Posted on 12/08/2005 8:32:02 AM PST by grundle
Feeling, evidently, flush with (other people's) cash, the Senate has concocted a novel way to spend $3 billion: create a new entitlement. The Senate has passed -- and so has the House, with differences -- an entitlement to digital television.
If this filigree on the welfare state becomes law, everyone who owns old analog television sets -- everyone from your Aunt Emma in her wee apartment to the millionaire in the neighborhood McMansion who has such sets in the maid's room and the guest house -- will get subsidies to pay for making those sets capable of receiving digital signals.
by April 2009 broadcasters must end analog transmissions and the government will have auctioned the analog frequencies for various telecommunications purposes. For the vast majority of Americans, April 2009 will mean . . . absolutely nothing. Nationwide, 85 percent of all television households (and 63 percent of households below the poverty line) already have cable or satellite service.
All Americans -- rich and poor; it is uncompassionate to discriminate on the basis of money when dispersing money -- will be equally entitled to the help.
The $990 million House version of this entitlement -- call it No Couch Potato Left Behind -- is (relatively) parsimonious: Consumers would get vouchers worth only $40 and would be restricted to a measly two vouchers per household. The Senate's more spacious entitlement would pay for most of the cost -- $50 to $60 -- of the converter boxes. But there is Republican rigor in this: Consumers would be required to pay $10. That is the conservatism in compassionate conservatism.
Yet Americans have such an entitlement mentality, they seem to think that every pleasure -- e.g., digital television -- should be a collective right, meaning a federally funded entitlement.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
"The Senate has passed -- and so has the House, with differences -- an entitlement to digital television. If this filigree on the welfare state becomes law, "
I have seven televisions.... I should get seven times as much entitlement, right?
Let them touch those things....
This is obscene.
How dare they spend hard earned money of OTHERS like THIS.
And WiFi! Don't forget WiFi!
I only have 4.
I demand 7
Where in the constitution does it say 'The right to Cable TV'.
Just to clarify, you did realize I was being sarcastic, yes?
The government shouldn't even be forcing us to get rid of analog TV's much less spending billions to subsidize it. This is just corporate welfare for the content producers who want to stop people from being able to save and replay TV.
There's no reason why that fortune gained by auctioning off the old analog airwaves cannot be used to defray the costs of conversion to digital. If the gov't is going to make money by this, it should be returned to the citizens.
What an obscenity.
Not to mention cel phones...or trips to nail salons.
Wow!
And I thought I was overboard with 6 TV's!
Hey, all you have to do in DC is drive around and check out the new cars in the lots of government subsidized apartments. Why don't they write about this?
" I only have 4.
I demand 7"
:)
"Wow!
And I thought I was overboard with 6 TV's!"
I believe the other way to treat ADD is with information overload. :)
Twenty minutes into the future...
They have to buy votes somehow.
"63 percent of households below the poverty line) already have cable or satellite service."
Are these the starving children we were going to be innundated with after welfare reform?
Maybe we should provide pizza delivery too.
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