My Computer Mechanic

Internet Access in rural Montana costs $7 million to each home (and you paid for it)

Today it seems like all of the discussion out of Washington is about raising the Debt Limit or not raising the Debt Limit. Do we as Americans allow the government to tax us more, can the government decide to spend, or will it be a combination of both.

I thought you would like to learn about a technology related government program to help you decide what you think is the best way to deal with the Debt Limit.

First, Forbes.com columnist Nick Schulz reported that President Obama's stimulus package had cost taxpayers $278,000 for each job it created. Now comes the disclosure that the stimulus shelled out &7 million per home to bring broadband access to rural areas. Schulz observed, "President Obama campaigned on expanding access to broadband Internet, and the stimulus afforded him an occasion for doling out federal dollars to that end."

He cites a report by Jeffrey Eisenach and Kevin Caves of Navigant Economics, a consulting firm, which examined the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's subsidizing of rural broadband, designed to bring broadband access to homes without it. The two authors looked at three areas that received direct grants or loans from the stimulus package:

1: Southwestern Montana
2: Northwestern Kansas (birthplace of my Father)
3: Northeastern Minnesota

The calculated that it cost $349,234 to bring broadband to each previously unserved household!!

BUT, "it's actually much worse than that," according to Schulz, DeWitt Wallace fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

The Montana area included in the stimulus funding has as many as seven broadband providers, including wireless, and "there were only seven households in the Montana region that could be considered without access," Schulz writes.

So the cost of extending access in the Montana case comes to about $7 million for each additional household served.

HUM!! I don't know about you, but this has to rate as about the most ridicules waste of taxpayer's money I can personally identify with. The government spent almost $50 million to bring broadband internet to 7 people. Several questions come to my mind:

• Did anyone ask these 7 households if they wanted or needed broadband internet?
• How can something like this happen?
• Where are someone/something protecting our tax dollars?
• Why didn't the households just get HughesNet for $90.00/month?

The last question is the most compelling to me. Looking on the HughesNet website they advertise that their service is eligible to be subsidized by the very same program that paid almost $50 million dollars to bring these households broadband on a wire. WHO IS RUNNING THE HENHOUSE!! I did the math, if the Federal government put the $7 million into paying for these Montana household's HughesNet subscriptions, instead of putting in broadband on a wire, these households would have broadband for the next 6481 years. Any financial analyst, except those that work for the federal government, will tell you this is ridiculous.

Why does the Federal Government have to be in the business of putting in broadband in the first place? These 7 households in Montana chose to live where they do; the Federal Government didn't require them to live there. IF broadband Internet was important to them, they can pay for HughesNet . I don't need my tax dollars being wasted on them - no offense to the Montana households.

I'm confident that this is one of only hundreds of examples of the waste of our tax dollars by the Federal Government. This one just falls too close to home, being technology related. After finishing this article, I'm writing to my Congressman and Senators about this and ask them to answer my questions. I hope that you will do the same.

I work too hard to pay my taxes to have them spent in ways that make absolutely no sense.