Prometheus 6

Cable companies are granted monopolies or franchises to operate. Why didn't those kneegrows who sat on the L.A. City Council or that kneegrow-who-would-be-governor Tom Bradley write black folks' neighborhoods into the franchise that was granted to Adelphia or whatever cable company that was given the contract?

Because LA was perhaps the least desirable metropolitan cable franchise in the U.S.

At the time it was built, the original cable franchise in LA was the largest metropolitan cable system in the country - Because of its sheer size, and the concommittant capital requirements (cable operators like any other infrastructure builder want to fund as much as possible out of operations, as opposed to out of their pockets) - it was a very difficult challenge getting any operators to step up and make the attempt at provisioning in LA.

In order to solve the problem, initial buildout of the franchise was focused in areas with a high concentration of apartment complexes and hotels. These are the cherry picks in the cable business, as a little infrastructure provides a considerable return on capital investment.

Because of its scale and complexity of funding from operations, mainstream operators would not take LA on. Into this vacuum steps an organized criminal crew. Deeze nefarious muhfukkaz didn't even attempt a best practices rollout that met the unique challenges of LA topography. Rather, they focused their routine efforts on the high density/high yield areas, and, in the residential areas, they setup a shakedown operation in which field reps were doing "collections" for services. (since these were expected to underperform anyway...,) said collections never making it onto the general ledger. Effectively, the banking syndicate which financed the original buildout was getting soaked for all infrastructure with no return on its capital lent to make this happen.

LA's original metropolitan cable system became a grand criminal enterprise netting its owner operators a rich criminal booty and putting some of the largest non-performing loans ever on the books of some fairly significant banks.., those banks were eventually forced to foreclose on the system with the upshot being that banker governed operations went into effect for a couple of years. Banker management took an already bad situation and failed to improve on it. What was already tore up from the floor up got much worse after bank imposed stop-loss management was put into effect. (after all this, the plot actually thickens.)

Once the racketeers got pulled out of the picture by the FBI and the banking syndicate that financed the original boondoggle, they were replaced as owner/operators by a group of Mormon sheepherders from Wyoming...., about a year into this change of ownership, I was sent into this situation to help find out why cash flow hadn't substantively improved over the halcyon period during which straight gangsterism had been the order of the day. I was 26 years old and spent several months in LA having the time of my life.

IMOHO - every young man should have such interesting and instructive adventures...,

I think we have the makings of a script for a Chinatown sequel based on this discussion of the criminal under-current behind the development of the cable television industry in Los Angeles. Water apparently isn't the only corruptible industry in the city of angels. The fact that this whole story would include Mormon sheepherders in Wyoming is pure gold. Somebody inform Roman Polanski we have a script idea.... From what I understand, Jack Nicholson directed a sequel to Chinatown chronicling the criminal influences in the development of the natural gas industry in LA that bombed and subsequently dropped plans to direct a third installement chronicling the development of the region's freeway system. I think we have a chance to revive the franchise with a story focusing on the cable television industry. Seriously, this would make a great non-fiction book. I favor another thread to continue this conversation.

As it happens I hate white guilt too, but it's because it blocks their intelligence. What I'm looking for is white responsibility...as in acting responsibly, not taking blame per se. There's GOT to be a way for them between the scylla of white guilt and the charybdis of white rage.

The LA cable infrastructure boondoggle provided a perfect example of middle of the road responsibility, i.e., responsibility to proprietors, shareholders, etc..., That Black folk's proclivities for television consumption got underserved in the process was strictly coincidental.

Frankly, until and unless Black folks get some chips on the infrastructure table, our interests aren't merely fungible, they're negligible. It's a straightaway given that Black folks have succumbed as fully and completely to the shinies of marketing as any other group in America.

That said, perhaps it's time to redefine the public expression of Black folks interests. Cobb has indicated repeatedly that anti-racist efforts have gone as far as they're going to go, and frankly I tend to agree with him. (notwithstanding my dogged pursuit of an acceptably rigorous explanation of racism as a psychological phenomenon, a pursuit I've enjoined both here and there and brought near to its conclusion.)

I think it's overdue time to take racial politics as private as cosa nostra, mormonism, and judaism. Time to focus on education and economics. That way, should you elect to engage in coalition politics, you have something other than a voting bloc to bring to the coalition...,

I think few things illustrate how effective such an approach can be than the example of the mormons and the way they operationalize mormon partisan business and politics. Perhaps Black folks should aspire to controlling some states, top-to-bottom the way the mormons control Utah and much of Wyoming...,

Don't think quoting me will drag me into this nonsense. I'm REALLY going to suggest Black folks do what I ragged on Libertarians for trying with South Carolina?

cnulan...  how does your discussion of how the cable industry was slow in providing services to black neighborhoods relate to the new reality in which a disproportionate number of black people have limited access to the internet?  Given that the internet is starting to replace the tv as a means of entertainment and information, what kinds of challenges do black people face in confronting the more raw and uncensored forms of racism that are to be found online?  Do you think black folk are in a better position to avoid being bamboozled as cyberspace becomes the more dominant form of media--is the black community prepared to acquire "some chips on the infastructure table" at this point in the game?              

cnulan... how does your discussion of how the cable industry was slow in providing services to black neighborhoods relate to the new reality in which a disproportionate number of black people have limited access to the internet?

It doesn't. Black folks comprise a sought after consumer market. My point about LA's metropolitan cable system was that criminality and corporatism might have given rise to an appearance of intentional neglect, when in fact, there was no such intentionality, at all.

Given that the internet is starting to replace the tv as a means of entertainment and information, what kinds of challenges do black people face in confronting the more raw and uncensored forms of racism that are to be found online?

Other than being shut out of the galactic core of the blogosphere because of the social and technological architecture of blog popularity a subject about which P6 could tell you vastly more than I, I don't particularly think Black folks face any particular challenges in cyberspace. AFAIC, having been online since Project Athena started in 1982 - I've never personally found it problematic. You will never hear me mewling about not being taken seriously or not being heard or being shut out in online discussions. Frankly, I have no patience for such pathetic weaklings....,

Do you think black folk are in a better position to avoid being bamboozled as cyberspace becomes the more dominant form of media--is the black community prepared to acquire "some chips on the infastructure table" at this point in the game?

Get back at me in a couple years after I've finished stacking all my chips and I'll let you know.

cnulan.... what kind of information was exchanged when project Athena first began and how has the exchange of information changed since? 

P6...  I was wondering if you could speak to the issue brought up in the earlier entry in which cnulan mentioned you would be a person in a position to comment on the exclusionary environment which permeates the blogosphere.     

cnulan.... what kind of information was exchanged when project Athena first began and how has the exchange of information changed since?

the celestial light of purest knowledge and inquiry has been supplanted by the quotidian filth and evil that lurks in the gonads and the reptile brains of the lowest common denominators of humanity....,

P6...  I was wondering if you could speak to the issue brought up in the earlier entry

I could, but right now I'm watching. Remember, this ain't my thread. 

I think it's overdue time to take racial politics as private as cosa nostra, mormonism, and judaism. Time to focus on education and economics. That way, should you elect to engage in coalition politics, you have something other than a voting bloc to bring to the coalition...

Faces at the Bottom of the Well: page 65

some of us need to be exchanging key pairs