Crisis or hype?


The "digital television crisis" is more about another power grab by a sugar daddy Congress than an actual problem
George F. Will takes on the digital television entitlement.

If you think America is suffering an entitlement glut, you may have just hurled the newspaper across the room. Pick it up and read on, because this story illustrates the timeless truth that no matter how deeply you distrust the government's judgment, you are too trusting. Here, as explained by James L. Gattuso of the Heritage Foundation, is the crisis du jour: The nation is making a slow transition from analog to digital television broadcasting.

Why is this a crisis? Because, although programming currently is broadcast in both modes, by April 2009 broadcasters must end analog transmissions and the government will have auctioned the analog frequencies for various telecommunications purposes. For the vast majority of Americans, April 2009 will mean . . . absolutely nothing. Nationwide, 85 percent of all television households (and 63 percent of households below the poverty line) already have cable or satellite service.

What will become of households that do not? Leaving aside such eccentric alternative pastimes as conversation and reading, the digitally deprived could pursue happiness by buying a new television set, all of which will be digital-capable by March 2007. Today a digital-capable set with a flat-screen display can be purchased from -- liberals, please pardon the mention of your Great Satan -- Wal-Mart for less than $460. But compassionate conservatism has a government response to the crisis.

Manufactured crisis aside, government is not your friend.

Every single dollar that government spends on taxpayers either has to be collected several times over (to pay for overhead) or borrowed with interest from future tax collections.

It would be much cheaper just to let you keep the taxes in the first place and choose how you want to spend the money.

But that wouldn't show how "nice" government is and how your elected officials are at delivering the pork.

Hat tip to The Agitator.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Thu - December 8, 2005 at 04:00 PM  Tag


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