$7 Million, or $5833 Per Current Broadband Customer

From the Cedar Rapids Gazette:

Iowa will be getting more than $7 million to expand broadband internet access in rural communities.

Sen. Tom Harkin announced the funding on Friday. He says the expansion is necessary for rural Iowa businesses to stay competitive and for rural residents to stay connected.

The loan will go to the Interstate 35 Telephone Company, a small rural telephone company headquartered in Truro. The expansion will serve all customers in the company’s three exchanges in Madison and Warren Counties.

That's Truro, population 427.

How big of a company is the Interstate 35 Telephone Company? From their web site:

Currently we support 1200 Internet customers

$7 million loan divided by 1200 internet customers = $5833.33 per customer.

But what sort of expansion are we talking about?  Customers already have access to 3MB download and 512kb upload speeds.  That's pretty fast, especially for rural areas.

Why does the company need a loan equivalent for $5833.33 per customer?  You're not going to get that much gross revenue out of a typical broadband customer in 9 or 10 years!

This is another example of Tom Harkin Wasteful Pork Spending.  Whether it's Harkin's $10 million electric bus debacle or a $5000 handheld computer for a fire department in Fort Dodge under the guise of Homeland Security or a brand new $171,000 fire truck for a town of 400 people or $3.5 million for the Iowa Association of School Boards.  And on and on and on.

It's no surprise that Tom Harkin was quoted as saying "I'm happen to be a support of earmarks, unabashedly."

What's sadder still is that the "reporters" at the Associated Press and the Cedar Rapids Gazette and the Des Moines Register reprint these press releases without bothering to spend 5 minutes to look up information on the company getting the loan or doing some simple math.  And then they wonder why we have budget deficits.  Unreal.