We sub­scribe to Time Warner Cable for our Business and Home . We hard­ly watch Television, so for both Accounts we asked for basic Cable. Subscribers of Time Warner Service in the Hudson Valley are famil­iar with the Triple Play . Phone , Internet and Television bun­dled togeth­er , Generally adver­tised for $33 per ser­vice. The total month­ly cost being $99 plus Taxes. Of course the phone is a total waste of mon­ey these days, no one ever uses the phone in our home. The one in my Business is fast becom­ing obso­lete also.

Of course every month the billed amount for the very same pack­age increas­es, while Channels on it’s Cable Television sur­rep­ti­tious­ly dis­ap­pears. A call to the Company gen­er­al­ly elic­its a pack­aged response ‚which goes some­thing like this.

“Oh, we are sor­ry the Channels you ref­er­enced should­n’t have been a part of your pack­age to begin with”.

The same thiev­ery is part of Time Warner’s argu­ment when you sign up and ask for a fixed IP Address. You pay for a fixed IP and is giv­en a Dynamic IP Address. Their argu­ments are always the same it’s the fault of the Sales-per­son who took the order. Never mind that the Sales-peo­ple work for Time Warner Cable. They nev­er accept responsibility.

Yesterday Wednesday June 18^th I arrived at work , of course it’s World Cup Soccer time so I had 3 Televisions on ESPN so cus­tomers who are inter­est­ed in the Soccer may watch the game if they chose to. I have had ESPN as a part of my basic Cable pack­age for years, on both accounts. Sometime in the ear­ly after­noon the cable froze and even­tu­al­ly all screens went black . I wait­ed believ­ing that some­thing was wrong with the feed and it would be restored in due time. After a while I real­ized that was­n’t hap­pen­ing, so I called Time Warner.

The Customer Service Rep on the line com­menced to tell me “Oh we’ ” I cut him off,” what­ev­er you do , do not tell me ESPN was not a part of my pack­age”!! He went on I’m sor­ry sir that is a fact.

I blew a fuse, are you kid­ding me I have had the ser­vice for years. If ESPN is not a part of it why did you not take it from the time you took all the oth­er chan­nels, why wait for the World Cup, the most watched event?

He pro­ceed­ed to go around in cir­cles after I lam­bast­ed him and his Company for being decep­tive, unscrupu­lous and dis­hon­est . I told him that straight away, I would be can­celling both accounts and going with Fios or Optimum TV, their com­pe­ti­tion, then I hung up the phone.

Thursday morn­ing I arrived at work and for good mea­sure I turned the Televisions on to ESPN chan­nel 21 and what do you know , ESPN was back up and running.

Time Warner has been involved in these decep­tive and unscrupu­lous prac­tices for years. In fact they have lost a big part of their mar­ket share. They don’t even both­er to mar­ket the triple play any­more . More and more sub­scribers of Cable TV are look­ing else­where for ser­vice. The afore­men­tioned two are com­pe­tent alter­na­tive providers as well as Direct TV.

Time Warner unscrupu­lous prac­tices are well doc­u­ment­ed with cus­tomers as far as California com­plain­ing of the Company’s unscrupu­lous bait and switch and oth­er nefar­i­ous prac­tices.http://forums.timewarnercable.com/t5/Channels-and-Programming/Enjoy-Better-NOT/td‑p/11599

Time Warner’s jin­gle ask cus­tomers to “Enjoy bet­ter” , you take a gam­ble on them, you are gau­rant­ed worse. I will still dump the Company, if for noth­ing more that its unscrupu­lous attempt to get me to pay for a chan­nel I had for years all because it’s being heav­i­ly watched. This was not my first bad expe­ri­ence with the Company, this time I have had enough. The Company’s efforts to weasel a few dol­lars out of me , like a com­mon street thug ‚will result in two lost accounts.

Soon many more cus­tomers will catch on and do the same.

