And they're still not going to get it. That money is going straight to internet provider exec bonuses and reported profits.
this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
210 points (98.2% liked)
politics
18883 readers
4000 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
We don't want 82 million in giveaways to Comcast.
We want public Internet that is free to users and run by the government
$82 million goes to Comcast
Comcast fires 20% of staff
Delays rollout by 3-years
Asks for more funding to complete project
I feel like we've seen this show before...
Ding ding ding. I’ll gladly open a holding company and promise to bring high speed internet to the masses. All I need is $82M in funding from the government. Then I’ll delay the installation by 20 years, lay off staff in those 20 years, give myself an $82M bonus, then say I need more funding with a renewed promise to bring high speed internet to the masses. Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s a tale that has been going for as long as ISPs have existed.
then you want a congress that will pass a bill and approve that
Free, and run by the government sounds like ‘highly regulated and restricted’ to me. Like they would have any reservations on sucking up everyone’s data.
Edit: Downvote me all you want, but remember Snowden and the NSA.
You haven't heard of municipal ISPs?
i mean exactly considering that republicans are literally trying to do that with kosa, which republicans are admitting is just to censor lgbtq content.
A VPN solves this
Not really anymore. Browser tracking through fingerprinting is quite effective.
I'm not here just to be a contrarian, but I really don't fully agree with some of the hot takes in these comments. So here's my perspective:
I'm in a rural area and because of this type of funding, I have decent high speed internet. The same can be said for my neighbors, some of whom didn't have internet until very recently because the options weren't really viable or reliable.
I get that this is a wonderful opportunity to sling vitriol at the government AND businesses. I get that there were spectacular failures in the past. But the reality is, like usual, more nuanced than that.
A lot of this type of money has, and likely will be, used to support building infrastructure for rural areas that would otherwise not be economically viable for companies to provide that kind of service to. Living in a rural area, I'm not convinced that many/any people are going to change their vote to Biden because they suddenly have access to (or promises of future access to) fiber internet. I'm also not convinced that Biden and his administration would have any reasonable expectation otherwise.
Additionally, I'm sure some of this money will go to the big corporations and directly into the pockets of the top execs. However, it does provide work and jobs for regular "commoners" as well. It's also the case that the big players aren't always the ones getting that money. A lot of this type of money is going to replace copper infrastructure with fiber, and a lot of the work is being done by smaller / regional companies because they're the ones who have been operating these areas all these years while the big players focused on the most profitable areas with the higher returns on investment.
Of course, feel free to aimlessly hate on the entire system, but at least do so knowing that this type of thing IS helping real people and that if/when they see these types of comments, it's pretty clear that folks are being unrealistic and dogmatic.
Will there be any rule changes/enforcement to keep ISP's from dividing up territories into regional monopolies?
I have two AT&T fibers running under my front yard, but they'll only offer me a dial up connection. Spectrum cable is my only real option, and they keep raising the price.
My problem has nothing to do with a lack of infrastructure and is clearly the result of collusion that is supposedly illegal.
"Thanks," said the cable companies as they start shopping for new yatchs.
Let the brides begin! It’s campaign season!
Brides? Bribes
This is the best summary I could come up with:
President Biden is heading to North Carolina on Thursday to announce $82 million in new investments to connect homes and businesses in the state to high-speed internet.
The funding comes from the American Rescue Plan, which was the COVID-19 relief package Biden signed into law in 2021, and aims to connect an additional 16,000 homes and businesses in North Carolina.
The investment, according to a fact sheet from the White House, will also create jobs in manufacturing and construction to produce “Made-in-America fiber-optic cable that will build out internet infrastructure across the country.”
Biden will give remarks and discuss his goal to connect over 300,000 more homes and businesses to high-speed internet by the end of 2026, through a total of $1 billion from the American Rescue Plan.
Biden’s remarks will highlight his so-called Bidenomics agenda, which is his economic plan to build the economy from the bottom up and the middle out.
Trump also won the state in the 2016 election, beating former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
The original article contains 305 words, the summary contains 169 words. Saved 45%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Now there's Car-online-a.
Why he's doing this:
Former President Trump beat Biden for North Carolina in 2020. Trump also won the state in the 2016 election, beating former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
All this stuff coming out now is just token measures to make it look like he's helping people so they vote for him.
And sure, they're better off than if nothing was done, but it's going to be obvious for voters they're only getting attention because an election is coming up.
Trying to help them the whole term and not just pre election would get a lot more votes, and help a lot more people.
But would be a bigger hit to donors pocketbooks.
The article is light on details too, so I suspect most of this money is going to telecoms again for them to run the fiber, and like every other time we've given them money, they'll likely just keep it and not do anything
Presidents do this every time they're up for re-election. This is nothing new. Of course they're going to pander to states they want to win.
The kleptocracy already paid billions for high speed broadband infrastructure. Telcos stole the money, delivered nothing, and the kleptocracy kept giving them money.
What's changed?
I have no idea what changed. I didn't say anything changed. I said he was pandering to the state, which is just what presidents do when they want to win a state and they're up for re-election.
I think this will be the third time, but maybe the fourth? I'm not sure why it's expected to work this time. Maybe Biden even knows that but just wants the optics? I don't know what would be worse honestly.
And yeah, if we're subsidizing this states internet bills....
The providers are just going to raise the price by that much in a year or two anyways.
Sure it doesn't work and voters have wised up to it... But this is what we always do so we'll keep doing it even tho it doesn't work!
