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Inky: Laptop family lives in Main Line mansion, doesn't like to pay the power bill
The Web site for the award-winning alternative weekly, the Philadelphia City Paper.
Inky: Laptop family lives in Main Line mansion, doesn't like to pay the power bill
The Inky has an interesting new twist on Webcamgate today (h/t to the Clog commenters for hipping me; I hadn't read the paper this morning).
The vice chairman of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission could scarcely contain his scorn.
Before the commission was yet another appeal from a Philadelphia-area family, again seeking a break on unpaid electric and gas bills that by last year were closing in on $30,000.
This family lived in a $986,000 house on the Main Line. The breadwinner, until recently, had earned well more than $100,000 per year. Yet he and his wife were in hock to creditors, ranging from Uncle Sam to their former synagogue - and had regularly been stiffing Peco Energy for five years, breaking payment plan after payment plan.
"Our procedures," the commission's Tyrone J. Christy wrote in a Dec. 17 motion, "were not meant to allow customers living in $986,000 houses, with incomes in excess of $100,000 per year, to run up arrearages approaching $30,000."
The debtors in question were insurance broker Michael Robbins and his wife, Holly, who now find themselves in the national spotlight after suing the Lower Merion School District, saying it allegedly spied on their child at home via a Web cam on a school-issued laptop.
What's more, it seems the reason Blake's computer may have been considered stolen — and hence, why the district may have snapped a picture of Blake, at home, popping Mike and Ikes or whatever the hell he was doing — is because the debt-ridden family declined to pay the $55 insurance fee that allows students to take their Macbooks home.
The Robbins' attorney, Mark Haltzman, says these are questions newspapers shouldn't be asking.
"I absolutely advised them, because I know the low level that newspaper people will go to for a story," Haltzman said yesterday, "even if it has nothing to do with the merits of the case."
[snip]
"Why does that matter?" Haltzman said when asked about the debts this week. "This is typical of any time someone stands up for their rights. Everyone tried to find a way to bring them down."
Even so, it was the apparent failure to pay a fee - a $55 insurance payment to permit the Robbinses' son Blake to take his laptop home from Harriton High School - that might have prompted the district to activate the Web cam.
Right. Because you get to accuse school officials of spying on their children in their homes — their bedrooms, even — and no one's going to question your motives.
Doesn't make the school district's policy choices correct, but at least the pieces are starting to fall in place.
As far as I know LMSD policy does not allow students who do not carry insurance on the laptops to take them off school grounds.
I still think there are ways to track stolen computers than to take pictures from an embedded web cam. Who knows what problems they are just asking for with that kind of policy. Lets say the kids knew about it, stole a laptop and sat around naked in front of the webcam just to get the school in trouble. How would a school system register on the sex offenders list anyway?
LMSD certainly has no grounds to complain about people living beyond their means in million dollar homes. That kind of lifestyle is the driving force behind the huge property tax flows that fund this bloated, profligate-spending school district.
[...] RELATED:Â Inky: Laptop family lives in Main Line mansion, doesnÂ’t like to pay the power bill RELATED: So, um, did the kid make it up? RELATED: Breaking: Lower Merion School District admits it's used Webcam "security feature" more than once Tags: bronx is 339, daniel ackerman, digital nation, douglas young, lower merion school district PBS documentary shows Bronx school watching unwitting students via Webcams [...]
PECO is not only creditor getting stiffed. Check the Montgomery County website legal actions section. Three pages of activity involving this couple.
Its Simple as far as I am concerned, It comes down to its the Schools Laptop they can do what they want with it, if they want to have tracking software on it they can and when its Missing they should be free to turn on the tracking software to locate property. The laptop was MIA the school has every right to try and find it. I am shocked given all this that the Judge has not tossed this case out yet.
[...] "He's making this up because his case is falling apart," Mandracchia said. PREVIOUSLY>> Inky: Laptop family lives in Main Line mansion, doesn't like to pay the power bill PREVIOUSLY>> Blake Robbins' crime? Popping Mike-and-Ike's, he says. Webcam-gate, now with [...]
RE message from Jim Steele - How do you do this, check the Montgomery County website.
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