Kleefisch complains she has bad internet after she and Scott Walker ignored Rural Broadband for 8 Years!

Rural MAGA Republican voters won't likely reward Gov. Tony Evers for bring high speed broadband to their communities and farms. They have to stop totally made-up issues like CRT and "wokeness.". 

But Evers finally put rural community's businesses online, eventually pumping millions into their economies. And Republican candidates will try to take credit, but too late: 

Gov. Evers' Task Force on Broadband Access recently released its annual report - highlighting its success in getting 387,000 homes and businesses new or improved internet access.

Read more:https://t.co/yp5b2lSdK4

— UpNorthNews (@UpNorthNewsWI) July 26, 2022

Kleefisch whines she has bad Internet Access? Imagine ignoring rural broadband for 8 years as Lt. Governor, and then blaming the Democratic Governor for her bad internet connection at home? It happened, captured on video, while also complaining about the garbage taught in schools. Our national educational curriculum is garbage? I have two college grads that say otherwise. Our Vos-legislative OBGYN's will also split their time guiding "exceptionalism" through our school curriculum. Big government anyone? 

Kleefisch and Walker refused federal broadband money, abandoning WI rural communities for 8 years. Now she has the gall to complain about bad internet access at home, like it's Tony Evers fault who spent nearly $300 million on broadband helping red rural communities? pic.twitter.com/0VGOJj3gYf

— John Peterson (@democurmudgeon) July 28, 2022

Walker Deregulated, stopped Broadband! Gov. Evers now offering Broadband State-wide, helping rural Republican areas.

It's no secret that rural farm communities vote Republican, but what is unknown is what they think their getting for that. Deregulation is big, got it, but that only makes their water undrinkable and dangerous (that's a direct anecdotal comment from a conservative farmer I talked to). Farmers and small towns are also being ravaged by local bankruptcies and mega-farm takeovers that wipeout families and over produce milk.  

Thank Scott Walker for Lousy or No Internet, hurting Jobs, Public safety, and Rural Businesses: Yup, that's the other thing rural voters are getting for their GOP loyalty. Yet even this hasn't move the needle for them to support Democratic Gov. Evers, or his plan the serve every corner of Wisconsin with fiber optic high speed broadband. 

And the media needs to do more to assign blame. It's either not brought up, or it's buried deep within the article. The following was mentioned halfway into the story, and didn't point out how legislators should have come up with new rules to meet the needs of the new technology? 

In 2011, the telecom industry in Wisconsin was deregulated under Gov. Scott Walker’s administration. Supporters said it freed companies from a maze of arcane rules based on an era of landline telephones, and that the growing popularity of cell phones and other technologies would foster competition in internet service.

The changes largely stripped the Public Service Commission's authority to hold internet service providers accountable to the general public. “We don’t set rates. We cannot tell them they have to go into a sparsely populated part of the state,” said PSC Chairwoman Rebecca Cameron Valcq.

Love deregulation?

What Scott Walker did and didn't do for 8 years is haunting us now. It's especially noticeable after COVID exposed everything Republicans didn't bother to update or solve. 

It's 2021 Republicans, and the "Market Forces" didn't Work, and Republicans made it difficult for local communities to be broadband providers. 

If Gov. Evers efforts take off, this can happen...

Amelia Gagliano manages the Errand Solutions customer service center in Land O' Lakes. The Chicago-based firm was able to open an office in the small town in Vilas County, Wis., because it has high-speed internet. Many business professionals now work remotely from towns in the Northwoods, provided they can get a decent internet connection.

Gov. Evers, not Walker, is urgently trying to help farmers and rural communities survive and thrive, especially after seeing how bad things got in the pandemic. This was never on the Republicans list of must-do's, and even now, instead of increased funding for broadband rollout they opted instead for another tax cut:

If broadband isn't the No. 1 issue in rural Wisconsin, "it's got to be close to it," Gov. Tony Evers said in a Journal Sentinel interview.

The importance was cited 124 times in a state of Wisconsin rural prosperity report last December covering jobs, education, health care and other topics.

"Working-class parents can't work if they have to sit with their children in the car to access public Wi-Fi hotspots," the report said.

The pandemic cast the problem in even sharper relief. When schools went to online learning, the Wisconsin Rural Schools Alliance polled districts about their challenges. Dozens cited home internet access.

