it would potentially make their stuff more available online to be stored and otherwise manipulated (not that it isn't already...)
The only thing that the communities have a peice of is the Cable TV action - by federal rules.
Gooserider
Goose...
One thing I would like to add on the "Cop Detail vs. Flagger debate"... You hit it right on the head though... it works fine in other states... but this is Massachusetts...
It would never work in Massachusetts.
If you think I'm kidding you... put on an orange vest and a hard hat and grab a Stop/Slow sign and give it a try... a crossing guard has better chances of survival!
(Carefull...I speak from experience)
An outfit I worked for (From Florida working here in MA) tried to go the 'flagger' route... They said in light of what happened I could keep what was left of the sign as a 'momento'... after I got the guy in his jeeps' attention when I broke it in half off his windshield... (long story lol).
This particular guy had no problem ignoring the "flagger" (me)... and it was hard to miss me becuase I was standing in the middle of the road and only stepped out of the way so as to avoid being run down...his windshield getting smashed did not alert him to the fact that he should have perhaps STOPPED to avoid on-coming traffic in the one lane zone...almost ran down another co-worker, just barelly missed hitting the excavator..luckily the Euclid was heading in the same direction... I knew the driver of the Euc would have no problem running him over like a beer can...His bravado and total dis-regard for public safety changed however when he was confronted with Mass State Trooper 'Johhny C' standing before him.. he had no qualm about potentially mowing me down...but then again Johhny C is a little more intimidating than I...Course so is the MSP uniform...
I did however have to "get out of this clowns way one more time however" when he locked up his brakes and reversed direction" His broken windshield did look quite nice however...
This was the same outfit that realized "The true cost of doing business in Massachusetts" after they paid $3,000.00 for MassHighway approved construction signs(installed BEFORE the jeep incident)... they vowed (If) they came back to do work here...the bid would reflect accordingly...
On a lighter note... From personal experience, I don't support doubling of fines for "work zone violators"... I would however support a judges' decision to make the particular offenders have to stand "upstream" from a work zone in an orange vest having to hold that SLOW sign...say in the middle of I-495 traffic for an hour or two...
That would be all the time needed...
However, seeing as Massachusetts does not have a death penalty statue... sentencing an offender to this punishment would/might be a bit harsh...
The added cost of having to, at a minimum clean up bodily fluids from the roadway from the 'unscathed' probably would have to be figured in...
If a construction worker can endure the day...Five minutes for a 'civilian' would be sufficient to control the problem...
