December 2, 2011

Our tax dollars at work - soap operas

From The Washington Times:
Online soap opera cleans up with stimulus broadband cash
You may not have seen the show “Diary of a Single Mom” co-starring Billy Dee Williams, but your tax dollars helped pay for it.

Through the federal economic stimulus program, a company owned by actor-director Robert Townsend was paid more than $230,000 to produce and direct the Web-based show, records show. Other production costs on the show paid to different vendors total more than $700,000.

The money came through an award by the Department of Commerce to One Economy Corp. for more than $28 million last year to help boost broadband Internet service in underserved areas across the country.

One Economy is using more than $1.5 million of that money to create programming such as “Diary of a Single Mom,” which the group says will help provide an incentive for people to connect to the Internet.

But taxpayer watchdogs say the government doesn’t belong in show business.
Emphasis mine -- I am sitting here typing this via a slow 3G cell phone signal being bounced off a mountain through $600 worth of amplification and fancy antennae. The local cable company stops two miles from my house (no line of sight -- already thought about this) and the two satellite services I have tried were so heavily oversubscribed as to be next to useless. This has been done before and the money was wasted -- why do we expect it to be done right this time. Our tax dollars "at work" Posted by DaveH at December 2, 2011 10:26 AM
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