A couple of weeks ago, I read an article of interest in the Business section of the Los Angeles Times, which caught my eye because of its title: Telecom Companies Reject Stimulus Money.
The headline piqued my interest because, after all, isn’t in en vogue these days to take big handouts from Uncle Sam for your big business? Didn’t Congress pass, at the President’s request, a massive “stimulus” bill to move money into the economy by investing it into, among other things, infrastructure growth?
We’re seen banks take billions, as well as the auto industry – just to point out two obvious recipients of President Obama’s largesse.
So why would big telecom giants like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon (all huge players nationally, but especially here in California) be rejecting what is, in essence, free money?
As the article says, “The Obama administration made it a national priority to spread high-speed Internet access to every American home and it offered stimulus money to help companies pay for it, but the biggest network operators are staying away from the program.”
Let’s see – could it possibly be that it turns out that “free money” isn’t so “free” after all? It turns out that accepting the government as an “investor” in your business is an invitation to allow Uncle Sam to meddle in the affairs of private companies, telling them how to run their companies. After all, “the people” are now stockholders, which all of the excuse the Obama Administration then needs to get a private company into their lock hold.
Once a company takes stimulus money, every aspect of how they run their business becomes scrutinized and manipulated, from how much employees are paid, performance bonus structures, or where a company has its corporate retreat (nothing above a Days Inn is appropriate).
But in the case of telecom firms that are paving the technology highway, there is extra cause to be concerned, we learn from reading this article. Apparently Congress put extra strings on these kinds of business, with a “net neutrality” clause that says recipients of the grants cannot "favor any lawful Internet applications and content over others."
Simply put, this is a clause that would require these companies to literally subject how they run their business to centralized planning by the President and the Congress. It is absolutely crazy, and flies in the face of the free market principles upon which our entire economy was established.
The good news is that these companies were making significant inroads into expanding access to the internet all around the company long before bailouts and offers of “stimulus” money started coming from the federal government. You can also be sure that they will continue to do so, probably more effectively, without taking the federal handout and all of the strings that come with it.
The reality is that if the federal government wants to help improve the health of the economy, instead of spending our nation into a ten-plus trillion dollar debt, they should be reducing the tax burden on working Americans, in order to allow the American people to stimulate the economy – by spending their own money!
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