President Biden is heading to North Carolina on Thursday to announce $82 million in new investments to connect homes and businesses in the state to high-speed internet.
He will go to the Raleigh-Durham area in the critical battleground state to make the announcement, alongside Gov. Roy Cooper (D). The funding comes from the American Rescue Plan, which was the COVID-19 relief package Biden signed into law in 2021, and aims to connect an additional 16,000 homes and businesses in North Carolina.
The investment, according to a fact sheet from the White House, will also create jobs in manufacturing and construction to produce “Made-in-America fiber-optic cable that will build out internet infrastructure across the country.”
Ding ding ding. I’ll gladly open a holding company and promise to bring high speed internet to the masses. All I need is $82M in funding from the government. Then I’ll delay the installation by 20 years, lay off staff in those 20 years, give myself an $82M bonus, then say I need more funding with a renewed promise to bring high speed internet to the masses. Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s a tale that has been going for as long as ISPs have existed.