“This is an equity issue for rural families and has a deep impact on rural economic growth," the Adams-Friendship School District, in Adams County, said in response to the poll. "It has to become a priority like rural electrification in the early 1930s.”

The state Department of Public Instruction asked school districts to survey families about the depth of the problem. More than 400,000 people responded. In some districts, 25% of the survey respondents — one in four families — said they didn't have any home internet access, let alone broadband. It was nearly half of the families in a handful of districts.

After 10 Year push by Democrats and Gov. Evers to Expand Rural Broadband, Republicans wake up, demand...Evers Expand Rural Broadband?

Expanding broadband today would be like the Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt's electrification of the U.S. back in 1935-36:

President Roosevelt issues an executive order to create the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), which forms cooperatives that bring electricity to millions of rural Americans. Within 6 years the REA aided the formation of 800 rural electric cooperatives.

Now, note the differences between the parties, and who's really serious about job creation. 

About 25% of rural residents, or about 430,000 Wisconsinites, lack high-speed broadband.

Republicans Say NO:  Oddly, it was not a top priority for Republicans in 2011 when Scott Walker turned down Obama's stimulus, and 2019 when they again decided not help their rural voting base. They didn't want "big government" interfering in the free market, that hurting internet provider profits. But ISP's didn't do anything because fiber expansion was prohibitively expensive, especially without the help of "big government" subsidies. Yup, a non-starter for Republicans: 

Republican Sen. Howard Marklein, who chaired the Legislature’s study committee on rural broadband in 2016, said he has reservations about the governor’s proposal (in his 2019 Budget) to expand high-speed internet. "I’m a little concerned that we might be taking money away from some other high priorities," Marklein said.

Democrats Say YES: Gov. Tony Evers is trying Again for Rural Broadband Expansion: In his 22-23 budget: 

Gov. Evers proposed in his budget investing $200 million in broadband access, with $150 million going to the expansion grant and the remaining $50 million helping people who can’t afford the high cost of internet. At Friday’s event, the governor said he will use some of the COVID-19 relief funds on broadband expansion.

Evers plan was soundly rejected:

Republican Assembly Leader Robin Vos called it "nothing more than a liberal Democrat from Madison's wish list."

But after seeing how rural communities loved the Governors plans, Vos went into action. Yes, even after Wisconsin's Congressional Republicans all voted against it: 

Evers has already vetoed a similar measure Republicans sent to his desk in February. With the influx of new stimulus dollars, Republicans brought back the proposal. Vos said the GOP “will have no choice but to go to court.”

Suddenly, Big Spending Republicans back Broadband Expansion? After Republicans rejected Gov. Evers attempts to bring back "our own federal tax dollars" to expand Medicaid, they now want to spend "our own returning federal tax dollars" their party voted against:

“The people most impacted by the pandemic, the hardworking Wisconsin taxpayers, should see additional state aid coming out of the pandemic funds,” Republican Rep. Mark Born said. “This is their money...!”

Democrat Biden says YES to Even Bigger Broadband Expansion: This is a major business and job creation plan. But again, not a Republican thing:

The pandemic exposed growing problems in the U.S., a bitter lesson only the Democrats seemed to have learned from and are taking action to solve.

"Broadband internet is the new electricity," the White House said. "It is necessary for Americans to do their jobs, to participate equally in school learning, health care, and to stay connected."

The White House fact sheet detailing aspects of the plan highlights the fact that more than 30 million Americans live in areas without any access to broadband. And in urban and suburban markets where broadband is available, it's often too expensive. This reality hits minority families harder than white families, creating digital inequities. The coronavirus pandemic, which led to shutdowns across the country, made the issues even more apparent, especially for students who struggled to connect to the internet for distance learning.

Let's pretend Republicans are no longer in the room. Stop listening to them. We don't have time for this!

Republicans always tell us just what their next scheme is but never seem to get called out for their mindless games. And, according to the latest Marquette poll, their game plan is working. People are so busy they've been lulled into thinking this is the way life is now, filled with unnecessary struggles with mounting problems we can't afford to solve. 

After 8 years of Scott Walker and the GOP Lame Duck power grab, it's astonishing that most people still don't know enough about Sen. Fitzgerald and Rep. Vos to give an opinion about them. 

