In the 1920s, conservatives were suspicious of-- and hysterical about-- rural electrification proposals... you know, "Socialism!!!" So President Franklin Roosevelt had to get the ball rolling with an executive order (May 11, 1935). At the time, just 3% of farms and ranches were electrified. A year later, Congress passed the Rural Electrification Act which was bitterly opposed by the same kind of corporate Republicans who oppose all progress that aims to make the lives of working class Americans better today. The legislation was bipartisan and bicameral-- drafted by Senator George Norris (R-NE) and Congressman Sam Rayburn (D-TX). But, for working on behalf of his rural constituents, Norris was viciously attacked by reactionary Republicans. Pro-Nazi fascist Republican Henry Ford, for example called Norris a "socialist" for supporting public electric power through the 1933 Tennessee Valley Authority Act and the Rural Electrification Administration, and successfully led a movement to force Norris out the Republican Party. In 1936, Norris ran-- and won-- as an independent New Dealer.Little known fact: In 1962, raving right-wing lunatic Ronald Reagan was fired from his job as the long time host of the hugely popular TV series, General Electric Theater because he kept giving speeches attacking the TVA as one of the problems of "big government." At that time the TVA was one of the biggest customers in the world of General Electric's turbines. In any case, much of the work that the Rural Electrification Administration did in homes 7 and 8 decades ago, is still in existence today, although much of it has been augmented to support a greater number and variety of appliances in rural homes. There were many reasons Goldwater lost his bid for the presidency in 1964 but one was his call for the U.S. government to sell the TVA. In fact. the two states whose economies were most impacted by the TVA, Tennessee and Kentucky-- blood red today-- voted against Goldwater by huge margins. LBJ won Tennessee 55.50% to 44.49% and Kentucky went blue 64.01% to 35.65%.Today, as Bernie explained, "high-speed internet is central to the basic functions of families, students, and businesses. Small businesses often cannot exist without it. Access to health care often depends on it. Yet across the country, huge swaths of the population lack access to an internet connection or cannot afford the options available. Millions lack any internet provider in their area and tens of millions are trapped with only one option. High prices keep internet out of reach for working families in both rural and urban areas." Here's his point and why those is a campaign issue-- for him, though not for any of the other candidates:
High-speed internet service must be treated as the new electricity-- a public utility that everyone deserves as a basic human right. And getting online at home, at school, or at work shouldn’t involve long waits, frustrating phone calls, and complex contracts and fees meant to trap and trick consumers. It should just work.The internet as we know it was developed by taxpayer-funded research, using taxpayer-funded grants in taxpayer-funded labs. Our tax dollars built the internet and access to it should be a public good for all, not another price gouging profit machine for Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon.Internet, telecom, and cable monopolies exploit their dominant market power to gouge consumers and lobby government at all levels to keep out competition. And they don’t provide service to anyone who can’t afford it, or install it in areas where it won’t make them as much money as their shareholders demand.Their greed must end. Verizon made more than $45 billion in profits over the last two years, and last year their CEO took home more than $22 million in compensation. Comcast made more than $34 billion over the last two years and paid their CEO more than $35 million in 2018. AT&T took $3 billion from Trump’s tax cut and cut 23,000 jobs while their CEO pocketed $29 million last year. With no incentive to innovate or invest, these conglomerates charge sky-high internet prices to reap profits from consumers, and they collect government subsidies to provide service to rural households while still leaving millions of Americans unconnected.It’s time to take this critical 21st century utility out of the hands of monopolies and conglomerates and bring it to the people while creating good-paying, union jobs at the same time. This is not a radical idea. Cities across the country deliver municipality-owned, high-speed internet to their residents, from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Lafayette, Louisiana.President Franklin D. Roosevelt promised to deliver electricity to every home in America in 1935, a time when 90 percent of rural households lacked it. Ten years later, his promise was largely fulfilled, transforming the standard of living for millions of Americans. Farmers could finally refrigerate milk. We already know how to provide affordable, high-speed internet, but conglomerates continue to monopolize the industry and provide the country with inadequate coverage and service. Bernie fought against this monopolization in 1996, when legislation passed into law that gave free reign to monopolize markets and gouge consumers. Enough is enough. When Bernie is president, every American household will have affordable, high-speed internet by the end of his first term. This investment will provide every community the internet they need for their homes, educational systems, small businesses, health clinics, and more.The geographic disparities of internet access are stark: in rural communities, more than 31 percent of Americans still lack access to what the Trump FCC defines as broadband. In urban areas, low-income communities and communities of color disproportionately lack access to broadband and millions more can’t afford to subscribe to broadband services. The United States ranks just tenth of 22 in a comparison with European countries in broadband deployment.The situation is even worse for under-resourced groups, communities of color, Native Americans, and people with disabilities. White, educated households are more likely to have broadband internet than households in communities of color. More than 80 percent of white households have home internet, compared to only 70 percent of Latino households and 68 percent of Black households. The FCC has reported that less than half of rural tribal areas have access to high-speed internet. Roughly one in four people with disabilities say they do not use the internet, and people with disabilities are 20 percent less likely to have broadband. We must end these disparities by connecting every household in America to high-speed internet, regardless of their income or zip code.Municipalities across the country running their own internet services have proved they can deliver high-quality service at a fraction of the price of established monopolies. Cities can run their own networks just like a water or electric utility or build out an open access network to allow multiple providers to compete on price and service, rather than one or two conglomerates gouging customers and setting their own prices. Bernie believes it’s time to stop relying on profit-focused corporations to get to universal broadband. Bernie will provide the necessary funding for states, cities, and co-ops to build out their own broadband networks, and ensure all households are connected by the end of his first term.
