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Congress Pays You $3 Billion to Keep Watching TV
Felix the Cat writes "After budgets cuts led to the layoff of engineers and scientists at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a US Senate committee has approved a $3 billion dollar subsidy to assist Americans in their difficult transition to digital television in 2009. The old analog television spectrum will be auctioned off to the highest bidder. The transition date was chosen to not interfere with college football bowl games or basketball playoffs." From the article: "The draft of a House bill would end analog transmissions on Dec. 31, 2008. It does not mention a subsidy for set-top converter boxes. So, lawmakers will likely have to work out differences between the two bills, though Stevens said he did not anticipate a big fight with the House over the deadline or the subsidy."
I have an idea.
How about CONSUMERS pay for new TVs or converters themselves? They don't get cable free. They don't get a free CD palyer when cassettes go out of style.
And if someone MUST baby the consumer, how about the fucking TELEVISION INDUSTRY do the subsidizing, instead? Why in the fucking hell should tax money go toward it? If we're going to spend billions of tax dollars on televisions, let's spend it subsidizing people to NOT own them?
Seriously, we already fucking subsidize breeders and marriage. Now we want to add television watching to that?!
I so fucking give up. You win. Where do I go for the nearest de-education center so I can join the mind-numbed consumer masses?
I have a hard time believing that they'll really end analog TV in 2008. There are too many people out there who (a) have low incomes, (b) like TV, and (c) vote. It's just that many of those same people don't know about this because they get their information from the TV news. This is supposedly going to happen smack dab in an election year, too.
Find free books.
Considering that TV is the predominant campaign commmunications vehicle, it's not surprising that they'll throw money at it to make sure it will remain working properly after a digital transition.
Iraq costs $6 BILLION each month.
--
make install -not war
I know this won't be popular with our crowd, but really it isnt a bad decision.
The source of the funds doesn't make this use of the funds any less ridiculous.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I'm a broke SOB that's still using the same TV that I've had for 15 years. It's missing the power button, the remote's battery door is held on with electrical tape, and I doubt I will replace it any time soon. Why? Because I have more important things to spend my measly pittance on. Particularly, food, power, transportation, etc. Ya know, things which relate to not dying.
I'm glad the government is concerned that I won't get my daily fix of White House talking points, commercials for boner pills, and HiDef Every Body Love Raymond reruns. Yet, there are other concerns in my life that could probably benefit from 3 billion dollars. In particular - the local trailer park, I mean high school, could use a little love. Four permanent walls and some sort of roof-ish thing would be nice.
Or, at the very least, I hear we suffered a wee bit of storm damage in the gulf coast, and there's also that whole "war" thing.
But, who knows. Ray Romano in HD. Perhaps the digital signal will allow me to understand why that show is funny.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
This is necessary to hold the country together. Imagine the economic turmoil that would result if millions upon millions of people were to decide that $50 is too much to pay to continue watching TV and dump their boxes instead? All those souls, no longer absorbing advertisements? The reduction in impulse buying could throw us into another depression!
Were the MPAA asleep at the wheel? Or just too coked up to notice that the perfect bill to tag a broadcast flag rider on just slipped past them? I mean, if congress is handing out subsidies, doesn't the MPAA deserve one too?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
ummm...you do realise that the radio is not a free service.
Radio is paid for through advestising.
If a company wishes to charge you for using their service then they have the right to.
...and that is all I have to say about that.
http://jessta.id.au
Yeah, they might even rush out and buy a ton of books. Or hold conversations with their family members around the dinner table.
Sign me up, I'm converted.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
Congress should spend all our money on whatever the hell they want since we are too lazy to do anything about it anyway.
I digress in only that this is a minor untruth. At any given moment there are hordes of people outside the Whitehouse protesting something or other, just not enough of them to do any good apparently - and I've seen a lot of people out there. Has anyone here heard of protesters actually getting their way? Shit no. Outright armed revolt is the only thing greedy politicians seem to understand because it is the one thing that can adversely affect their well being in the short term (no pun intended).
For all I care lawmakers can cross out the amendments of the constitution and articles of the bill of rights once a day starting tomorrow. Then in a couple weeks this bullshit will get old to make a difference in EVERYONE's life and we will all be motivated to perform our duty as citizens of this country: protect it. Until this happens the erosion of basic human rights will be a sad fact of life as newer and more obscene laws are passed leaving generations behind who remember what it was like to protect yourself from a coked-up cop and live to tell about it. This, only to bring forth generations who know nothing of the sort and are taught to behave like livestock even more so.
Beer Swilling, Big Mac Eating, Violence Glorifying Pigs. Is this what we really want our country to be full of? I dont know about you but Id like to see more people interested in the advancement of our race and society as a whole. Fat-asses...
