Internet Integral to the Stimulus Package?

Recession = two negative growth quarters in a row in GDP.

The US has not had one negative growth quarter yet this year. That means, no recession; yet. It's not official. Your 401K is not a barometer of economic health.

"Are Internet projects important enough to be part of the stimulus package?"

Why not? Everyone and there mother are holding out their hands to the US Government for more money. Heck, they are just giving it away, no?

We are talking trillions of dollars; tax payer's dollars (probably yours if you earn even a meager salary and definitely mine) going faster than we can print it (or collect it, for that matter).

Sure, give it away! China and other nations will loan us whatever we need. No need to worry about over extending our credit, right?

When the well starts running dry, raise taxes again. Everyone should pay more taxes, right? Or, as they are doing in my state, selling our toll roads to foreign nations. Yes, some of our roads we drive on are not our roads, but belong to a foreign government or foreign company. My toll dollars going abroad.

Are we insane? We just hand out money like it is candy; our money, like tomorrow isn't coming. However, if we keep free spending like we are now, tomorrow will not be coming, at least not in a form anyone would be willing to greet the next morning.

It's hard to tell where the point of cognitive dissonance has taken over in our society. At one time business flourished or failed based on their merit. It was the natural order of things. The weak were either culled out or they pulled up their britches and got back in the game.

Now, there is a nanny handout for just about any cause of failure and we are the people that pay for other peoples failures.

I, for one, am tired of bailing out anyone. Don't get me wrong. I'll bend over backwards to help anyone willing to help themselves. However, we have spent decades breeding a culture (corporate and private) that expects to be cradled and cooed for every ill decision and failure they make without accountability.

Personally, I say hand those jokers the bucket and let them start bailing themselves out. Then, let's judge their worthiness of our help based on their will to help themselves and keep government out of this.

Let the unworthy ones sink. At least they will make a good coral reef for rest of them already there.

I have heard Obama say several times in speeches (as a primary candidate and in the general election) that laying broadband cable for internet is a fundamental part of his plans to invest in our infrastructure. For the 25% or so of us who don't like Obama, and who are already celebrating the failed Obama presidency, obviously this was just a convenient lie. But for the other 75% of us who either supported him or who now want to believe him, it sounds like broadband for everybody. Infrastructure investment is the wise choice at this point because (1) it doesn't outsource well, (2) many of the jobs don't require years of training, (3) we have been neglecting it for too long, and (4) after the money is spent there is somthing of value to show for it.

This is just another social program that the government has no need to get their greedy fingers into.

Supply and demand is perfectly able to address this and can at a cost that will be far less than what it would cost for any government agency (read that as bureaucracy) could hope to do.

There are a few things that a government can do well (i.e., defense, national roads, etc.). However, TV, cable, telephones, and internet are not one of them.

Any government's motto should be: "You can get better, but you won't pay more for it."

It's unfortunate that "bailout" and "broadband" are being conflated here. Who is being bailed out in this case? I'll grant you that AT&T, Verizon, Comcast or TW would very likely be the chief beneficiaries, but those are now among the best financial reporting companies we have. I'd hardly call that a bailout of the type that the Big3 are seeking and certain notoriously ill-behaving Wall Street firms received recently.

I'd prefer to think of any Internet connectivity agenda as one that is empowering to small towns and private citizens, in a world where once-American jobs are now being performed overseas by individuals who, themselves, are working from their own homes and villages using "broadband"-supported VPN lines.

A 'broadband' agenda isn't a bailout. It's building for the _present_ and the future, which is something that we can no longer avoid doing by waiting for key players to respond to supply and demand dynamics. Supply is currently controlled by those holding too much market power, and they'd sooner maintain sustainable levels of scarcity than exploit what Moore's Law avails.

The S&D dynamic has been muted for the past fifteen to twenty years by a snails-pace kind of incrementalism under the guise of bi-modal competition (cable vs. telco), which has amounted to nothing more than a game of chicken being played, irrespective of what the state of the art could support. In that same time frame US "broadband" penetrations have fallen to embarrassingly low levels, according to all measures of record, including the stats maintained by the dominant carriers and the FCC, themselves.

From a "truth in terms" point of view, I have started referring to mine as a 201K in honor of its recent reduction in value by nearly half...

milo