No more digital divide

A digital divide separating the computer and Internet haves from the have-nots turns out to be more of a gully or small ditch than a Grand Canyon. The political dividers will have to find another gap to exploit.

Survey and related data culled by the Pew Research Center, a team from UCLA and the Commerce Department belies the notion that computers and the Internet have been disproportionately advantageous to a relatively small elite comprised mostly of affluent white Americans with college educations, who live in and around major metropolitan areas. Al Gore and his vice presidential running mate, Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, did their best to make political hay of this issue during the last presidential election

...then there's no need, let alone justification, for a massive federal assistance program to bring the Internet to supposedly benighted rural America.

Well, yeah, but why would that stop the liberals? Logic is not among their strong suits; scare tactics and class warfare are.

Will someone please spread this information to all North Carolinians who will soon be hearing how the Democratic Senate Candidate Erskine Bowles will be taking credit for bridging the so-called "digital divide" for those poor people in North Carolina because of what he and Al and Bill did for them?

You'll remember that way back when, Bill went to Eastern North Carolina and made his pitch, followed by Bowles returning to the state to form what was called the Rural Prosperity Task Force--the precursor to what is now known as the NC Rural Internet Authority, another expensive bureaucracy that is already funded and fronting for the Democrats mythical "divide."

The great unwashed masses out there don't know that it was all simply a Clinton/Gore/Bowles myth designed to build a political machine over a period of years that would help send Bowles to the U. S. Senate by creating a network of support throughout the State (they met in every community).

The Republicans had better get their facts together on this mythical "divide." The facts are that the Rural Telephone Cooperatives nationwide have done an excellent job of bringing Internet service--yes, even high-speed Internet access to the most remote rural areas of the states, including North Carolina. Up to 85-90% of rural folks have had the access--many times ahead of their city counterparts--for some time. The Democrats don't want to hear that though. They don't mess with the truth. It doesn't conform to their desire to pit the "haves" and the "have nots" against each other.

This doesn't mean that the Democrats give up on it. The following comes from Washington Post article on the same topic:

Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) and others argue that the studies are inconsistent. And even if more disadvantaged people have access to computers now than before, that does not necessarily mean that they have the skills to use the Internet to do things like find jobs, look up medical information or find information to help them make financial decisions, she said.

Last month, Mikulski joined 100 community, labor and professional organizations -- including the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the AFL-CIO and the National Education Association -- to fight for more funding to close the digital divide.

Can you imagine if somebody had tried to get the government to close the "Radio Divide" or the "Television Divide" or the "Automobile Divide"? Oops, I forgot. The government did step in to close the "Electricity Divide".

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