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Comment by chaostheory | Hacker News Reader

Not many people remember, but the Clinton admin offered $200 billion in credits and tax cuts for US telcos to roll out fiber nationwide in 1996:

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026...

http://www.cringely.com/2009/10/29/what-goes-around-teledesi...

TDLR: through mergers and good lawyers, the telcos were able to get the $200 billion of Clinton tax credits in return for nothing. Obama is trying again with a $100 billion plan

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The Clinton administration bears a lot of blame for that--the government had a unique way of not, you know, actually making the credits conditional on rolling out nationwide fiber. Business is as business does, government is as government does, and apparently no one had the idea of modulating ISP rewards _after_ broadband service levels changed. I'm not sure you can blame the telcos for maximizing shareholder value as much as you can blame regulators for not understanding that the sky is blue.

You're assuming that the government has the public's interest as it's main priority -- not that its purpose is to funnel value from the public to private owners pockets. That they are able to exploit the goodwill of the state isn't a flaw, it's a feature.

> I'm not sure you can blame the telcos for maximizing shareholder value as much as you can blame regulators for not understanding that the sky is blue.

Actually you can. Regardless of legality, it is still stealing.

I'm just really sick of people condoning this crap just because the motivation is to maximize shareholder value. There's a thing called ethics.

Does anyone of a credible study about this?

"The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is a non-profit American public broadcasting television network with 354 member television stations in the United States which hold collective ownership.[2] Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia."

"Since the mid-2000s, Roper polls commissioned by PBS have consistently placed the service as America's most-trusted national institution."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBS

But it's not a PBS article. Cringley is a pundit and PBS is hosting his articles in an op-ed space called the "Pulpit."

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