You know what we haven't tried and will likely work?
Actually putting the work in and trying to help Americans the entire term and not trying to only do the bare minimum for appearances to trick people into thinking they're being helped...
At least that way, even if we don't get the votes, we're helping people.
For fucks sake, the most common reason most non voters have given for decades is that neither party legitimately wants to help them, they just get tossed crumbs before an election, and that's only if they live in a battleground state.
This shit isn't complicated. It's just helping Americans makes donors unhappy, and Dems consistently underestimate how much voters can see thru this pandering.
What do you call a nation-spanning infrastructure bill? Or offering cash payments to low income families so their kids can buy food in the summer?
I'm all for criticizing Biden, but it should be honest criticism.
Voters have wised up to it? Do you have any actual evidence of that?
Yeah, election results...
In addition to surveys of non voters.
I get a random person on social media not knowing that, but our president and his campaign team should.
Please present this evidence. Just saying you have evidence is not actually having evidence. I would like to see these surveys and how they show that voters have wised up to political pandering.
Politics is simply not the way to make change, they said. Two-thirds of nonvoters agree, for example, that voting has little to do with the way that real decisions are made in this country; they are 21 points more likely to say so than people who voted.
A majority also said they believe it makes no difference who is elected president and that things will go on just as they did before. Nonvoters were 29 points more likely to say that than people who voted. (Read more about why they didn't vote, in their own words.)
And
Nonvoters are also more likely than voters to say that traditional parties and politicians don't care about people like me; the mainstream media is more interested in making money than telling the truth; the American economy is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful; success in life is pretty much determined by forces outside our control; and to feel that most issues discussed in Washington don't affect them personally.
The article already says NC voted trump the last two elections, and I already quoted it...
So I'm going to assume you don't need another source for that
Just because you only pay attention around election time does not mean Biden has been doing nothing this entire time... that doesn't make any sense. Like he hibernated through the term and only just now regained consciousness to campaign again?
This reeks of both-sideism. Please compare the platforms and policies of the two sides you seem equally disillusioned with.
No, I have been paying attention...
One of the biggest criticism of Biden s early years, was that he appeared to have no plan when he took office. He didn't have anything ready to go, and said he would start to look into his various campaign promises.
And before that was done, we lost the House.
This reeks of both-sideism
Republicans are a lost cause.
If the only standard for the only other option is "not republican" then we, as a country not just a party, are completely fucked.
1/3 of this country doesn't vote, moving further right for decades isn't working. It's time to go back to FDR style Dems when Republicans could only manage to win two states
I share your frustration with the two party system for sure. However, let's deal in realities. Biden signed more executive orders in his first 100 days than any president since Harry Truman. Here's some more info:
https://www.politico.com/joe-biden-first-100-days-presidency
Let's criticize Biden for his actual fuckups (Israel anyone?)
Benefit of the doubt that's true and he did get some stuff done that was substantial:
Is it enough to offset alternating with Republicans?
Moderate progress only works if it's steady. Ten steps back and five steps forward is still moving backwards.
If moderate progress is the most we reach for, we'll never make any progress on a long time scale when modern Republicans get equal turns.
And the way to prevent that, is trying for faster progress. The party just won't try that, because their donors don't want it.
Bringing us alllll the way back to 1/3 of voters just not voting.
Read about what he has done. You don't need to make any assumptions.
What should he do? Decree that college is free now and insurance is banned and so is homelessness etc? Realistically, he's done a lot and is far more progressive than leftists tend to credit him for.
At this point it feels like we are just finding ways to be dissatisfied tbh.
Here is an opinion piece with more deets on stuff Biden has done:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/13/why-progressives-winning-inside-democratic-party/
You won't answer my question...
Do you think Biden has done enough in his four years to correct Trump's?
Do you think right now we're better off than when Obama left office.
Because if not, then moderate progress isn't enough of a goal
I'm not sure why you're trying to make a zero-sum argument here. Nothing in life is black and white, and just because Biden couldn't measure up to your standards doesn't mean we need to, or should, replace him.
Also, nobody is required to argue or refute any claims or points you're trying to make. Biden didn't face the same problems that Obama did. He doesn't have the same faults or struggles, so why are we trying to make an apple-to-apple comparison when that's not even what we're discussing?
Personally, Biden's executive orders read as very well intentioned, and I personally have directly and indirectly benefited from many of these. There are some things Biden has done that I have disagreed with, but overall, the executive orders and ruling policy of the Biden administration is a positive. If you read some of the executive orders, it's pretty clear that Biden understands the issues that ail the public in most, if not all, sectors.
Gotta shout out a thanks to @naught for getting me interested in reading executive orders. For anyone curious, you can find it here: https://www.federalregister.gov/presidential-documents/executive-orders/joe-biden/2023
Really interesting stuff.
The article is light on details too, so I suspect most of this money is going to telecoms again for them to run the fiber, and like every other time we've given them money, **they'll likely just keep it and not do anything **
That is the real problem, the government throwing money at Telcos and expecting them to do something other than line their bottom line.
A cynic would say Biden knows this and is trying to get in with giant telecos and trick voters.
Although it would be even worse if he legitimately expects them to go or their end.
Considering Biden legitimately ran his last primary on his ability to cooperate with Republicans...
There's a pretty good chance he's not smart enough to see this coming. If he is, then he's still just lying and doesn't see an issue with that.
i mean it's actually part of the infrastructure bill that was passed earlier but go off i guess