Today an article published in CNN Money analyzed the costs now of the average American household to now receive television broadcast to their home under the new digital cable bill which was also passed by the 110th Congress during the Bush Administration, and went into effect earlier this year.
The article indicated that the average cable bill now is over $75 per household, and projected to increase to almost $95 very shortly in many areas throughout the country.
Congress passed this legislation using the "carrot" also for public consumption of providing sums for those households now receiving only the FCC free stations in their local areas due to all those towers which were built for such purposes with taxpayer funds in the 1950’s and beyond for the cable boxes in order to convert their analog television sets to digital.
Of course, no provisions for those monthly fees now which are about three times the home telephone bill for telephone service, though with deregulation and all the taxes and bells and whistles in those packages that are sold by most telephone providers has resulted in many Americans discontinuing either their cellur phone, or their home phone depending on costs involved.
Fewer and fewer can now afford both.
Since the "carrot" for the health care deform that has been much publicized has been the vouchers or subsidies that Congress is including based upon income levels (in effect, budgeting now Americans disposeable income more and more) it does seem that the mind set that has also taken hold of those on the Hill is using vouchers and subsidies paying part of the costs in order to effectively get the public to swallow much of this continue backdoor taxation legislation, while also not even tying increases in those rates or provisions with even the CPI for the private corporate entities that are benefitting from legislation such as these measures.
Or even accurate statistical data tying in maybe the amount of those subsidies and vouchers with also the rises in costs for the average household now in America so that in the future, as has been the case, progressively the amount of those vouchers or subsidies is reduced or due to inflation the purchasing power severely minimized, yet "fining" or penalizing those whose budgets eventually preclude once again such "luxuries" as cable television, or private health care insurance plans.
These public/private partnerships are leading to now many having to hang on to their automobiles for many, many years also, or give up driving now due to insurance costs and the amount of fees and fines for minor offenses – since there are now less donations to those "junker" donation programs than ever before, according to a recent report of the decrease also in donations that are being received by civic organizations, which are more and more requesting and receiving instead government grant monies and thus arms of big brother once again, becoming also nothing more than branches of the government in claimed "non-profit" public/private partnerships based on matching sum requirements for those grant monies.
Wasn’t the idea of government, at least the U.S. government initially, to provide for specific and usual governmental services, and the private sector to provide all else (with the exception of the advent of the stock market, which actually makes most private corporations really public corporations due to the source of their funding and yet lack of any true accountability to shareholders or consumers buying their products for their administrative costs, yet with the taxpayers now also bailing out some of those fiscal mismanaging corporate entities more and more) – instead of as is becoming the treand, more and more the private sector now providing for usual governmental services, and the government providing for the private sector’s profit margins through legislative means in giving "privileges and immunities" to the corporate at the cost of the general public at large?
Let’s hope once again that Congress does start to see the big picture in this pending legislation, rather than merely the short term gains.
http://money.cnn.com/2010/01/06/news/companies/cable_bill_cost_increase/index.htm