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Trump Pushes To Expand High-Speed Internet In Rural America (reuters.com)
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday to make it easier for the private sector to locate broadband infrastructure on federal land and buildings, part of a push to expand high-speed internet in rural America. Reuters reports: "We need to get rural America more connected. We need it for our tractors, we need it for our schools, we need it for our home-based businesses," a White House official told reporters ahead of Trump's speech at the annual convention of the American Farm Bureau Federation. "We're not moving mountains but we're certainly getting started," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to preview Trump's actions. The White House described the moves as an incremental step to help spur private development while the administration figures out what it can do to help with funding, something that could become part of Trump's plan to invest in infrastructure. "We know that funding is really the key thing to actually changing rural broadband," a second White House official said. Reuters cites a 2016 report from the Federal Communications Commission, noting that 39 percent of rural Americans lack access to high-speed internet service.
Some suspect he's rewarding those who voted for him and punishing blue states and their infrastructure projects.
He's known to personally reward loyalty and punish non-loyalty above personal doctrine or dogma. Even though he's pro-infrastructure, he still may avoid blue-state infrastructure as punishment for not voting for him and/or giving him poor ratings.
The recent tax bill also tilts toward red states in that state and local taxes cannot be deducted as much as before from the total taxed. (Some may claim this is "more fair", but blue states already pay a disproportionate amount of money to the Federal Gov't, per population.)
Table-ized A.I.
I suspect most people come to populated areas for career reasons, not necessarily because they prefer crowds and density.
It seems outsourcing and technology have shifted the jobs to more populated areas for some reason, good or bad. Rural areas recovered slower from the slump, and this is partly why T was elected: they felt slighted.
I believe the shift is partly due to farming automation, and partly due to the fact if your job is easy to do remotely, it's also easy to outsource to a cheap-labor country. Those jobs left here tend to require heavier teamwork and personal interaction. In the late 90's I thought telecommuting would take off and relieve population density. I was wrong.
Table-ized A.I.
You can't tell by some of the comments.
At this point if the executive order provided free high speed internet to all Americans the headline would probably be
"Trump signs order making it easier to spy on all Americans".
Damn!
Just checking the early comments, and it's all "he's only rewarding the red states for voting him in", "it's encroachment on public lands - will end with offshore drilling and commercialization of public lands", "write a check to your cronies".
They left out "he's only doing it to watch liberal heads explode".
Even though I disliked Obama and [president] Clinton, at least I accepted that they were duly elected, and note that they did some things that were actually good for the country. Notably, Clinton reduced regulations and reduced the deficit (and national debt) for awhile.
Is there *nothing* good that will come from this president?
At least he's no longer literally Hitler. That's progress.