Lifeline offline: Unreliable internet, cell service are hurting rural Pennsylvania’s health; The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 26, 2018

Kris B. Mamula and Jessie Wardarski, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette;

Lifeline offline: Unreliable internet, cell service are hurting rural Pennsylvania’s health

 

"Even as businesses in Pittsburgh compete to commercialize artificial intelligence and give machines the human quality of “learning,” just a three-hour drive away people struggle with dial-up connections — if there are internet connections at all.

More than 24 million Americans — 800,000 in Pennsylvania and mostly in rural areas — lack an internet connection that meets a federal minimum standard for speed. The result is a yawning divide in commerce, education and medicine that’s splitting America into the digital haves and have-nots.

“We’re basically being cut off from the 21st century,” Huntingdon County Planning Director Mark Colussy said."

Trump’s budget eliminates NEA, public TV and other cultural agencies. Again.; Washington Post, February 12, 2018

Peggy McGlone, Washington Post; Trump’s budget eliminates NEA, public TV and other cultural agencies. Again.

"In a repeat of last year, the Trump administration’s budget proposal for 2019 calls for eliminating four federal cultural agencies in a move that would save almost $1 billion from a $4.4 trillion spending plan.

Trump’s proposal calls for drastically reducing the funding to begin closing the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The four agencies would share $109 million in 2019, a overall cut of $917 million.

Congress rejected a nearly identical plan from the Trump administration last year...

In a statement, IMLS director Kathryn K. Matthews said her agency is the primary source of federal funding for museums and libraries.

“Without IMLS funding for museums and libraries, it would be more difficult for many people to gain access to the internet, continue their education, learn critical research skills, and find employment,” Matthews said.

Laura Lott, president and chief executive of the American Alliance of Museums, blasted the “continued threats” to the cultural agencies that support the work of her membership.""