Skip to main content

Americans now have the "right" to digital TV?

As we go into an election year spin-cycle, with the statists on both wings of the Demopublican Party competing to hand out bread and circuses with our tax dollars, THIS is just too much.

As the Snooze J reports, "Coupons offered to convert old TVs to digital".

Seems like the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (who knew we had one of those?) has been taking heat from Congress regarding its failure to properly prepare Americans with older TVs for the 2009 switchover to all HD broadcasting. So now it has set aside $1.5 Billion--let's see, thats $1,500,000,000 of OUR money--to send out $40 vouchers to defray the costs of converting an old TV into one that can receive Hi-Def. Converters sold on the free market will retail for $50-70, and the NTIA expects to pass out between 10-26 million of the vouchers (two per household, please).

What this amounts to is the US government essentially taking $5 from all 300 million American citizens and redistributing it in the form of TV vouchers to 26 million households. Want to know the cute part? There's not even a "needs test." You don't have to be poor or deprived or undocumented: you just have to ask for one. Or two. (And if you think I'm giving you the website address for this boondoggle, think again.)

I've been looking through my copy of the Constitution, even the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and I just can't find "the right to high-definition television" listed anywhere.

Oh, wait, it's there in pencil in the "Election year addendum: you have the right to a properly functioning television, so that you can watch political advertising."

Comments

Brian Shields said…
What a steaming pile of poop.

I mean.. I don't quite think this is appropriate.

I don't even think there are that many people who are watching TV over the air anyway. Maybe 5% of the population.

Heck, down here all they'd be able to pick up is WBOC, and that's not even clear.

Poop, I say, a big old smelly pile of political poop.

Popular posts from this blog

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?

New Warfare: I started my posts with a discussion.....

.....on Unrestricted warfare . The US Air force Institute for National Security Studies have developed a reasonable systems approach to deter non-state violent actors who they label as NSVA's. It is an exceptionally important report if we want to deter violent extremism and other potential violent actors that could threaten this nation and its security. It is THE report our political officials should be listening to to shape policy so that we do not become excessive in using force against those who do not agree with policy and dispute it with reason and normal non-violent civil disobedience. This report, should be carefully read by everyone really concerned with protecting civil liberties while deterring violent terrorism and I recommend if you are a professional you send your recommendations via e-mail at the link above so that either 1.) additional safeguards to civil liberties are included, or 2.) additional viable strategies can be used. Finally, one can only hope that politici

More of This, Please

Or perhaps I should say, "Less of this one, please." Or how about just, "None of them. Ever again. Please....For the Love of God." Sunshine State Poll: Grayson In Trouble The latest Sunshine State/VSS poll shows controversial Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson trailing former state Senator Dan Webster by seven points, 43 percent to 36 percent. A majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- disapprove of the job that Grayson is doing. Independents have an unfavorable view of him as well, by a 36/47 margin. Grayson has ignored the conventional wisdom that a freshman should be a quiet member who carefully tends to the home fires. The latest controversy involves his " Taliban Dan " advertisement, where he explicitly compares his opponent to the Taliban, and shows a clip of Webster paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22 -- "wives, submit to your husbands." An unedited version of the clip shows that Webster was actually suggesting that husba