Democrats Ask $650M More for Move to DTV

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saljr

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May 16, 2008
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$650M More for Move to DTV. How stupid is....are @@#$ government. What a dum @ss.....people can live with tv. No wonder are government has $$$$$ problems.
 

jrabbitb

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This is seriously the last thing we should be spending money on right now. the last article i read said that there were more then one voucher going out per household, HELLO you only need 1 (and i use need loosely) you got to be kidding me with this DTV Horse $h!7!!!!
 

gm0n3y

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Yes, in these uncertain times it is important to make sure that fat lazy Americans get there television. What else are they going to do when they're unemployed and broke?
 

TyRaX

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If someone hasn't saved enough money to buy a $50 receiver by now (it's been years since the first warnings arrived) then there are more productive things that person should be doing with their time than watching television. Even with the $40 gift card, that still leaves a minimum cost of $10. For that much, they could buy a snow shovel and spend an afternoon offering to clear other people's snowy driveways and walkways at ten bucks a pop. They might just make enough money to buy a whole new TV.
 

TwoDigital

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Every single $ that the US government it must first take from you (really by threat... since you get to go to jail if you decided to not pay your taxes in full...)

Why, then, is it *MY* job to give someone else up to two $40 coupons so they can get digital TV? I don't need a tuner since I'm lucky enough to get a bill from Comcast each month for $180 to cover cable TV among other things. When will the government be reimbursing me by sending me a $80 voucher to put toward my cable bill?

Maybe once the government finally collapses financially under its own weight we can find some conservatives to put back in there who understand that government CREATES the problem and can never really help solve it.
 

E7130

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This is stupid, these people are so cheap they can't afford to go and buy a converter just so they can still get their free TV. What about the rest of us that actually pay for TV, why do we need to spend more of our money on them. I love it, Dems in House are like, "The American people are not ready for digital..." that is how it sounds to me. I only know of one person that uses over the air and they are lazy welfare scammers (its the truth, he and his wife don't want to work anymore).
 

gm0n3y

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The problem with both of the Democrats and Republicans is that they are both socially conservative and fiscally retarded. They throw money at useless things, spend stupid amounts on the military, and then don't fund social programs properly. Who needs a healthy, educated work force when you can build more bombs. At least if they don't want to fund education and health care properly they could lower taxes. Even worse, instead of raising taxes to pay for their idiocy they go one step further and just borrow the money racking up insane and irresponsible levels of debt.
 

Luscious

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I don't think the problem here is with the folks living off analog signals. I still get analog signals, and will pay $40 for a converter box if I need to. But the economic problems of the recent year have made it difficult for those laid off and their homes in foreclosure to now shell out more money on something that has been free forever. Just because some folks pay for satellite radio, it doesn't mean the government should abandon analog FM next.

Now the flip side, if cable and satellite offered a local-channel package for $5-$10 instead of charging $40 for their cheapest plan, the digital transition wouldn't be such of a big deal. Those who can afford $40-$180 for cable and cheerfully pay every month get my congratulations - $480-$2000 over a year is money for me spent elsewhere.
 

mdillenbeck

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I hope they get the money.


First, TV is more than just entertainment. It is news, weather, and educational programming. To say we shouldn't fund converter boxes because there is entertainment programming is like saying libraries should stop using taxpayer money to buy newspapers and TVs. I mean, newspapers have entertainment content like fluff stories and coupons AND they are relatively cheap, so why waste money on something so inexpensive and easily obtainable by our citizens.

TV provides some rather important content. Some local, national, and international news is given only through television broadcasts. Additionally, a weather radio cannot provide radar maps and graphics that help inform people better about existing weather conditions. Our society has chosen to arrange itself this way.


Second, not everyone who isn't buying a box is doing so because they are cheap. Believe it or not, there are some families that are just not making in our society because of evaporating jobs and a failing economy. Not all are welfare bums. (In the 80s my local paper analyzed Wisconsin's welfare when "work 2 welfare" was the big push - the average recipient was on it less than 6 months and were white middle class families that suffered a job loss... think we'll see many of those during this recession?) For many, $50 is the difference between making rent or eating - so how do they justify getting kicked out or starving their kids in order to keep access to news, weather, and educational programming? How should they feel knowing the government is making money selling off the slices of the spectrum they just freed up, and that the government only cares about making sure those who have access to "free" TV are the ones who can afford to shell out $50 like it doesn't matter?


Third, and this may be a shocker to some, but not all households consist of one family. Heck, in my early 20s we had 3 distinct family units living in one apartment. I know of many people who rent out a room or a section of their home to another family to supplement housing costs. So if we say only one box per address under the assumption of one household per address, who gets the coupon - first on the lease, first alphabetically by last name, or first to apply at that address?


Finally, anyone can say is it *my* job to do so and so. Is it *my* job to provide for snow plowing or road repairs when I don't use a car? If I walk everywhere, why should I pay for you to get somewhere on a road in a car? Is it *my* job to help subsidize your kids through child tax credits - I mean, it was your stupid idea to make the thing so you should be able to care for it. Is it *my* job to make sure your house never burns down - I mean, if you need fire service then you should pay for it, otherwise you should take precautions to protect your residence from fire. Is it *my* job to pay for any form of public transport? - take a cab or hire a limo driver if you need to get somewhere. I can afford my own car, why should I give a darn about you?

