Republicans slam broadband discounts for poor people, threaten to kill program::Thune, Cruz complain that $30 discounts go to people who “already had broadband.”
what a bunch of low life jerks.
they can give millions in subsidies direct to corporations, but a mild discount in internet services for poor people requires incredible, roadblock worthy proof of obvious numbers for zero reason. theyre just assholes.
I would like to propose an alternative solution: Force broadband providers to offer low cost service to families that need it. Don’t subsidize it, just force it.
Internet connections cost next to nothing to maintain. The telecoms can afford it.
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I like the sentiment, but I don’t trust the government to run anything efficiently or productively
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As a Texan, I 100% assure you that I fully understand the ramifications of commoditizing public services. I was cold with the rest of them, while Can-cruz was slipping away to vacation.
I just think that placing the federal government in charge of building, maintaining, and upgrading internet infrastructure would have lasting negative ramifications in just about every way.
The though above (in a sister comment to the one i replied to) about regulations requiring an affordable option (maybe one that could be further subsidized for parents with school age children, etc) is much more palatable to me.
have you looked into Calyx? They have a pricing model that costs less because they are a 501c3 nonprofit
I have no doubt they can do it.
I don’t think they should be in control of our communication though. I don’t trust them with my privacy or not to use it to exert political control over the people.
I want regulations. A government willing to set rules and to enforce those rules.
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The problem here is neither can really be trusted long term. The main advantage I see to governments is that there would be forced transparency.
I’ll take my chances. At least I can theoretically vote for the people in government.
As someone who has worked in government and private industries of all sizes let me tell you the takeaway from my experience: Only organization size matters. The only exception is in the “small stuff”:
- Small government entities (municipal stuff) are often extremely efficient and frankly, surprisingly competent.
- Small businesses are much more likely to be wildly inefficient and incompetent. They’re also much harder to police and can often exist solely to extract as much money as possible from a government contract while providing as little benefit/output as possible (the bare minimum). Safety is never a priority and anything that can be made someone else’s problem will be (externalities).
Big business and big government are both extremely slow and wasteful but in different ways. Big government wastes time and money on simple things that should be cheap but because of various laws and regulations must adhere to regulations of all sorts they end up being expensive (and these regulations often don’t keep up with the times). This also slows everything down because you have to wait for the stuff to pass muster before you can use it most of the time (no matter what that thing is… From simple paper products to chairs to industrial equipment to desks to rocket engines etc you name it). This often results in people having to wait (sitting on their asses while still getting paid).
Big business wastes money on 3rd party tools and services that are often completely unnecessary. Usually because the powers that be “have always done things that way.” They also waste money by being really, really bad at project management. This is the big one: At any big company something like 9 out of 10 IT projects are considered failures because they just keep going forward (with the project) no matter what. So they often end up with something that needs to be maintained/replaced and ends up becoming a regular, long term expense.
Big business isn’t usually corrupt but they will spend loads and loads of money lobbying to make it easier for them to extract profit from whatever it is that they do. Safety, ethics, and things like the general well-being of society be damned. They have no morals except those codified in law whereas the people in huge government organizations are very visible to the people in general and know they have to act ethically or they could get in big trouble (and there’s whole entities who’s job it is to watch them for bad behavior and inefficiencies).
Related: There’s never “too much” or “too little” regulation. There’s just good regulations and bad regulations. Anyone who says regulations are bad or insinuates that they’re “job killing” is looking to mislead you.
they can give millions in subsidies direct to corporations
That’s exactly why they’re fighting it – every dollar they give to poor people is a dollar less they can give to rich people.
That’s what they think, or at least that’s what they want you to think. Every study has shown that every dollar you give to anyone below the 40th percentile returns more than a dollar to the economy. The lower on the totem pole, the more it grows the economy. The opposite is also true. For every dollar you give the top 10 percent, 70 cents or less goes back into the economy.
The more they give the poor, the richer they would get, but the money isn’t the point. Cruelty is. They want to cause as much harm as they can get away with before we whip out the trebuchets and guillotines.
But that risks poors being less poor and exploitable. It’s ultimately about the control.
They’d keep the control if they gave the poor the resources they need. That doesn’t upset the balance of power, it just grows the economy to the size it needs to be for everyone to thrive. Control is already secured. Cruelty is the point.
If there’s one thing Republicans can’t stand, it’s helping the poor.
Especially those with unplanned pregnancy
Excuse you those are gifts from God and future wage slaves!
It’s two fold for them, I’d bet money that they’re also trying to disconnect the youth in some attempt to grow their dwindling youth base. Their dumb book bans don’t work so well when kids can just hop on the Internet and get it anyways (and more)
Can’t have kids learning all that “empathy” and “caring” indoctrination! /s
I can very easily see republican communities banding together against the internet in the same way Amish ones do.
