U-verse cabinets often make the evening news when they are plunked down in your front yard, as this report from North Carolina shows.

A drunk driver that managed to take out one of AT&T’s “lawn refrigerators” powering its U-verse service in San Jose was the start of a four-week nightmare for a family driven from their home by a loud, polluting emergency generator left running by the phone company 24 hours a day. Falsely blamed for an accident? Here’s what to do.

AT&T responded to the accident scene after half the neighborhood lost service. Technicians installed a replacement green lawn box and fired up an emergency generator to restore service until Pacific Gas & Electric could arrive to hook up regular power to the AT&T box. If you’re looking for a versatile solution for emergencies, outdoor adventures, or job sites, portable generators are compact and mobile, making them perfect for a temporary, self-contained power source.

And then nothing happened… for weeks.

Emily White’s home on New Jersey Ave was treated to nearly a month of continuous generator noise and fumes that made staying in the house impossible.

“We could smell the exhaust in our house and the noise was just endless and loud,” White told KGO-TV. “It vibrated the windows, we couldn’t use our backyard, we went away on the weekends just to get away from it.”

The family ended up canceling their Father’s Day barbecue and left for an area hotel, regularly calling AT&T to try to get them to deal with the generator but had no response. But it turned out they may have called the wrong company to complain.

Nearly a month after the accident, PG&E trucks arrived to finally restore power to AT&T’s equipment. They also assumed full responsibility for the delay.

“We could have and should have done better by this customer. We want to do a deeper dive into why the work took so long,” PG&E spokesperson Nicole Liebelt said.

The electric company is also picking up the cost of the family’s hotel stay.

KGO-TV reports PG&E may have been the guilty party for leaving an AT&T emergency generator up and running for nearly a month. (2:11)

Roberts

Although perhaps understandable that MSNBC (owned by Comcast) would report on the death Ralph Roberts, the founder of America’s largest cable operator, some thought Joe Scarborough went too far in a nearly seven minute puff piece about Roberts on Morning Joe, recounting the history of Comcast and its founder.

“Tupelo, Mississippi. That was our introduction to the cable business,” Roberts said. “I didn’t pay too much attention to Tupelo because I didn’t know anything about cable — I didn’t even know what it was. And Tupelo, nobody ever heard of that except I later found out it was the birthplace of Elvis Presley.”

Scarborough was very friendly about Comcast, calling it “a family” he was proud to work for.

Roberts went on to say he raised his kids to go forth and do whatever gives them the greatest happiness and don’t worry about what anyone says about it.

“I wanted to throw up,” said Stop the Cap! reader Joe Weigel. “Comcast is a family, but so are the ‎Gambinos, the ‎Bonannos and the ‎Luccheses. Maybe that goes a little far and I feel bad when anyone passes away and hold nothing against the patriarch of the Roberts family on this sad occasion. But what the hell is NBC News thinking running a seven minute puff piece about the founder of the most-hated corporation in America without bothering to mention that fact? I’m more angry about that than anything.”

“They have all that airtime and tell a very one-sided tale about a family whose ethics in the cable business is frankly to do whatever gives them the greatest happiness and not worry about what anyone says about it,” Weigel adds. “That isn’t news and it’s shameful for a news channel to discard any standards in journalism and produce a story that doesn’t even try to tell the whole story. Viewers deserved better.”

Roberts died June 18th. He was 95.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/MSNBC Comcast Lovefest 6-25-15.mp4[/flv]

Morning Joe aired a very gracious piece about the founder of the most-hated corporation in America. Ralph Roberts founded Comcast in 1963. He died last week at the age of 95. MSNBC is wholly owned by Comcast. (6:49)

Comcast must reveal the identity of its broadband subscriber who left an anonymous comment on the Freeport Journal Standard’s website that suggested a political candidate was a child molester.

The Illinois Supreme Court affirmed a local court ruling that compels Comcast to name the writer known as “Fuboy” and share that information with Bill Hadley, who ran for a seat on the Stephenson County board in 2011.

In response to a story about Hadley, “Fuboy” anonymously attacked the candidate in a comment attached to the story:

“Hadley is a Sandusky waiting to be exposed,” the commenter wrote. “Check out the view he has of Empire (Elementary School) from his front door.”

Sandusky is an apparent reference to former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky, convicted of child sexual abuse in 2012.

Hadley spent three and a half years and more than $30,000 pursuing the identity of the commenter. Hadley is a retired Illinois corrections officer and chairman of the county board.

“It’ll be a huge victory for me, but it has practically broke me financially,” Hadley told the Associated Press.

At the heart of the case is whether a person is allowed to make potentially libelous comments anonymously on an online forum. Multiple court rulings in Illinois suggest there is no guarantee of privacy if those comments defame another.

“There are folks who go through life thinking that the Internet provides permanent anonymous protection. This case makes clear that that’s not true,” said Don Craven, an attorney for the Illinois Press Association.

Chatham County Sheriff’s Deputy O’Berry ejects a WXIA-TV news crew from a Savannah, Ga. hotel room at the direction of a senior official of the American Legislative Exchange Council. (Image: WXIA-TV)

When an Atlanta news crew from WXIA-TV asked questions about a closed-door meeting involving Georgia lawmakers, wireless industry lobbyists, and the American Legislative Exchange Council, Bill Meierling, vice president of communications for ALEC, directed four armed sheriff’s deputies to kick the news crew out of their hotel rooms and escort them to the street.

