As Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton heads off on her post-convention campaign trip, she’ll stop in Pittsburgh on Saturday where she is expected to talk about her jobs initiative.
Clinton said, if elected, she will launch “the largest investment in good-paying jobs since World War II.” The plan includes a goal of bringing “affordable broadband Internet to all Americans by 2020.”
“By 2020 there will be something much more advanced than broadband,” said John Whitehall who co-founded the Center for Appalachian Network Access, an early 2000s Carnegie Mellon University initiative to bring connectivity to rural Appalachia. “So, while I think that is a very noble statement, and we said that by 2015 everyone should have broadband, the fact is we don’t know where the technology is going to go.”
Whitehill said the CANA project wrapped up as smart phones became more popular, giving internet access to anyone near a cell tower. But he said connectivity is just as important now as it was more than a decade ago.
“Communications, connectedness, tied together to openness, prosperity and in the end political truth,” Whitehill said.
Another plank in Clinton’s jobs creation platform includes what the campaign calls, “The country’s boldest infrastructure investment since the 1950s.” Jeff Burd watches infrastructure investment as the Pittsburgh-based President of The Tall Timber Group.
“It’s an overdue investment,” Burd said.
But he said he’s wary of the promise, adding that he hopes the money actually goes towards infrastructure and isn’t earmarked for other purposes.
After politicians crafted the stimulus program passed in 2009, Burd said only about 25 percent of the money spent actually went to purchasing materials and paying construction workers. He added that other political factors can also shape which congressional districts get money.
“The most responsible use of the infrastructure funds would be to ignore where the votes are and think like an engineer,” Burd said. “There are roads and structures in this country that are in varying degrees of unsafe and that’s where that money should be going first.”
Clinton’s rally at the David Lawrence Convention Center begins at 4:15 p.m. on Saturday. Doors open at 2:15 p.m.
