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Major Carriers Shun Broadband Stimulus
jmcharry sends word that as the deadline looms for requesting broadband grants from the $4.7 billion available in stimulus funding, Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T are conspicuously absent from the list of applicants. Quoting the Washington Post: "Their reasons are varied. All three say they are flush with cash, enough to upgrade and expand their broadband networks on their own. Some say taking money could draw unwanted scrutiny of business practices and compensation, as seen with automakers and banks that have taken government bailouts. And privately, some companies are griping about conditions attached to the money, including a net-neutrality rule that they say would prevent them from managing traffic on their networks in the way they want. ... Yet those firms might be the best positioned to achieve the goal of spreading Internet access to underserved areas, some experts say." Reader Michael_Curator notes that while the major carriers may be holding back, there were still enough applications to slow government servers to a crawl, resulting in a deadline extension.
> Comcast/AT&T/Time Warner suck, but you can bet
> that the US government will suck even worse.
Yup. That's how I feel about healthcare, too. It's a dog's breakfast now, but having the government take over won't help.
The Army reading list
Of course medicare is not -at all- sustainable. That's the little devil under the sheets.
Of course democrats do the same to every non-working "social" program : expand it. Not even democrats themselves dare to suggest it's working right - which is presumably why they want to expand it and force it on every American.
Btw : it's not a death panel if you can choose your own panel. Only forced government coverage which outlawed or sabotaged private insurers (e.g. "single payer") would have death panels. The difference is that you know in advance what a private insurer's panel is going to say, so the decision (cost and benefit) is basically your own. You don't know in advance what a government panel is going to say, and you don't get to select another one. Therefore if a government panel like Obama suggests would come into existence, it's refusal to cover some life-saving treatment is a de-facto death sentence.
The Dutch actually do this. If you're over 65 most care is actually denied. They may refrain from directly executing you for being old, but if you have even minor kidney or liver problems ... forget living another year. Nearly all of those problems are perfectly and safely treatable, and no obstacle to living to see a century, but the government decided it's too expensive to pay to fix old geezers.
Obviously the dutch government is in the process of expanding this downward. Recent casualties are pain treatments for pregnant women (epidurals are de-facto outlawed in Holland). Also some treatments for young children are being denied more often - like leukemia treatment. The problem is that if the government denies care you have 2 choices : die or emigrate. Needless to say, massive numbers of Dutch people seek medical care outside of Holland, like Canadians do.
Of course politically expedient "treatments" like euthanasia or abortion are paid back 150%. They are actually talking about involuntary euthanasia on healthy people (right now you have to explicitly state you don't want to be euthanized, or ... ). One can only wonder what the next round of cost-cutting will bring in Holland, and how many more Dutchies will run away.
http://www.brooklaw.edu/students/journals/bjil/bjil31ii_allen.pdf
This is what Obama wants to introduce to America. This is where it leads.
Aren't you afraid that ... you know ... at some point you will run out of other people's money to spend ?
Obviously if I were to spend your money (like you want to spend other's money) you'd call that theft. So do you consider yourself a thief ?
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