Who's Gov. Evers? The biggest and most obvious scheme was to reject Gov. Evers budget so they could rewrite it, pare it down, pass it, and take credit for what was the administration's Democratic agenda. Seriously, this works?

Republican Scam: Having "Discussions" and promising to "have a conversation:" We already know whatever the issue, these manufactured and nonexistent "discussions" and "conversations" won't make a damn bit of difference. Yet reporters never ask them about it.

We should just walk away, stop listening to their failed and ridiculous ideas. It just takes time away from getting our own message out, real solutions. For once, have them catch up to us, instead of us reacting to their lunacy.

The Walker/Republicans Failed "Free market" Expansion of Rural Broadband: As predicted, broadband providers didn't see enough money in rural broadband expansion, so we're still having a "conversation" about it. That means turning away our own federal tax dollars to help pay for rural high-speed broadband and all the new jobs, educational training, and businesses it would create:

“I think this is an opportunity for rural areas,” said Tessa Conroy of UW Extension in a 2018 interview. “More and more people can work remotely” in rural Wisconsin if broadband access is available, and other “natural amenities” often make it a good place to live.

Surprise, after 8 Years, Rural Farmers suddenly get Help: Thank god we don't have to listen to Scott Walker's fairytale stories about the utopian paradise he created with tax cuts and special interest handouts to big business.

Walker ignored every problem that made him look bad, and never once tried to solve the state's biggest problems, like struggling rural community schools and hospitals, farm bankruptcies, disappearing family dairy farms, escalating rural suicides, and mental health issues.

Republicans hate criticism: Republican "leaders" threw a tantrum when someone rightfully accused them of leaving farmers behind. It took a while, but they finally signed on to a Democratic plan to help struggling farmers. 

The (GOP) Joint Finance Committee in July declined to release ($200,000) to the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection after Democrats requested the committee do so. The Republican members then sought additional information...

The decision sparked a spat between Gov. Tony Evers' pick to lead DATCP, Brad Pfaff, and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald. Pfaff at the time argued in a press release that GOP lawmakers "have chosen to leave farmers behind." But Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, countered the remarks were "offensive and unproductive." Committee Co-chair John Nygren, referencing Pfaff's earlier statement, said that rhetoric "didn't match the man" he had been dealing with. He suggested the language may have been driven by the Evers administration. "I do believe somebody was playing politics with farmers, and that’s really unfortunate," the Marinette Republican said.

 The way I see it, juvenile Republican responses like Nygren's will just delay the future for all of us. Maybe 10 years, maybe 30? What they are doing is stealing away the future I thought was easily attainable for my kids.

Wisconsin Congressmen keep Rural Voters in Broadband slow lane by denying access!!!

You'd think if something were consumer friendly, it would be a no brainer that business would flourish. Not so much.

What about that scary old Net Neutrality thing Republican hate so much? It's a consumer-friendly, pro-constituency idea that benefits all American voters, especially those in rural areas...but it doesn't benefit GOP campaign coffers desperate for funding from ISP lobbyists.

How can anyone argue with these benefits:

Rules require (1) the Internet to be made equally accessible to all users. (2) They prohibit service providers such as Verizon and Comcast from offering faster content delivery to customers in return for higher fees while leaving other customers in a slower lane ... (3) give the FCC permanent authority to prevent Internet gatekeepers from blocking or throttling customer access, (4) retains FCC programs that expand broadband access in rural areas and make the Internet more accessible to low-income persons.

Who would argue against consumer benefits promoting business and jobs?

Wisconsin Congressional Republicans, that's who. Next time you see them, ask them why? Keep in mind a few things; like how providers are now devising ways to game the system to increase profits; trying to fleece customers despite their income. And because the net is a vital lifeline, Democrats are determined to classify it as a "utility:"

Classifying ISPs as utility companies under Title II meant they had to treat the internet like every other utility — that is, just like gas, water, or phone service — and that they couldn’t cut off service at will or control how much of it any one person received based on how much that person paid for it. The idea was that the internet should be a public service that everyone has a right to use, not a privilege, and that regulating ISPs like utilities would prevent them from hijacking or monopolize that access.

