{"id":5672,"date":"2010-03-05T07:53:09","date_gmt":"2010-03-05T13:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=5672"},"modified":"2010-03-05T07:53:09","modified_gmt":"2010-03-05T13:53:09","slug":"the-citizen-or-consumer-always-pays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2010\/03\/05\/the-citizen-or-consumer-always-pays\/","title":{"rendered":"The Citizen or Consumer Always Pays"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <em>Springfield-News Leader<\/em> discovers that a recent government lawsuit against a private company will <a href=\"http:\/\/www.news-leader.com\/article\/20103050365\" target=\"_blank\">cost the consumers<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>AT&#038;T is charging Springfield landline customers a roughly $2-a-month fee in order to recoup a $7.45 million settlement with Springfield&#8217;s city government.<\/p>\n<p>And Springfield is not alone. Customers from 270 other Missouri communities will also pay the fee for five years.<\/p>\n<p>Surprised?<\/p>\n<p>AT&#038;T says city officials were aware the company would use a state law that allows the company to recoup the money and that officials or the public should not be surprised.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Who is surprised by this?  A few guesses:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Journalists unfamiliar with the economics of doing business, where you raise prices&#8211;or in this case, use lawful line items on bills&#8211;to recoup additional costs.<\/li>\n<li>People who don&#8217;t know any better and learn these things from journalists.<\/li>\n<li>Skittish kittens who are taken aback by anything loud.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Keep that in mind whenever The Good Guys In The Government stick it to the robber barons who have to work for a living: the citizen or the consumer always pays, sometimes twice (once for the sticking it to, and once for being stuck it to).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Springfield-News Leader discovers that a recent government lawsuit against a private company will cost the consumers: AT&#038;T is charging Springfield landline customers a roughly $2-a-month fee in order to recoup a $7.45 million settlement with Springfield&#8217;s city government. And Springfield is not alone. Customers from 270 other Missouri communities will also pay the fee [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-overreach"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5672"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5674,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5672\/revisions\/5674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}