DeLayed Pork

DeLay's district to get loan for broadband

WASHINGTON — Nearly $23 million meant to bring the World Wide Web to the rural United States instead will underwrite fast Internet service to affluent Texas suburbs represented by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, a situation Democrats and critics called outrageous yesterday. The loan, from the rural-development wing of the Agriculture Department, includes work in communities outside Houston, in DeLay's district. Farm and telephone groups questioned the wisdom of the $22.7 million loan to ETS Telephone Co. & Subsidiaries, a Houston firm that advertises itself as providing telecommunications for "quality master-planned communities." The loan would help bring broadband service to 9,272 households and businesses just outside the Texas city, said the Agriculture Department. Congress created the program in 2002 to help rural areas, including towns of fewer than 20,000 people, gain Internet access. The ETS project qualified, a USDA official said, because it was in a traditionally agricultural area and met the population criteria. Critics said the USDA loan was misspent. ETS chief Richard Gerstemeier was not available for comment yesterday. A spokesman for DeLay had no comment.

Just a small sample from the platter of goodies our federal government spends, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, each year in order to get enough members of congress to sign the appropriations bills. If our government is not the most corrupt organization in the world, please tell me who is worse.