Would the Tea Party Support the Internet?

Recently the newly elected governor of Florida, a favorite of the Tea Party crowd, decided to reject a federally funded high-speed rail project that was planned for his state. Rejecting the project meant that Floridians won’t get the benefit of the high-speed rail project or the jobs that would be created by it.

Some other state will get the money for a similar project. But the governor stood tall on the principle of, well, something.

From what I can gather, Tea Party people are dead set against federal spending. All federal spending, regardless of the benefits it provides for real people, is somehow evil according to these people. So I started thinking about three of the biggest milestones of the last 70 years or so.

Nuclear Energy--Humans harnessed the energy created by splitting atoms apart in the 1940s because the federal government launched the Manhattan Project to create the first atomic bomb. Every nuclear generator around the world owes its existence to the team of federal workers who labored in the New Mexico desert.

Some Tea Party types seem to be fans of nuclear energy. I wonder if they would be such big fans if they knew how it started.

Interstate Highway System--Long before he was a general, Dwight Eisenhower was stationed at Army posts accessible only by dirt roads. He saw firsthand how difficult it was to move soldiers and supplies from place to place in the United States. He also saw just how efficiently the Germans could transport anything on wheels with the Autobahn.

That’s why Eisenhower pushed for the development of the Interstate Highway System we use today. That’s why he wanted to use federal dollars to build the highways. If the Tea Party had been around in the 1950s, they might have called the interstates “socialist roads.”

Internet--When a manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) decided it was silly to need a separate terminal for each data network he could access, the idea of transparently interconnected networking was born. All the money for the development of what we no call the Internet was provided by the federal government.

Even the browser was developed with federal dollars. Mosaic, the grandfather of all browsers, was created at the University of Illinois National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

Every Tea Party website communicates its message courtesy of the United States government. Every Tea Party chapter uses a product of federal spending to rail against federal spending. I love the irony.

But I really have to wonder something. If we had been prevented from spending federal dollars in the past the way the Tea Party is blocking us now, where would we be today? Would we have nuclear power, interstate highways, or the Internet?

This Could Get Interesting

With the deadline for the current CBA coming up, things are getting interesting in the relationship between the players, the owners, and the league itself.

According to The New York Times, the NFL players' union is considering an interesting course o action. The union might decertify itself, a move that could expose the league to individual lawsuits by players.

That could expose the owners to potential losses. We already know that the owners are way more interested in money than in actually having a football season. Read the full story here.

Not only that, but the Times is also reporting that a federal appeals court has ruled that the league acted against the interests of the players in renegotiating TV contracts. Here's the story.

Suddenly, it might be in the owner's best interest to concede on some points and actually get a CBA with the players. I'm a fan; all I really care is that we have NFL games in September.