As someone not from the USA I am convinced, after reading many news articles over the past decades, that people voting for the GOP are either evil or too dumb to make any kind of impactful decision.
There’s a reason they’ve been infiltrating school boards, banning books, and white washing history books. They can’t get elected if the electorate is educated and informed about the issues.
A lot of it stems from insecurity and otherism.
They’re on the losing side but want to be in denial about it. Those on the winning side behave like patronizing children, which only causes the losing side to want to spite them.
Really, the US is an extremely successful example of how to keep people divided and distracted so they can be easily exploited by their rulers.
This is the case on both sides. Democrats are only progressive until it fucks with their money. Then they become real conservative, real quick.
This is so sad. In Spain the government takes care of the central internet infrastructure and fiber is now available pretty much everywhere. You want to start an ISP? Just buy access to the central network and build the last mile. Every small town has it’s on ISP or two. You want fiber? Some guy will show up tomorrow and lay down a cable to your house. $20-$30 a month without any termination fees. Last time I had to connected internet in new apartment it took literally couple hours.
USA should do the same but of course red states would block it and lobbyists for the corporations would fight it on every step. So instead they are giving free money to the telcos making sure the prices will stay high and no investment will be done.
It was like that in Russia before big federal companies took over that business. A wild west where companies actually competed with each other, even by providing their own forums, filesharing services, torrent trackers and pirated WoW\CS servers - with unlimited traffic when it was paid-per-MB and with better speeds\ping when it became unlimited. It didn’t cost much nor for them, nor for clients, and they were very responsive if there’s some problem with connectivity. It actually created some sort of a community around ISPs where people could cooperate locally around their issues.
I don’t want to sound like an ancap, or an annoying free market fan, but it served people way better than monopolization. And knowing how it all ended, having a small local company eyeing your traffic is probably better than having feds farming it in a centralized fashion - that’s probably the reason, since some things never left local servers at that time (sus), and it happened right at the time of big riots. Some ISPs I know were bought out in the same year.
Having it said, even though in America it was probably just greed leading to that situation, big companies should be dismantled and localized to start to care about their clients. It means better service (they depend on ya), better privacy, probably better prices since they can’t use you to strong-arm into another area with price dumping shouldered by your bills or just charge you whatever they want. Same shit recently happened with gig economy apps everywhere. If the state has one job, it’s to hold down that bullshit of exponential growth. But just like with Anakin-Padme meme I’m having an impression there’re not many places where representatives actually represent people, not corps. And I’m happy for some countries not falling for it, at least not at all times.
/rant
The “free market” of America has seen providers given huge payouts by the government to flesh out infrastructure in rural areas etc to just… Not even pretend to start and run with the cash to no consequence whatsoever.
Multiple times.
Right, because it’s not “free market” it’s all government controlled market. Like this comment from above.
Both parties in our country have decided that nothing should happen unless a person who is already rich gets richer. That Government should never take any action if it possibly reduces the chance that someone else would make profit off of a problem.
Yes, that’s not capitalism or free market. That’s government interference. Big difference. Like the whole too big to fail non-sense. No, government get out of the way and let them fail.
In America, even the Democrats would block something like that.
Both parties in our country have decided that nothing should happen unless a person who is already rich gets richer. That Government should never take any action if it possibly reduces the chance that someone else would make profit off of a problem.
Like we don’t even build roads any more, unless we make it a public/private partnership where taxpayers pay to build the road, and then a private company takes over toll collection.
My town built a bridge across a river - not even really a new bridge, sort of replacing a existing bridge that was free to cross. And in the last few months of construction, the city announced that they’d partnered with a private company to collect tolls to fun maintenance. It was $2.50 to cross (one way) for cars when the bridge opened - like 6 years ago - and they’re increased the tolls every opportunity since then. So now it costs more than $5 - each way - to cross the bridge for cars. The price for a Semi-truck to cross has on;y risen by 25% in the same time.
And they’re notoriously bad. They double bill. They bill errantly (sending people bills who didn’t even use the bridge). They’re tolling system will be months behind. They’ll put liens on cars that they claim crossed even when they haven’t yet sent a bill.
The city government knows about all these problems and they are just like “our hands are tied, we signed a contract with them”. So that bridge will be a Govenrment-enforced, for-profit scam for at least another 30 years.
And sometimes the city doesn’t even get their full cut, because they apparently promised in the contract with the company that there would be a certain minimum daily use. So some days the city forgoes their cut, in order for the company to hit their promised profit for that day.
Mind you, this company didn’t’ have any part in building the bridge. And they don’t run physical tollboths. They just built an array of cameras and sensors and have a payment portal website. And yet we let them gatekeep the bridge and the money generated by the bridge.
And of course, use of the bridge is always low, because people drive 20 miles out of their way to use the free bridge. And the more they raise the tolls, the more people avoid the bridge. So the more days the city doesn’t even take a cut.