This is what Bernie is promising to do when he replaces Trump in 2021:
• Deliver access to high-speed broadband internet to everyone in the United States by building out the necessary resilient, modern infrastructure.• Provide $150 billion through the Green New Deal in infrastructure grants and technical assistance for municipalities and/or states to build publicly owned and democratically controlled, co-operative, or open access broadband networks.• Condition grants on strong labor, wage and sourcing standards to ensure that federal funding goes toward creating good-paying union jobs and ensure all funded projects cannot subcontract work to evade labor law through the Workplace Democracy Plan.• Condition grants on universal service, provisioning minimum speeds, privacy standards and affordability• Reform the Universal Service Fund and establish dedicated funding from general revenue to the existing programs, ending regressive contributions from providers are passed onto consumers.• Establish a dedicated, accelerated last-mile fund through the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utility Service to provide capital funding to connect all remote rural households and businesses and upgrade outdated technology and infrastructure, prioritizing funding for existing co-ops and small rural utilities.• Set aside $7.5 billion of this funding to expand high-speed broadband in Indian Country and fully resource the FCC’s Office of Native Affairs and Policy.• Preempt the 19 state laws, largely written and lobbied for by internet service provider monopolies, that limit or bar municipal and publicly-owned broadband.• Ensure all public housing provides free broadband services to residents.• Ensure people with disabilities have full access to the internet.
• Aggressively enforce the Americans with Disabilities Act to ensure the accessibility of the Internet, cloud-based applications, and internet-connected devices.• Ensure full Section 508 compliance, including making sure government agencies can receive ASL video calls from deaf people.• Ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.• Develop regulations to expand the availability and quality of closed captioning and audio description on internet platforms.• Reinforce and expand the national and state equipment distribution programs for people with disabilities.• Reinforce and expand the availability and quality of accessible modern telecom services to ensure everyone who needs these services receives them.• Expand the E-Rate and Rural Health Support programs to ensure all schools, libraries, hospitals and other essential community facilities are connected equitably and affordably and provide dedicated funding to ensure these facilities on Tribal Lands are connected.
Nor is this all Bernie is determined to do along these lines. Costs too high. "The problem goes beyond a lack of basic access to internet services," he wrote. "Access to high-speed internet means nothing if you cannot afford your bill. Microsoft found an estimated 163 million people in this country might not currently use the internet at minimum broadband speeds. That’s because the internet in this country costs too damn much. American consumers who are connected are forced to pay more for less. The United States ranks 10th of 28 countries in average broadband speeds and 18th out of 23 countries in fixed broadband prices, charging double the prices of. Only 54 percent of households with incomes below $20,000 have home internet, compared to nearly 90 percent of households with incomes above $100,000. Affordability and digital literacy are major barriers to internet usage for low-income households and seniors. The internet was invented in America. We should be the world leader in providing fast, affordable service. We must also invest in digital adoption and literacy, ensuring when affordable service is provided, all can fully utilize the benefits. Large internet service providers have enjoyed government funding, protection from competition, and light regulation while gouging customers with some of the highest prices for service in the world. Bernie will regulate these providers like a utility. The FCC will review prices and regulate rates where necessary, ensuring areas without competition aren’t able to run up prices. We will also require providers to offer a basic plan for a regulated rate to all customers, ensuring everyone will be able to affordably connect to the internet."Bernie has been very clear that he intends to break up and regulate internet and cable monopolies. He wrote that "Telecom and cable monopolies exploit their dominant market power to gouge consumers and lobby government at all levels to keep out competition. Just four companies control nearly two-thirds of the entire market. Prices are as much as 25 percent higher than they would be in a competitive broadband market. Large ISP monopolies report inaccurate or overstated coverage information, obscure their prices, and often don’t deliver promised speeds." And by the way, that ActBlue thermometer on the right is a way you can contribute to Bernie's campaign and make sure all these proposals and promises come to fruition. I can guarantee you Status Quo Joe or Trump will never deal with any of them.
