Will someone please explain...

by: Brandon (Re-Post from 2008)

Will someone please explain to me why $1.5 billion of our tax dollars went to buying people digital converter boxes for their old TV's?

Okay, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. I guess you could make the argument that "People get their news from TV (if you can call what comes on CNN or ABC "news"). What if there's a nuclear war or natural disaster. How will people get information on what to do?". That's about the only thing I can think of... but why does everyone need 2 converters? One wouldn't be sufficient for this task?

I'm also tired of people agreeing with me with comments like "Ya! That money should have gone to education, or feeding the homeless, or fixing roads, or to the unemployed underwater basket weaver's union" or some crap like that. The money should have stayed in our (the taxpayers) pockets... period.

Why do I need to give the government money so they can turn around and give it right back to me for things that I'm perfectly capable of doing on my own? If you can't afford a $40 converter box, you shouldn't be watching TV.

I'd also like to point out that due to the law of adverse selection, the less than 10% of US Citizens who really would have benefited from these (ie: the elderly) probably have no access to the internet so they couldn't order their government coupons to begin with.

You didn't even have to provide any proof of anything when you ordered these things other than a residential address. So now that all of the rest of us (including non-tax paying illegal aliens) have gotten them, the government will try to increase that $1.5 billion to pay for another round of them later this year.

Fantastic!


2009 UPDATE: Guess what, the government did move back the conversion date and they did add to that $1.5 Billion dollar budget. I wonder how many people there are out there like me who followed the law of adverse selection and bought them only to leave them in the box because I already have cable.

I did a quick google and according to the OC Register, here are some more interesting numbers:

Included within the additional funding for this useless social welfare program:

$54,000 for DTV Transition Maps awarded to Hammett & Edison.
$12 million for DTV call center support services awarded to IBM Corp.
$1.3 million for DTV magazine advertising for elderly and people with disabilities.
$1.5 million for FCC DTV Consumer Education Support Services awarded to Ketchum Inc.
$3.5 million for public relations and advertising awarded to Burson-Marsteller.


Interesting...