When the Air (Waves) Were Free

I wonder how it happened, back in the olden days, that we ended up with television networks that were free.  I can imagine the Congressional hearings that would go on today, with some hee-haw from the south whining something like, "Do you think it's fay-ure that folks is gointa be able to make those teevee people pay all that money to put on those shows on thay-yure teevees for free?


Of course, it's not free, and never has been, because sponsors have always sponsored television and radio in this country, and sponsored it so that they could profit from it.  And not too long after those wonderful days when Congress decided to give us public radio and television, so we would have a non-commercial source of information and entertainment, those folks that we elected to Congress and the White House decided that it wasn't fair that we should have that for free.  And of course that wasn't free either, because we paid for it with our tax dollars.


But all that did was make us vulnerable, by virtue of our greed and gullibility, to the accusation that we are paying for services we don't use, and why should we?  Always works.  Now we have commercial "public radio" as well as fund-raisers that make us pay for the privilege by having to listen to the fundraisers as well as cough up the bucks.


And of course now we have a different battle for the airwaves, that of internet accessibility.


Those of us who have, of course, just assume everyone has, and if they don't, they should just go buy it.  But once again, those who have cannot fathom those of us without.


When my daughter was a teen, and wanted a car, I had her and her brother sit at the kitchen table with pencil and paper, and I recited the monthly bills.  Then I gave them the monthly income.


My daughter leapt from the table in a rage.


The facts were hard.


And those of us who are still fortunate enough to be truly in the "middle class" just can't imagine that some of us live on $20,000 a year or less, don't have health insurance.  Too many of us live on the edge of the precipice, and yet we pay a criminal amount for our cable television because they figured out how to take away our free t.v. and we need that connection, and yes, that escape.


The haves can't fathom then that so many of us cannot affort that $60 a month to hook up to the internet.  Sure we can buy, many of us, a cheap laptop.  It is the connection to the world that we just cannot afford.


And now we have our members of Congress accusing our President of all kinds of nasty business because he is attempting to provide free wireless internet access to the American people.


They are going to scare us by convincing us that the cost will be prohibitive, like it isn't when it's private, and that the actual wi-fi will -- I swear -- interfere with our GPS.


Could we please smarten up?  Can we stop acting like the great unwashed listening to a snake-oil salesman at a carnival?  Can't we see, just this one time, that these clowns (not to mix the metaphors too badly) are afraid that we will get something for nothing.


What actually happens, just as free t.v. did back in the olden days, is that free connectivity would open up a whole lot of business for those weasels that pay Congress to keep our hands off their stuff.


But, I fear, the appetite for greater wealth and power has gotten so voracious in this new millennium that even that penny to pay the poor in order that they may serve the wealthy cannot be pried from our masters' hands. 

Social Insecurity

I lost my free wireless last week.  With an income of $12,000, it is unlikely that I will be paying upwards from $55 a month for a wireless connection.  So I will haul my laptop, which I bought refurbished for ½ price, to the library, which fortunately has in the past year advanced into the 21^st Century with public wi-fi.

One of the things that I can do that Tea-Partiers cannot, is recognize that there are others who, through no fault of their own, are far less fortunate than I.

That does not mean that I am thankful for this state of affairs, because I also recognize that there are people who, for no good reason (and I mean good in the Golden Rule sense of the word), have far, far more than I.

I don't care how many aircraft the Koch Brothers have at their command; what I do care about is that they have the power to engage in criminal, deceitful, ugly acts to manipulate the public, to garner support for political policy that continues to provide them with that power.

Now, those with a little more than I, the middle class, have more to lose.  Rather than feeling more secure about what they have, this has made them vulnerable to those who use their power and fortune to convince them that change means loss of what they now have.  Not a vacation home, mind you, but health care, a job, savings for retirement.

At the time the generous soul who shared their wireless with me left town, I had spent the month paying large (to me) sums of money for repairs – it seemed everything I owned, old but cared for, was breaking down.  A week's pay for a car repair, a week's pay for a lawn mower, an inexpensive printer that I now cannot use because it is wireless and, alas, I no longer have wireless access.  The airline ticket I paid for my annual visit to my daughter is something I cannot afford.  I do what I have tried hard not to do:  waste my life worrying constantly about money.

So when I lost the wireless, which in truth, in this freedom-at-a-cost country, I was stealing, something in me broke.  My lifeline to my family, all far away, is gone.  My ability to sit down and write a blog now needs to be structured and fit into time I am at the library.  And the calendar I throw together every month on Publisher has no picture gallery because I am putting it together at home without the internet.  My old computer had a picture gallery, but instead of feeling pissed off, I opt for – I can't think of the word, and I can't get to the internet thesaurus site.  How about resignation?

I am poor, I have no right to contact with the outside world.  I am lucky I have my laptop and a library connection, and for now, I am lucky that my car, with its 156,000 miles, can still get me there.

Meanwhile, the Koch brothers have convinced the insecure among us who still have a middle class life, that by helping us they will lose that life.  And meanwhile, while the Tea Partiers fight the Koch brothers' battle for them, they in fact are helping them destroy what they now have, and what used to be considered a secure life.