Posted on 03/22/2017 6:11:24 AM PDT by Kaslin
The defunding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is long past overdue. No president, including Ronald Reagan, has seriously pushed an immediate winding down of this corrupt and outdated waste of taxpayer funds. Who would have ever imagined that Donald Trump would be the first to do it?
His first budget proposal takes that step, not just to save of ton of taxpayer money ($450 million is a lot of money) but also to establish a principle about our leftist media. It's simply not appropriate for the federal government to fund Democrat propaganda badly disguised as news.
Is it any surprise, then, that the media have come unglued?
CNN anchor Martin Savidge suggested Sunday that this proposal sounds like "conservative revenge." In September, we will mark the 50th anniversary of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which laughably proclaimed that the taxpayer-funded TV and radio stations of America would seek "strict adherence to objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature."
There's no way to measure precisely how many billions of dollars or hundreds of thousands of hours of broadcast time conservatives would need to accomplish a tiny fraction of "revenge" for this long half-century march of leftist propaganda.
If it is "revenge" for conservatives to demand an end to this charade, then we are guilty as charged.
On CNN's "Reliable Sources," PBS President Paula Kerger was offered a platform to make ridiculous statements about how PBS is all about educating small children before kindergarten, and how the public should pay no attention to all the liberal "educating" they undertake in prime-time.
Kerger made preposterous arguments with no rebuttal. Try the one where she said, "Our entire programming operating budget is less than Netflix spends on the production of 'The Crown.'"
She is picking possibly the most expensive television show ever made, with an estimated production budget of $130 million, but no matter. Now look at the 2016 Public Broadcasting Service and Subsidiaries financial statement. Under expenses, programming was listed as $380.3 million. In 2015, it was listed as $382.9 million.
Kerger is playing accounting games with the term "operating budget" or the money sent to "subsidiaries." But for the people who watch PBS stations and pay the bills -- involuntarily -- it's a difference without a distinction. It's also their typical obfuscation. In a press statement, Kerger claimed that PBS is blandly defined as "increasing school readiness for kids 2-8, support for teachers and homeschoolers, lifelong learning, public safety communications and civil discourse."
"Civil discourse" is not the term many conservatives would associate with PBS. In reality, the harshest attacks on conservatives often come from the so-called Republicans on this network. Last year, "PBS NewsHour" pundit David Brooks slashed Sen. Ted Cruz for supposedly speaking in "dark and satanic tones." Brooks said, "If you watch a Cruz speech, it's like ... we're going to stomp on this person, we're going to crush that person, we're going to destroy that person."
Over the years, there have been many wild leftist statements. PBS host Tavis Smiley insisted that Christians blow up people "every day" in America. In 1995, NPR's Nina Totenberg wished Sen. Jesse Helms or one of his grandchildren would die from AIDS as "justice." PBS omnipresence Bill Moyers proclaimed that Republicans wearing U.S. flag pins after 9/11 reminded him of Chinese communists carrying Mao's "Little Red Book." Moyers also oozed over paintings glorifying the Marxist revolutionaries ruling Nicaragua, saying, "The white dove of freedom soars with the Sandinista revolution, whose heroes included Jesus Christ, George Washington and the nationalist hero Augusto Sandino."
Let the left-wing billionaires fund this left-wing propaganda. Conservatives are tired of funding our own (literal) demonizers.
PBS did have Firing Line years ago, but...
For the Big Bird fans. Sesame Street is now on HBO..reruns 9 months later on PBS.
So many choices available for education and culture.We need not fund PBS and NPR.
Some say the funding is 2 per cent of the public TV and radio networks’ budgets.They can make it up elsewhere via private fundraising.Corporations give, too..maybe a tax deduction?Let THEM give.
A 2008 report on corporations giving to PBS showed car companies, movie studios and even “Fox Broadcasting”.
Of all the PBS programming Sesame Street is the only franchise that turns a profit. I can just imagine Schmucky Schumer doing a photo op dressed up as Big Bird. Hey, he could have Amy Schumer at his side in a Miss Piggy outfit. After the way her last gig bombed failed what does she have to lose? (other than a few pounds) :^/
I for one am getting REALLY tired of radio PSA’s on stupid topics like “don’t drive your car through a flood” that end by saying “Paid for with Pennsylvania taxpayer dollars.”
That is just nothing short of buying influence with local media.
Such parasites as the sleazy Bill Moyers have gotten rich off Middle Class taxpayers forced to fund the Leftist propaganda arm at PBS.
All this talk of defunding NPR, PBS, NEH, et al sound really great. I’m all in favor of it!
But you know that as soon as an actual bill to do it shows up in the Senate, the usual turds (McLame, McConnell, Linda Graham, etc) are going to come out and tell us it is “DOA”.
Wait and see.
Oddly enough, this may have the downside of funneling more support to the leftist MSM cartel. So congress, stimulated to by President Trump, needs to rework the antitrust laws to target the media oligopoly.
Only 5 companies control the MSM, and in turn they are controlled by just 15 billionaires. This needs to end, as these billionaires are all decidedly anti-American, definitely anti-conservative, and imagine themselves as behind the scenes rulers of the government.
Another good place to do that would be the colleges.They are infested with Liberals spewing propaganda
defund the left.
and here’s a great reason why....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EA_40Hj05I
furthering indoctrination of young minds....
“Whose the president that’s going to cut your funding? Grump grump grump”
PBS has aired numerous documentaries on the terrorist heroes of the Red Left of the 1960s and 1970s. Weather Underground, SLA, Black Panthers, Chicago 7, on and on...
But how am going to get my Downton Abbey?
Oh, wait. I can that on Hulu, or Netflix, or something.
How about we fund pro-America accurate non-propaganda instead. It’s only fair after decades of the opposite.
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