Obama is heading up to Marquette, MI in the UP to da land of da Yoopers and pasties this coming week to talk about his plan to make broadband available to 98% of Americans.
That's the UP as in the Upper Peninsula. Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Properly known as "da UP, eh." Da trooper is headin' up to da UP in February. As for me...Dis wannabe is just a troll from below da bridge who can only wish to be a true Yooper...somebody who lives in the UP. But I know the prez is in for some snow. And if he's looking for someplace remote to talk up his new plan, he's going to exactly the right place.
Here's where Marquette is, up in the top by that red dot that says Marquette:
Folks like me have to drive over the six mile long Mackinac Bridge to get there, hence being a troll since I live "under" the bridge.
Lemme tell ya a thing about Michigan's UP. It's amazingly beautiful. And a little on the remote side. And snowy this time of year.
TheAverage annual snowfall in Marquette Michigan is 141 inches, or about 12 feet of snow per year...not the highest on the list of NOAA's list of average snowfall for cities, but it is 5th out of 278 US Cities tracked.
My wife and I drove up to Michigan's Keewenaw Peninsula, near the very tip of the Upper Peninsula about two hours north of Marquette one year. The broad-band and internet connections there, and infrastructure there in general was occasionally an impediment to commerce.
I started to feel embarrassed whenever I'd use my debit card to buy anything as it would very literally tie up the phone lines of the main store in town, near Copper Harbor, for long enough to cause the line in the store to back up and block in-coming calls.
While we were there on mild summer days, areas of town would regularly lose power or phone service. Twice we'd approach a gas station in the more populated Houghton to find a line of people who were waiting for the power to come back on so they could purchase gasoline.
There are plenty of places in the United States of America throughout the the more expansive and less populated regions that simply don't have the same reliability of infrastructure that the more populated regions enjoy. Places near the "end of the line" that are sometimes seasonally difficult to get to, or have so little population as to be low priority.
And that's a huge impediment to the economies of those more rural areas.
Too often people think poverty and imagine inner city ruins when the word Poverty comes up. But Rural America often sees some of the highest poverty rates in the US, with difficulty accessing things like natural gas for heating and experience sketchy electrical service, and even sketchier internet or cellular phone service.
Obama is going to the right place to talk about his plan for the future. His plan to wire up 98% of America to broadband internet connections.
Obama will be talking in Marquette about local businesses that have been able to increase their revenues specifically because of better broadband access, especially in the area of exporting to new international markets.
"The next-generation wireless network in Marquette is an effective demonstration of how the president's proposal to open up airwaves will spark new innovation, put people back to work, grow the economy and help America win the future," the White House said in a news release.