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Why PBS? It is not propaganda, it is just news. Often it's Left-leaning, but not as much as MSNBC or CNN can be sometimes. PLus my granddaughter watches all those kids shows and plays educational games on pbs.org. These shows are far better than that other crap on regular TV. Funding PBS can't be that big a chunk.There are bigger things to cut. Why do they all fear cutting welfare benefits? That's where they should concentrate, but I haven't heard that mentioned yet.
See these:"Congress approved $420 million for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting last year, and President Obama is seeking $451 million in his new budget.""Opponents say the stations and their networks should get their funding entirely from the private sector and let the public determine through a free market what programs and stations will survive.""Shows such as (public television's) 'Sesame Street' are multi-million dollar enterprises capable of thriving in the private market."Between 2003 and 2006, DeMint said, "Sesame Street" generated more than $211 million in sales of toys and other products related to the popular children's show. Gary Knoll, the president and CEO of Sesame Workshop, received nearly $1 million in compensation for 2008, the South Carolina Senator said."http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/6371-sen-demint-raps-pbs-qmuppet-lobbyqI think at the end of the day, funding for PBS is on questionable grounds to begin with - should the government really be in the entertainment/broadcasting? In prosperous times, it's not a big issue, but in lean times, it's tough to justify spending $450 million for Cookie Monster to have a job while we still have 9% unemployment.This doesn't mean PBS cannot continue to exist; rather, it needs to be able to exist on its own just like other networks do.I am a big fan of PBS (especially NOVA, America's Test Kitchen, etc.) but I am not opposed to reducing spending here. In bad times, difficult choices need to be made for the common good. If there is enough demand for PBS, it will find a way to survive.
Sesame St can probably stand on it's own, but I don't know about the other lesser known (except to a 4 yr old) shows. I do think private donations will rise if PBS gets defunded, but I would hate to see moveon.org or other leftist groups contribute because that only means the news programs will lean even more that way in order to satisfy their sponsers.
Yeah, I wouldn't want it to turn into a left-sponsored network. But do you really think it would? I don't know what MoveOn.org would get from sponsoring Sesame Street. I think sponsorship would more likely come from general corporations – your Nestles, Microsofts, ExxonMobils, Procter and Gambles, etc. Since PBS does have some good programming, I want to see those programs remain. To tell you the truth, I would rather have all NPR funding cut before PBS funding, but I think some people look at those as two sides of the same coin.
I do think that would, if for nothing else but out of spite. Totally agree about NPR. What gets me about NPR though is the hypocrisy of the Left. The want a Fairness doctrine, but get all psycho when Republicans propose defunding NPR.Maybe it's wishful on my part, but I think many people are waking up to this crap. Look at the false accusations about Palin and the Tea Party, then look at the hateful signs displayed towards Gov. Walker.
Regarding the so-called “Fairness Doctrine”, one would think that any government-sponsored news media that leans to one political side is truly “unfair”. After all, the taxpayer is helping to foot the bill. But I don't think that there is the same level of “unfairness” with a biased, private news company. After all, if someone doesn't like that company, he or she is free to start a competing news outlet with opposite views.I have no idea how a Fairness Doctrine law could ever survive. Who is to say what is "left" or what is "right"? Didn't conservative talk radio arise because of perceived liberal bias in the mainstream media in the first place? It seems like it's subjective whether some media pieces are conservative or liberal. Who would be the judge?Personally, I think the Fairness Doctrine is pulled out of the scare bag every so often by Democrats as a threat, but I would guess that it would never be passed.
The “Fairness Doctrine” was in place for many years until Reagan stopped it. You don't remember that the radio stations would have some boring show on, usually Sunday morning, when we were kids? I too do not understand why the government is in the business of paying for entertainment programming, then again why are we paying for the National Endowment for the arts too? Ski makes the best point when he asks why we are not looking at entitlement programs for cuts. This year entitlement spending will be something like 53% of total government spending. I think it is hilarious listening to Republicans and Democrats gnashing their teeth about coming up with $100 billion in cuts. $100 billion is nothing when you consider the deficit is planned to be $1.7 trillion this year or, to put it in perspective, 170 times the "cuts" they are talking about. I think it is slash and burn time on the budget and NO program should be exempt, not defense, not medicare, medicaid, welfare, or social security. It does not matter if we try to protect those entitlements/benefits if the country goes under anyway. It is probably time to have a serious discussion about the size of the federal government too.I don't see any worthwhile cuts coming from either side of the aisle though. Instead, I predict that taxes will go up, we will keep borrowing money we cannot afford, and both parties will continue to fiddle while Rome burns. The simple fact is that current spending is unsustainable and absolutely nobody wants to confront the reality of what it will take to get the Federal Budget under control.I tell you guys what, I would gladly forgo my military retirement check if I thought for even a second that the idiots we have collectively put in office would spend the money even halfway wisely. Unfortunately, we seem to continue to elect people that I would not trust to balance their own checkbook to run the affairs of the United States. I don't want to hear talk out of Washington, I want a politician with the courage to propose the painful cuts and probably taxes that will put the federal government and by extension the country, back on the path to fiscal sustainability. I am not holding my breath though, I think the US will get an IMF bailout first.
