Believe It or Not: You Decide

Well, everyone has been expecting a lawsuit since BellSouth and Cox failed to panic the public or intimidate the council. As it turns out the surprise little petition drive in the middle was just a pretext–something to give the big boys cover and standing when they trot out their first delaying lawsuit.

The Fiber411 boys won’t care for that interpretation but here is what the public has to decide: Do you think that the crew from Fiber411 came up with this convoluted tactic–one that involves obscure state laws, arguing for a new interpretation of the law that one segment of the code should be newly defined as controlling another, that at least two laws written to control in special cases (both of which apply in this instance) should be ignored ( one that BellSoouth had written specifically to control this instance), and piously mouthing the clearly bogus idea that dedicated opponents to the plan have suddenly replaced concern for corporations with a set of democratic values that they clearly don’t give a fig for. Do you believe that Fiber411 came up with that and that BellSouth standing on the sidelines, motivated by the pious concern for proper procedure in bond law that the Fiber411 guys “developed” stepped in to help out and clarify law? Or do you think a strategy like this much more likely the product of a phalanx of lawyers at BellSouth who knew that they needed some strategy, no matter how convoluted or weak to stop the sale of bonds which will lock the city into its plans legally, leaving BellSouth to only–gasp, horrors–compete.

I know what I think. I challenge the Fiber411 guys to tell us all just who suggested their legal strategy for starters. And just why they decided, at the moment when the bonds are being readied for approval, but when–even by the law they cite–they do not have the necessary city-parish signatures to halt it; why turn “your” petition in before you gather that last thousand–why unless someone has suggested that the time to do it is now, while the bonds can still be delayed. Who suggested that?

It is very hard (and I have been trying) not to smell a rat.