Louisiana Voice

(Yes, I know I’m supposed to be on a break in order to move back into my home that was flooded last year. But this exercise in frustration was just too mind-numbing to let pass without writing about it.):

It’s official: Today (Wednesday, July 5, 2017) is the longest day of my life.

Not because I hung blinds as I prepare to move back into my home that was flooded 11 months ago. I did hang blinds and I’m already on record as claiming that task as the one I hated more than any other.

Now I have to amend that list since hanging blinds has dropped to second place on my dreaded to-do list.

You see, I called my cable company today to arrange for my cable and internet to be reconnected. It was the task from hell.

Because of lawsuit concerns, I won’t mention the name of my cable company but its initials are Cox Communications.

To set the stage for this obstacle course of one’s mental well-being, I should point out that for the past 11 months, my wife and I have been living at my youngest daughter’s house, a mere seven miles from our home. But last August 13, it may as well have been 500 miles away for our chances of making it to her home which, thankfully, remained high and dry.

But I digress. While residing at her home, I kept my cable account open in order to maintain my current email address. When I took that action, I was told it would cost $10 per month. But it soon began creeping upward. My last bill was for $18. Of course, there was no explanation for the furtive rate hike. They just do it because they can.

Still, because I had kept my account active, you might think it would be easy to call and ask that I be reconnected at my former residence.

Oh, for the love of everything holy, think again.

For openers, I got an account representative who apparently was somewhere in Calcutta or Kyrgyzstan or Kiribati or Djibouti or Sri Lanka which automatically meant she would be required to repeat everything at least three times in order for me to pretend to comprehend what she was saying.

At one point she informed me (I think) that despite my having been a customer of uninterrupted tenure for 22 years at the same address and another 11 months (with no lapse) at my daughter’s, I would now be a “new customer.” Okay, no big deal there. They can call me a new customer or a warthog as long as I get my service.

When I informed her I wanted just the basic cable with no land line telephone in my bundle this time, she said she had something called a “twenty-plus” package that offered 20 cables: Fox, CBS, ABC, NBC and a host of other stations/channels I’d never heard of which I assume are local access channels where local folks get to pick guitars or clip toenails, or read poetry, and call it local entertainment. The worst part? No CNN or ESPN. I like CNN and ESPN but they’re not part of this paltry package.

Eighty-two bucks, folks. That’s the price she quoted for the “Twenty-plus” package and I never did learn what the “plus” was, though she did tell me it included high-speed internet.

Now about that high-speed internet. That’s horse hockey and Cox knows it. They don’t offer certified, bona-fide, verified high-speed internet to consumers anywhere in this state. I worked for the State of Louisiana for 20 years and when I left, state computers had true high-speed internet. Residential consumers did not and do not have access to high-speed internet. The difference is like night (ADSL, i.e. residential subscribers) and day (SDSL, or commercial subscribers).

When I squawked about the pathetic “Twenty-Plus” channel options, she said the next best package was 220 channels, also with high-speed internet for $89 which also included the land line telephone as part of the bundle. I said I didn’t want the land line. She said tough noogies, it comes with the package.

Now let’s review:

Twenty channels, including four networks (but no CNN or ESPN) and a host of crappy local channels for $82 per month;

Two hundred twenty channels, including about 210 channels I will never watch—and a phone line I don’t need—all for $89 per month.

From 20 to 220 channels. Nothing in between. Nada. Nil. Zilch. Just one quantum leap from 20 to 220

“How long is this $89 per month price good for?” I asked because I’m on to their rate manipulation tricks.

“One year,” she said.

I understood that without the need of her repeating herself. One year and then they jack the price up to whatever they want because we’re a captive audience. I know, I know, there are others, like AT&T. You see, I lied just a tad about the 22 years of uninterrupted service because once, when I got sick and tired of Cox’s rate hikes, I switched to AT&T but found it so much worse than Cox that I switched back the same week to the lesser of the two evils.