The Republicans voting against their constituents best interests:

Voting no: Bryan Steil, R-1st; Jim Sensenbrenner, R-5th; Glenn Grothman, R-6th; Sean Duffy, R-7th; Mike Gallagher, R-8th

These Republicans stand to gain at the voter's expense, despite being elected to serve the public:

The communications industry is one of the largest lobbying groups in US history; internet providers and the telephone companies before them are notorious for spreading wealth across the aisle. 

And those who voted yes? Give them credit: Mark Pocan, D-2nd; Ron Kind, D-3rd; Gwen Moore, D-4th

Despite the popular talking point, net neutrality did not discourage ISP's from investing in their systems:

Some broadband providers, like Comcast and Charter, actually increased investment in 2015 and 2016. Others, like AT&T, decreased investment, but told shareholders years before the FCC adopted its rules that they planned to slash infrastructure spending after completing network upgrades.

Can we afford the mistakes that no regulation will create?

"Consumers don’t have anywhere to turn when they are wronged by these large corporations, because the FCC took itself off the beat entirely,” said Representative Frank Pallone (D-New Jersey). “Consumers are left watching the internet slowly change in front of their eyes."

One particular incident has become a flash point in the debate. During the Mendocino Complex Fire in 2018, Verizon throttled mobile internet speeds for firefighters, according to a brief filed by the county of Santa Clara, California, as part of the federal suit against the FCC. The county paid for "unlimited" plans for the firefighters, but the plan limited connection speeds to 1/200th of their usual speeds after exceeding 25 GB of data. "This throttling has had a significant impact on our ability to provide emergency services," the brief says. The county was able to restore full speeds only after contacting Verizon's billing department and switching to a new plan that cost twice as much.

Still...

Vox: Even though public support for restoring net neutrality rules is overwhelming (including among Republican voters), due to conditions in the Senate and Trump’s veto threat, net neutrality is still dead and doesn’t appear headed for resurrection.

Trump's Canadian Dairy agreement of "little use...too small and too far in the future to help." GOP doing nothing about Rural Broadband!!!

It turns out, Trump is gaslighting farmers for their vote and sending them a $12 billion bride for good measure. But will rural communities and dairy farmers let some city huckster con them?

Trump's trumped-up NAFTA renegotiation is a major swing and a miss, doing almost nothing, and get this, the tariffs Mexico and Canada slapped on ag, pork, and dairy products are still in place because of Trump's steel tariffs.

Trump's Smoke and Mirrors meant to deceive Dairy/AG Farmers Exposed: Why rural voters keep coming back to the Republicans for a few relaxed regulations, bad roads, and lousy broadband coverage is a mystery to me:

1. The renegotiated trade agreement between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada is of little use to the dairy farmers Trump insisted on helping, Federal Reserve banks in the Midwest are reporting.

2. Gains from the new agreement are seen as “too small and too far in the future to help dairy farmers,” the Chicago Fed reported in the central bank’s periodic report on economic conditions across its 12 districts.

3. The Chicago Fed reports “dairy farmers continued to struggle,” and Canada and Mexico kept their tariffs on pork, dairy and other agricultural products that they imposed in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum products imported to the U.S.

4. The Minneapolis Fed reported that “a substantial number of dairy operations have exited the business since the beginning of the year.”

Broken Rural Broadband Promise makes things Worse...thank you Republicans: At the same time Trump put farmers on the frontline in his trade war, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is putting off broadband rollout until he can put together perfect rural broadband maps that accurately show how bad the problem really is...I wish I were kidding: 

The FCC's current broadband maps grossly misstate where internet or wireless service exists and where it doesn't. One of the major reasons: The FCC has relied on wireless and broadband companies to report … but the agency doesn't check the data … providers only need to report advertised maximum speeds and not actual speeds.
 Pai blames the previous Democrat-led administration for creating the problem and says his administration has been left to clean up the mess. But he says this process will take some time to play out. "The maps as they currently stand aren't perfect," Pai said. "But our goal is to make sure with respect to wireless connectivity that we have a clear-cut idea about where those connections are and where they aren't."

 Republicans aren't that into you (rural voters) either:

The Trump ... infrastructure proposal called for $50 billion in rural spending, including on broadband, but so far neither his budget nor the Republican Congress have allocated additional funds for rural broadband deployment.