There are always things in a society we do not want to pay for that are done for the common good. As we become a more wireless society, we need to free up bandwidth on the spectrum to send all those signals. To help those enjoy more TV and wireless broadcasting devices, the government wants to go from analog to digital signals. This may disenfranchise many lower or fixed income households from information sources you may not consider or care about. However, they do - it may be their primary outlet. Thus, since we are changing the common rules of our society in a fairly sudden and abrupt way, we as individuals in this society have an obligation to see that all have a chance to maintain their status quo while the wealthier citizens reap the rewards.
 

gm0n3y

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@MDillenbeck

I disagree with TV being more than just entertainment. I personally lived for the majority of my childhood only getting broadcast TV and we could only get about 3 stations. Two of them were terrible American stations (I live in Canada) and the 3rd was a terrible Canadian station. None of them had any form of news (actually I think one was Fox, but I don't consider Fox News to be actual news) or educational programming.

Basically, if you can afford to own a TV, then you can afford $40 for the converter thing. The electricity to power the TV for a year will be more than $40.
 

Stryter

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Oh yes! I would love nothing more than to give more of my hard earned cash away to the government so a bunch of complete strangers can have digital tv! God, I love socialism!!! I just know we are making the Founding Fathers so proud!
 
G

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The fundamental problem here, as with many problems in the government, is a complete lack of accountability and a lack of useful data.

I could support a delay if there was say a specific target to trigger the conversion and an actual measurement of households that need a converter box and someone actually in charge. What is the target 100%? >90%? Where are we now? Who knows.

Secondly who is accountable for this and why are they not fired - this sort of incompetence goes on at a company, you will (eventually?) get fired (or demoted to a less demanding role). They should appoint someone to manage/deliver on the transition date and if they don't achieve it they are fired/removed from Congress. The problem now is if targets aren't met, it's just a matter of more money, people and influence - so why bother achieving initial targets? When (unfortunately) this gets delayed to June (or whenever), we will just be having this same discussion at that point AGAIN. If people are in the dark at this point and can't understand the information on the TV, perhaps they won't notice a difference when there screen goes blank?!?

And apparently I missed the theory that TV is an ENTITLEMENT. The broadcasting is still free after the transition, it is up to the end user to have the appropriate equipment.

BTW, 650Mil would represent ~15Mil more $40 coupons (which includes a ridiculous waste of $50Mil on overhead to distribute these). Is congress really saying there are 15Mil more people (or say at least 7.5Mil if you use 2 per household) in need of coupons? This is just more pork spending (probably on advertising, staff and beaucracy to "manage" the program); my guess is less than 50% of that money will actually reach the people who need it.
 
G

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I like the overwhelming response by everyone on how absurd this sort of mindless spending is, but as usual the people who work for us ignore us and could care less about spending our money. Long live big government. They can't ever get anything right and yet we vote in politicians and our new president only to make government bigger so we can get even less done and spend even more money mindlessly. Quite honestly, we deserve what is coming our way.
 

zodiacfml

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Oct 2, 2008
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agree with this guy above, if local news were that important then they should be turning on their radios.
i consider music a better form of entertainment than live in the fantasy of tv.
a month or two of no tv won't be that bad for 20 million households, maybe even better.
though advertisers think otherwise.
 

blackened144

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I'll bet most of the people complaining about not being able to get their voucher and cant afford the converter, complains with a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. Kind of reminds me of an interview I saw of some college kids at a "hemp" festival California. For the entire interview, the dumb ass was puffing away on a gigantic joint talking about how hes sooo poor he cant afford health insurance and the government needs to make sure everyone has health insurance.
 
G

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It doesn't matter anymore, and it's not that much money to spend. The US government has been a giant Ponzi scheme(by any reasonable definition) for about the past 100 years, especially since Reagan. China, the Baby Boomers and alot of others are calling their investments in, a complete financial collapse is inevitable. Atleast the Dems are buying us technological infrastructure with this borrowed money we can't possibly repay.
 
G

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The Dems are not "buying us technological infrastructure". We are talking about transmitting TV signals digitally vs analog. And the money here has NOTHING to do with putting in infrastructure to accomplish this - that investment has already been done (privately) by existing broadcast stations and cable/satellite companies.

All this money is doing is giving people $40 off the cost of a converter box... it does not enable digital broadcast of signals or provide ANY investment in digital infrastructure in anyway. Please stop drinking the coolaid the Dem's are handing out on this. In fact the gov't has MADE money on this transition (on the backs of the TV stations and other companies putting the infrastructure in place) by selling off the rights to the existing analog spectrum to other industries.

Can the government misinform people? Yes We Can!
 
G

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"Over 2 million Americans are waiting to receive a coupon to help them offset the cost of equipment that will help them manage the transition. Millions more don't have the proper information they need,"

2Mil * 40 coupon = 80Mil, if you choose to say well 2 per person then that is $160Mil. OK let's say "over 2Mil" means 3 Mil... that's still $240Mil MAXIMUM

...so it should be obvious to everyone that of course you need 650Mil, the extra HALF BILLION going to? Thank you Mr Rockefeller! With financial acumen like his, are you sure he is not from Illinois?
 
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