Like I said, captive audience.

“I’m going to put you on hold for just a minute,” she said (at least I think that’s what she said).

Twenty minutes later, she returned to tell me she was going to transfer me to the installation department.

“Uh…” I managed to say and then she was gone and I got to listen to elevator music for the next 40 minutes with only a brief interruption when she returned to the line to apologize for the wait and then she was gone again. And I couldn’t name a single one of the dippy songs. I was forced to listen to an unidentifiable playlist for the full hour I was on hold (her 20 and installation’s 40).

The installation lady was stateside, at least. But she went through all kinds of offers and when I attempted to tell her I didn’t want any of that, she interrupted me to say, “I am required to make these offers. If you don’t let me do it, you won’t get your service.”

Well, that was pretty brutal. But I wanted my cable so I let her finish. She then informed me there would be a credit check conducted on me and that there “might be” an additional deposit, depending the results of the credit check. This for a customer of 22 years (oh, sorry. I forgot that I was now a “new” customer). Then she started asking all types of personal information, including my social security number and—for future verification purposes—the name of my first pet.

Are you kidding me? My first pet? We were so poor when I was a kid that my first pet was a sagebrush and I didn’t bother to name it because I didn’t want to become emotionally attached. So, as an alternative question, she asked where my mother and father met. Hell, I wasn’t there. I suppose it was in Ruston since that’s where I was born. But I was their second child. They probably met four or five years before I came along and they could’ve met in Zwolle or Paincourtville or Shongaloo, for all I know.

Then (are you ready for this?) she said she was transferring me to the installation verification team who would set up the appointment for my installation.

That’s right. Another 15 minutes on hold as I desperately tried to identify a song title from the “You’re-on hold-and-you-have-to-listen-to-this-incredibly-pitiable-musical-interlude.

So, it took me a mere 90 minutes, of which only 10 minutes at most was spent in actual conversation with a live human being, to reconnect my cable and internet and to be forced to take a couple hundred channels I don’t want or need and to accept a land line telephone I didn’t want from a customer service representative I couldn’t understand who works for a company I don’t particularly like.

I’m nearly 74 years old and 90 minutes to me at this stage of my life are too precious to waste in such a maddening manner.

I could’ve been using that time to do something far more enjoyable, like hanging blinds.

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By Stephen Winham (Guest Column)

A question no mainstream media reporter has apparently considered serious enough to ask is a very simple, albeit long, one:

How did we enter the regular session with a proposal by the Governor that made the clear statement that we needed another $440 million in revenue to balance the budget for the coming year, provide full funding for TOPS, give state employees a pay raise and provide minimum funding for departments (among other things), yet wind up with NO new revenue, TOPS fully funded, pay raises for employees, and with everybody, including the governor, claiming the budget is okay and they are happy with it?

Think about it. That makes no sense. How can you go from needing $440 million for an adequate budget to needing ZERO? When we see this kind of thing we have no choice but to question the entire budget, including the size of the “fiscal cliff” projected for FY2018-19 and beyond. Credibility needs to be restored to the budget process before people are going to believe anything they are told about it.

For at least 7 of his 8 years in office, Gov. Jindal covered up our structural budget problem using every gimmick to which the legislature would agree.  Every year he declared a great victory on the budget and every year the gap remained or, worse, got larger.  He inherited an almost $1 billion surplus from the Blanco administration and left Edwards with a $1 billion hole – a turnaround of minus $2 billion if my second-grade math still works.

Rather than relying on such gimmicks, Gov. Edwards has returned to the tried-and-untrue plan of using scare tactics to frighten the people and the legislature into balancing the budget via increased revenue alone.  This is an old game and one Louisiana’s citizens grew sick of long ago.  How many times were we told, “We are approaching a big fiscal wall and we must do something or we will surely perish when we hit it!”  How many times did the wall move?  This tactic only worked once in the JBE administration and the temporary “solution” enacted is set to disappear in about 12 months. Now the wall has become a cliff from which we will fall to our fiscal death in the absence of a solution.