For the first time this evening I got involved in the muck of local pol­i­tics. I joined many oth­er busi­ness owners

who are less than pleased with the way the new Parking

pay sta­tions were shoved down our throats

Literally every busi­ness own­er who tes­ti­fied, yours tru­ly includ­ed, point­ed to pre­cip­i­tous drop-offs in busi­ness since the new Pay sta­tions were installed.

Many also point­ed to the fact that the pay sta­tions are notably absent from the cir­cle at the bot­tom of main street close to the Hudson River. They argued there are busi­ness­es peo­ple in that area that are friend­ly with peo­ple of pow­er in City Hall. This Blogger is unable to sub­stan­ti­ate those claims . What I know is that there are no pay sta­tions in that Area . Which is clos­er to where the Mayor’s father has his business.

Coincidence ? Maybe , but it smells to high heav­en. Restaurant own­ers are com­plain­ing they will be forced to lay off work­ers . They com­plain of what they char­ac­ter­ize as a tick­et­ing blitz under­way. I thought it was real­ly iron­ic that we the busi­ness own­ers who pay the tax­es to hire these cops and tick­et agents, are unable to make a liv­ing because they write tick­ets which keeps our cus­tomers away .

Maybe it’s not such a bad idea if we can­not afford the tax­es, maybe then they may be forced to cut some of the dead-wood.

Just maybe.

Truck Driver Kevin Roper 35 employed to Mega Company Walmart appeared in a Middlesex County Court House Wednesday June 11^th. Mister Roper plead not guilty to vehic­u­lar homi­cide and assault by Auto.

Roper, the Walmart truck dri­ver involved in the New Jersey Turnpike car acci­dent Saturday morn­ing that claimed the life of one per­son and crit­i­cal­ly injured four oth­ers, includ­ing come­di­an Tracy Morgan, has plead­ed not guilty to vehic­u­lar homi­cide and assault by auto. He remains free on $50,000 bail. No new court appear­ance was sched­uled. Middlesex County pros­e­cu­tors accuse Roper, 35, of not sleep­ing for 24 hours pri­or to the crash. He turned him­self in to police imme­di­ate­ly after the acci­dent and has been placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave by Walmart.The com­pa­ny has vowed “to take full respon­si­bil­i­ty” for the acci­dent if it’s proved that Roper caused it. http://​gma​.yahoo​.com/​t​r​a​c​y​-​m​o​r​g​a​n​-​c​r​a​s​h​-​w​a​l​m​a​r​t​-​t​r​u​c​k​e​r​-​k​e​v​i​n​-​r​o​p​e​r​-​p​l​e​a​d​s​-​1​9​5​9​3​6​516 – abc-news-celebrities.html

Laws gov­ern­ing Truckers are strict these days, in fact dri­ving with­out ade­quate sleep is tan­ta­mount to dri­ving while intox­i­cat­ed . It is trag­ic when mem­bers of the trav­el­ling pub­lic are injured or killed.. We pray for the fam­i­ly of the deceased as well as those injured, includ­ing Tracy Morgan 45, who con­tin­ue to bat­tle for life in a New Jersey Hospital.

Mister Roper is alleged to have bragged in a tweet quote: Trying to win more than lose, dri­ving trucks for a liv­ing, move or get hit! #Walmart.

This has set off a firestorm of hatred of mis­ter Roper in the Main stream Media .

Really?

Are we going to con­demn a man for a tweet he made which had noth­ing to do with the crash? Does any­one believe this dri­ver will­ful­ly crashed his rig into the vehi­cle trans­port­ing Tracy Morgan and others?

Does that tweet mean mis­ter Roper is a mani­ac who was a tick­ing time bomb wait­ing to take some­one’s life? So far there is no evi­dence of that. What we have is a hard work­ing man try­ing to earn a liv­ing. Sure he needs to face the Courts , that’s where inno­cence and guilt are decide.

In fact Fox news reports .Walmart released this statement.