So I just tell them to wallow in it while they can because sooner or later Uncle Scam is going to knock down THEIR door, not just those devil worshiping Marylin Manson fans or those Taliban Trainees with their skateboards and hats on backwards. Sure we need protection from Bad People, especialy those crazy enough to fly planes into buildings, but we need more protection from what could be called a "Corruption epidemic", and it all starts by putting an axe through the fucking thing.
You are about to give someone a piece of your mind, something which you can ill afford...
You know what amazes me? Everybody in the US knows that but still they don't care. They don't even care enough to goddamn vote once every four fucking years.
What a bunch of useless retards we all turned out to be huh?
evil is as evil does
"Yeah, they might even rush out and buy a ton of books. Or hold conversations with their family members around the dinner table. Sign me up, I'm converted."
I hear ya, man. I'd love it if I could make everybody conform to my standard of living.
"Derp de derp."
On the plus side I will say that the level of transparency of corruption is much higher than I've encountered elsewhere in the world and you, usually, don't get killed for investigating who bought which politician, which I've seen before.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
You have a choice. Vote. Or run yourself and quit bitching.
I wish fewer people would vote. Imagine what this country would be like if only people who understood the ramifications of their actions voted. I can guarantee that any person with a brain that watched the presidential debates would not have voted for Bush, but he still won. Why? Because people are too fucking stupid to vote.
My other car is first.
I think he was being sarcastic.
But who you should really be criticizing is the government! Their lifestyle is to be paid off by media companies to make sure you see ads and continue to SHOP SHOP SHOP. So they're making sure that you have a boob tube to deliver ads right to your house. The media companies win, and then the politicians get more bribes.
All for forcing their lifestyle on you.
(If they want that so badly, why can't they finance this out of their "contribution" fund? I want my taxes to do something good, not make people dumber. I don't even own a TV to begin with...)
My other car is first.
and if u must watch a show, remember that bit torrent is your friend
Just another crappy blog
You're looking at things from the wrong angle. Mandatory voting would have seen him hit the road too. There are too many people who DO understand the implications of certain government decisions who just don't care or don't think their vote will make a difference.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
What amazes me even more are all those people who insist on their right to bear arms to defend themselves from tyranny but never even kill a single corrupt politician with them.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
They don't even care enough to goddamn vote once every four fucking years.
And a fat lot of good that does. Since third parties are so pitifully marginalized there isn't a hope in hell of one of their candidates ever getting elected to major office, I get a choice between Sleezeball A or Sleezeball B. You only have to take a look at Kerry and Bush to see the truth of this. It always boils down to whatever candidate is *slightly* less evil than the other.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Without delving too deeply into the technology of it all, an analog TV transmission takes up a massive width of spectrum--a digitally compressed television signal takes up a comparatively miniscule width, leaving all the left over space between channels free for the government to auction. Addressing the original topic--the air waves are owned by all of us, collectively. If our government wants to sell some of the spectrum previously allotted for our use, It makes sense to me that some of the profits would come back to us. Of course their motives are purely selfish, but the result is fine by me.
You do know that HDTV is just a subset of Digital TV right? Shows can still be broadcast digitally in standard definition while saving a signficant amout of bandwidth over the analog broadcasting of the same shows.
I don't believe that the government should subsidize the switch over to digital TV. I also don't believe that consumers should pay.
I think the quickest way to create a revolution in America is to cut people off from television and alchohol. Given that, I can see why the government is willing to pay to make sure nobody "leaves the matrix" in the process of converting over to digital television. They do not want people to be free from their opiates, their distractions. If they get free from them they might have time to think and then to get upset over what a crappy job the government is doing.
I think advertisers should pay for the switch to digital tv. Our economy is driven by consumerism and consumerism is inspired, mostly, by television commericals with coporations being the beneficiaries. If someone can't afford a digital TV setup than they can't see corporate America's propaganda and they will buy fewer things they do not need. Coproate America loses money.
Corporate American pays for television shows to be created so people will see their commercials and buy their products.
Why should the consumer either through their tax dollars or their net income pay to have someone else's advertisements to be beemed into their heads?
Let the people who make the profits pay the costs
The conversation around the dinner table thing only works until you find out that your son is gay, your daughter a democrat, and your wife cares about black people.
When TV gets turns off, expect a jump in the domestic violence rate.
The $3 billion in subsidy comes from the auction of the spectrum.
It's still public money and it's still a subsidy and government handout to big corporations. I mean, what's the point of using a public resource to generate revenue when you hand the proceeds of the acution right back to the people who paid it?
Let me be clear, this $3 billion isn't coming from some other agency or program, it is coming from the proceeds of the auction.
Yes, and those $3 billion should go to funding NASA, not TV receivers.
Humor us. What are the appreciable differences?
They were both strongly in favor of invading Iraq. And staying in Iraq. Are you suggesting that Kerry would have done the responsible thing and try to institute the Draft? Would that reknown leader of men convince the Congress to vote for such a measure? If so, why couldn't Kerry ever sponsor and pass a piece of significant legislation?
