You've probably heard about the upcoming transition to digital television, where television providers will stop providing analog televisions signals entirely. You may even recall that the exact date for that transition, after several delays, was finally set for February 17th, 2009 (per the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005). Critical word in that sentence: was.Recently, there has been (another) movement to delay this transition. There are concerns that as many as 21 million households that still aren't prepared for the transition. Obama has been pushing this issue, and the Senate has voted unanimously on a bill to postpone it until June. I've very disappointed by this news. Fortunately (in my opinion), the House rejected the bill by a narrow margin. While I appreciate that many households probably aren't prepared, I don't see the benefit of delaying the transition even further. To put it simply: if they haven't prepared themselves in the past 2 years, I doubt a 6 month extension will cause them change course. To be blunt, I believe that there is a significant percentage of the population that won't address the problem until the day after their televisions stop to work--regardless of how long of a delay.
The point of this story, though, is that I decided to actually express my feelings towards my state representatives rather than just complain about it. I wrote my representative and the representative whom headed the opposition to the bill, both of whom voted against it, and thanked them for their work. I also wrote one of my senators--ironically, the ranking Republican on the State Commerce Committee, whom has done a lot of work for the transition and whom I expected to oppose another delay--and expressed my disappointment. It was surprisingly easy to contact both; I just looked them up on www.house.gov and www.senate.gov. I'm going to have to remember this the next time I have a major gripe.
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