“With regards to news reports that sug­gest Mr. Roper was work­ing for 24 hours, it is our belief that Mr. Roper was oper­at­ing with­in the fed­er­al hours of ser­vice reg­u­la­tions. The details are the sub­ject of the ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion and we are coop­er­at­ing ful­ly with the appro­pri­ate law enforce­ment agen­cies. The inves­ti­ga­tion is ongo­ing and unfor­tu­nate­ly we can’t com­ment fur­ther on the specifics.

“Federal law requires dri­vers to work no more than 14 hours for any shift and 11 hours of driving.” 

We sim­ply have not reached that stage where an informed con­clu­sion can be arrived at. This is not the case of a drug deal­er fir­ing a weapon, hit­ting an inno­cent bystander. What we have it seem, is a hard work­ing man who is involved in an auto­mo­bile crash. It behooves every­one includ­ing those in the Media to take a step back and let the sys­tem play out before they con­demn this man to be stoned to death.

As users of the road we should be care­ful how we react in con­demn­ing oth­ers. We nev­er know when we may be involved in a crash or acci­dent, find­ing our­selves accused of vehic­u­lar homicide.

Virginia Congressman from the 7 Congressional District Eric Cantor has suf­fered a stun­ning pri­ma­ry defeat at the hand of Dave Bratt. Without bela­bor­ing the point of Cantor’s defeat , it bears men­tion­ing that Cantor became a vic­tim of his own conspiracy.

Cantor was one of the con­spir­a­tors who gath­ered in a secret loca­tion in Washington DC the very night Barack Obama was cel­e­brat­ing his inauguration.

Robert Draper’s much-dis­cussed and heav­i­ly-report­ed new book, “Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives.”

According to Draper, the guest list that night (which was just over 15 peo­ple in total) includ­ed Republican Reps. Eric Cantor (Va.), Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), Paul Ryan (Wis.), Pete Sessions (Texas), Jeb Hensarling (Texas), Pete Hoekstra (Mich.) and Dan Lungren (Calif.), along with Republican Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), John Ensign (Nev.) and Bob Corker (Tenn.). The non-law­mak­ers present includ­ed Newt Gingrich, sev­er­al years removed from his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, and Frank Luntz, the long-time Republican word­smith. Notably absent were Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R‑Ky.) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R‑Ohio) — who, Draper writes, had an acri­mo­nious rela­tion­ship with Luntz.

Read the rest of the Article here.

Robert Draper Book: GOP’s Anti-Obama Campaign Started Night Of Inauguration

Republicans had no inter­est in America, what they cared about was Party over Country . Their sin­gu­lar goal is to main­tain pow­er at all cost . They were deter­mined that Obama would not be allowed to Govern. The acri­mo­ny and ran­cor which char­ac­ter­ized the polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment in Washington DC since the President took office was, and still is the strat­e­gy of the Republican Party.

Their goal is to trans­fer wealth from the 99% of Americans to the wealth­i­est 1%. To do that they have to main­tain pow­er at all cost. Eric Cantor was a dar­ling of the T‑Party , the front group of Charles and David Koch, Billionaire Industrialists.

Gerrymandered Districts cre­at­ed by Republicans to ensure safe re-elec­tion for their incum­bents, actu­al­ly cre­ate a bunch of hard­ened overzeal­ous ide­o­logues like Dave Bratt. In essence Eric Cantor the right wing hard-ass,eventually was not hard-ass enough, he fell on his own sword.

In my last Blog I high­light­ed the dis­par­i­ty in the way the city of Poughkeepsie was being run. I talked about the lack of Sanitation ser­vices in some parts of the city while oth­er parts are kept in pris­tine con­di­tion. I also

made clear that the Mayor needs to do a bet­ter job as all res­i­dents of the City deserve the same treatment.

