Republicans slam broadband discounts for poor people, threaten to kill program::Thune, Cruz complain that $30 discounts go to people who “already had broadband.”
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!
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 like the sentiment, but I don’t trust the government to run anything efficiently or productively
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.
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.
While I’m sure cruelty is the point for many politicians and their voters, those politicians serve entirely at the neoliberals discretion, on the condition their abuse never gets in the way of profits.
On the right, that means pandering to fascists, fundamentalists, reactionaries and idiots.
They’re free to inflict whatever abuse they want on the public on the condition it never gets in the way of the insatiable greed and entitlement of the 1%. The moment it does, they’ll be out on their ass.
Unfortunately, this is also true on the left. But rather than abusers, they pander to progressives.
Progressives can talk all the environmentalism and social reforms they want, but they do so on the condition that it never makes any significant difference on the profits of the wealthy.
So they’re allowed to do things like “use tax dollars to pay off the insurance companies”, but they’re not permitted to introduce legislation that would completely undermine an extremely predatory industry.
The moment someone has the power to do anything more than talk about it, you quickly find this neoliberalism has incredible unity. Media companies, politicians, industry groups and pundits from both sides will all hold hands as they stomp the threat into the dirt.
Best of all, they don’t need any grand conspiracy to do so. They communicate entirely with economic dogwhistles.
They’re fully aware that things like deregulation and trickle down never work – they count on it to get rich. But the moment anyone in a position of power speaks out against those ideas, they know it’s their signal to throw everything they can at stopping them.
If there’s one thing Republicans can’t stand, it’s helping the poor.
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
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.
Why do republicans hate poor people so much?
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.
