Fighting for Rural Broadband
Last week, I spoke in an Agriculture Committee hearing about the digital divide in rural America.
UW-Madison estimates that just 63 percent of households in rural Wisconsin counties have broadband access, yet Washington politicians have been all talk and no action on the issue. As I noted in the hearing, we have spent $351 billion the last five years, but we can’t do precision agriculture going from Crawford to Grant County. This is a systemic failure of this system.
I pledged in the hearing to bring together rural broadband experts to find solutions for rural Wisconsin and all of America. I expect you to hold me to that pledge. You can watch the clip here.
There are 6 Comments
I love Van Orden
But, I don't for one-second think that the government needs to be in the middle of Broadband. This is expanding incredibly fast, and it is because private enterprise has a market and satisfies the need. Yes, it is good for many things, but we don't need one more government interference. I don't know anyone who can not get internet today, they will need to pay for it, and their neighbor should not be forced to.
I agree
Where in the Constitution do We the Peole grant Congress the authority to spend our money on something like this? Answer: nowhere, therefore, the 10th Amendment is triggered and it must be left to the states and to the people to figure out. If our politicians would simply start following the Constitution then all our lives would be much better.
Broadband
Excellent points. Moreover, if we but limited goverNMEnt to what is constitutional, we would not have this looming financial crisis. 95% of what goverNMEnt spends, is not constitutionally authorized.
BTW, can you get rid of that irritating CAPTCHA? 4X attempted to enter correct answeers, and pics are so small that details can not even be made out, much less correctly ID'd
Rural Broadband
Thank you for this note. I completely understand what you are saying, but I believe that RBB is used so widely in commerce and is cost prohibitive in many of our areas that the government should help get this out to all points. An additional use for this is telehealth to help with the folks that can’t get into a clinic. Thank you again for the note.
DVO
Broadband
It's right there in the Declaration of Independence: "Life, liberty and the pursuit of broadband."
Or something like that. It may be that this is a good investment, but as Ludwig von Mises argued, it is better to keep goverNMEnts limited, so that one success is not used to justify million$ of failures.
Broadband
The current RBB initiatives are the 21st century equivalent of the Rural Electrification Act of 1936. Do you have electricity? If you do and you are in a rural area, it is more likely than not due to private industry, it is due to this public program. Here is a link for your reference: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-10315/pdf/COMPS-10315.pdf
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