Big Barry’s pitch in Mooresville for more Internet does not compute

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onoff

 

 

 

Yep.  Big Barry’s doing it for “the children.” In politics, you could justify invading Iran by saying it’s “for the children” and you could likely get a free pass from the media and your opponents.  I mean, who wants to throw a monkey wrench into something that is “for the children”?

Dear Leader took time away from bankrupting the country to visit a bunch of eighth graders in Iredell County for a photo op pitching what he sees as a need for more money to expand access to high-speed Internet:

[M]ore people may soon know the name Mooresville, where every student in grades 4 through 12 will take home computers. 

Obama wants schools to copy that kind of thinking. He said, “There’s no reason why we can’t replicate the success you’ve found here.”

“I’ve come here to Mooresville to reignite the engine that powers our economy,” Obama said.  “Today we’re going to take a new step to make sure every child in every classroom has access to cutting edge learning tools.”

He emphasized affordable college tuition for all students, creating jobs and giving the resources to students now to thrive upon graduation and helping the economy grow.

For the the plan to happen, Obama said students need access to cutting edge tools, such as laptops and iPads in the classroom.

“I want to see a tablet that costs the same as a textbook,” he said. “I don’t want success to be limited to a single school or school district.”

They already do cost about the same.  Has Big Barry stepped inside a school bookstore lately?  Some textbooks cost MORE than an iPad mini.  More:

 […]Obama is asking the FCC to find money to “connect 99 percent of America’s students to high-speed broadband Internet within five years. Within five years we are going to get it done,” he said.To pay for it, this means higher federal fees on phone bills.  A senior White House official told Channel 9 it could be as much as 40 cents more per month, but that it would be temporary.[…]

Social security was supposed to be “temporary.”  I think we are still paying taxes on our phone bill that were initiated around World War II to bring telephone service to rural areas.  

Barry’s proposal sounded awfully familiar to me.  (As a former political reporter within the drive-by media, I’ve heard a lot of political speeches.)

Then, I remembered.  Bill Clinton and Al Gore pushed this same doggone thing back in the mid-90s.  Their proposal led to the establishment of the Universal Service Fund.  According to our friends at the FCC:

  • The Universal Service Fund (USF) provides support to promote access to telecommunications services at reasonable rates for those living in rural and high-cost areas, income-eligible consumers, rural health care facilities, and schools and libraries.

  • All telecommunications service providers and certain other providers of telecommunications must contribute to the federal USF based on a percentage of their interstate and international end-user telecommunications revenues. These companies include wireline phone companies, wireless phone companies, paging service companies, and certain Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers.

  • Some consumers may notice a “Universal Service” line item on their telephone bills. This line item appears when a company chooses to recover its USF contributions directly from its customers by billing them this charge. The FCC does not require this charge to be passed on to customers. Each company makes a business decision about whether and how to assess charges to recover its Universal Service costs. These charges usually appear as a percentage of the consumer’s phone bill. Companies that choose to collect Universal Service fees from their customers cannot collect an amount that exceeds their contribution to the USF. They also cannot collect any fees from a Lifeline program participant

So, we’re already paying to extend telecommunications services to schools, hospitals, and rural under-served areas.  But Big Barry and his comrades in the mainstream media aren’t concerned with inconvenient things like facts.  They think we need to pay even MORE for our phone service.

The USF was established in 1996 — SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO.  Apparently, according to Dear Leader, that fund has not accomplished its mission in 17 years.  But everyone paying an additional 40 cents per month on their phone bill is going to accomplish it within FIVE YEARS ???

Yep.  Our country is going broke, and our economy is in the toilet.  But Big Barry & co. refuse to tighten their belt.  They’ve got to bleed us for just a little more. FOR THE CHILDREN, of course.