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."

Comments

Re:Don't you understand?

[Bastian]

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!

Re:Stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

How about CONSUMERS pay for new TVs or converters themselves? They don't get cable free. They don't get a free CD palyer(sic) when cassettes go out of style.

The government didn't destory all cassette tapes six years after the CD player was first sold to the public, now did they?

CONSUMERS have already paid billions of dollars for televisions that work perfectly fine with free over the air analog signals. The government, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that free over the air analog signals should disappear, instantly making all of that equipment obsolete unless a digital converter box is installed. The government, in its infinite wisdom, has also decided that it will sell/lease this signal space for billions of dollars to private enterprise, with some fraction reserved for public service use.

It seems perfectly reasonable for the government to dedicate a portion of the revenues that it will realize with this giant electromagnetic spectrum swap to compensate CONSUMERS who couldn't care less about free over the air digital television verses free over the air analog television.

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?

Read the above. The purchasers of the old free over the air analog spectrum are in effect subsidizing the conversion. It's only "tax money" if you ignore this major detail.

If we're going to spend billions of tax dollars on televisions, let's spend it subsidizing people to NOT own them?

Because this is a democracy, and the "we don't even own a television" portion of the population has even less political power than PETA.

Seriously, we already fucking subsidize breeders and marriage.

Economic and political trends in Western Europe and Japan both show why subsidizing the "breeders" is a sound economic policy. I'm not even touching the comment on marriage.

Where do I go for the nearest de-education center so I can join the mind-numbed consumer masses?

As a married man with a child, a graduate engineering degree, a law degree, and a television, I officially invite you to go for (sic) the nearest tall building and take a flying leap. You don't need a de-education center, since your prior education seems to have failed to instill any sort of critical reasoning ability.

Re:Naive a little?

[Decker-Mage]

EVERYTHING Congress (and the executive branch, as well) does is done as favors to big business. I must respectively disagree as your reply isn't inclusive enough. I would rather say that everything Congress and the Executive branch does is in favor of whomever gives them the most benefits be it in the form of donations for their campaigns, free/subsidized trips or other goods and services, and similar items. The source can be big business, labor unions (e.g. AFL/CIO, AFSCME), professional organizations (e.g. trial lawyers association), and even individuals (e.g. George Soros). We have the best politicians money can buy.

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.

Re:Naive a little?

[KDR_11k]

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.

Re:Naive a little?

[slashdot_commentator]

but to claim Bush and Kerry had "no appreciable difference" is pure ignorance.

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.