So lets review… We’re in the worst economic recession in well, a long long time.  Most say it’ll get worse before it gets better.  And what are our leaders concerned about?  “Oh my gosh, people too cheap to pay $30 a month for basic cable might not get to watch Jay Leno soon – we’d better spend billions giving them free converters!”

I don’t watch a lot of TV because I’m too busy either studying or working.  I’m sorry, but if you need a government bailout to watch TV (and you’re not a senior citizen) – you probably shouldn’t be watching tv, you should be out looking for work.  If you ARE a senior citizen and you can’t afford cable TV then you’ve got bigger problems.  Nobody ever touches this aspect of this story – we aren’t talking about money to give diabetes medicine to seniors… we’re talking about enabling people to keep on watching TV … FOR FREE!  This only affects the sorry saps who only watch the FREE signals. 

PS – the HD receivers aren’t expensive.  I actually bought one a few years ago thinking I could use it with my computer (I was wrong of course), and it was maybe all of $12.  If you can’t afford a $12 one-time purchase for a leisure activity then you’ve got bigger problems to tackle than how to watch television.

And how does this benefit the government?  Shouldn’t NBC, CBS, ABC, etc. be the ones giving out these converters… they are only being used to keep people watching THEIR advertising – and thus upping their numbers allowing them to charge for said advertising.  How it is the responsibility of our government I have no idea.  Oh yeah- our government “forced” them to go into HD.

Hello…  Every major TV network has been broadcasting in HD for years now because the public (who are all snapping up new HD LCDs) has been DEMANDING it.

What a joke.