Government Spending on Fast Internet Service

Posted on by
Reply

The Federal government has a $42+ billion program for expanding broadband Internet access to Americans who don’t currently have that access. In a rare application of sense, the law has an entry criterion:

The broadband plan, part of the $1 trillion infrastructure bill signed by President Biden last November, stipulates that money to improve service can’t be doled out until the Federal Communications Commission completes new maps showing where homes and businesses lack fast service.

Like I said, an application of sense. But there’s one more little fillip that’s necessary. That’s the need to define “fast Service.” Absent that, the maps won’t necessarily be useful.

Such a definition is needed because Internet speed is constantly increasing as the underlying technology is constantly improving. We’ve gone, after all, in just three decades, from 300baud dial-up access to the Internet at the start to today’s 100s of gigabit/sec access, and that’s getting faster as 5G access spreads and subsequent xG accesses are developed.

What’s the speed for which the FCC’s maps are required to indicate the need on the part of those of us who don’t currently have it? Will that be a static requirement, or will the speed be required to increase along with the general population’s access speed?

An Interesting Exercise

Posted on by
Reply

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has announced that Chicagoans can look forward to her planned bump in their property taxes of 2.5%, effective next year.

Maybe the increase is warranted, maybe it isn’t. Here’s the exercise. Lightfoot needs to release, for each of the prior five years, detailed line-item allocations of budgeted property tax collections and the production schedule for each of those allocated-for items.

In parallel with that and for each of those same five years, she needs to release detailed line-item actual expenditures, supported by receipts for each expenditure, for every step of the supply/expense chain from allocation through intermediate purchases/expenses—including identifying intermediate and final suppliers, wages suppliers paid for production of each item at that stage of the chain, the services and hard goods bought, the date of each purchase, the date of actual delivery of each purchase—through to final allocated-for product delivery and the date of that final delivery. For those projects not yet completed and those items not yet finally delivered, she needs to release the originally scheduled dates, their current status, and concrete, measurable reason(s) for the delay, if any.

The exercise, also, would be as informative as it would be interesting.

Trump’s “Chaotic exit from White House”

Posted on by
Reply

That’s opening of the subheadline of a Wall Street Journal article concerning former President Donald Trump’s (R) last days in office. One remark jumped out at me, though, from a former aide.

If you only start packing with two days left to go, you’re just running low on time. And if he’s the one just throwing things in boxes, who knows what could happen?

Aside from the foolishness of assuming Trump was the one doing the packing, this is a canonical example politicians and bureaucrats (and pressmen) being unable to understand moving at the speed of business rather than at the speed of politics. A hectic departure, most probably, but there’s no reason to believe chaotic. Not by a businessman.

A former Trump aide, though? Trump isn’t perfect; his White House staff and the Executive Branch agencies for which he was responsible for staffing consisted of hundreds of persons, if not thousands. Nor has Trump been perfect in his selections—see his initial choice for Attorney General and his choice for FBI Director for a couple of his more famous personnel mistakes.

What’s the basis for claiming chaos out of hecticality? Besides the claimants’ (assuming this unidentified source actually exists) confusion, I mean.

Just the News Has a Question

Posted on by
Reply

The news outlet ran a poll over the weekend. The question was this:

How concerned are you that additional IRS funding through the Inflation Reduction Act will lead to more audits for typical taxpayers?

As of Sunday morning, the enormously unscientific poll—consisting solely of JtN readers—was running 96% Extremely concerned.

Keep in mind that the IRS has been targeting Conservatives and conservative organizations at least since early in the Obama administration (if not sooner; that’s just when it became exposed).

Keep in mind, too, that Progressive-Democratic Party politicians, since Obama’s first Presidential campaign, have characterized typical taxpayers as merely bitter Bible- and gun-clinging denizens of flyover country, as irredeemable and deplorable, as 15% of us being just no good.

How is this even a question?

It’s Not Just the Moms

Posted on by
Reply

First, the President Joe Biden/Attorney General Merrick Garland (each Progressive-Democrats) Department of Justice designated angry and enthusiastic mothers at school board meetings as domestic terrorists and Garland had his FBI begin investigating them as such.

Now the Biden administration are hinting around that average Americans who are angry over the FBI raid in former President Donald Trump’s (R) Mar-a-Lago home and the exploding security failure at our southern border might be terrorists, also.

Americans angry about the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Florida estate and insecurity at the southern border pose an increased risk of domestic terrorism, the Biden administration warned in a series of bulletins sent to federal and local law enforcement over the weekend.

And

“Last night, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice issued a Joint Intelligence Bulletin, accessible via the Homeland Security Information Network, providing information on the potential for domestic violent extremists to carry out attacks on federal, state, and local law enforcement and government personnel or facilities,” CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus wrote in a memo to 60,000 employees.

This is a general warning about all of us Americans, not just the tiny few who are prone to violence. A tinier few than the antifa, BLM, Ruth Sent Us, Jane’s Revenge, et al., arsonists, rioters, terrorists toward whom Garland and his FBI have chosen to turn a blind eye.

Magnus, again:

Since the search, the FBI and DHS have observed an increase in violent threats posted on social media against federal officials and facilities.

Yet, the FBI has chosen, repeatedly, to not “observe” the violent threats posted on social media by individuals who engaged in mass shootings or those posted by antifa, BLM, Ruth Sent Us, Jane’s Revenge, et al.

We’re all terrorists, those 10s of millions of us average Americans who won’t kowtow, according to this Progressive-Democratic Party-controlled government.