The Biden administration is continuing its push to bring internet connectivity to every home and business in the U.S.
What are the odds that there’s no accountability for any company taking this money?
Near 100%
Dems are all about social good, half-assed at double cost.
Agreed on the 100% part, but this absolutely isn’t specific to political parties. They both love giving corporate handouts with no strings attached. I suspect this has more to do with campaign donations than anything else. It’s the same with defense spending where we regularly just can’t account for millions of dollars.
Even with the PPP, which was fully bipartisan, they claimed to have strings and then just forgave 10 million of them, even though we know many workers never saw the money intended for them. Slightly different situation, but similar things happened with rural internet initatives in the 90s as well
My super generalized statement wasn’t so much saying that dems were the only corporatists, but that just that they espouse social good and use that as the means and justification for their inevitably corporatist actions.
One of my favorite ones was Obama care, making insurance companies record profits. Where did that money come from? Us… taxpayers. The ones it was supposed to save money. I’m sure there were some outliers that were really helped with the whole pre-existing conditions protections, but the rest of us got shafted.
That’s a terrible example, and generally not much of your post is true. Most people aren’t actively paying for the ACA through taxes, only the richest 20% of americans (>281k /year) src, and in fact it saved many Americans money even without pre-existing conditions. Plus the ACA has saved many lives.
The cost and concessions made to pass it are more a reflection of how awful capitalism and the american healthcare system are. Those companies were always going to make record profits regardless of whether the ACA passed or not, just like many other companies, and you always foot the bill for the uninsured/underinsured anyway through other methods like ER visits and cascading illness through inability to pay for services. You also pay for them when they have medical emergencies and file for bankruptcy and when they become homeless because of medical issues or the payment of medical goods and services.
Also remember, many democrats were pushing for single-payer which would’ve skirted most of this by expanding medicare and forcing insurance companies to compete.
It’s almost like Reps erode nearly every plan for oversight before it can be passed, every single time, so that their corporate donors get exactly what they want; funding without the “difficulty” of not stealing. Same thing happened with “Obamacare” when they gutted every bit of the cost savings measures that would have limited the rates, negotiated drug prices, etc. Are people really that blind to it?
Oh, more handouts for the ISPs? $400B wasn’t enough? NO government money should be given to ISP companies until the people who stole the last money are held accountable.
here it’s going to a company that’s charging double or triple (or more) what the phone companies do in the country where dsl has been extended… and for far less speed…
these guys certainly aren’t using those public funds to build an adequate network in the rural / small towns part of the state.
Do what the constitution says you have the power to do. Have the usps create a modern communication system that gives connectivity to every home in the USA.
We could have done fiber to the home three times over for what the ISPs have stolen since the 80s.
I wonder how long it will take for the ISPs to misappropriate these funds. Seems like they’re really good at that.
I wonder if a credit voucher kind of system could work. Rather than give the money directly to the ISPs who will take the money and change nothing. What if each user in the area was given a credit voucher for their share. They don’t get to keep the money, but can choose to spend their voucher via an ISP who meets the criteria. Customers see direct benefit because they’re “purchasing” services with govt money and ISPs can’t just take the money without reinvesting.
we can also just pay for the CapEx for a municipal broadband project, or countywide public broadband or something
Man, this would be the dream. The US has let a lot of essential services and utilities become run by private companies seeking only the highest profit. There’s some things that should be provided by the government, and I believe internet connection is one of them.
