Posted on 12/28/2010 7:34:41 AM PST by Iron Munro
Jackie Dones and her three daughters recognize the value of the Internet.
They have homework and class projects, job searches and employment applications all waiting for them in cyberspace.
But for Dones, a part-time cashier at Family Dollar and a resident of the North Boulevard Homes, a public housing project, paying $90 a month for cable, phone and Internet is a struggle. Evidence of the struggle: the family was without Internet for two months until just before Christmas, when Dones managed to pay the late fee on her account, providing at least a brief reprieve.
"They'll probably turn it off tomorrow," she said.
Dones is about to get a break.
The Tampa Housing Authority has secured a $2.1 million federal grant to provide broadband Internet access to 23 public housing sites. Details are being finalized with Bright House Networks, which will provide the service, and residents will be connected beginning March 1.
The project will be the first such one in Florida and one of the few in the nation.
Internet access will be available to about 3,400 residents for free for the first two years. After two years, residents will be able to pay for the access for the next three years for $18.35 per month.
In addition to having Internet access, the housing authority also will make available a selection of computer training options, including basic computer and Internet keyboarding, Microsoft A+ Certification and an online computer curriculum for school-age children.
The program also will help residents get computers of their own by offering 1,000 computers for only $125 and will install almost 200 computers in two communities to offer residents a designated work space. The authority also will launch a website for residents to provide information on housing, employment opportunities, and the like.
While some might view Internet access in subsidized housing as a luxury, housing authority officials don't. They say Internet access in this day and age is a basic necessity that can mean the difference between moving out of public housing or not.
"Having access to the Internet is like having a stove or refrigerator or a phone. You can't function without it," said Jerome Ryans, the authority's president and CEO. "We've got to break the cycle of the revolving door of public housing. We have to give them the help to get things done."
Having the Internet consistently available at home will make a huge difference, Dones said. During periods when she didn't have it in her home, she went to the library. But there's a time limit on surfing the Internet at the library, and that made it difficult for her to fill out a job application or do homework for her behavioral health courses at Brewster Technical College.
"You're trying to fill out an application and you feel like it's a big test because it's timed," Dones said.
THA isn't the first public housing authority to offer Internet access to residents. In San Francisco, the city, the housing authority and a nonprofit organization called Internet Archived have partnered to make Internet access available to 6,000 public housing households.
The access has only been widely available for a few months, said Ralf Muehlen, network administrator for Internet Archive, but he says he already can point to specific examples of lives improved by the service.
"One woman is pursuing her education. She had to go to a computer lab at San Francisco State University to use a computer lab. It was a 45-minute trip. Now the need to do that trip is gone," said Muehlen, meaning the woman can spend that time studying, not in transit.
Isn't this just more deficit spending to provide more STEALTH REPARATIONS?
People struggling to pay their own bills and living without internet access are being put further in debt by the feds in order to provide free internet access and subsidized computers for people who have been living on the backs of taxpayers for generations.
How come I have to pay for MY internet. WHERE’S MY CHECK?????
Well, it IS a ‘basic human right’, after all...
Hey Jackie, you want free internet? Go to starbucks!
Shutting off the cable, of course, is out of the question. Also, I've got $50 that says she has a cell phone in addition to the house phone. Another $25 says at least one of the daughters has a cell phone as well.
Interesting. So if the Gov pays for internet do they also start blocking certain sites for Tampa Public Housing residents?
Normal people in tight situations either go wireless with a group of others, or go to the library.
I bet the cable or Dish bill gets paid on time.
Maybe she’s got one of those free govt cell phones.
It almost has to be, at least in the case of children. At least a bare minimum would be having internet access at schools and libraries. That is, unless you want there to be some permanent class gulf in America which nobody could ever bridge in one lifetime.
In other words, we don’t need to be in the business of giving the idiots excuses for class warfare politics.
C’mon guys - get with the program. It’s part of the “Commerce” clause in the Constitution that also gives us obozocare.
p o r n
An easier way to cause a class gulf would be to adopt a welfare program called The Great Society.
They'll probably block FOX News, Drudge and Free Republic.
Stuff like this makes me want to scream.
After 14years we dumped DirecTV because of budget constraints. Now I pay $60 a month for a grandfathered Alltel 3G wireless plan for Internet. So we struggle to make ends meet and welfare leeches get taxpayer funded broadband free???
Screw that!
And no, I can’t get cable. No access. But I still pay into the USF.
It drives me nuts. You want high speed internet? Then pay for it. Or steal it from your neighbor with the unprotected wireless router. But don’t make me pay for it for you.
You're right -- and I suspect the girls in the article have that. As for creating an unbridgeable class gulf, it already exists.
It shows, as some other commenters have pointed out, in the insistence on having cellphones, cable TV and a landline -- any of which could be sacrificed if Internet access were so damned important.
It obviously isn't.
You mean she actually had to a computer lab in order to use a computer lab? What an OUTRAGEOUS violation of her civil rights!
And the beat goes on!
Reparations for slavery?
When a black woman is one of the richest people in America?
When a black man was Secretary of State??
When a black woman was Secretary of State?
When black men have sat — and do sit — on the Supreme Court??
When a black would-be despot sits in the White House?????
