Unfunded mandate
May. 3rd, 2008 09:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jhetleyWell, I dumped an old computer monitor at the "cleanup weekend" this time, a Dell belonging to Younger Son. And from thence to RadShack and the purchase of a digital TV converter box. This would be my first step in enabling the Feds in their plot to sell great gobs of RF spectrum for even greater gobs of money, after making the whole nationwide sweep of analog TV equipment obsolete...
The box, of course, costs more than the $40 coupon which Congress bestowed upon us. Take our out-of-pocket $20 (to be doubled when I get a box for the other TV) and multiply it by the number of analog TV receivers in our fair land, add in the cost of new digital broadcasting equipment on the other end of the signal, and I'd bet you total more money than the FCC takes in from spectrum auctions.
A tax by any other name would smell as rotten.
(At least I don't have to lay out more cash for an outside antenna. Automatic setup gives us 8 channels of digital on an indoor antenna, two we didn't get before. Whee!)
The box, of course, costs more than the $40 coupon which Congress bestowed upon us. Take our out-of-pocket $20 (to be doubled when I get a box for the other TV) and multiply it by the number of analog TV receivers in our fair land, add in the cost of new digital broadcasting equipment on the other end of the signal, and I'd bet you total more money than the FCC takes in from spectrum auctions.
A tax by any other name would smell as rotten.
(At least I don't have to lay out more cash for an outside antenna. Automatic setup gives us 8 channels of digital on an indoor antenna, two we didn't get before. Whee!)
