Over at his Talking About Politics blog, Carter Wrenn discusses a bill sponsored by leftist Sen. Doug Berger that gives the E-NC Authority something else to do:
A while back President Obama?s administration was giving cell phones to people on welfare and, now, State Senator Doug Berger has sponsored a bill to have the ?E-NC Authority? provide broadband Internet service to the same folks. It is unclear how hard-pressed welfare recipients will get computers.
Senator Berger?s bill may be seen as an example of the mystery of government logic. Or as an example of values in the modern age. Surely the poor have greater needs than broadband Internet service. Here in North Carolina we have liberals ? like Senator Berger ? voting to cut Medicaid (medical care to the poor) then turning around and in a burst of compassion giving the poor the Internet.
Longtime readers of Carolina Journal may remember that the original intent for E-NC (when it was created as the Rural Internet Access Authority) — as expressed by its main sponsor, former state Sen. Eric Reeves — was for the agency to be dissolved on Dec. 31, 2003.
?What we don?t want is to create a whole new bureaucracy that lasts forever,? Reeves told The News & Observer of Raleigh in June 2000.
Since then agency leaders have repeatedly found new excuses to keep it alive, and now you see the latest one.
