As far as the Solyndra thing goes, it is like this. The federal government has no place picking winners and losers. Every time they give money to a company that could not get it through private means they hurt that companies competitors.

Clean air act started out great. So did the EPA. When I was a kid in LA we had "Smog Days" where we could not go out an play because pollution was so bad. It got fixed. My kids have not had one single smog day. But they do not give up. Now the air you breath out is a pollutant.

Medicare is great for the people on it. It really hurts the medical professionals. The costs are passed on to other patients.

DARPA and the like. This is good stuff. Government should spend on pie in the sky stuff like DARPA does. Places where no sane private company can see a profit in. Sometimes great things can come of it. NASA going to the moon is another thing that government should do because they are the only ones that really can.

Government has a place. The problem is that when you use a government agency to "fix" a problem that problem can never be fixed or the jobs go away. Therefore they always expand their reach. They do not ever go away.

We all know that it will almost assuredly be fucked up.

It would be badly maintained at a high cost. Every issue would have to be bounced between your service provider and the government to see who was at fault.

Of course there will also be a ton of regulations put in place by the politicians and major telcom / cable lobbyists about who can and who can not provide service over that last mile.

I am sure this will end up really well for the customer.

When there is no competition they can and do do this. With competition you can have companies that maybe charge a bit more and promise FAT pipe and no messing around.

Of course you can enjoy your choice between Satellite(Slow and massive latency), Cable (What ever one company is allowed in your area), and Phone company (Decent if you happen to be near a CO) if you like, but I want real competition.

Google seems to do ok with their experiment

What should not happen is that the local government should not sign away the peoples right to have competitors. This is happening in almost every municipality. It results in high prices and bad service.

Widen your scope a little and you will see some glaring issues with over regulation and under regulation. For the most part under regulation of utilities causes one set of problems while over regulation stifles any real innovation.

As in many things balance is required.