Have you had any fury with your coffee this morning? If not, here’s a story to angry up the blood: Wealthy hospitals are using a century-old law to skip billing legitimate insurers and instead are going directly after the poorest victims of car accidents. No surprise, it’s to maximize profit.
Source: Injured In A Crash? Some Hospitals Will Skip The Insurance And Go Right To Seizing Wages And Home
Wilkey is facing two more lawsuits, according to WRCB TV. And there’s even more weird sociopathy present in the accusations. On July 9th, Deputy Wilkey was sued by a man who claims the deputy used excessive force during a traffic stop over window tint.This lawsuit claims the deputies performed an illegal search of his vehicle by detaining him until they could run a drug dog around his car. The drug dog supposedly alerted but no drugs were found. The deputies also allegedly told the man to stand with his hands on the hot hood of a vehicle, resulting in burns.The second lawsuit [PDF], filed October 17th, details Deputy Wilkey’s harassment of six minors in a vehicle. Once again, Wilkey told the driver and occupants he had stopped them for illegal window tint. He was also accompanied by Deputy Jacob Goforth, who was present during Wilkey’s forced baptism of another driver. Wilkey also claimed he “smelled weed,” apparently to justify the actions he took next. He ordered all of the minors out of the car and began doing things only Deputy Wilkey would ever do.
Both cases here are disturbing. And they’re disturbing in very different ways. I’ve never read a civil rights lawsuit against an officer that included claims of a forcible religious experience, but here we are.
One unlucky man who bought a house that can’t get wired Internet service is reportedly selling the home just months after moving in.
Seth, a software engineer who works at home, bought a house in Kitsap County, Washington, after being told by multiple Comcast employees that he could buy the Internet service he needs to do his job, according to a detailed Consumerist article yesterday. Seth also wrote a lengthy account on his blog titled, “It’s Comcastic, or: I Accidentally Bought a House Without Cable.” (The man’s last name was not given.)
“Before we even made an offer [on the house], I placed two separate phone calls; one to Comcast Business, and one to Xfinity,” Seth wrote. “Both sales agents told me that service was available at the address. The Comcast Business agent even told me that a previous resident had already had service. So I believed them.”
That turned out to be untrue. After multiple visits from Comcast technicians, he says the company told him extending its network to his house would cost $60,000, of which he would have to pay an unspecified amount. But then Comcast allegedly pulled the offer.
“After about seven weeks of pointless install appointments, deleted orders, dead ends, and vague sky-high estimates, Comcast told him that it had decided to simply not do the extension,” according to the Consumerist story. “The company wouldn’t even listen to Seth’s offers to pay for a good chunk of the cost.”
We contacted Comcast to get more details last night but haven’t heard back.
After getting nowhere with Comcast, Seth tried getting DSL Internet from CenturyLink, which told him it could provide service of up to 10Mbps.
“After that very first Comcast tech told Seth there was no cable infrastructure to his house, he contacted CenturyLink. The company promised to get him hooked up right away,” Consumerist wrote. “But then the next day he got a call informing him that his area was in ‘Permanent Exhaust’ and that CenturyLink wouldn’t be adding new customers. Of course, that didn’t stop CenturyLink from billing Seth more than $100 for service he never received and will never be able to receive. Seth then had to convince someone with CenturyLink’s billing department to zero out the account that should have never been opened.”
Besides Comcast and CenturyLink, the Kitsap Public Utility District operates a gigabit fiber network that passes near Seth’s house, Consumerist wrote. “So why can’t he just get his service from the county? Because Washington is one of the half-dozen states that forbids municipal broadband providers from selling service directly to consumers,” the article said.
Nationwide, about 20 states impose limits on municipal broadband in order to protect private Internet providers from competition. The Federal Communications Commission voted to preempt such laws in Tennessee and North Carolina after receiving petitions from municipal providers in those states but is facing a lawsuit over the decision.
RadioShack is trying to auction off its customer data on some 117 million customers as part of its court-supervised bankruptcy.
The data in question, according to a legal challenge launched by Texas regulators on Friday and joined by the state of Tennessee on Monday, includes “consumer names, phone numbers, mailing addresses, e-mail addresses, and, where allowed, activity data.”
The states say the sale breaches the 94-year-old chain’s promises to its in-store and online customers that it would not sell their personal identifying information (PII) data.
As we’ve noted many times in the past, the entertainment industry likes to take a multi-pronged approach to its quixotic efforts to “stop piracy” (which could be much better dealt with by simply giving the public more of what they want). Working on federal copyright law to continually expand it is one main strategy, but there are a lot of others as well, including pressuring private companies to voluntarily censor content, getting international trade agreements to force laws to change and… getting random state laws to force through big changes quietly. This last strategy has come into focus lately, especially with the rise of so-called “true origin” bills, that are almost certainly unconstitutional, but are rapidly popping up in a variety of states. This is actually a replay of an old strategy. I remember similar “true origin” efforts being pushed about a decade ago, and I’d thought they’d completely died out… but they’re back.