Re-read the simple question at the beginning of this column.  Do you believe Gov. Edwards presented a realistic and honest budget?  Do you believe the legislature enacted a realistic budget? Do you believe cuts were made and, if so, do you know the effects of those cuts?

The inability to definitively answer any of the above questions calls the credibility of the entire budget and budget process into question.  I personally believe we have a structural imbalance of at least $1 billion.  A “cliff” as large as $1.5 billion is being talked about.  Until we all have a better explanation of our current budget, none of us can really know the size of our budget problem, much less how it should be solved.

We pretty much know the revenue options.  What we don’t know is precisely what would have to be cut to balance the budget through cuts alone. The last time I can remember anybody really being put on the spot to answer this question was in 2013 when AP reporter Melinda Deslatte asked then commissioner of administration Kristy Nichols why she didn’t recommend cuts instead of patchwork funding in the governor’s budget recommendations.  Her response was that cuts would result in “needless reductions to critical services.”  While that is not much of an answer, it does offer clues to why we have not seen cuts anybody is willing to permanently stand behind offered up for serious consideration..

Without knowing what really must be cut to balance the budget, the contention that we need no more money by Representatives Henry, Harris, Seabaugh, and others will continue to resonate with a public that wants to believe it.

What I find most incredible is that the Governor apparently does not believe credibility is important.  More than once during recent legislative hearings on the budget the Governor’s staff essentially said, “If you don’t like what we have proposed, tell us what you want to cut.”  Legislators responded, “It is your job to tell us where to cut.”  I agree – But once the governor presents a credible list of cuts, I also agree with his folks.

I apologize for any redundancies between this and my last column, but now that the governor has signed the budget act, I believe the one simple question I ask here is worthy of an extra focus. How can we expect anybody to support taxes if they have no idea what cuts really mean?

—Stephen Winham spent 21 years in the Louisiana State Budget Office, the last 12 as Director. He lives in St. Francisville.

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In case you might be wondering why (or grateful that) I haven’t posted anything over the past few days, there is a very good reason.

Remember last August 13? That’s the day many of use in the parishes of Livingston, Tangipahoa, East Baton Rouge and St. Helena stopped gazing skyward at the persistent rainfall and started looking downward at the rising waters that were suddenly engulfing our homes.

On August 13, I was a moderately content retiree satisfied that my mortgage and my wife’s car were paid off and I could look forward to a life of mowing my lawn, grilling hamburgers and pointing out the foibles of elected officials and governmental appointees.

After August 13, I continued to goad those who failed to meet their responsibilities to Louisiana citizens but now I had a brand new mortgage (I’ll only be 103 when this sucker’s paid off), a new car payment and a contractor to babysit through the rebuilding process.

Now I am happy to report that we are down to the final days. We should be moving back into our home within the next couple of weeks. Everything we salvaged from the flood will have to be moved back in, new furniture will soon be delivered, blinds and curtains will have to be hung (my least favorite task on the face of the earth), and countless other time-consuming chores will demand our attention.

That’s the long way of saying that for the foreseeable future (perhaps a month), posts on LouisianaVoice will be sporadic and squeezed in only when I can steal time away from the details of rebuilding, refurnishing and relocating.

So please bear with me. I have a backlog of stories on which I intend to devote considerable research but for the time being, they are going to have to wait.

But I promise when I return, it will be with a flourish because:

Bobby Jindal may be gone

But his ghost lingers on.

Corruption, sleaziness, ineptness, and unethical behavior, like the devil, never sleep.

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“Judge Free’s actions have harmed the integrity of and respect for the judiciary.”

—Louisiana Supreme Court in handing down a 30-day suspension to Judge Robin Free in December 2014 for his accepting a free trip from a plaintiff attorney who won a big judgment on Free’s court. He would be suspended for misconduct again on June 29, 2016, this time for one year.

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