How Can the Stimulus Plan Help the Internet?

Wired is running an article raising the question of how a US economic stimulus plan could best help broadband adoption and the internet in general. We discussed President-elect Obama's statements about his plan, which would include investments in such areas, but Wired asks how we can avoid the equivalent of the New Deal's "ditches to nowhere" without more data about where the money would actually make a difference. Quoting: "... the problem is that no one knows the best way to make the internet more resilient, accessible and secure, since there's no just no public data. The ISP and backbone internet providers don't tell anyone anything. For instance, the government doesn't know how many people actually have broadband or what they pay for it. ... In September, the FCC found that its data collection on internet broadband was incomplete and thus ruled that AT&T, Qwest and Verizon could stop filing some reports — because the requirements did not extend to cable companies, too."

Comments

Re:offtopic question re. slashdot

[corsec67]

That happens when the future is now.

no just no public data

[Anonymous Coward]

"since there's no just no public data."

there aint none of it ya hear!

The national stimulus PowerBall lottery

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Cutting taxes would mean, that the government would have to admit, that it has no idea what to do with all that money, that it is fleecing off the taxpayers, in order to fix the economy's problems.

Ain't gonna happen.

And giving *all* taxpayers *some* chump-change back as a check, didn't work either.

So I propose, that instead of giving a bit back to everyone, the government should give *a lot* back to a few. With a national PowerBall lottery. You don't need to buy any tickets, having a Social Security number will be enough. Every week, the government will pick one Social Security number, and that person gets one million dollars to stimulate the economy, in whatever way he or she chooses. No strings attached. Piss it up a wall, or build a school.

Repeat as necessary, until the economy is fixed, or until the government is broke (I mean, like Chapter 11).

The excitement of the weekly drawing show will keep people's minds off the sorry state of the economy. Jennifer Aniston will host.

Re:Premise guarantees failure

[Iamthecheese]

You're right! We need an immediate return to communism!