AZrailwhale
Diamond Member
I keep a wireline because in disasters, they continue to work. Cell sites depend on commercial power with back-up batteries that are only good for a couple of hours. Phone company offices have commercial power, back-up batteries AND either diesel or turbine generators (or in one case that I know of both) with at least a week's fuel stored on site (except in New York City where the back-up generators aren't allowed die to fire regulations).I don't know about Verizon, but most of the ATT cuts are voluntary early retirement buyouts to eliminate positions that increased usage of cellphones have made superfluous. Most people don't have wirelines any more so far fewer outside techs are needed to maintain the plant and install new services. That trend was happening a decade or more ago. My office staff dropped from four frame techs and three electronic tech for one office to one of each and in the last couple of years I worked, it dropped to five combined techs covering six offices from six thirty AM to eight PM and one combination tech covering twelve offices from eight PM to six thirty AM. There is less demand for wired phones plus the new fiber optic equipment is far less labor intensive than the old integrated circuit/copper wire equipment it replaces.The Republican tax giveaway to the richest people in our country extended into the businesses they owned. Then Majority-Leader Mitch McConnell told everyone that he believed the new jobs and trickling of wealth into society would make the tax cuts “be beyond revenue neutral." This means that the hit to our country’s collective coffers would be taken up by all the piles of money these businesses and wealthy folks would gift everybody. Right away every big business reported pulling in billions of dollars that they quickly pocketed or used for buybacks of their own stocks. McConnell said he was surprised that his plans of giving hundreds of billions of dollars to the wealthiest people in our society, with zero strings attached, didn’t work the way it never has and never will in the history of our country.
On the flip side workers’ wages have slumped under the Republican-version of the free market. Added to this is that instead of creating more jobs, big business and their tax cuts have laid off more workers during that time. Two of the biggest tax benefactors, telecoms Verizon and AT&T—who have pulled in tens of billions of dollars in government money over the past five years, are guilty of laying off almost 100,000 people during that same time. And now, after all of that, Republicans are once again nakedly calling for austerity measures to shore up our national debt. This play is being made in the hopes of chipping away further at the already weak social safety net programs, most of which are wildly popular—like Medicaid and Social Security.
Verizon and AT&T cut nearly 100,000 jobs but keep billions in tax breaks
The Republican tax giveaway to the richest people in our country extended into the businesses they owned. Then Majority-Leader Mitch McConnell told everyone that he believed the new jobs and trickling of wealth into society would make the tax cuts “be...m.dailykos.com
The trickle will start any minute now.
Thanks for the information.
I am 83.
There are two landlines in the house.
I use a simple cellular flip phone only for emergencies.
On Tuesday one of the landlines lost its dial tone.
I was told that I would have to wait until Monday before a technician could out to check the situation.
Now I understand why the service is so slow nowadays.