At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing in early October, Democrats and Republicans were critical of cuts the FCC has made to a program funded through its Universal Service Fund, which reimburses some of the costs for phone companies offering broadband in rural communities. Committee Chairman John Thune said Pai had committed to conducting a "thorough economic analysis on funding cuts" ... But no analysis has occurred and that cuts had increased by almost 25 percent.

Pai believes the "trickle-down theory" for rural high-speed broadband could work? Imagine what a smaller corporate tax cut and more revenue money going to total broadband coverage in the U.S.:

Pai argues that if the FCC limits the fees that big cities can charge wireless companies to deploy their 5G infrastructure, these carriers will be more willing to plow that money into rural broadband. But critics called this a false premise and does nothing more than strip local communities of negotiating power. "Saving money in New York of Los Angeles has zero impact on investment in Montana."

But pushing fiber closer to customers or directly to their door is expensive. An FCC report estimated it would take $40 billion to expand internet access to cover 98 percent of Americans and another $40 billion to deliver broadband to 100 percent of the US population. 

Democrats forcing Wisconsin Republicans to run on issues they've hated, ignored.

It's jaw-dropping, but not surprising, to see every Republican candidate touting their desire to bring rural broadband to all areas of the state. But they've done near nothing the last eight years of their supermajority to make that happen. They even turned back federal money to speed up the process.

Here's just one example: Republican Howard Marklein pretending he cares about rural broadband, preexisting conditions, and deteriorating roads...ah, no!:



We've seen how the "free market" works in Wisconsin, especially when it comes to rural broadband. Makes you wonder how Republicans can keep telling the same old lies about the wonders of the private sector:

Without government assistance, broadband providers say, they couldn't afford to extend the service to sparsely populated areas because there aren't enough customers to justify the cost.

The easily congested and not-so-fast wireless rural system now being installed has frustrated those who were told this was the solution. Funny how electric and telephone wires found their way into remote rural areas, huh?  It proves it can be done...why not today? But Walker Republicans didn't care until Democrats chose to run on this stuff:

Feb. 18, 2011: One of the governor’s first acts back in 2012 was to turn away nearly $23 million in grant funding that would have allowed the state to expand fiber optic broadband networks to 82 schools and 385 library facilities. We lost 150 full-time jobs that could have been created by this project.

"The state taxpayers would have been on the hook for the entire amount if the state could not meet the grant's precise requirements," Mike Huebsch said in a memo to school and library associations. "This is simply not an acceptable risk." 

The most recent state budget contains only $6 million spread over four years for broadband deployment.  

Imagine this from Scott Walker: Yet Minnesota's Democratic Governor took his billion dollar budget surpluses to expand broadband:

The Minnesota Office of Broadband Development has already managed $30 million in broadband investment in that state since it launched in January 2014. The legislature recently approved a $10 million annual investment in broadband expansion, and Gov. Dayton has proposed investing $100 million of the state’s nearly $2 billion budget surplus in bringing broadband to rural communities. 

Trump Party Holding U.S. Rural and High Speed Broadband Back, lobby to Kill "Too Much Competition."

Net Neutrality is dead. Will broadbands expansion end abruptly? Yes. 

Motherboard: AT&T and Verizon are lobbying for rule changes that will strangle smaller competitors, making US broadband competition even worse.

Like the Rural Electrification Act of 1936, expanding rural broadband should have been the next biggest thing. But Republicans have put telecom profits before American entrepreneurship. It numbs the mind that almost nothing is being done because it cost too much? This is the federal government's responsibility now, since "the marketplace" not just failed, but hasn't done squat.

Telecoms are seeking to repeal this: 

A key part of the 1996 Telecommunications Act required that entrenched ISPs needed to sell access to their copper-line infrastructure—also known as unbundled network elements (UNEs)—to smaller competitors at regulated rates. The goal was to foster broadband competition by giving small ISPs a leg up in a market with often impossible barriers to entry (both political and financial).

But Big Telecom make it all difficult: 

ILECs (incumbent local exchange carriers) like AT&T and Verizon traditionally made getting access to their networks as cumbersome and difficult as possible, then pointed to the resulting difficulties as evidence the plan wasn’t working. ILEC lobbyists also eroded many of the sharing requirements for telco fiber and cable networks with the help of the Supreme Court.

What we're missing out on? Much lower prices like in France...

