https://headlineusa.com/with-recession-looming-biden-pushes-45b-plan-to-nationalize-internet/
(Headline USA) With a crumbling economy, soaring inflation, crippling baby formula shortage and deteriorating southern border crisis, the Biden administration is taking the first steps to release $45 billion to nationalize high-speed internet by roughly 2028, inviting governors and other leaders on Friday to start the application process.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo is overseeing the distribution and said that universal access to broadband internet would be akin to the electrification of rural America during the 1930s, a recognition that the internet is a utility needed for U.S. residents to function in today’s economy.
“There’s more than 30 million Americans who don’t have internet,” Raimondo said. “And in this day and age without high-speed internet, you can’t go to school, can’t go to the doctor, can’t do simple things. And in this day and age without high-speed internet, you can’t go to school, can’t go to the doctor, can’t do simple things. Think of how many times in a day you Google something or go online.”
The funding is part of the $65 billion for broadband in the $1 trillion social engineering program in guise as infrastructure package that President Joe Biden signed into law last November. That bipartisan package is one of the rare policy achievements that the Democrat president is trying desperately to shill for votes ahead of the midterm elections, though it’s unclear how much the message will resonate when much of the country is focused on high inflation, rampant crime and soaring gas prices.
Former President Donald Trump has dismissed the infrastructure spending as “fake” even though the broadband spending was one of his own priorities, but didn’t include the hundreds of millions of dollars for cultural and social programs that obsess Biden. Trump’s Agriculture Department said in 2020 that it had invested $744 million on rural internet connectivity, a sum that was meaningful yet insufficient.