Posted on 02/10/2006 8:00:19 PM PST by FreeManDC
Administration renews attack on public broadcasting with funding cuts similar to those rejected by Congress and the American people in June
WASHINGTON February 6, 2006 John Lawson, president and CEO of the Association of Public Television Stations (APTS), condemned cuts in federal funding for public broadcasting recommended by the Bush Administration earlier today. Lawson said: By submitting a budget proposal with cuts of this magnitude, the Administration is completely ignoring the will of the American people as they expressed it quite vocally last June. In now renewing the attack on public broadcasting, the Administration is saying the opinions of the American people do not matter.
The Administrations budget proposal would rescind more than $100 million in federal funding for public broadcasting over FY2007 and FY2008. Lawson said: In addition to drastic cuts over the next two years, the budget proposes no federal funding for FY2009. With this tactic, the Administration may be laying the foundation for the elimination of all federal funding for public broadcasting. The Administration declined to recommend advance funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides grants for local station operations and national programming. Among other things, the practice of advance funding which has been in place for the past thirty years protects public broadcasting from political abuse.
The Administration also proposes completely eliminating funding for the highly-successful Ready To Teach program, which provides funding for online resources for teachers seeking quality professional development that is easily accessible, flexible and tailored to local, state and national standards. In another section of the Presidents budget, the Administration requests funds to upgrade the skills of tens of thousands of math and science teachers.
The budget also proposes the elimination of targeted grants for the federally-mandated digital conversion of stations, and funding for the satellite interconnection system that distributes PBS and other programming to local public television stations. Lawson said: Its not just ironic, its sad that the Administration wants to eliminate federal support for local public televisions digital conversion at the same time that Congress has set February 17, 2009 for the end of analog broadcasts.
Finally, the budget proposes the elimination of the Public Telecommunications Facilities Program (PTFP). As Gulf Coast stations struggled to meet local communications needs in the wake of the devastation caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, PTFP was the only source of emergency federal funding to help. Lawson said: The decision to eliminate PTFP is a serious blow to a program that played an indispensable role in Gulf Coast recovery. PTFP is essential, as this program is an investment in public broadcasting stations physical capital, enabling them to deliver expanded programming and services tailored to the needs of local communities.
Lawson said: The cuts, amounting to $157 million, or 30 percent less this year than in FY2006, are devastating. As we did last year, our stations will work together with our supporters across the country to fight these cuts vigorously. In one bright spot for public television, the Administration proposed level funding for the Ready To Learn program at the Department of Education.
My gut feeling is that it will not happen.
Bush has made the honorable proposal but the congress will not follow through. The PBS funding is protected with moats, concrete walls, barbed wire and machine guns.
The way to deal with PBS is from the inside. Take over the organizations and the state owned broadcast outlets and eliminate the leftwing drivel and replace with conservative commonsense. This activity will cause intense pain among the locally displaced but will not be a national cause celebre.
We can get a third term and a fourth term, all we gotta do is get his brother Jeb to run...
I think GWB is a lot more popular than the media, leftist scum and RINOs will ever admit.
I hear the complaints that GW didn't get a potential replacement to groom for the job as VP... he didn't have to... Barbara and George Bush groomed two fine young men pefectly capable of getting the job done...
By submitting a budget proposal with cuts of this magnitude, the Administration is completely ignoring the will of the American people as they expressed it quite vocally last June
WTF is this nitwit talking about?
It is a day later, and no one has answered this question. I wondered the same thing. Don't recall voting in that election!
Also, I love this part of the response of John Lawson "CEO" of National Public Broadcasting:
Among other things, the practice of advance funding which has been in place for the past thirty years protects public broadcasting from political abuse.
Oh Yeah, no political abuse there. No one-sidedness.
Cut it more.
Tomlinson got his head handed to him just by suggesting their might be bias. And the lefties at PBS celebrated long and loud over their destruction of him.
Well, good for them. They managed to keep their nice staterooms on the Titanic.
They already tried that. Cutting funding would be a LOT easier than changing the culture. If you put a conservative in charge, he will have the entire corporation fighting and resisting him. Liberal politicians and the MSM will demonize him. Some Democrat prosecutor will indict him for corruption. He'd have to fire everyone and start all over from scratch. Even the guys at Car Talk are sick liberals when they get off cars and onto politics.
Easier to pull their funding and let them figure out a solution.
The operation has begun and much of what you said is true. Management will be resisted but can ultimately prevail.
There is another and in my view most important componant, PBS and NPR provide programming to the stations that broadcast what is provided. The stations are owned by the states and ultimately under purview of governors.
Red State governors must penetrate bureaucrats at the universities who conrtol operations of the stations to force change. If PBS programming is dropped becaust it is unacceptable to station boards, change can flow from below as well as from above.
Funny that it was 1981, the last time Republicans were serious about cutting budgets!
Oh, wasn't Amtrak supposed to be zeroed out by now?
I actually like PBS and don't get much pleasure from the thought of its budget being cut. Government funding of the arts and media bugs me as a matter of principle, but on the other hand PBS has some excellent programming. Austin City Limits, Charlie Rose, Nova, the Wall Street Journal editors' roundtable, concerts and other cultural stuff, those carpentry shows (This Old House and Yankee Workshop), interesting documentaries -- I also like the evening news with Jim Lehrer. Certainly there's some irritating leftist junk like the Bitter Feminist Roundtable (or whatever it is), but it's offset by the other stuff, especially now that Bill Moyers is gone. I think PBS is worth funding simply because it's a high-quality alternative to the mind-rot you get from the other networks.
Some people, I think, sometimes forget that our alternative in 2000 was McCain. I'm not going to complain too much about W performance in general. I'd to 3rd term him, if at all just to avoid an '08 McCain!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.