Before getting into today’s Winston-Salem Journal editorial on publicly-financed broadband service, I strongly advise everyone to read Jeff Taylor’s Carolina Journal piece on the deep doo-doo Davidson and Mooresville find themselves in after borrowing millions to provide broadband and cable TV service.

The towns went heavily into debt to provide service, and guess what —– the Journal says it’s OK to borrow without voter approval because, well, everyone wants broadband and Time Warner is taking its sweet time providing service to rural areas. Follow the logic:

The issue here is that North Carolina’s small towns and rural areas need fast Internet service so they can attract business. With high-speed Internet, people can work from home, too, thus increasing the likelihood that small Internet-based businesses can take advantage of lower costs in rural areas. Also many people currently work from home. They can move to rural areas and stay employed by urban companies if they have a high-speed Internet connection.

These communities can’t wait until it will be profitable for a private company to serve them adequately. So, using the democratic process, they are asking their local governments to establish service for them. This is reminiscent of the early 20th century when small towns in this state developed their own electrical grids rather than wait for the big utilities to do so.

As you can imagine, I love the part where the Journal evokes “the democratic process” as justification for public financing of broadband. So what kind of democratic process will take place when property taxes are raised to cover the cost of broadband service, which will likely happen in Davidson and Mooresville?

Last but not least —- the Journal says they’ve “long argued that government borrowing without a vote of the people is both unwise and unconstitutional.” Really?