Taxpayer Money Turns Magically into the almighty…Free Market? I’m seeing a pattern here.

Isn’t the private sector supposed to be private? I thought government didn’t create jobs?

The above assumptions are “Humpty Dumptyisms.” From Through the Looking Glass:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

 “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master that’s all.”

The private free market sector is whatever we choose it to mean apparently.

It’s just like our supposed “free market” charter and school voucher programs, that rely on taxpayer money to stay alive, the telecommunications industry wants a piece of that action too.

GBG: AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and four other telecom companies are offering a proposal to overhaul the $8 billion federal phone subsidy program to pay for high-speed Internet connections in rural and other underserved areas.

You read that right; four telecom companies want our federal tax dollars to pay for their free market expansion into those “unprofitable” rural areas. Humpty Dumpty would be proud.

The Universal Service Fund subsidizes phone service for the poor and pays for Internet access in schools, libraries and rural health clinics … half the money goes to pay phone companies that provide voice service in rural places where phone lines are unprofitable.

While AT&T whined, complained and eventually sued to keep the state of Wisconsin out of providing internet service to “unprofitable” area’s, they’re working behind the scenes to drain the public coffers to make it profitable.

For an industry claiming the free market will service hard to reach areas of consumers, the evidence says something else:

The FCC now wants … a new Connect America Fund that would underwrite the cost of building and operating high-speed Internet networks in places that are too sparsely populated to justify costly corporate investments.

Up until now, I guess it was difficult to justify such costly corporate investments.” But now with taxpayer money:

Republicans complain that the program promotes waste by subsidizing multiple rural phone companies in places where the free market doesn't support even one… The telecom company plan would provide subsidies for only one provider in an area and target funding at places where there is no business case for companies to provide service on their own. 

Hey, little monopolies!!! Now that's competition.