Why PBS? It is not propaganda, it is just news. Often it's Left-leaning, but not as much as MSNBC or CNN can be sometimes. PLus my granddaughter watches all those kids shows and plays educational games on pbs.org. These shows are far better than that other crap on regular TV. Funding PBS can't be that big a chunk.There are bigger things to cut. Why do they all fear cutting welfare benefits? That's where they should concentrate, but I haven't heard that mentioned yet.
For Iulus Caesar the ends justified the means, subordinating institutional checks and balances in a quest for ?results.? Was the constitution of the republic broken? No matter, as long as constituents were satisfied ? by a bread dole, farms for veterans, or vast entertainments. Whatever goodies accrued to the rabble, however, the real object was to concentrate power in Caesar?s hands. It was therefore useful to dilute the senate, corrupt the people, massacre and plunder foreign nations, all for the aggrandizement of a single individual. Dickinson tells us that ?Caesar was preparing the way for his deification or something like it, yet many historians have found difficulty in attributing such an objective to a man of his bold and rationalistic spirit.? It is difficult indeed, in our own time, to account for the motives of men like Hitler or Lenin or Stalin. But there has always existed, in some men, a pathological desire for power and primacy. ?Like dictators of recent times,? wrote Dickinson, ?[Caesar] was anxious to clothe his position with a name that would be free from constitutional associations and would mark his supremacy as a complete break with the past.? Claiming to represent the people, or serve the cause of a ?higher history,? the dictator serves himself. Caesar destroyed the republic with no greater object than gratifying his own ego. ?The bent and temper of Caesar?s mind were clearly not congenial to broad ideas of economic or social welfare,? wrote Dickinson. It is of no account what Caesar promised. What is important, is what Caesar delivered !!!
I work for the government, and I am NOT one of the few who make triple figures,. I work just like everyone else in the private sector as to my cohorts and many here at the base.The perception that ALL government workers are overpaid in comparisson to the private sector is a myth.However, I read this online and while it will not happen, it proves how the system is broken and how common sense does not prevail over personal gain and pride. I'm not sure what all the fuss is about regarding the government shutdown. I think the solution is quite simple: Just pay all the regular government workers their regular pay and let them continue to work ? and furlough all the members of Congress.Those lawmakers should have to work around the clock without compensation instead of continuing to get paid and not resolving anything.Once they solve the budget problems they can resume getting paid. And bingo! They will "magically" come to consensus and have it solved in a day or two.You bet... when it hits THEIR pocketbook you can bet they resolve things, but as it stands they have reason to resolve things - they still get paid, and paid much better than me and the rest of my normal federal bretheren.
As regards cutting the budget, the current handwringing in Washington over a puny $100 billion cut says it all. We are arguing about indivudal peanuts when we should be talking about entire pallets of them. To put it in perspective Jonah Goldberg wrote an excellent piece lambasting the ridiculous whining going on about cutting the budget right now. The best was this analogy
But given their terror of forcing a government shutdown, Democrats were forced to counteroffer with a cut of $10.5 billion, or 0.28 percent of the federal budget.Imagine you have a budget of $10,000 (about 40 percent of it borrowed on a credit card), then "slash" 28 bucks. That's what it's like to be a frugal Democrat.
My emphasis. We elected children on both sides of the aisle last November. I expected the Tea Party candidates at least to be talking seriously. So far we are not, Congress will make token cuts and then put its collective head in the sand and ignore the looming crisis until it is too late. Republicans and Democrats alike are guilty of either ignoring reality or being liars, I have not decided which.I fear that America is looking at an Argentina moment in a few years unless we get some lawmakers with the spine to do the right thing for the nation and ignore all the special interests engaged in trying to salvage their piece of the taxpeyer funded Federal pie.
Don't blame the Tea Party. Bachmann, Ryan, Paul are all VERY outspoken and serious about the deficit as is Palin. It's the RINOs, Democrats, and President who have no spine. The Senate will kill any proposal made by the House, and if not, the President will veto it. We (the TP) better take the Senate in 2012 too.
We (the TP) better take the Senate in 2012 too.
That is our best hope to achieve something. Unfortunately, it is another two years before the TP can take the WH and senate. That is a long time to let the spendthrifts have control of the budget. What will the national debt look like in two years? I shudder to even think of it.
I know that some of you harp on Republicans and Democrats with semi-equal tenacity. While I realize that Republicans are hardly perfect, I must say that the two sides are not equal in my book.
Over the next decade the cuts are expected to save hundreds of billions of dollars.
The only ones who are budget hawks are Republicans, but not all of them. How many in the GOP will back these huge cuts?
The next test for Republicans is going to be the debt limit. They forced the Democrats to blink over the 2011 budget, can they do the sane with the debt limit? That is a powerful chip when you remember that debt makes up almost half of federal spending in this fiscal year alone. The great game continues and I am not sure how it will turn out. I think the Ryan plan is a good start, but even it does not really go far enough in making structural changes.
