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Comment by maztaim | Hacker News Reader

It will make a few very rich without returning any tangible value to consumers.

This sounds like the US in a nutshell to an outsider like me?

One political party in the US is ideologically wed to the idea that government, _any_ government, cannot accomplish anything. That would be a big reason way you hear so much of that point of view.

This bill will lead to a bunch of rural internet being a lot less crappy. Will it be perfect? No. Will it be better than it was? Yes.

> This bill will lead to a bunch of rural internet being a lot less crappy.

I was under the impression the US had tried similar before... and Comcast et. al. just pocketed the money and bumped their prices up some more.

Without reading the entire bill, these appear to be accepting bids to do ~well defined work.

Probabaly just like they did last time .

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c5e97/e...

One thing we have to face as a populous, is how to establish justice when it involves big companies and millions of people.

All this hustling and bustling about doing something big to help people out, and we ended up with a highway bill that includes some telecom pork. The Democrats are DOA at midterms after this.

You and GP might prove to be right, but let's give it like 15 minutes or so before declaring it dead.

This is just the bill that some Republicans could get on board with. The Build Back Better bill that actually helps people is supposedly going to be voted on in the house tomorrow, and then it has to get through the Senate.

There are other massive bills in the pipeline and also next year's legislative session.

Democrats are DOA at midterms, but it will likely be due to the normal pendulum of politics (backlash against party in power) and unfavorable demographic shifts.

And even more extreme gerrymandering by GOP controlled state legislatures.

There is extreme gerrymandering on both sides. When the Democratic party wins they gerrymander as much as the Republicans.

> When the Democratic party wins they gerrymander as much as the Republicans.

Absolutely false. Democrats do it far less, in fewer places, and with much less effect on outcomes. Please don't "both sides" this issue.

In fact, Democrats changed laws to try to end gerrymandering in three states they won: Oregon, Virginia, and Colorado[1]. They did this against their own self-interest and likely ended up helping Republicans[2].

Multiple independent, transparent measures of extreme gerrymandering have found that Republicans do it more[3].

Republicans have also been found by courts to be using racial gerrymandering to dilute the votes of minorities over[4] and over[5].

That shouldn't be surprising, because we now know that racial gerrymandering was an explicit tactic that Republicans illegally pursued[6].

1. https://apnews.com/article/redistricting-579984fa53d99795674...

2. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/10/democra...

3. https://election.princeton.edu/2012/12/30/gerrymanders-part-...

4. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-gerrymandering/...

5. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/north-c...

6. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-secret-files-of...

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