When countless black men have risen to the top of the ranks of the richest in professional sports and show business?? Men like Hank Aaron. Men like Bill Cosby who... (Never mind. As we all know, Bill’s either an Uncle Tom or Oreo Cookie, depending on which black race pimp you listen to.)
And, how about Liberation Theology?
Liberation from WHAT? The chance to achieve and succeed??
Give me a break!!
Let me make it clear right up front: I am NOT a racist. I supported Herman Cain in his run for the Senate. And if he ever runs again, I would probably support him again (and he’s recently begun to talk about just that).
I also consider Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams two of the finest economists and minds extant today. In case you don’t know them, both are black.
Sowell, Williams and Cain – among others — have spoken out against those fellow blacks who castigate and vilify America for a slavery now long in our past. And ALL thinking men and women oppose the periodic calls for reparations. (When he ran, I supported Alan Keyes. I even spoke in his stead on the RTKABA at a Capitol rally and was asked to fill in for him on his radio show at the time. Sadly, while I still consider Alan a good man, I have had to rethink my support since he came out FOR reparations.)
The fact is that the modern descendants of slaves brought here in chains in admittedly miserable, soul-gutting conditions now calling for reparations need to remember something:
They should not only be glad to be in America, they should be glad to be ANYWHERE!
Had their ancestors NOT been brought OUT of Africa – many by Muslim slave raiders —the blood of those ancestors would have run into the earth over there several centuries ago, victims of the OTHER black tribes that captured them in one of the interminable tribal conflicts STILL ravaging that sad continent and these modern day would-be “plaintiffs” would not even exist.
And I would remind you that slavery is STILL practiced in parts of Africa (mainly by – American BLACK muslims LISTEN UP!! — MUSLIMS) and Asia today. How ironic that disgruntled American blacks are embracing a system that participated mightily in their initial bondage – and would, if Islam takes root here, probably put any who cling to their Christianity back INTO BONDAGE – or to the sword.
95% of the African slaves who were transported across the Atlantic went to South and Central America, mainly to Portuguese, Spanish and French possessions, and that less than 5% of the slaves who crossed the Atlantic went to the United States, it was remarkable that the vast majority of academic research, films, books and articles concerning the slave trade concentrated only on the American involvement, as though slavery was a uniquely American aberration.
And should the great-great-great grandchildren of SLAVE OWNING BLACKS also be subject to PAYING these reparations? If so, how do we find THEM?
And I have traced MY family back to the SLAVS. Although the term looks to be related to “slave,” depending on your source, it either means “glory” or “worshipper.” But my family research indicates that many of my of my ancestors LIVED lives of virtual slavery to some despot or other. Do I qualify for reparations? From whom?? And it begs a question: Are most of us now living here headed into a modern form off that servitude? But that’s a topic for another discussion.
The official US Census of 1830 lists 3,775 free blacks who owned 12,740 black slaves. Furthermore, the story outlines the history of slavery here, and the first slave owner, the Father of American slavery, was Mr Anthony Johnson, of Northampton, Virginia. His slave was John Casor, the first slave for life. Both were black Africans. The story is very readable, and outlines cases of free black women owning their husbands, free black parents selling their children into slavery to white owners, and absentee free black slave owners, who leased their slaves to plantation owners.
-”Selling Poor Steven”, American Heritage Magazine, Feb/Mar 1993 (Vol. 441) p 90
Of course, a full telling of Black History would not be complete without a recitation of the origin of slavery in the Virginia colony:
Virginia, Guide to The Old Dominion, WPA Writers’ Program, Oxford University Press, NY, 1940, p. 378
And the holier-than-thou Northern liberals are strangely silent on recent archeological evidence from NEW YORK CITY clearly tracing the financing of the slave trade to NORTHERN BUSINESSMEN!!
At the height of his remarkable boxing career, Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Clay), once declared “I’m glad my great-grandpa got on that boat.”
And speaking of ancestors, my paternal grandmother’s daddy joined with the 80th Ohio Volunteer Infantry early in the War Between the States (reupped twice) and fought on the Union side at Chickamauga, Vicksburg, Jackson then joined up with Sherman for that infamous march to the sea through Georgia. My wife’s great-great grandpappy ALSO fought for the Union. While I revere the memory of my ancestors, inasmuch as that conflict was less about slavery than it was the economic exploitation and abuse of the South by the North, I fear they MAY have been on the wrong side.
Author Robert Hitt Neill tells of attending a Tennessee Mountain Writer’s Conference years ago with several other authors. Among them was Alex Hailey, celebrated author of “Roots.” Watching a TV news show, a group of them watched a demonstration in a Southern state against the “Rebel” flag incorporated into that state’s flag. The very next report covered a famine in Africa. Graphic images showed dead bodies, starving children with distended tummies and runny noses and dying people covered with flies, too weak to brush them away.
Mr. Hailey intoned in a low, serious voice, “Every time an American black sees a story like that, they should find a Confederate flag and kiss it.” He then pointed to the TV screen and continued, “Because these would be me and my descendants, except for American slavery. I thank God that my family and I are here instead of there.”
Next problem!
Dick Bachert
I think you are on the wrong forum - this is a CONSERVATIVE forum not a socialist one. If they want internet - get a job and pay for it. That’s what I’ve done and I do without other things so that I have broadband internet access.
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