First you want to take away my free TV. Now you're going to tax my tobacco ?!?!

[smalll]

to pay for the healthcare of your precious little Madisons, Finns, Jaydens, Quadens, Zadens, et. etc. etc.? :argh:

Oh, but I guess I can make up for all that bad stuff by going out and buying a house to get another tasty tax credit. :rofl:

Yes, I'm angry -- here's some reasons why:

1) Not all of us are so spendy that we have cable. (gasp!)

2) Not all of us are so spendy that we go out and buy new TVs every three years or less (how un-American!) so we NEED those converter boxes.

3) Not all of us are so boob-tube-focused that we just HAVE to have perfect "digital" reception to see every little zit on our favorite pornstars. We are quite willing to take a little bit of "snow" or static on the box, which leads to point 4:

4) With digital, if we don't live right next to the broadcasting locations, and there's actual hills and/or tall trees near us, we won't just get a little static or snow on the screen - we'll get a big fat NOTHING! "No Signal!"

5) ANOTHER huge cigarette tax increase? To pay for health insurance for kids of families who may make UP TO $80,000 A YEAR?!?!

6) Tax on roll-your-own tobacco will go from virtually nothing up to $23 A POUND?!?! (I roll my own - switched for economic reasons, actually find I prefer it to regular cigarettes.) In general, if cigarette smokers are poorer than your average person, roll-your-owners are even poorer still. This is who we're taxing? How regressive can we get?!?

In fairness, the Democrats themselves are not as bad as DU on some of this: they did pass this SCHIP funding-monstrosity, but in fact, MOST Dems in the House voted to delay the digital switch-over. I'm amazed at how many DUers, though, are on the "let them eat cake" side of BOTH of these issues. How can you be like this in the MIDDLE (or what's worse, BEGINNING really) of a DEPRESSION?

Thank God, at least, that the Republicans are clueless, hopeless and tone-deaf at this point: if they were smart, they could ride the wave of a great populist revolt and set you pay-TV, anti-smoking Mac-users' heads up on pikes at the end of all this. Count yourselves lucky.

[htuttle]

1. They're going to raise the tax on Top and Bugler?

What's next, raising the taxes on Thunderbird and Mad Dog?

:crazy:

[TK421]

5. Higher taxes on Mad Dog would transform the town I live in

which was once prosperous and bustling to...well, prosperous and bustling! :rofl:

[mike_c]

2. can I get a latte...

...with my whine?

:rofl:

[ReverendDeuce]

3. Regarding points 1-4, you're just whining...

This issue is of import to me because I see so much misinformation in here about it and I am an enthusiast for this stuff.

1. You can get a converter free... You've seen the rebate program, yes? Okay, so you feel your time is money and you may need to use some gas to go buy one etc, etc. Nitpicking.

2. Who said every three years? Today's NTSC standard is what, 60 years old? We'll all be dead by the time ATSC is replaced. Oh, but that must be what we call "passing the cost onto our children"...

3. But you're getting all the extra quality for free!

4. Are you kidding? In my apartment, I can't get an analog signal worth watching. I can't hear past the snow and the multipath interference, combined with the snow, makes the picture look like I've been on acid all day... You can't hear or see anything other than a vague outline of a human figure. With my digital TV, I get crisp, perfect images. In the snow, in the rain, all day long, **from an antenna**!

What a load of rabble...

[smalll]

As to your points -

1) The main reason they delayed the switchover was that the government had run out of converter rebate money.

2) Maybe not every three years, but I know one person (family member) who bought a brand-new TV five years, at most six years ago - and it wasn't new enough. It needed a converter box.

I'll leave 3 aside, as I think 4 deals with it:
4) I know people like you who HAVE benefited from the digital change -- I know one person who lives only ten miles outside a major city, in an apartment also, and this has helped. But I also know of someone who lives less than 30 miles outside a major city, and whose digital converter box gives them basically NO channels - there are hills and tall trees in the way. So the new, improved pornzitvision is hardly free if you can't get any porn (or anything else) at all!

[S n o w b a l l]

17. You may be happier with it in the end..

I have cable, but most of everything I've read shows people getting MORE channels...not less.

This site might be helpful to see what channels you can get.

http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx

I hear ya on the tobacco tax. Sucks monkey balls.

[smalll]

18. Thanks. I myself might not get hurt by the switchover -

I actually DO live in a major city. But I have a fellow non-cable, old-TV family member who it seems is going to have HUGE problems getting signals with digital. And I'm really non-plussed by the fact that a lot of people like him are going to lose TV or get forced to pay big-time to a regional cable monopoly or duopoly to get dreck like today's "The Learning Channel" when all they want to watch is good stuff like MacNeil/Lehrer, and/or good network comedies like The Office or 30 Rock.