Are their border control policies different? Would Kerry beef up the border security, increase deportations, institute guest worker visas, and increase convictions of business owners that hire illegal immegrants?
Has Kerry helped push any legislation would show he understands the onerous cost of the federal gov't?
Face it. The boys at the top picked someone who wasn't going to upset the apple cart. And until THOSE losers are booted out of power, no matter what loser the Republicans put up, the Democrats will put up another loser.
And finally, we live in a country of dumbasses who vote, and dumbasses who don't vote. Until you can fix them, they'll be voting for "a Bush" every time.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Yeah, they might even rush out and buy a ton of books. Or hold conversations with their family members around the dinner table.
Books and conversations produce independent thought. I think the politicians know exactly what they are doing -- maintaining status quo. People in their alpha wave zone in front of the TV being shown things like the play by play on the "war on terror", or the next plague of the week that kills 800 people in China or a couple of birds, and of course the required car advertisement that is aired at every commercial break between 6 and 11 PM.
If it were me, I would be willing to pay much more than $3 billion of somebody else's money to keep them quiet.
And Bush isn't dumb. People like to say he is, but he's really not. But seriously, nobody has enough time to learn everything and keep up to date on it, and it's good that Bush knows how to delegate and rely on his advisors. (Though he's made some awful decisions. I don't know if it's due to bad advice or bad decisions based on that advice.)
Of course, that statement applies to almost everybody who ever gets to the point where the have a chance at being elected president.Not that any of this is really relevant to Congress's $3B subsidy.
If they want that so badly, why can't they finance this out of their "contribution" fund?
Because corporations will externalize any cost they can. The bill for getting lobbyists to convince Congress to approve a $3,000,000,000 TV subsidy out of the government's (read: the American people's) pockets probably comes out to a lot less than $3,000,000,000.
Indeed. I find it quite surprising that people got so worked up over which tall, rich, white, male, Yale-educated, imperialistic war-criminal got elected to the presidency. Is this indicative of a rift in the Skull and Bones society to which they both belong, or is it just that we Americans are happy to focus on two people yelling "you suck!" at each other over insubstantive issues?
How does a 7-person democracy cut a pie? Into 4 pieces.
The most basic difference for most Kerry voters, I think, was not what would be done but what had been done. It's actually not unreasonable for Kerry to have chosen to stay in Iraq; it's a mess that the US made and which arguable we should try to clean up after ourselves. If we didn't, future deaths resulting from a civil war in Iraq would be blamed on us (not to mention a potential new safe haven for al Qaeda).
But the difference is that Bush HAD gone into a war, under what many prospective Kerry voters considered false pretenses, and for that he deserved to lose his office, even if his policies for the future were exactly identical to Kerry's.
For example, Kerry might have been able to get foreign assistance in Iraq, not because his policies were better than Bush's, but because for many countries the answer would be an automatic "No" to Bush. They'd say Bush had brought it on himself, whereas Kerry would be trying to fix a situation he inherited. That's not a guarantee, but there was no hope of any world support under Bush.
Actually, that's not even the most basic difference. The most basic difference is in the Supreme Court. It was obvious that Bush would appoint at least one new Supreme Court justice, and that he would almost certainly chose an anti-Roe nominee, whereas Kerry would almost certainly chose a pro-Roe nominee. The way it turned out was somewhat more complicated, but at the time both sets of voters may have had abortion (and other things that the Supreme Court weighs in on) at the front of their minds.
There were numerous other policy differences: privatization of social security, concerns over Bush's pro-business style (in particular, the energy policy for which many Democrats feel Bush should be punished), environmental policies.
I'm not trying to debate what should be done in Iraq, or to favor one candidate or the other. I'm just saying that the presence of similarities between the two doesn't mean that there weren't also differences.
But one last bone I'll pick: not all senators are there to sponsor legislation. An awful lot of work goes on in Congress that doesn't get names on bills. The details of the bills are where serious work gets done, not in the overall thrust. A President is as much a negotiator as a policymaker, and being good at those back-room skills getting bills actually passed is at least as important as initiating legislation. John McCain, for example, is more respected for his ability to make the resulting legislation reasonable than for the bills that he himself has sponsored.
Again, I'm not using this to comment on the election itself or take a stand on who you should have voted for. I'm just saying that if you're not seeing any differences, and you're not seeing Kerry's accomplishments, then you need to look more closely.
"I wish fewer people would vote. Imagine what this country would be like if only people who understood the ramifications of their actions voted. I can guarantee that any person with a brain that watched the presidential debates would not have voted for Bush, but he still won. Why? Because people are too fucking stupid to vote."
Those people who voted for Bush knew exactly what they were voting for. Calling them stupid makes you appear stupid for not understanding that these people actually agree with Bush's agenda.
Vote for Pedro