HDTV Mis-Direction?

Well, tomorrow is the delayed cutover to HDTV. I don't particularly know what that is all about, but according to the news briefs I heard yesterday, the delay was due to approximately 6.4 million households not having a converter box at the time the original cutover was scheduled to occur. This may sound a bit cynical, but the government was apparently quite concerned that their message was not going to reach 6.4 million households. In response, they spent $2 billion (that would be $2,000,000,000) in taxpayer money to delay the cutover and equip an additional 3.6 million of those households for HDTV . . . there seem to be 2.8 million still not capable of receiving the new signal. The government apparently believes their message to be of such importance that it was well worth the $2,000,000,000 in taxpayer money. My understanding was that the government was to take care of the health and well-being of its citizens, provide a financial system and a strong defense. I am trying to understand how HDTV fits into that . . . . . I suppose it could just be an overwhelming lobby effort by the television industry - talk about special interest influence in Washington - sheesh.

As I stood in line at my local grocery store the other day, I thought of an alternative to investing $2,000,000,000 in tax dollars for TV. Next to me was a pre-prepared bag of food for the local food shelf marked at $5. It contained enough food and ingredients to feed a family for a day. I couldn't do the math in my head, since $2,000,000,000 of tax dollars just had too many zeroes for me to comprehend. Since then, I have divided the $2,000,000,000 by $5 and learned that hour hundred million families could have enjoyed a good meal - that is 400,000,000 families. Think about that - isn't it mind-boggling?

So just for the record, if I had a legitimate choice of how my tax dollars were to be spent, I would have fed the people instead of making certain they had TV in their living room. It would have been a pretty good message for the government to deliver and even the lobbyists for the television industry could have taken some credit - I don't really care about that. 400 million families might have cared, however.