6287

And to look stupid. Don’t forget that part.

6288

And annoy everyone around you, that’s critical.

Oh, and spend a bunch of money for the privilege.

6289

Well thanks guys. I feel like I’ve restored my limited cool pool now :) Unfortunately I now know what a vape pen looks like and won’t be able to be clueless about it any more.

6290

Easier to buy yours, now that you know what to look for!

6291

And remember, the cool kids vape weird flavored vapey stuff.

6292

On the one hand, voting in the US is primarily an expression of tribalism and team, so you aren’t going to move a large number of votes with appeals to reason on the issues. On the other, this is a great way to communicate on the issues, and Dems should do more of it.

Edit: This is a progressive challenger to a sitting Dem member of Congress from Nevada’s 1st district. So not necessarily the most productive effort.

6293

That graphic just makes me fuckin’ angry.

6294

Well, yeah. You’re not going to see a mainstream Democrat imply that we should starve the military industrial complex!

6295

It seems a difficult task to convince hogs to vote against the trough.

6296

But isn’t threatening to take away even one cent from the military a political death sentence?

I mean just for 2021, the Democrat controlled congress approved an EXTRA $25 billion that wasn’t even asked for.

6297

Dem vs. Dem, it’s a viable strategy. But yeah, in the general you’re going to get creamed.

6298

Me too, but maybe for a different reason.

I work in the area of broadband policy and funding. Bernie’s proposal of $150B for broadband would be great, but it’s a small portion of what’s necessary.

The rest of his policy (that’s cited by this contender) involves breaking up the big Internet companies and mandating a basic plan for Internet – something that’s already available on a “voluntary” basis from most Internet companies.

For me, what makes me mad is that the numbers here – at least around broadband – are wildly disingenuous. If you actually wanted to make universal (wired) broadband available, it would cost a hell of a lot more than $150B over ten years, and the upkeep on it would be more on top of that. It’s a nice start, but it’s a bullshit pipe dream as an actual solution.

I’m not a big military supporter, either, for the record. I am a big supporter of honesty.

6299

Fair enough!

But hey, boiling things down to soundbites and graphics is always going to come with a certain eliding of the details. Maybe the broadband point is across some line of disingenuousness, I dunno, not my circus.

6300

You are comparing apples and oranges. The 15b a year is not for 100% free internet for everyone, thus the number must encompass the entire cost of maintaining the internet infrastructure. Publically owned internet could still charge a fee. The money is grants and technical assistance to create publically owned isps, not fully operate them. It’s seed money.

Provide $150 billion through the Green New Deal in infrastructure grants and technical assistance for municipalities and/or states to build publicly owned and democratically controlled, co-operative, or open access broadband networks.

6301

While I can’t speak for the validity of the number quoted in the article, this is saying to build out access to underserved rural areas, places where it’s not profitable enough for private ISPs to want to serve customers and would be a good target for publicly operated internet, would be 19b.

So 15b a year in seed money for building things like this seems like it could accomplish a lot.

6302

However, both Bernie and this Nevada candidate are marketing it as “Publicly Owned Broadband” which implies more universal broadband, which is a much loftier – and more expensive – goal. I wasn’t trying to imply it was free broadband for everyone, but just building out infrastructure to all the currently un- and under-served places will cost well over $150B.

The program as listed would provide $150B over 10 years to allow public entities to build broadband – which is a good thing, generally, since it’ll introduce competition – but it doesn’t do much/anything to address the larger issue of access, esp. since most of the communities positioned to build municipal networks would do so to provide what is referred to (positively) as “facilities based competition” (or negatively as “overbuilds”), meaning that there’s likely already commercial broadband available.

SHLB’s estimate – which is reported in the THE Journal article and which I wouldn’t put much stock in personally – is only to connect anchor institutions, meaning schools, health care institutions, libraries, and the like. Setting aside the issues of whether the estimate is accurate, connecting the anchors is the easy and cheap part. Getting it to peoples’ homes, businesses, and other non-anchor institutions is going to be way more expensive, esp. if we’re talking about fiber (which is what we should be talking about). SHLB’s plan is to get the anchors connected, then worry about having the anchors “share” that connectivity with the surrounding communities.

The anchor institution approach is what we did back in the 1990s, and it was the right strategy then – get high speed connectivity into communities. The next step, getting it from central points to where it’s more broadly available, is something we’ve struggled with for 25 years and it appears that, unless the financial incentives are there, it’s a losing strategy. And, frankly, $150B in public networks won’t change that.

I think the more interesting thing, in terms of last mile/residential broadband, will be seeing whether the satellite constellations can actually provide even a fraction of what has been promised. I’m not holding my breath, though.

6303

Honestly, this strikes me as an odd thing to be angry about, given all the other things one could be angry about in our politics.

I don’t think that presentation implies that it’s one or the other, really. It’s just meant to put the costs of the Dem agenda in context. Biden’s plan isn’t let’s cut the military budget and use the money for this stuff, and neither is the actual proposed legislation laid out along those lines.

6304

It sounds like your objection is you are reading more in to the plan and goal than it purports to be. From everything you stated the 150b over 10 yrars would be a great start.

A plan to provide 150b to help build publicly owned internet with a goal of also serving underconnected areas is not a claim that a 100% publicly owned 100% coverage internet would only cost 150b.

6305

I can understand that. As someone who has worked in this area my entire professional career (25 years), it’s near and dear to my heart and I would prefer people are accurate and serious when proposing policy – so I’m probably more prone to get annoyed at bullshit proposals than most! I’d love to see more serious proposals in this area.

6306

Having followed Bernie’s proposal pretty closely, I can tell you 100% that it is marketed as a solution to the underserved in America – and it’s not that. It’s not a terrible proposal, but it’s marketed as a solution to the underserved problem, rather than as a solution to the lack of competition problem. It would likely help with the latter, but it would almost certainly do little to address the former.