This bridge is basically in the middle of a city - so some people commuted across the old bridge for free, now they have to pay $10 in tolls just to go to work and back home. Or they add 40 minutes to their commute, add unnecessary traffic to other roads in town.
Just because a Democrat led city Government didn’t believe in paying with tax dollars for maintenance on a bridge that was already built.
Yeah, it’s all really tragic. I remember reading somewhere that in one US city the town hall sold the control of all parking meters to a private company. Now the company raises prices constantly and the city can’t do anything that would put their profits in danger like closing a road for public event.
It’s nuts to me that the government isnt clamouring to run free email or cloud storage for people, and encourage them to use it. Same for phone service. It seems like an easy and relatively cheap way to get free access to a lot of data.
Spain is also the size of a single state.
USA also has a lot more money, right?
Never a missed opportunity to grind the poor into the dirt, am I right republicans? Oh, but they’ll lobby for billions (with a fucking B) to give away in government subsidies to AT&T and other broadband providers all the while abolishing Net Neutrality.
If you have any illusion to think republicans are helping you at all, look no further than their jaw dropping history in telecom policy.
Internet should be treated as a utility, not a for-profit business who we need to give more government kickbacks to. Look how well that turned out in the past.
Exactly. It’s a service. Service costs money. Pay for it with taxes
Republicans literally exist to only make things worse.
So don’t be like that, they also exist to get paid by their corporqte overlords and remove rights.
You will find that was covered by the previous sentiment.
Anyone else think republican politicians would be really bad at chess?
They’d play chess like a pigeon would. Flipping over pieces and shitting all over the board, while having no clue what they are doing, nor caring about what they are doing.
Well, shitting on things without consequence is definitely their definition of freedom.
So exactly how they govern.
Why do republicans hate poor people so much?
They don’t see you as people. It’s just that simple.
Rich republicans: because they view them as damaged goods who only have themselves to blame, that are only fit for slave labor to profit from.
Poor republicans: ?? probably think that they’ll become rich one day, unlike those other poor low life schmucks who deserve nothing because they’re damaged goods who only have themselves to blame, that are only fit for slave labor.
If you have the time, I recommend Adam Conover’s podcast interview of Corey Robin about What Liberals Get Wrong about the Right. It answered a lot of questions like this for me.
Republicans like helping Poor People like Jesus did!
Should be higher. $60/mo. tax credit for broadband plus $2,000 every 3 years for tech gear.
That’s more then I spend for my household on “tech gear” every 3 years, including cellular devices. I am far from any line that would qualify me for a program… seems excessive.
I agree with the bump to $60, $30 is a good subsidy like a decade + ago.
Is the money supposed to completely pay for it or is it a subsidy? If it’s a subsidy then $30 seems fine. High speed Internet at around $50 seems pretty common.
Idk. Where I live the cheapest option is like $65. I think one company offers 10mb for less, but for obvious reasons I haven’t switched to that.
I thought there was a companion requirement that providers must offer a plan that is fully covered.
$30 would pay for my fibre entirely
$30 would cover the $27 of taxes and (mostly) fees for my phone and internet (business) bundle.
I have a “Deregulated Administration Fee” of $8.95.
Edit: It is 100/40 bonded VDSL2 for those curious. There is an upgrade available to 200/40 though. Good speeds for middle of nowhere, but that means only one wired provider.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Republican members of Congress blasted a program that gives $30 monthly broadband discounts to people with low incomes, accusing the Federal Communications Commission of being “wasteful.”
The lawmakers suggested in a letter to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel that they may try to block funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which is expected to run out of money in April 2024.
The letter questioned Rosenworcel’s testimony at a recent House hearing in which she warned that 25 million households could lose Internet access if Congress doesn’t renew the ACP discounts.
“At a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on November 30, 2023, you asserted—without evidence and contrary to the FCC’s own data—that ‘25 million households’ would be ‘unplug[ged]…from the Internet’ if Congress does not provide new funding for the ACP,” the letter said.
As Congress considers the future of taxpayer broadband subsidies, we ask you to correct the hearing record and make public accurate information about the ACP."
Unfortunately, your testimony pushes “facts” about the ACP that are deeply misleading and have the potential to exacerbate the fiscal crisis without producing meaningful benefits to the American consumer.
The original article contains 546 words, the summary contains 189 words. Saved 65%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I gave up on cable internet about 2 years ago.
I just use my phone and haven’t looked back. Saves me a ton of money, too.
Oh wow, I have 5G on my phone and it served its purpose when the cables were being repaired (which took a few months), but I’m not pulling 1000/1000 mbit with latencies of under 6 ms from the air, and it only costs like 35 eur / month
I can get 500mbps for $50 or 1gbps for $65.
My cell phone bill is only $25, and I don’t need to download large files often or under time-constraints.
Having an extra $600 in my bank account every year is pretty noticeable, though.
