Stimulus Funds Help Wire Rural Homes For Internet

[Stan In FL]

your tax $$ at work; making porn available in mayberry.  someone please tell me in what universe does this make sense?
 

Stimulus Funds Help Wire Rural Homes For Internet

Up in rural northern Vermont, it took until the 1960s to run power lines to some towns — decades after the rest of America got turned on.

These days, it's the digital revolution that remains but a rumor in much of rural America.

Dial-up user Val Houde knows this as well as anybody. After moving here four years ago, the 51-year-old mother of four took a correspondence course for medical transcription, hoping to work from home. She plunked down $800, took the course, then found out the software wasn't compatible with dial-up Internet, the only kind available to her.

Selling items on eBay, watching videos, playing games online? Forget it. The connection from her home computer is so slow, her online life is one of delays, degraded quality and "buffering" warning messages. So she waits until the day a provider extends broadband to her house.

"I feel like these companies, they don't care about these little pockets of places," she said one night recently, showing a visitor her computer's slow Internet service. "And I know we're not the only ones."

For Houde and millions of other Americans laboring under slow or no Internet service, help is on the way.

Bolstered by billions in federal stimulus money, an effort to expand broadband Internet access to rural areas is under way, an ambitious 21st-century infrastructure project with parallels to the New Deal electrification of the nation's hinterlands in the 1930s and 1940s.

More

[GeronL]

more government waste, oh goodies

[Stan In FL]

7 billion bucks so goober and gomer can practice their constitutionally protected right to rub one out.

Stimulus bill includes $7.2 billion for broadband

President Obama signed into law on Tuesday the $787 billion stimulus package, which includes $7.2 billion for broadband grant and loan programs.

Both the House of Representatives and the Senate on Friday approved a conference report that reconciled the two chambers' versions of the bill.

The bulk of the funds directed at broadband--$4.7 billion--will be distributed through a program run by the Commerce Department, while $2.5 billion will fall under the jurisdiction of the Agriculture Department, giving particular emphasis to broadband deployment in rural areas.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10165726-38.html#ixzz1CZfjtWze

[GeronL]

Another tremendous waste is "weatherization" funds.

I think they did something like 17 houses in Austin for something like a quarter of a million dolars.

I wonder where that money really went.

[Stan In FL]

$5 billion for weatherstripping.  and horror stories aplenty out there.  

Stimulus for Homes: Obama's $5 Billion Weatherization Plan
President Obama and Congress just pumped $5 billion into the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP), a 30-year-old branch of the Department of Energy that provides weatherization services to low-income families. Weatherization-which typically means to adding insulation and caulking in old buildings-is an important, low-hanging fruit to pick in the name of U.S. energy efficiency.

More

for example . . . .

Dallas must abandon poorly-run weatherization program
DALLAS — Last month, News 8 exposed how the City of Dallas squandered some stimulus money in the home weatherization program.

The program spent $8 for light bulbs and $1,500 for water heaters.

A Dallas City Council committee learned Tuesday the program has been run so badly that the city must pay back money to the state and turn over the remaining millions it has so the county can finish the work.

Dallas received $13 million in stimulus money in October, 2009 to weatherize low-income homes. But it proved to be too many dollars chasing too few contractors who couldn't finish homes fast enough.

More

ok, lets pretend like the stimulus accomplished something.  it didn't, but stay with me for a minute.  let's just say that the federal dollars caused an artificial bump in demand for construction services, and let's just say that a moderate number of people, noting the increased demand, started small businesses and entered the construction industry.  what happens when the government stop paying for people's weatherstripping?  

they all go out of business.  that's what.  and that is a downturn that government directly caused.  first of all, it destroyed private economic activity (and during a recession, mind you) when it taxed or borrowed the dollars to pump into the weatherstripping business.  then, it f_cked up the construction industry;  it literally planted a time bomb in people's futures set to go off as soon as the faucet of government money was turned off.

so, it deepened the current recession in order to create a subsequent recession.   and these were the smart kids in the last election.  that's the part that kills me.

[GeronL]

Where is the money really going?

I don' care if its run by the city or county or state, its all going into the same pockets.

[Vonne]

I think the basis of the argument stems from the historical notion that the government is to assist or provide the infrastructure of commerce and the economy.  Federal funds have generally assisted with building roads, power lines, phone lines, and Internet connections to remote areas of the country.

I'm not necessarily in agreement with this, in all circumstances.  Additionally, many states have their public service commissions, while negotiating rates with monopoly utility providers, require a certain allotment of assiistance to connect those in remote areas included in the base rates paid by all/most.

[Vonne]

I will agree that this weatherization funding is essentially a scam.  I believe it to be nothing more than an attempt to have people put on the payroll and off unemployment.  All carried out under the banner of 'Green', 'Energy Savings', and 'Lowering Utility Bills'. 

Weatherization of old homes is desperately needed, especially by those whom most lack the funds or ability to do it themselves.  I'm just not sure this is the way to go about it.

Clearly it's reached the level of absurdity with federally funded 'Weatherization Schools', 'Certificates', etc opening up or being introduced everywhere.  The other day I even heard of a church receiving federal funds to hold weatherization training classes for the unemployed.  Craziness.

[JohnBrowdie]

there is a huge, HUGE difference between building an interstate system, and the central government fretting over goober and gomer's download speed. 

I think it has zero to do with infrastructure, and everything to do with the trillion dollar flaccid stimulus that was nothing more than a grab bag of payoffs and pet liberal projects that was crafted under special order in the house, and fed to us during a time of national emergency.

it borders on criminal.

I think the basis of the argument stems from the historical notion that the government is to assist or provide the infrastructure of commerce and the economy.  Federal funds have generally assisted with building roads, power lines, phone lines, and Internet connections to remote areas of the country.

I'm not necessarily in agreement with this, in all circumstances.  Additionally, many states have their public service commissions, while negotiating rates with monopoly utility providers, require a certain allotment of assiistance to connect those in remote areas included in the base rates paid by all/most.

[Vonne]

there is a huge, HUGE difference between building an interstate system, and the central government fretting over goober and gomer's download speed. 

it borders on criminal.

I'm actually inclined to agree.  However rural high-speed internet federal funding was initiated under Bush, long before this economic crisis that started with Bush and carried on through Obama.  I thought it was absurd than too.

[JohnBrowdie]

bush's program was (arguably) a free market initiative.  it didn't work, but it also didn't cost 10 billion bucks. 

[Vonne]

bush's program was (arguably) a free market initiative.  it didn't work, but it also didn't cost 10 billion bucks.

Perhaps... argh... well... (arguably) would be a fairly apt to describe that initiative, in relation to free market enterprise.

Also, I'm fairly certain that ol' George was the one who signed into law the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 which created the TARP funds and in turn funded this initiative...  But that's neither here nor there!

Far more intriguing is just how similar Bush and Obama apparently are, both waste tax payer dollars on the same exact initiatives!  Simply differing on their pretexts!  Bush is helping businesses grow, special interests, and the economy.  While Obama is helping the unemployed, the environment, and the economy.  Sigh... and the tax payer loses...  :-\

[JohnBrowdie]

stimulus and TARP are completely different conversations, but as long as we are on the subject . . . TARP wasn't an appropriation;  it was authorization to draw down debt.  what it turned into after he left office simply isn't his doing.

[Vonne]

What it turned into after he left office simply isn't his doing.

Conjecture!  

Seriously though, what has transpired is just a hideous amount of irresponsibility that can, and deservedly, be thrown around in a hundred directions.  It's a sad state of financial affairs that we're in.   :-\