Posted on 07/01/2005 3:30:50 AM PDT by ajolympian2004
Rosen: Subsidizing liberal bias
July 1, 2005
Liberals are forever complaining that the Bush Administration "manages the news," spins it to fit its agenda. They have a point. But every administration does this. Of course, these same critics never complain that National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System indulge their own biases. Why? Because NPR and PBS manipulate their programming to fit the liberal agenda. It's a status quo that liberal cheerleaders for NPR and PBS enjoy and tenaciously defend.
We expect politicians, including presidents, to be biased advocates for their own agendas. Journalistic objectivity and balance at NPR and PBS is purely a pretense. Sure, public broadcasting offers some quality programming and more depth than most commercial TV and radio news, but it'd be nice to see quality and depth of a more balanced nature. In spite of rare, token conservative offerings, public broadcasting is overwhelmingly liberal. From Bill Moyers to Frontline, from Nina Totenberg to All Things Considered, PBS and NPR list decidedly to port.
Perhaps that explains why Republicans in Congress are always trying to cut NPR and PBS budgets while Democrats perpetually fight to protect them. Hard as it might be, imagine how Democrats would complain about NPR and PBS if their programming had a conservative bias. Kenneth Tomlinson, the Republican who now chairs the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, is under attack from Democrats in Congress and liberals everywhere. Tomlinson's sin is that he's called for long-overdue balance at PBS. I wish him luck. He'll need it.
In a tortured defense of NPR and PBS taxpayer subsidies, Bob Smith - a liberal talk show host on WXXI-AM, the NPR affiliate in Rochester, N.Y. - made the following claim: "You may be interested in knowing that the indirect subsidy we all pay each year because the ad revenue paid to Rush Limbaugh's network and his major market affiliates is fully tax-deductible at the source, is far greater than the total national taxpayer contribution to all public radio and TV stations. Rush Limbaugh raises your taxes far more than NPR and PBS."
This is a priceless insight to the liberal mentality, speaking volumes about their collectivist instincts and disdain for private property. Allow me to dissect, reorder and correct this babble:
1. Businesses are forced by government to pay income taxes.
2. Income taxes are assessed on business income; that is, a business's revenues minus its expenses. That's why it's called an income tax, as opposed to a gross revenues tax. If a company's costs exceed its revenues, it has no profits and, hence, no income tax liability.
3. This nitwit's contention is that the deduction a company takes from its revenues to advertise on the Limbaugh show, a legitimate business expense, constitutes an "indirect subsidy" because it reduces the company's potential tax liability. This is as absurd as objecting to a business expensing the cost of its payroll, raw materials or utilities.
4. In essence, Smith is saying that a business should be grateful the government doesn't confiscate all its revenues. As he and his liberal ilk see it, government has first claim on everything you earn. Anything you're allowed to keep, then, is an "indirect subsidy," for which you should thank government for its generosity.
In the real world, as distinct from the liberals' socialist utopia, what you earn is yours, not the government's. You have first claim on it. When government allows you to keep a greater share of what you've earned - whether you're an individual or a business - it's not a subsidy. It was yours to begin with. Conversely, any tax dollars that go to NPR or PBS are a subsidy, since those dollars were first earned by someone else, then taxed and redistributed to the beneficiaries. The same applies to food stamps, welfare, housing subsidies, Medicaid or any other government "entitlement" program. No one has a right to any of these payments; they're all charity.
The prospect of an after-tax return on your labor and investment is what motivates rational human beings to devote their time and risk their capital in productive enterprises. Increase the tax and lower the expectation of net income and you get less investment, labor and output. That's why a country can't tax itself rich. This is a concept that the left seems unable to grasp.
Mike Rosen's radio show airs daily from 9 a.m. to noon on 850 KOA.
by Mike Rosen
I'm a firm believer in American exceptionalism. I believe that our country, its Constitution, its system of political economy, its culture, institutions, and, most important, its people have produced the greatest measure of political freedom, individual opportunity and economic achievement the world has ever known.