I must also add that it is the respon­si­bil­i­ty or res­i­dents to take care of their com­mu­ni­ty. Eating from a paper plate and then sim­ply drop­ping it on the side­walk after fin­ish­ing the meal is com­mon sight here. The notion of walk­ing and eat­ing a full meal is prob­a­bly an alien con­cept to some of you , not so here. In some instances piz­za box­es are strewn on the side­walk, left exact­ly where the piz­za ran out or where the wind dis­card­ed it .

The dif­fer­ence in the life of the city is very sharp. Poverty, drugs , vio­lence, guns and sol­id mid­dle class life coex­ist togeth­er. Yet as if miles apart. It occurred to me today as I had brunch with my wife, that at the risk of sound­ing arro­gant or grand, life is large­ly depen­dent on the choic­es we make. We can decide to com­plain about the things which are wrong in our lives. Just how poor we are, just how bad­ly we have been treat­ed, or we may use those adver­si­ties as cat­a­lysts to empow­er ourselves.

Our city is infest­ed with drug users and push­ers. A few days ago a young man Shiquan M. Krouser, 27, was shot and killed by Police. It is alleged that he attacked and injured a female police offi­cer. Police respond­ed to a report of a man who was “dust­ed up” — high on angel dust or PCP — “caus­ing a dis­tur­bance, stop­ping cars, yelling and scream­ing,” at the inter­sec­tion of Main and Academy streets ear­ly Saturday morn­ing, “all they (offi­cers) know is the per­son they encoun­tered,” Chief Ron Knapp said. http://​www​.pough​keep​siejour​nal​.com/​s​t​o​r​y​/​n​e​w​s​/​c​r​i​m​e​/​2​0​1​4​/​0​5​/​2​7​/​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​n​a​a​c​p​-​i​n​v​e​s​t​i​g​a​t​e​-​s​h​o​o​t​i​n​g​/​9​6​4​7​1​75/

One could argue that the chal­lenges fac­ing the City Of Poughkeepsie are no dif­fer­ent than any oth­er city. There may be some ele­ment of truth to that.

I believe how­ev­er, that in a city this small , the dis­par­i­ty is pret­ty wide. Walk the streets of this city and you get a feel for what I’m talk­ing about. Drugs can be sourced on almost every cor­ner. Prostitutes roam the streets night and day and shoot­ings are nev­er far away.

Inside the Shadows Restaurant the Sunday after­noon crowd enjoyed fine din­ing in a com­fort­able and ele­gant atmos­phere. It does seem we chose to live the way we live . We are not bound by our present cir­cum­stance. How we react to adver­si­ties will impact what hap­pens to us going for­ward. Truly Poughkeepsie is a lot like oth­er American cities, she has some chal­lenges not found in oth­er cities how­ev­er. Residents of this Mid ‑Hudson City can do bet­ter to remove this stig­ma that our city is just a drug town where peo­ple go to get high, or as one crit­ic told me once ” a place where old peo­ple retire” .

This is a city where one is nev­er far from the Hudson River. The new­ly ren­o­vat­ed Walk-way over the Hudson is one of America’s newest and most scenic National Parks. We have two fab­u­lous Colleges here, State of the Art Hospitals and great din­ing. This lit­tle City on the Hudson can be a great place to live, it all depends on we the people.

City of Poughkeepsie, Population rough­ly 20,000. Chief Executive, ®Mayor John Tkazyik.

The City of Poughkeepsie is invit­ing all prop­er­ty own­ers who own a prop­er­ty clas­si­fied as “411” to explore the option of hav­ing the Sanitation Department col­lect refuse. We would like for you to com­pare your cur­rent san­i­ta­tion rates with the City of Poughkeepsie’s rates. The cost of refuse pick­up will be based on an assess­ment of the prop­er­ty done by the Department of Public Works. If you would like to set up an appoint­ment please con­tact DPW at (845) 451‑4111. http://​www​.city​of​pough​keep​sie​.com/

What the city’s Mayor and Website does not tell you is that these very prop­er­ty own­ers who own slight­ly larg­er Rental prop­er­ties enjoyed Garbage pick­up as a func­tion of the tax­es they pay like oth­er City Residents. These Property own­ers were forced to pay to have garbage from their prop­er­ties picked up by a Local Garbage com­pa­ny Royal Carting.

