Thursday, December 08, 2005
We Have Become France
Remember, although it is difficult to do so, that Republicans control Congress. And today's up-to-date conservatism does not stand idly by expecting people to actually pursue happiness on their own. Hence the new entitlement from Congress to help all Americans acquire converter boxes to put on top of old analog sets, making the sets able to receive digital programming. All Americans — rich and poor; it is uncompassionate to discriminate on the basis of money when dispersing money — will be equally entitled to the help.
The $990 million House version of this entitlement — call it No Couch Potato Left Behind — is (relatively) parsimonious: Consumers would get vouchers worth only $40 and would be restricted to a measly two vouchers per household. The Senate's more spacious entitlement would pay for most of the cost — $50 to $60 — of the converter boxes. But there is Republican rigor in this: Consumers would be required to pay $10. That is the conservatism in compassionate conservatism.
Now, the hardhearted will, in their cheeseparing small-mindedness, ask: Given that the transition to digital has been underway for almost a decade, why should those who have adjusted be compelled to pay money to those who have chosen not to adjust? And conservatives who have not yet attended compassion reeducation camps will ask: Why does the legislation make even homes with cable or digital services eligible for subsidies to pay for converter boxes for old analog sets — which may be worth less than the government's cost for the boxes?
You may well ask. I'm going to go have a drink.
Unbelievable.
9 Comments:
By 
Pile On®, at
Thu Dec 08, 08:12:00 PM:
Pardonnez-moi Madame, mais ne voulez-vous pas dire "incroyable" ?
By TigerHawk, at
Thu Dec 08, 08:33:00 PM:
If we're going to become France, the quality of the food around here is going to have to improve considerably. The idea of combining French social regulation and American food is one very grim vision of hell.
I say this as somebody who was put in charge of dinner tonight because his wife is at the annual "Hags on Nags" holiday party, so naturally I ordered in pizza.
By Cassandra, at
Thu Dec 08, 09:41:00 PM:
Yes, well Pile, the worst thing in all of this is that we're expecting a snowstorm and so instead of my drink I went out into the cold and bought a carful of groceries and a bunch of logs for the fireplace.
And you have to realize how very much I detest grocery shopping to know what that took after the day I had at work today. 4 con calls and most of the day spent on WebEx. Hell doesn't begin to touch it. And no alcohol at the end of the rainbow.
We had pizza too - homemade. The food was divine in Paris, TH - I can't believe I didn't put on a pile of weight there. It was wonderful.
By Cassandra, at
Thu Dec 08, 09:48:00 PM:
Et, oui! Monsieur On :) Je n'ai jamais pensé pour vous entendre parler en français!
By Pile On®, at
Thu Dec 08, 09:48:00 PM:
Where do you live that you can't buy beer or wine and groceries at the same place.
By Cassandra, at
Thu Dec 08, 09:48:00 PM:
By Pile On®, at
Thu Dec 08, 10:06:00 PM:
Well thank God I don't live back east with all your uptight puritan laws. I don't take kindly to people imposing their religion on me.
By TigerHawk, at
Thu Dec 08, 10:45:00 PM:
New Jersey has the same rules -- people here do not understand that beer is food. Like peanut butter or bananas or little pucks of Borsin cheese.
Of course, I didn't know that beer was food until the summer I was 20. There I was, all alone at 9 a.m. in line for the tour at the Heineken brewery in Amsterdam. There was a Chinese-American guy from California -- also alone -- standing next to me, so we struck up a conversation: "My name is Melvin. My friends call me Mel." Kind of like that.
Anyhoo, I expressed my misgivings about drinking beer at 9 in the forenoon, but Mel put me at ease with a single, obvious point: "Hey, man, it's liquid toast."
Thereafter, I have been quite comfortable drinking beer in the morning. If circumstances warrant.
On the matter of groceries, I rather like shopping for them. I mean, more than I like folding laundry, or putting the left-overs into Tupperware containers. Which are the alternatives, according to my wife.
By Cassandra, at
Fri Dec 09, 09:20:00 AM:
Beer: it's not just a breakfast beverage anymore...
Seriously, the spousal unit likes to grocery shop too. Always has. I think it's a hunter-gatherer thing. He's a better bargain-shopper than I am too - he drives me mad. I'll grab something off the shelf and he'll gently take it from my hand and put it back, saying "that one is only 89 cents a litre..." and I'm thinking "just let me get my fingers around his neck, Lord, and squeeeeze...".
All my life I have scrimped and saved and pinched pennies and finally I make good money and I don't *have* to bargain shop and this man is worried about saving 3 cents on a can of tuna? He doesn't understand that I want to wallow in th glorious luxury of just brazenly grabbing the name brand off the shelf... I'll make it up by not buying some other trinket that most other women can't live without because, after all, I am Scottish. Let me live a little.
Yikes.
I loathe shopping. Always have. I seem to lack the acquisitive gene.
