Trump FCC Boss Brendan Carr Joins Ted Cruz In Fucking Over Poor Rural School Kids
from the assholes-are-in-charge dept
Last year, the Biden FCC passed a new rule that would help bring Wi-Fi access to school kids who struggle to do their homework online. More specifically, the rule allowed schools to leverage the FCC’s E-Rate program funds to pay for mobile hotspots in things like busses, making it easier for kids who lack broadband (or can’t afford broadband) to get online.
The FCC E-Rate budget was not increased, meaning the public didn’t have to pay a penny.
Enter Ted Cruz, who recently tried to kill the program based on a bunch of lies and gibberish about how the program was somehow “censoring Conservative viewpoints.” Cruz’s proposal didn’t make it through the House of Representatives, but Trump’s extremist lackey at the FCC, Brendan Carr, is now picking up the campaign:
“Today, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr asked his commission colleagues to vote on two items that would reverse the agency’s unlawful, Biden-era decisions to expand COVID spending programs,” Carr’s announcement said. “Those FCC decisions spent scarce taxpayer dollars on funding unsupervised screen time for kids without accounting for the significant attendant risks.”
Again, this program helped kids in poor, rural communities do their homework via portable hotspots doled out at the school library to folks out of range of traditional broadband access. There are no “significant, attendant risks.” It was not “illegal.” These are completely fabricated lies to feebly justify the pointless destruction of a useful program that didn’t cost taxpayers an additional cent.
Cruz’s effort would have leveraged the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to not only eliminate the program, but to also ban the FCC from ever creating something similar ever again (Republicans used similar tactics in 2017 to kill new FCC rules that would have held telecom giants accountable for repeated privacy violations).
Carr’s proposal, in turn, would eliminate the program now, but wouldn’t forbid the FCC from restoring it under future administrations. In a statement, Cruz applauded Carr’s pointless destruction, but urged Congress to make it permanent:
“Kudos to Chairman Carr for moving to undo the Biden hotspot program and protect children, but now it’s time for Congress to step up and codify this change,” Cruz said in the FCC press release. “In May, the Senate passed my Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution overturning the illegal Biden hotspot rule. I urge the House to act on the resolution and prevent this or similar harmful rules in the future.”
Again, there is no money being saved here. No U.S. citizens were asking for this helpful program to be destroyed. This is just wanton destruction by terrible assholes, who know that because “the left” (read: people across political ideologies who actually care about kids being able to do their homework in a country with shitty and expensive broadband access) supported it.
The other underlying motivation is the fact AT&T didn’t like rural kids getting free access to the Internet (instead of overpaying AT&T for cellular access). These terrible assholes can’t just come out and admit any of this, so you get this weird performative bullshit about “Biden illegality” and “protecting the children” as flimsy cover.
Filed Under: assholes, brendan carr, broadband, education, hotspots, internet access, portable hotspot, schools, ted cruz, telecom, wifi
Comments on “Trump FCC Boss Brendan Carr Joins Ted Cruz In Fucking Over Poor Rural School Kids”
So that’s the culprit, “unsupervised screen time”. To bad, I was hoping for RFK to come on to say that this must be banned because WiFi is bad for children.
And there’s the biggest lie. The program being destroyed enabled kids to do homework, so hardly counts as “unsupervised screen time” even if the kids don’t have an adult hovering over their shoulder (as opposed to within earshot).
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Not Fooling Anyone
Kids aren’t going to do their homework on their phone while on the school bus. Phones are a distraction from learning, not a benefit. An increasing number of schools are banning cell phone use during school hours to reduce the harm caused by social media exposure.
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Kids have no business being able to call for help when Koby touches them inappropriately.
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Hahaha.
Fucking retard.
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You’re right. They are proably trying to do their homework on the school issued tablet. You know.. the one that the schools likely got from a grant that the GOP are proably also trying to cancel.
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Yeah we can’t have kids using anything taxpayer funded for anything fun and self-directed, ever. (The horror!!)
Zhey each moost alveys be merely un obedient little cog, doing zonly productive zings for zhe fathzerland! Jawohl!
You’ve got a terminal case of authoritarian-brain. Somebody call Bob Altemeyer, we got a case study here for him with an RWA score off the charts.
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To bad it is entirely too late for you in that regard so do us all a favor, stop using the internet altogether and maybe your cognitive decline will stop.
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Wifi access through a hotspot, you ignorant fuck. Not phones. Are you going to argue that the Internet isn’t useful for education?
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Shows how little homework you did. I did mine on the bus if necessary, with books and paper.
gunna need another box of crayons!
Kudos to Chairman Carr for moving to undo the Biden hotspot program and protect children,
PROTECT THEM FROM WHAT?
knowledge, information, education. being able to do homework? what? how does this BS protect kids!
it doesn’t! what it does do. is make it so some kids can’t succeed. but that must be the point! to make sure the elite have a future set of dumb workers to work there factories and staff there favorite restaurants! and according to the currant criminal crime syndicate masquerading as government! anything that helps the poor is illegal…….
And my Internet service went UP in price..
Isnt this stuff Silly.
The Odds are, They want the State to be responsible for Stuff to happen In the State, so that “Who” looks good? NOT the Gov. Not the Democrats, Not the Corps Who Pay to Much too the STATE to Block Others from coming in.
Oh, neat! So when is Congress going to undo all the illegal Trump shit? And their own complicity?