Bernie foresaw what deregulation and consolidation of cable giants would do to consumers. He was one of just a handful of Congressmembers to vote against the 1996 Telecommunications Act, arguing against the bill on the House floor:“Mr. Chairman, this telecommunications bill cripples consumer protections and should be soundly rejected. It is being touted as pro-consumer when, in reality, it will cause inflated rates and will limit consumer choice. It is touted as pro-competition when it actually promotes mergers and the concentration of power.”This legislation set the groundwork for the light touch regulation and monopolization of the broadband market that we see today. We will break these monopolies up and closely regulate them to ensure they are providing consumers with acceptable service, and eliminate hidden fees, surprise bills, and other consumer-gouging practices.
What's he going to do about it? First off, "Use existing antitrust authority to break up internet service provider and cable monopolies and bar service providers from also providing content and unwind anticompetitive vertical conglomerates." He also intends to Classify broadband providers as common carriers under Title II and reinstate net neutrality regulations while working with Congress to codify net neutrality protections into law to prevent a future FCC from repealing them once again. He promises to appoint members of the FCC who will use Title II authority to promote competition, choice, and affordability for broadband service and he will require price transparency, advertised speed accuracy, and granular service data for large, private broadband providers, while eliminating hidden fees, including surprise billing, and require internet and cable providers to clearly state the cost of service, ban unexpected rate increases, and end service termination fees.He also intends to build resilient communications networks as part of his infrastructure plan for the country. "Our outdated and dangerous national infrastructure is not ready to withstand impacts like floods, hurricanes, or wildfires," he wrote. "When extreme weather events hit, communities can be left without the life-saving communications tools and information they need... Internet access and communications infrastructure are critical to the decade of the Green New Deal, a ten-year, nationwide mobilization centered around justice and equity during which climate change will be factored into virtually every area of policy. With our $150 billion investment in resilient, affordable, publicly owned broadband infrastructure, we willI ensure that communities stay connected during natural disasters. This communications infrastructure will ensure first responders and communities are ready to deal with the worst climate emergencies."Milwaukie Mayor Mark Gamba is running for a seat to represent a large and largely rural Oregon congressional district in the heads of very reactionary Blue Dog Kurt Schrader who can be counted on to not support Bernie's initiatives. Gamba told us that he has "long believed that high speed internet should be a public utility similar to other necessities like water and sewer. It has been on my to-do list as a mayor, but since that list is long and intense, we’ve had to prioritize issues like climate change, safe routes to school and affordable housing. In our region, an even smaller city than Milwaukie, Sandy Oregon, did choose to roll out gigabit service to their residents who didn’t have any high-speed access. It turns out that they’ve been able to provide better service than what the rest of us experience from Comcast, at half the price. The main reason we haven’t done it is the upfront expense for building out the system. The U.S. government could easily create a zero-interest loan process that helped cities and counties with that initial investment and be paid back within a decade or so. I totally agree with Senator Sanders that we need to break the death grip that the telecom giants have on this critical piece of infrastructure and make sure that every family has fast internet access so that parents can start a business or apply for a job and kids have the opportunity to succeed on their homework which, more and more depends on internet access. As a member of congress I would work to make sure that the rural and low income areas of America were prioritized in this rollout."Jon Hoadley is a Kalamazoo area state legislator running for Congress against reactionary Trumpist Fred Upton. "Districts like mine in southwest Michigan," he told us this morning, "need high speed rural broadband access now. When we have some of our neighbors who can't get online quickly and easily, and even some neighbors who can't reliable cell phone service, we are limiting people's freedom and opportunities. Big telecom companies aren't going to be jumping in to help any time soon. If we want thriving rural communities, we need to invest in rural communities with bold ideas that face these challenges head on."This morning, two California progressive candidates, for whom-- and for whose districts' residents-- rural broadband is an important issue, sent us statements of their own visions. Audrey Denney is running in the far northeast largely rural corner of the state. "Lack of broadband internet and cell service in large areas of the North State," she told us, "inhibit access to public safety resources, education, services, and economic opportunities. Investment in improving our communications networks will revitalize our rural economy by helping local businesses prosper and encouraging economic investment in the north state. Improving access to phone and internet will also help all people access the resources, knowledge, and skills they need to improve their livelihoods and quality of life."Kim Williams, a former diplomat under Obama, wrote that when she meets with constituents "we frequently talk about how this district can look dramatically different in a few years or how it could look exactly the same. This resonates with many people because so many things have remained stagnant. And while there are many parts of California that are thriving, the Central Valley is not. We desperately need policies that can rebuild communities from the ground up and acknowledge every basic need wealthier Americans take for granted. And we need the might of the federal government to do this. Most of our local electeds have remained laser focused on pleasing a handful of wealthy campaign donors when we've needed a government that can lift up everyone. Universal access to high speed internet would do just that. It would ensure everyone could access the doctor when they needed it and not weeks later. It would ensure our workforce (one third of which do not have a high school degree) could skill up for the changing job market, and it would open up remote jobs to thousands of people across the Valley. In short, access to the internet would be life changing for hundreds of thousands of people in my district."
