Broadband Stimulus Plan Creates Lobbyist Feeding Frenzy

[antimatter98]

With renewed talk of using some taxpayer money on infrastructure (including broadband), telecom lobbyists are have started lining up with their hands outstretched.

link:
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Broadband-Stimulus-Plan-Creates-Lobbyist-Feeding-Frenzy-99863


My comment: if the stimulus plan hands over a few billion to Verizon and or Cisco systems,
exactly HOW will this money create jobs for the unemployed? Cisco won't hire anyone
it would not ordinarily hire, and will likely use subcontractors who will use their own
people or do minimal hiring. (will Cisco or Verizon hire a laid off policeman to help build
out a broadband network?)

This stimulus thing has all the potential to look like what happened in Iraq or post Katrina--
contractors making huge sums, with little actual local effect. Much less job creation for
local people.

[valerief]

1. More jobs in China and India, I suspect. nt

[notesdev]

2. Patronage is not stimulus

it's giveaways, money taken from working people and given to people who practice blatant bribery, not even ashamed enough to confine it to dark alleyways.

[smaug]

3. What have they done with the $200 billion from the telcomm apct of 1996?

Most of the telecomm corporate behemoths received a total of $200 billion in federal (that's our money,, folks) to modernize their pots systems as a result of the telecomm "reform" act of 1996. This allows ATT to color an entire telephone exchange area as having broadband in rural areas, even when they don't provide it.

For example, I live 2 miles from a rural town of 5400. But, I'm more than 18,000 feet away from the telco central office. But, since ATT offers dsl (and crappy at that) in town, our entire exchange area (which covers nearly half a county) is "officially" broadband in area. We've fallen so far behind South Korea and Japan in this competition as to be bringing up the rear in the race.

What did we pay $200 billion for? Of course, our local congresscritter is a traitorous Blue Dog, so won't get a straight answer from him. In fact, he vigorously opposed the bailout of Wall Street in all the local press and TV, and then voted both times for the bailout.

Until corporate lobbyists are forever banned from contacting any governmental entity at any level of government on pain of forcible vacations in Gitmo (it's only hazing, after all, right? - according to the pimple-assed draft dodging drug addict child-sex tourist Rusty Limbaugh) for eternity, I'm not hopeful of anything getting done in a proper (that is, in the taxpayer/citizen's interest) manner.

If I were Obama, I would have fired out of hand the Secret Service agents who tried to take away my Blackberry (I don't like those, but still) - being able to communicate without having it palmed and snooped over by fawning sycophantic minions (what an insidious prison). Communication without a filter is seriously necessary; the president needs this ability to call people personally without having the call 'placed.'

Ok, rant over :-).

[lib2DaBone]

4. Isn't there some type of pesticide we can spray along the floors of CONgress?