“I am a guest of the hotel, sir,” WXIA reporter Brendan Keefe told Chatham County sheriff’s deputy A. O’Berry.

“Not for long, we’ll take care of that,” responded O’Berry.

“Are we violating a law here?” Keefe asked another deputy who told them to gather their belongings.

“Don’t say nothing,” O’Berry told the other deputy.

“To protect Republicans and serve giant corporations,” said Atlanta resident Larry Jefferson, who tipped us off. “To watch a hack from ALEC wave his arm and see armed deputies throw a reporter who paid for his room out of a hotel for just asking questions should wake up every American about where this country has gone.”

In a resort hotel in Savannah, the newest crop of bills likely to end up before Georgia lawmakers are being written by corporate lobbyists for introduction by friendly legislators willing to do their bidding.

At ALEC’s Communications & Technology Task Force Luncheon, Keefe spotted Rep. Ben Harmon hobnobbing with a lobbyist for CTIA, the giant wireless lobby. When he approached Harmon, Keefe was pulled out of the room. He soon found Meierling in the lobby being watched over by four off duty Chatham County deputies paid to protect ALEC’s event.

“Turn off the camera,” Meierling demanded.

When Keefe refused, Meierling told him he was going to have him thrown out of the hotel.

Keefe persisted and asked who was paying for the legislators to attend. “Lobbyists?” Keefe asked.

“No,” Meierling replied.

Unfortunately for Meierling, looser lips from an unidentified New England legislator and two lobbyists in the hotel bar the night before suggested otherwise. One lobbyist admitted she paid a higher fee to be there to help subsidize legislators’ travel expenses.

Meierling

When confronted with that information, Meierling sighed deeply and waved over the officers to do their duty… to ALEC.

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” Deputy O’Berry immediately demanded as he walked up to the reporter. He was uninterested in the fact Keefe was a paid guest at the hotel. Keefe and WXIA had to go, to protect the interests and the secrecy of a group that is responsible for writing many state laws across the country.

“It’s a corporate bill mill,” said former ALEC member Sen. Nan Orreck. “The truth be told, they write the bills.”

“There are votes taken that have the corporate folks at the same table voting with the legislators on what bills to pick and that at its core just screams out inappropriate,” Orreck said. She left the group.

For the convenience of legislators, ALEC model bills come to their desks already written. All a legislator has to do is fill in the name of his or her state on a blank line and the bill is ready for introduction. To help educate lawmakers about the hot button issues bothering America’s largest corporations, ALEC’s legislative members — almost all Republicans — are paid “scholarships” in the thousands of dollars to attend resort meetings.

David Ralston, the speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, even penned a fundraising letter on ALEC letterhead looking for $5,000 contributions to send fellow lawmakers to ALEC’s annual meetings.

“O’Berry and those other deputies should be suspended, fired, and then thrown in jail for dereliction of duty,” Jefferson believes. “These deputies either don’t know or don’t care about the law, something O’Berry was well aware of when he told another deputy to keep his mouth shut.”

“ALEC exists to subvert our democracy and any identified member of this group in public office should no longer be there.”

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WXIA-TV in Atlanta introduces viewers to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group that can summon sheriff’s deputies to toss a reporter out of a hotel where he was a paid guest just for asking too many embarrassing questions. (6:31)

The community of Hampton Falls, N.H., was first settled in the year 1638 but many of the 2,200 residents of the New England town are settling for Comcast no more.

Selectmen of Hampton Falls called on Comcast to send a representative to their meeting after scores of locals complained about the awfulness of the local cable company.

“Comcast’s service is absolutely miserable,” said Hampton Falls vice-chairman Larry Smith. “On a scale of 1-10, I’d say it’s a zero.”

Smith shared a personal experience about his wife’s attempt to shift her business email to her residential account. Comcast repeatedly sent her to the wrong department.

“This is designed to be the worst system possible,” Smith said. “It’s a virtual monopoly. Comcast doesn’t reward or honor loyalty. If you don’t have an hour or two to devote to it, you don’t even bother picking up the phone.”

Comcast made another local resident drive back and forth to Portsmouth three times to pick up a new router because the equipment proved defective each time.

“Everyone who knows me knows that I don’t get irate, but this ticked me off,” the customer said.

Comcast representative Jay Somers took heat throughout the meeting for missed service calls, poor equipment, poor Internet service, and lousy customer service.

His responses did not seem to satisfy residents:

• On missed service calls, Somers said Comcast did not provide enough technicians to handle service calls in the area. He added the company tries to have someone responding within 24 hours, but that obviously was not consistently happening in Hampton Falls;
• On Internet outages, Somers blamed customers using their own purchased modems instead of relying on Comcast’s own Internet Gateway, which costs an extra $10 per month;
• Television and other outages were the fault of home wiring or animals allowed to chew on Comcast’s cables.

Somers promised Comcast treated every customer the same, regardless of whether they were a budget minded customer or one taking every service they have.

While in no rush to deal with customer complaints, Comcast sent a letter signed by Nick Leuci, vice president of franchising, pressuring the town to hurry renewal of Comcast’s local franchise, despite having over a year remaining on the current agreement.

Based on the number of complaints from local residents, the board decided to take that matter up at a later date.