Thanks for your sympathy on the tobacco tax (that one will REALLY hit me.) The worst thing about it in the long run, even more than the regressive nature of it, is the fact that we will ALL pay for this because of the black-market issue: more money for gangs and other criminals, more gang-related violence that inevitably entails, plus more money for gangs means that kind of dead-end life-style will gain even more glamor in the eyes of disadvantaged kids, to their lives' great detriment, PLUS we'll be funnelling even MORE money to the "corrections" industry to imprison, at great expense, all the extra cigarette street-dealers who get busted by vice squads.

[panader0]

4. I agree about the tobacco tax.

Hell, most of the cost of a pack of smokes is tax already. I smoke GPC non-filter, but will be switching to roll yer own soon.
We live close to Mexico and can go to the duty free stores and get smokes for a fraction of the cost. My girlfriend smokes more than I do, and you can only get one carton per month, so we get her brand. They cost $60 plus here, and $18 at the duty free stores.
We need to grow our own. I don't know why people don't do it. Is there a good reason?

[catnhatnh]

20. Surprise!

Don't bother. Under SCHIP your GPCs will be taxed at $1 per pack while roll your own tax goes to (approximately) $1.18. So unless you want to buy a $45 rolling machine and give up 15-30 minutes a day for very little savings...

[Pithlet]

6. You know what?

I'm against sin taxes. I think they're regressive, and would have much rather had SCHIP funded another way. :eyes:

[TahitiNut]

12. Sane folks like you and me ... are a minority, I guess.

Funny how folks are so ready to tax "the other guy" ... even "progressives."

[Pithlet]

14. Maybe. I wish people who think so little of helping children were a minority.

Yeah, I do get that the tax is an imposition and I do feel for those who will be negatively impacted by it. But I don't get feeling resentment for those who will be helped by it. We were going to need to help those kids regardless of where the money came from. SCHIP had to happen, regardless of where the funds came from. The OP's whining makes it hard for me to feel sympathy for him.

[TahitiNut]

15. Apparently nobody cared less about the kids' health care than the tobacco nazis who refused to pay.

It's easy to "care" when it's about making someone else pay. Whoopee. That's pretty threadbare ethics, imho.

[kiva]

19. I also wish that more people cared about helping children.

Then funding SCHIP would become a priority, not financed by a back door tax that penalizes many of the poorest Americans. Funding would be based on taxing ALL Americans, rather than let the non-sinners off the hook. If we truly think that helping children is a national priority, we wouldn't fund it by taxing smokers while at the same time urging them to quit smoking--the ultimate mixed message.

[Jeanette in FL]

7. Time for a little music - Taxman- The Beatles

Let me tell you
How it will be.
There's one for you,
Nineteen for me,

'Cause I'm the taxman.
Yeah, I'm the taxman.

Should five percent
Appear too small,
Be thankful I don't
Take it all.

'Cause I'm the taxman.
Yeah, I'm the taxman.

If you drive a car,
I'll tax the street.
If you drive to city,
I'll tax your seat.
If you get too cold,
I'll tax the heat.
If you take a walk,
I'll tax your feet.

Taxman!

'Cause I'm the taxman.
Yeah, I'm the taxman.

Don't ask me what I want it for,
(Uh-uh, Mr. Wilson.)
If you don't want to pay some more.
(Uh-uh, Mr. Heath.)

'Cause I'm the taxman.
Yeah, I'm the taxman.

And my advice to
Those who die.
(Taxman!)
Declare the pennies
On your eyes.
(Taxman!)

'Cause I'm the taxman.
Yeah, I'm the taxman,
And you're working for no one but me.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

8. Have you heard of books?

[smalll]

11. Yes, I have. I'm a reader too. But this REALLY gets my goat -- I've seen it in other TV threads --

1) The government FORCES the switchover from analog to digital.

2) Non-cable, non-satellite people like me who don't buy new TVs until their old ones go kaput complain about it, while -

3) Spendy, high-def, pay-TV people react with horrified impatience when it looks like the switchover will simply be DELAYED for a few months.

And somehow, it's us people watching free TV on old sets who get called the TV addicts?!?! People say things like "free TV is not a constitutional right"?!?!

Sorry, it's the spendy HBO-watching people with their big-screen plasmas who are the addicts, and it should be no business of the government to enable pointless technological upsells!

[Starbucks Anarchist]

16. Do you even know why they're making the switch?

http://www.dtvanswers.com/

And the cost of the converter box is defrayed or eliminated with the free coupons the government is giving out. The only people who should be upset about the transition are those relatively few people who haven't been able to receive their coupons yet.

Aside from the slight coupon delay, switching to digital has no downside. It frees up the spectrum, has better picture and sound, and offers more programming options than analog does.

It is clearly not a "pointless technological upsell."

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

9. The tobacco tax is a tax on those making under $250,000..... broken campaign promise.

For economic reasons I MYO too.

[charlie]

10. Hope they're not making budget projections for anything important with this

Make sin taxes too onerous and people stop sinning. Or they sin on the black market. Everybody knows it, so why don't they ever learn?

[nichomachus]

13. Next, they'll be taxing self-mutilation and coprophagia

Those bastards!