‘I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.
If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.’
Thomas Jefferson 1802
The government wants to dump billions of dollars into pretty much everything it seems. From what ‘they’ keep saying, some kind of infrastructure improvement is a good idea. How about if we overhaul the Internet? I have no idea how well that would translate into jobs created and whatnot, but it sounds good. For being the country that ‘created’ the Internet, we’re falling behind the world. We’re something like 24th in broadband penetration and way behind in bandwidth. The median broadband speed in the US is about 2 megabits per second. In Japan it’s 61! South Korea is 45, France is 17, and even Canada is ahead of the US with 7mbps.
I’m not sure how we fell so far behind. My guess is that it’s mostly due to lack of competition. I’m sure there’s some regulations to blame or the FCC… someone smarter than I could probably explain. I look around my area, and really the only broadband provider is Time Warner – and they suck. Their service sucks, their prices suck, and they have no reason to improve any of it. I really wish Verizon would hurry up with their FiOS deployment. I won’t get it anytime soon, I ‘m sure, but at least it might prompt Time Warner to get nervous and improve something.
So that’s my brilliant and well thought-out idea :D Sounds good to me… I’ll even volunteer to be the Internet Czar. Not as catchy as “Car Czar” but I’m not picky.