That arrange­ment lit­er­al­ly pun­ish­es those with a rental prop­er­ty with four or more Rental apart­ments. It’s a kind of dis­crim­i­na­to­ry pun­ish­ment of res­i­dents who have attained a degree of suc­cess. This is noth­ing new how­ev­er under this Mayor, there is a cer­tain type of selec­tive dis­pen­sa­tion of scarce resources in this not so large city. Main street, the main artery of the com­mer­cial dis­trict is clean and well main­tained . In the sec­tion from Academy down to the River. This sec­tion large­ly has white owned businesses . 

The sec­tion from Academy head­ing East to the City lim­its , sel­dom sees a street-clean­ing vehi­cle. In many instances there are shrubs grow­ing out of the side­walks. For full dis­clo­sure I have owned and oper­at­ed a Business on the lat­ter part of Main Street for 13 years. I have spo­ken to the Mayor about the way the Sanitation Department has gone about it’s func­tions and he has respond­ed swift­ly. However things go right back to the way they were the next day. This sec­tion is large­ly pop­u­lat­ed with Black and Mexican businesses.

Work crews have been busy installing new gas lines on the south­ern side of main street for months now . Residents have been forced to deal with traf­fic snarls. Business own­ers have com­plained of dras­tic reduc­tion in busi­ness as a result. Additionally, dust and noise pol­lu­tion from the heavy equip­ment adds to the mis­ery lev­el. Yet right on cue the City is busy hav­ing new park­ing meters installed for the first time on the east­ern cor­ri­dor of Main street.

Most cities do have park­ing meters. The prob­lem here in Poughkeepsie is that while the Mayor and his Administration gives the aver­age res­i­dent of the City less for his tax Dollar, large com­pa­nies seem to be doing real­ly well under his stew­ard­ship. If the Mayor wants to be a Mayor for all res­i­dents of the City, he must ensure ade­quate and equi­table dis­pen­sa­tion of ser­vices for tax-pay­ers funds. He can­not rea­son­ably ask for more, even as he gives less and less.

But then again the Mayor is already seek­ing high­er office. Business own­ers like myself will be forced to feed these Meters for the 11 or 12 hours we are open each day. Hopefully the Mayor will see fit to make sure that the streets are swept and the putrid sew­er odor in some areas are dealt with.

Officer Vincent LoGiudice appeared in Nassau County Court, where a grand jury indict­ment was unsealed, charg­ing him with two felony counts of sec­ond-degree assault and one count of third-degree assault in the April 25 beat­ing of Kyle Howell, 20. Prosecutors said the offi­cer used exces­sive force as he and his part­ner were attempt­ing to arrest Howell. LoGiudice was released on his own recog­ni­zance by Nassau County Court Judge Christopher Quinn. He faces a max­i­mum of 7 years in prison if con­vict­ed of the top charge. He is due back in court on July 2. LoGiudice, 34, has been sus­pend­ed with­out pay after an inves­ti­ga­tion con­duct­ed by the depart­men­t’s inter­nal affairs unit in con­junc­tion with the Nassau dis­trict attor­ney’s office, sources said Tuesday. Police allege in court doc­u­ments they were try­ing to stop Howell from swal­low­ing a bag of mar­i­jua­na, and that he kicked and punched police. 

http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​7​T​e​h​H​_​p​7​XGg

The only prob­lem with that sto­ry is that the video evi­dence dif­fers dra­mat­i­cal­ly from the

Police account . The cop was seen run­ning back to the front of the car after he was head­ed in the direc­tion of the rear of the car. How could this cow­ard claim he saw him swal­low­ing any­thing when he was at the rear of the car? The video seem to sug­gest that Howell said some­thing to the cop which he though was out of line. Heaven for­bid some­one talk back to one of these earth­ly Gods. In the video LoGiudice was seen run­ning back to where Howell was sit­ting and in a fit of rage rained blows all over the young man. Even if Howell had mar­i­jua­na he did not com­mit him­self against these lunatic and moron­ic cops. What is the penal­ty for pos­ses­sion of a bag of Marijuana?

