On August 11^th, Pew Internet, a project of the Pew Research Center, released their Home Broadband 2010 analysis of Broadband growth. Their findings?

“By a 53%-41% margin, Americans say they do not believe that the spread of affordable broadband should be a major government priority.”

(read full report here)

 “Poll or no poll, we have a responsibility to respond,” retorted Senator Kerry, who should well-know the value of polls from his 2004 presidential race.

This is the same Kerry who once stated:

“The best way to begin genuine bipartisanship to make America stronger is to work together on the real crises facing our country, not to manufacture an artificial crisis to serve a special interest agenda out of touch with the needs of Americans.”

The government is attempting to respond right now to an artificial crisis in Internet regulation and America is telling them, quite clearly, that these aren’t our needs.

Somewhere off the coast of New England Kerry is sporting a new pair of flip-flops while sailing the $7million yacht he forgot to pay taxes on. It’s okay, in this recession, we’re all trying to shave off spending where possible.

More unsettling is the response of the FCC, which praises the report and then uses it to justify more action.  “Today’s Pew report confirms what the FCC found in our broadband survey last year: there are still too many barriers to broadband adoption in America,” Jen Howard, the spokesperson for FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. Thus, the FCC chose to focus on selective areas of the report and miss the point: That the majority of Americans don’t think that the government should be working on this issue.

When surveyed as to whether affordable high-speed internet access should be a “top priority” for the federal government, a mere 11% of those polled agreed. Thirty percent said it was "important but a lower priority," 27% said it was "not too important" and 26% said "should not be done.” Affordable high-speed internet access is simply not something the FCC and Congress should be working on, but they insist on wasting our time and resources on a crisis of their own device.