We've done some bad things along with the good - who hasn't? - but, on balance, we've done a far sight better than any other nation ever has. We've saved the world from genocidal tyrants intent on global domination and exported freedom and democracy far and near. I think we're something special.
Most America haters don't envy and resent us for what we've done wrong, but for what we've done right. They dislike us because we're not them and because they're not us. So let them. That's their problem. The last thing we should feel is guilt. Do you think the French would consider changing the way they are because Americans might not approve?
Liberals, of course, thrive on guilt and self-flagellation.
If we're not universally liked, they say, it must be our fault. OK, for the benefit of those among us who desperately want to hold hands and sing Kumbaya, here's what we can do to make the rest of world love us:
* Disband the military. Scuttle the fleet. Disarm the cops; in place of guns, give them sticks and funny hats.
* Raise the price of gasoline to $5 a gallon; make everyone ride trains.
* Forsake baseball; elevate soccer to the national pastime. Ban hot dogs; make vendors sell snails and mussels.
* Cede our sovereignty to the United Nations.
* Extradite Henry Kissinger to Spain so some left-wing judge can convict him of war crimes.
* Ratify the Kyoto treaty, imposing huge costs on the American economy while granting exemptions for most of the rest of the world.
* Double taxes on productive Americans; redistribute half our income to the Third World.
* Have the government take over the airlines, trucking, hospitals, automobile manufacturers, and the energy sector. Let bureaucrats run the economy and allow the labor unions to shut it down whenever they want more money for less work.
* Put everyone on the dole. Make us all dependent on government for our sustenance.
* Socialize the pharmaceutical industry and health care delivery, so that medical treatment and drugs will be ``free'' to all as long as they don't mind waiting months for ``nonessential'' treatment. People who can afford to pay extra can go to Canada. (Whoops, I forgot; can't do that. Canada already has socialized medicine, which is why Canadians who don't want to wait in line come here.)
* Outlaw exports of our goods and services; our trading partners don't like the competition. But give them unlimited access to our markets.
* Mandate two-hour lunches. Limit the workweek to 35 hours, but require employers to pay the same as for a 40-hour week. Prohibit paid overtime. Shut down the economy for two months every summer while everyone ``goes on holiday.''
* Bulldoze all McDonald's fast-food outlets.
* Require that all U.S. films be in French with English subtitles (and that they star Jerry Lewis and Gerard Depardieu.)
* Open our borders. Admit half the world's population. Put them on welfare. Require that the public schools teach them in their own language.
* To please the Europeans, remove legal barriers to prostitution, pornography and drugs. Abolish capital punishment. To accommodate Islamic fundamentalists, outlaw prostitution, drugs and pornography, along with women's rights, dancing and drinking. Mandate public floggings for all violators, and reinstitute capital punishment - especially the stoning-to-death of female adulterers.
There appear to be some conflicts, here. Maybe you just can't please everyone. So why don't we just please ourselves and the billions of non-Americans who would vote with their feet and come here in an instant if they could. As for the America haters? Let 'em eat snails.
Sorry, Mr. Rosen. In light of this week's Supreme Court ruling, you're just wrong. Everything ultimately belongs to the government. It's merely a matter of them deciding when they want to take it.
I pay my county property taxes quarterly in person at the courthouse. Each time I hand over the check to the lady at the counter, I refer to "paying my rent". It always draws a slight headshake and roll of the eyeballs.
I listen to NPR until I feel the urge to vomit. Ususally within five minutes of turning on my car radio. It is amazing to me how the on-air personalities such as Diane Rehm can claim objectivity. "All Things Considered" once called "All Things Condesending" by a local NPR announcer in an intro to that show (he soon left the station)is all about victims and the need for more and more government.
They regularly sneer at the Bush Administration and "flyover" country. They openly love the idea of "diversity" except for white Christians, of course. There's also no diversity for conservative ideas. They cover Republicans as if they were a foreign ideology.
And all on the taxpayers' dime.
The said all of this with a straight face. I guess they even believe it to, though to me it's reporting straight from another dimension of Bizarro World.
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