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Comment by freehorse | Hacker News Reader

I don't think that "multibillionaire gets big chunk of the money intended for building durable infrastructure due to being friends with/funding the president, resulting to no infrastructure being actually built" is shocking (anymore) but it was still worth watching.

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Last I heard, plenty of non-satellite internet providers have also taken billions from those programs, then pretty much ignored the associated obligations.

And it's not a "Trump" issue, either. The rot also thrived under Biden.

Wasn’t Kamala Harris part of a big push to provide better internet to rural American? I thought I remembered reading $25B in federal funding with essentially 0 marginal positive outcome

That pattern extends back to the Clinton administration.

Over the last 30 years there have been plenty of attempts if you will to build out fiber. Some did lay fiber, others seem to have not.

The Biden bill did get my parents fiber in rural Wisconsin because the local ISP actually wanted to deliver Internet.

I think the government was hoping that raising and holding providers accountable with the bandwidth tests would have solved that but enforcement is one place this is falling down.

I don't know as much about this issue, but definitely do not doubt that, and the fact that this has not carried on indicates more and deeper issues (the video does mention about the progress of the project being too slow under Biden and does broader criticism than towards Musk/Trump). But corruption being a thing during previous governments does not make the current overt corruption better.

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