You've read more than once right here at PJ Media about the $7.5 billion that President Joe Biden's Jobs and Infrastructure Investments Act put on the table as an incentive to build a network of 500,000 charging stations electric vehicles up and down the nation's interstate highways. And you read about how few have been built… eightat last count.
Well, that was a bargain compared to today's boondoggle.
The same law also set aside $42.45 billion (that's three Ford-class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers) to roll out high-speed Internet to millions of Americans who currently lack access. This means mostly rural people, who are usually the last to get something new, like drug-resistant herpes or imaginary personal pronouns.
This is the part of the column where I'd ask you to guess how many Americans had connected to high-speed Internet after 2.5 years and all those billions, and then you'd say, “Zero?” and then we'd both say we need a drink.
Because the answer really is a big, fat zero.
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr posted on X a few days ago, “Mostly the $42.45 million is just sitting there. It hasn't even turned a shovelful of dirt.”
The infrastructure act is typical of Bidenomics, loaded with rules and regulations that make it impossible to get anything done quickly. As Carr said, they include “rate regulation, thumb on the scale for government-run networks, technology bias, union preferences and many more issues.”
And since states are required by law to submit proposals—again, burdened with the red tape of Bidenomics—no wire was expected to be laid before 2025, anyway. remember those”shovel ready work“Since the last time Biden was in charge of handing out billions of other people's money? Yeah, that was great.
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Back to Commissioner Carr's thread on this, all this red tape means that “many of the broadband builders who would normally bid to do this work are not showing interest in taking those dollars.” Just because there's “free” money on the table isn't worth the frustration of going to bed with Washington.
We've seen the same issue arise with the construction of these electric vehicle charging stations and the $52 billion CHIPS Act that supposedly gets advanced chip manufacturing off the ground, but it looks more like a big bailout for Intel without do nothing to help the company recover. of years of bad bets and bad execution.
Meanwhile, there's been an easy solution to bring high-speed internet to rural areas staring us in the face: Starlink. If you have $300-$500 to spend on equipment, which you can set up yourself, you can have Starlink in a hurry. Or if necessary, since there is a Democrat in the White House, Washington could send $500 checks to anyone who wants one.
But where's the graft in sending $500 checks and letting them set up their Starlink transceivers? Where are the union jobs? Where are the rules and regulations of intervention? Where are the local commissions with open hands? WHERE'S THE GRAVY TRAIN?
The $42.45 billion was never for high speed internet. The $42.45 billion exists, so there would be $42.45 billion to hand out to the interest groups gathered at every stop along the route of Biden's low-speed gravy train.
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