FCC Has $185 Million in Unclaimed Broadband Funding

Why would they take money that has requirements attached to them when they are already receiving funding from the government (aka the taxpayers) that has very little restrictions?

Relay Service funding for starters... Not to mention the numerous government contracts that are overpriced.

And let us not forget any private deals between AT&T and the NSA.. do you think AT&T is letting the NSA in for free?

Suppose they don't believe it is possible to provide the upgrades and connect the homes under the stated conditions for the amount offered.
aren't they being responsible for refusing to take the funding?

Good. Now can we all stop paying the damn USF "Fee".

Take a look at comcast/twc/att and look how they were rolling in dough on the stimulus.

Please, please, don't waste this money again. I can only imagine what Phase II will bring if the FCC can't even dole out half of the Phase I money. Something is wrong with the program if money can't be given away.

I'm against wasteful spending, not government spending per se.

And FWIW, the "rich" do pay a vast majority of the taxes in this country. I can't imagine anyone legitimately arguing otherwise.

So, what percent of income do farmers contribute in taxes?

Just out of curiosity, do you consider the current defense expenditures to be excessive and/or wasteful?

Admittedly statistics can be made to agree with both sides. As you obviously noted, the definition of 'rich' factors heavily in the determination. But when examined as 'From whom does the majority of the tax revenue come', the answer I usually arrive at is the middle class.

I haven't the foggiest idea... I work for Verizon. I was only commenting on the irony of reversing the general rule of using dollar amounts when discussing who pays what.

Romney pays around 13% in taxes (if we give him the benefit of the doubt)... I pay around 30%. Hence, I pay more taxes than Romney.

The rich/middle-class question is a little harder because it is so subjective. Living in NYC, I probably have a different view than someone in middle America.

While I dislike the 1% figure too, most of the data available has been formatted to it. For 2009, the top 1% ($343k cutoff) paid 36.7% of income tax collected. The next group, .1% (with a $1.4M cutoff) paid only 17.1 % of income tax collected. With my cutoff of 'middle class' somewhere between them, it is obvious that the 'rich' paid less than 1/2 of income tax collected.

Of course, these figures include the bottom 50% of tax payers (cutoff $32k) which throws the percentages off due to the sheer number of 'poor' people.

The average tax rate is also very telling... the tax rate of the top 5% is 20.46%, the top 1% is 24.01%, the top .1% is 24.28%. Does that seem very 'progressive' to you? It doesn't to me.

The real truth is this, companies like AT&T and Verizon are not expanding DSL service, even with money from the federal government, is that the subsidy would not cover near the cost of providing and maintaining the service.

] If you calculated the subsidies handed out to U.S. telcos, you could probably wire the country six times over with fiber to the home. People should be very concerned that these companies are now turning their back completely on this infrastructure. In fact, they're just letting those users flee to cable, creating a massive monopoly.

Most places that have electric lines that run to them should be able to have some sort of internet access, that is, if someone can hang some wire on poles to get lines to people's homes, then someone should look at it, otherwise let the private or public entities get internet to the people if the big companies don't think it is worth it...