The way they work is pretty simple: they outlaw anonymity on the internet if your website distributes any kind of audiovisual work. The point of this is twofold: one, for those who “register” and reveal their name and address, it makes it easier for the RIAAs and MPAAs of the world to sue a site for copyright infringement. And, for those who don’t reveal their names, the RIAA and can ask the states to prosecute the site owners for failing to reveal their names.
Apparently the state of Tennessee really doesn’t want its citizens to have good, competitive broadband. While the FCC’s net neutrality rules keep getting all the attention, as we’ve discussed, in the long run it may be a bigger deal that the FCC (the same day it released the net neutrality rules) also started dismantling protectionist state laws that block municipal broadband. Those laws — almost all of which were written directly by big broadband players afraid of competition — make it close to impossible for local municipalities to decide that they’re going to set up true competitors. The FCC pre-empted two such state laws, including in Tennessee, where one super successful municipal broadband project, in Chattanooga, wanted to expand to other nearby places. However, Tennessee’s law blocked this.
We already noted that Rep. Marsha Blackburn was trying to pass legislation that would block the FCC’s efforts here, but the state of Tennessee has taken it up a notch and sued the FCC over the rules. You will notice that the arguments used by the state of Tennessee are almost verbatim identical to the lawsuits we wrote about yesterday challenging the FCC’s net neutrality rules:
The State of Tennessee, as a sovereign and a party to the proceeding below, is aggrieved and seeks relief on the grounds that the Order: (1) is contrary to the United States Constitution; (2) is in excess of the Commission’s authority; (3) is arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion within the meaning of the Administrative Procedure Act; and (4) is otherwise contrary to law.
Yes, this is almost word-for-word identical to the claims made about the net neutrality rules and is basically the standard language to challenge any FCC ruling.
But here’s the larger question: if you’re a resident of Tennessee who likes having fast, affordable, competitive broadband, are you happy about your tax dollars being used to sue the FCC in an effort to uphold a law written by the big broadband players, focused on blocking such competition? It seems like the current Tennessee Attorney General, Herbert Slatery, has painted a giant target on his back for a challenger who actually wants to support the public in Tennessee.
In Knoxville, Tennessee, a Christian church put up what proved to be a controversial sign. The sign read, “Remember, Satan was the first to demand equal rights.”
And a shitstorm ensued, of course. Some people found this to be a swipe at gays seeking equal rights.I think, however, they’re looking at it the wrong way.
Lets look at Christian mythology with a critical eye. Who is this “God” character, and who is this “Satan” guy? Lets look at it with a little bit of a critical eye. So the first thing we need to remember is that the victors write the history books. So, you’ve got to look at the Bible as a piece of propaganda for the winning side.
So God apparently created everything. He created Tyrannosaurus Rex, which had arms too short to masturbate. Then, he created us, with arms long enough to play with our genitals, and hands that are pretty damn well suited to it. He gave us the capacity to feel pleasure, and he gave us the desire to chase it. He gave us a thirst for knowledge. He gave us a lot of great shit.
But, he demanded that we not use any of it, and he demanded that we love him.
Sounds like a sick bastard to me.
This God character sounds more like the psychological profile you’d get if you went to a high school, found the meanest 16 year old cheerleader, and told her that she had absolute power. Sorta like a North Korean dictator with serious cock size issues.
But, its even sicker than that.
He sticks the tree of knowledge right smack in the middle of the paradise he made for us, and then says “you can eat all this shit, pears, durians, blackberries, but I will fuck your shit up if you eat this fruit that cures your ignorance.”
He watches us all the time, like the NSA.
Oh, and he DEMANDS that we love him. If you don’t love me, I’ll burn your fucking ass forever and ever. That sounds more like a stalker than an omniscient being.
On the other hand, we have this Satan guy.
Maybe he’s not so bad after all.
Maybe he’s not so bad after all.
Satan likes us. Satan doesn’t mind if we enjoy ourselves. Satan doesn’t care if we love him or not. He’s there if we want him. Oh, and he suggests that maybe, just maybe, we ought to come out of the shadows of ignorance and eat from the tree of knowledge. From what I can tell from the mythology, Satan doesn’t watch us unless we request it. Opt-in surveillance, free will, enjoy yourself, and don’t be ignorant.
Does that sound like the bad guy to you?
Open government advocates file requests for public records because it’s not only our right, but our duty as citizens to find out what the government is doing in our name, how officials are spending our tax dollars, what kinds of mistakes they’re making, what problems our communities face, and how we can improve society through policy changes.
Unfortunately, some public officials interpret transparency as a threat, best answered not with documents, but intimidation, insults, and other forms of retaliation.
In this fourth and final round of The Foilies—EFF’s Sunshine Week “awards” for outrageous experiences in pursuing public records—we’re focusing on how government agencies (and one rock star) lashed out at citizens and journalists for attempting to unearth unflattering truths. We’ll also cover a few cases where that behavior had consequences.