To add insult to injury hun­dreds of these cow­ard­ly thugs were out in force sup­port­ed by their clos­et­ed big­ot­ed friends and neigh­bors denounc­ing the District Attorney for doing her job, which was to charge these two cow­ards with felony assault. The pur­pose of the mob of cops at the Court-House had noth­ing to do with sup­port­ing this cow­ard. They fun­da­men­tal­ly believe they are above the law. They believe they should not be held account­able for assault­ing any­one and they damn sure believe they should nev­er be ques­tioned or held account­able for seri­ous­ly assault­ing a 20 year-old African American male. What this bunch of big­ot­ed thugs suc­ceed­ed in doing was show­ing the world the con­tempt in which they hold the very pub­lic they are sworn to pro­tect. The very peo­ple who pay their ele­gant salaries, all $145,900 a year of it, allow­ing them to live on Long Island . Howell, who was arrest­ed on April 25, had surgery to repair an injured eye he suf­fered dur­ing the inci­dent. He said Tuesday he no longer trusts police offi­cers. The Police Union Boss believes this Cop is the best they have on Long Island. I believe that state­ment should send shiv­ers down the spine of every­one liv­ing and dri­ving through that part of New York. That state­ment how­ev­er sup­ports this Article. They are com­mon thugs.

No bag of mar­i­jua­na or any oth­er sub­stance gives a Cop the right to pum­mel a mem­ber of the pub­lic this way. Even if they sus­pect­ed that Howell was swal­low­ing the con­tra­band there are avenues in law which allows for a con­vic­tion through test­ing. If a con­vic­tion was that impor­tant to them. The fact of the mat­ter is these thug-cops want­ed to admin­is­ter a beat­ing to some­one they believe beneath them. Every sin­gle cop and sup­port­er who showed up in sup­port of that beat­ing is a dis­grace and a blight to the badge they wear, but more-so they are a dis­gust­ing blight on the human race.

Howell was charged with assault­ing two police offi­cers, wit­ness tam­per­ing and sev­er­al oth­er charges. All the charges were dropped last month after a judge reviewed the video.“I am very grate­ful that I have the video to prove my inno­cence,” Howell said last month. “Without the video, we would have no voice,” his moth­er, Joan Howell, said. “If there was no video, we would not be here today.”Even with the video, the police union and LoGiudice’s attor­ney warned against jump­ing to con­clu­sions in the case.

Not only were these crim­i­nal cops pre­pared to beat this young man into a pulp, they want­ed to send him to prison for a long time for get­ting beat­en by them. As far as their Union and Attorneys are con­cerned the video evi­dence should not be trust­ed. Obviously the pub­lic is too stu­pid to fig­ure out what they saw with their own eyes. They on the oth­er hand, are allowed to use the graini­est videos to con­vict sus­pects all the time, par­tic­u­lar­ly black suspects.

How many African-Americans are locked up in Jails and Prisons all across America on trumped-up charges and fab­ri­cat­ed evi­dence? Every year scores of peo­ple are released from Prison because Cops and Prosecutors , lie, fab­ri­cate or with­hold evi­dence result­ing in seri­ous Prison time for inno­cent cit­i­zens. To com­pound that prob­lem Courts are extreme­ly reluc­tant to revis­it decid­ed cas­es, even when there are strong evi­dence of Prosecutorial impro­pri­ety. The Nassau County DA on the dis­missal of the con­coct­ed charges, should have charged them with fil­ing false reports. In cas­es like these these cops should feel the full force of the laws. Police offi­cers are paid to pro­tect us, they are not above the laws.