As the United States slowly discarded the line-sharing plan, other countries embraced it to great success. It’s a major reason why someone in Paris can now get 100 Mbps broadband, TV, and phone service for around $60 per month (or less), while Americans now pay some of the highest prices in the developed world for the same services.

This is an in your face broadband plundering by Big Telecom, at least while Republicans in charge. Keep voting for Trump Party politicians if you want to pay a lot more for cable, or who knows, maybe price you out the internet completely:

But FCC data shows the US broadband competition at higher speeds is virtually nonexistent, something that’s only getting worse as telcos like AT&T and Verizon refuse to upgrade aging DSL lines, giving cable operators like Comcast and Charter a greater broadband monopoly in countless markets nationwide. That lack of competition in turn drives sky high prices, terrible customer service, and even net neutrality violations.

Dane Jasper, CEO of San Francisco-based Sonic:“When incumbents build fiber to the homes and businesses themselves, they can retire copper and eliminate the competitive unbundling obligations,” he notes, creating a “race to build.” “If incumbents can eliminate competitive access without themselves building fiber, that will set communities back, and slow deployment by both incumbents and competitors,” says the CEO.

In a June letter to US Senator John Thune, smaller providers warned that AT&T is seeking price hikes as high as 15% on broadband services should the petition be approved by the FCC.

Scott Walker not really into Wisconsin!

If you are one of those anti-government types, then what Scott Walker is doing makes perfect sense to you; its just politics, where the ends justify the means, people get hurt but that's life.  

But when policy ignores growing state problems, we've got a problem. Here's a quick rundown of ignored problems any responsible governor would be on the front lines facing, and proactively solving...except Walker. Could he even acknowledgment or show just a little concern?

We're the dairy state for god's sake:

JS: Dairy farming has been Kyle Kurt's livelihood, and his passion, since he graduated from Lodi High School 18 years ago. But come Monday, he's having an auction to sell his cows, his milking equipment, his tractors and other farm machinery that he's spent years acquiring. “It’s probably the toughest decision I have ever had to make,” Kurt said. "Something's got to change or the small farms are going to be gone."

Scores of Wisconsin farmers are in a similar predicament. And with them, a way of life that has defined much of the state for more than a century and a half is disintegrating. 

Entire communities are falling apart as small farms go under, said John Peck, executive director of Family Farm Defenders, a Madison based advocacy group. Grain mills, car dealerships and hardware stores suffer. The local tax base erodes. Churches and schools struggle or close. “The multiplier effect on the rural economy is huge. It’s why you are seeing all these boarded-up small towns,” Peck said.

Wisconsin lost 500 dairy farms in 2017, and about 150 have quit milking cows so far this year, putting the total number of milk-cow herds at around 7,600 — down 20% from five years ago. Federal court data shows the Western District of Wisconsin had the highest number of Chapter 12 farm bankruptcies in the nation in 2017. Some farmers cover up taking their own life by making it look like a farm accident, said Joel Greeno, president of Family Farm Defenders and a farmer near Kendall in southwest Wisconsin.

Rural Broadband? Walker in No Rush: Remember this...

The state is turning down $23 million because state taxpayers would have been on the hook for the entire amount if the state could not meet the grant's precise requirements, Mike Huebsch, secretary of the state Department of Administration, said.

Blind to Business Opportunities, Walker spends dwindling state taxpayer money: There's no rush, nothing wrong with almost being last in the nation:

Wisconsin ranks 49th among states and the District of Columbia in the average download internet speed for a wired connection, according to the report from Speedtest, a Seattle technology firm.

WHA: Ask Dan Corbin how badly northern Wisconsin needs broadband internet, and he’ll tell you some residents in his town are still using dial-up. The chairman for the Town of Summit said residents have yet to see the expansion of broadband service to rural areas of Douglas County and the City of Superior ... Superior residents are paying the same monthly rate as residents of La Crosse for slower internet service. Northern Wisconsin officials also expressed concern over discrepancies between the speeds that providers advertise are available and what service is reflected on the FCC’s broadband map.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is committed to improving access, Dickison said. He held listening sessions

In rural areas, it’s about $8,000 per subscriber, said Jeff Lee, operations director at Norvado in Cable, Wis., which has been working with fiber optic cable installations since 1983 ... With fiber optic cable and copper hardline so expensive to install across long distances, wireless options are being considered … fixed wireless also rely on sending data over short distances, and can't handle "high data" activities, like video streaming, very well.

