The $550 billion "Bipartisan infrastructure deal" unveiled Sunday night would spend nearly twice as much on broadband as it does on mass transit and close to three times as much as it directs toward airports.
The Biden administration's pitch for including so much broadband spending in the infrastructure bill leans heavily on an historical parallel: the 1936 Rural Electrification Act, a Depression-era effort to run power lines to every home and farm in the country.
"Yet, by one definition, more than 30 million Americans live in areas where there is no broadband infrastructure that provides minimally acceptable speeds."
"Municipal broadband is unlikely to scale well to fit U.S. broadband needs," concluded a pair of researchers at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in a report published in June.
"The goal of many municipal broadband advocates is not principally getting more broadband to more areas, but rather to reduce the share of broadband that is provided by the private sector," noted Doug Brake and Alexandra Bruer, the two researchers.
Already, there are warning signs of more broadband boondoggles to come.
On Monday, the Washington Examiner reported that $1 billion of the new broadband spending is earmarked for the Appalachian Regional Commission, an economic development partnership between the federal government and 13 states.
It's becoming increasingly difficult to discern fact from fiction, and unfortunately the media has a strong bias. They spin stories to make conservatives look bad and will go to great lengths to avoid reporting on the good that comes from conservative policies. There are a few shining lights in the media landscape-brave conservative outlets that report the truth and offer a different perspective. We must support conservative outlets like this one and ensure that our voices are heard.
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