Elon Musk reshares video of Jon Stewart and Ezra Klein bashing BEAD's lengthy application process

Though the broadband grant funding debate has occurred in earnest on this community for years and amongst the telecommunications and fiber industries, it’s hardly become a mainstream issue for water cooler conversation—until now. Jon Stewart invited New York Times writer and Vox Media founder Ezra Klein onto his podcast, The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart to discuss—of all things—the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program. Klein is in the midst of a cross country book tour for his new non-fiction book, Abundance. The topic of the Democrats’ addiction to process over outcomes is a major theme of the book, and while appearing on the podcast with Stewart, Klein laid out in detail the 14 steps all the 56 Eligible Entities of BEAD needed to undertake in order to qualify for funding, from the Notice of Funding Opportunity through the challenge process to the final proposal. A gobsmacked Jon Stewart listened and occasionally chimed in with expressions of disbelief at the amount of red tape the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Biden Administration behind it put in place for the states and territories to secure the funding, with Klein ending his point on the issue by stating that the Democrats did this to themselves.