The Wall Street Journal reports, approximately 39 percent of the rural population in the country, about 23 million people, don't have "fast" internet, which is defined as having the speed to support "email, web surfing, video streaming, and graphics for more than one device at once," the Journal writes. On the other hand, only 4 percent of urban dwellers lack fast internet. Former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler concluded that Americans should have access to both fast home Internet and mobile broadband.

Walker's Coal Dust Kids: Imagine a thin film of coal dust on everything around you. How safe, how healthy, how nervous would you feel daily?

In 2008 before he was governor, he signed the Koch-backed “No Climate Tax Pledge,” by Americans for Prosperity, that he will oppose any legislation relating to climate change—presumably a cap-and-trade plan or a carbon tax—that would result in a “net increase in government revenue.”Walker has argued, based on a study funded by the coal company Peabody Energy, that the new rules are “unworkable” because they would be too expensive for manufacturers and residents.

Urban Milwaukee: You might call Walker the King of Coal. Just nine states in America are more dependent on coal than Wisconsin. The state now gets 63 percent of its energy from coal, up from about 55 percent when he took office. That’s largely because the Kewaunee nuclear power plant was closed, but it’s also because the state has been asleep on solar and wind power for six years.

Isthmus: Out of step with average voters: 70 percent believe the U.S. should put more emphasis on wind energy production, and 76 percent support increased solar. 60 percent of conservatives support taking action to accelerate clean energy use.

GOP's Old Reaganesque Tax Cut Economy Fading Away...

While Republicans celebrate the passage of their creeky old 80's Reaganesque agenda that's leaving everyone behind, the new internet/high tech economy is moving past their "forgotten" voting base. The following story is subscription only, but you can get the idea...:

ROXOBEL, N.C.—Danielle Baker wanted a $324,000 loan last year to expand the peanut-processing business she ran from the family farm. She had a longstanding relationship with the Roxobel branch of Southern Bank, and she thought Southern would help fund the peanut operation she had spun off, too. But that branch—the town’s only bank—closed in 2014. A Southern banker based in Ahoskie, 19 miles away, said Bakers’ Southern Traditions Peanuts Inc. was too small and specialized. A PNC bank branch also turned her down.

Instead of bringing high-speed broadband to every nook and cranny of the US, funding debt-free colleges, and taking the expensive health insurance burden off American employers, Republicans can't get past their simple tax cut madness. We can't take care of a simple thing like helping Wisconsinites live longer:

Anyone else getting a little war-on-drugs deja vu over the opioid epidemic?

Bonus Ploy: After the GOP's tax cut made the richest companies even richer, we were treated to stories about year-end bonuses of $1000. But wait, this one-time smokescreen simply hid the old economies job losses, pushed by the GOP's tax cut:

1. AT&T will layoff and fire more than a thousand workers starting early next year ... Across the Midwest, an estimated 600 workers were notified they were being laid off by the company on December 16, a week before the company announced it was doling out $1,000 bonuses to 200,000 of its employees in celebration of the Republican Party’s tax overhaul. 

2. The announcement comes days after the New York Post reported that the company "pink-slipped more than 700 DirecTV home installers." 

3. On Friday, the Post also reported that AT&T has recently laid off "215 high-skilled technician jobs in nine Southern states" and plans to fire nearly 700 workers in Texas and Missouri beginning in February.

4. Last year, senior executives at AT&T told The New York Times that "shrinking the [company's] workforce by 30 percent is not out of the question." The Justice Department sued AT&T in November in an attempt to block its acquisition of Time Warner. Soon after the company announced it would give $200 million worth of bonuses, President Donald Trump praised the move as an indicator of how the tax bill could benefit American workers.

Companies Expanding Too, Thanks to Taxpayers?: It's great to see new jobs cropping up throughout Wisconsin as well, but with the help of working Wisconsin taxpayers. Again, this is what passes for the "free market." Yet Wisconsin in last for the 3rd year in a row in job-creating new startup companies...that's the new economy ignored by Walker:

JS: Global sales of cheese, sausage, gummy bears, generators and factory equipment are some of the drivers behind the latest Wisconsin business expansions, new data from the state's economic development agency shows. Fifty projects eligible for state tax credits in 2017 represent $11.7 billion in investments and thousands of new jobs, according to Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. But one big project — the Foxconn Technology Group factory planned for Mount Pleasant — makes up $10 billion of that amount. 

Foxconn aside, what's left are $1.7 billion in expansion projects and about $114 million in WEDC tax credits.

Click to enlarge the list, to see how much WEDC is giving away or loaning. Again, not all funding is bad, but still, some of it's out of control. Where's the magic of this mythical free market we hear so much about? Notice how some companies are simply "retaining" jobs here.

FCC says Internet NOT a Utility now...yet Wisconsin GOP starting to think it is?

This isn't just about the inability of the Republican Party to run our government responsibly, it's also about a lack of awareness and the eventual realization that the "lefties" were right all along.

Well guess what? A few contradictory things just happened: The Republican dominated FCC is now saying the internet is NOT a public utility, essentially repealing net neutrality, while Republican legislators in Wisconsin are now realizing it just might be a public utility. Huh? God these people are slow. 

1. Walker Stopped Rural Job Creation and the Internet: Take one of Scott Walker's biggest initial mistakes; turning down federal rural broadband funding. Like the Journal Sentinel wrote in this Feb. 18, 2011 editorial:

The state is turning down $23 million because state taxpayers would have been on the hook for the entire amount if the state could not meet the grant's precise requirements, Mike Huebsch, secretary of the state Department of Administration said. Actually, high-speed Internet is part of the necessary infrastructure that is vital to communities that want to grow. The state will get there anyway, but this money could have speeded up the journey.

That's an understatement. 

Fast forward to December 2015, and to a state taxpayer corporate giveaway amounting to $1.5 million, a drop in the bucket to Obama's federal stimulus offer. Heck, Walker doled out $500,000 in 2014 and $450,000 in 2015, instead of  spending it on schools or transportation.

Fast forward to today with the news Microsoft picked our state to pilot a rural broadband experiment. It appears WPR is under the impression Republicans have been leading the rural broadband charge all along, not the Democrats:

For state lawmakers, bringing high-speed internet to rural Wisconsin has been a top priority. In May, the state Assembly passed a bill that would allocate $35 million to expand broadband in rural areas (state revenue folks).

Peanuts. 6 and half years ago we could have been well on our way, creating rural businesses and jobs with that $23 million federal offer.

 

2. Suddenly, Republicans think High Speed Internet is a Utility and Job Creator? It's not just hypocrisy, it a contradiction to their party position and federal policy. First, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, seeing a conspiracy theory behind net neutrality:

Pai said he would reclassify the internet through Title I of the Communications Act, rather than Title II. Without further explanation, Pai also claimed that the earlier net neutrality rules were actually a deliberate distraction created by the Obama White House: “In order to energize a dispirited base, the White House released an extraordinary YouTube video instructing the FCC to implement Title II regulations,” Pai said.

Here's what a few suddenly "enlightened" state Republican legislators are now saying, 6 years after the fact. See if you can see the contradiction:

State Assembly Rep. Mary Felzkowski, R-Irma, said her constituents are worried about being able to complete daily tasks without reliable internet access.

"One of the biggest things that I hear repeatedly is that people would like to work from their home or help their children with school projects. A lot of other things are necessitated by having a good internet connection, and that is something that is very sketchy in up in our area as of now."

For state Rep. Romaine Quinn, R-Rice Lake, the lack of decent internet in all parts of Wisconsin could slow the state's growth.

"It's a health care issue. It's an economic driver issue. And it's an educational piece too. Everything that we do in life now kind of revolves around having internet access, whether we want to use it or not. It affects everyone. Especially business parks. If you don't have a business park that is wired to high-speed internet with a large bandwidth and capacity for users, you're not going to have businesses move there. Plain and simple."

Here's the outrageous kicker, and what made me write this blog post:

Felzkowski said  ... she'd like to see the internet be treated as something akin to a utility in the future.

Huh, that's what it is now!!!! But not for long: 

"Back in the 50s, when the government said that everybody was entitled to electricity — that it's an economic driver, it's a quality of life issue — we made sure that everybody had electricity and everybody had access to a telephone. This is the same concept that we're working under with broadband. So, the investment will be there to get broadband to the residents of the state of Wisconsin."