Posted on 03/08/2011 7:38:06 PM PST by Kaslin
Taxes Misspent: It's bad enough that taxpayers are forced to support a left-wing media outlet long since rendered obsolete by the Internet. Now we learn NPR is seeking booty from terrorist sources.
Where to begin in describing the damning revelations produced by filmmaker James O'Keefe's Project Veritas in its videotaped undercover sting of National Public Radio officials?
NPR claims innocence, but why was Ron Schiller, until recently the president of the NPR Foundation, so eager to do lunch at Georgetown's schmancy Cafe Milano with two men posing as high-ranking members of a Muslim Brotherhood front?
The investigative reporters were offering NPR a $5 million donation, and the videotape they made shows Schiller giving them the impression that it would be money well spent.
The whole episode provides plenty of new reasons for taxpayers to demand the end of NPR public funding.
An NPR spokeswoman insists that O'Keefe's phony Islamists "repeatedly pressed us to accept a $5 million check, with no strings attached, which we repeatedly refused to accept." Does she expect people to believe that NPR fundraisers spend their working hours meeting with prospective donors for the fun of it?
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
The House just needs to leave it out of the budget.
I doubt anyone except for congressional aides understand what’s going on. That’s the problem.
O’Keefe should have had ‘em meet with a couple of underage Muslim sex workers...the dopes from NPR wouldn’t have caught on.
They already have. I believe the $61B in cuts currently being negotiated with the Senate include de-funding for NPR, PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Bump....
How do I nominate James O’Keefe for a Nobel Prize?
“NPR is already liberal, but without tax payer funding it can come out of the closet and be a full on left wing media outlet.”
How would we be able to tell the difference vs. now?
And it's not already?
And, in the absence of federal funding, if it becomes another iteration of Air America..........well, we all know how that ended.
Is this the same guy who made the “Schiller’s reel” on SNL in the 70’s?
They fail to mention Betsey and her cheerleading the National Palestinian Radio comment.
so, because the 105 billion was found, the 105 billion can be stopped? if the 105 billion had NOT been discovered, no one would have noticed the huge checks being written? is that it?
I do not understand how the act of that prior congress can establish these fiscal burdens for years into the future. (I always thought that there was something about one congress not being able to assume appropriations for a future congress? Maybe that was wishful thinking on my part?) It is disgusting. As a matter of fact, it appears that $105 billion is the minimum amount since I see that the (new) PPHF is established and "appropriates amounts to the fund in perpetuity." (All this at a clip of "FY2015 and each fiscal year thereafter = $2 billion.") WTF?
You are correct, this monstrosity must be REPEALED in total. None of it can be allowed to stand.
My further chilling thought as I type this, I suspect that there are scores of similar legislative pieces that have done the same in terms of cavalier misappropriation for unconstitutional purposes. Is it any wonder that we find our "government" operating at such obscene levels of deficient spending that are growing larger with each passing month and year.
It sounds like you and I have both encountered the same concept (though for the life of me I can not recall or find the source).
The problem that we have here with this specific aspect of the monstrosity is that this "act" is a mishmash of "Appropriations" and "Authorizations" mixed in with the establishment of a new set of "Entitlements."
Using this Glossary of Political Economy Terms, we can distinguish:
Entitlement program:
The kind of government program that provides individuals with personal financial benefits (or sometimes special government-provided goods or services) to which an indefinite (but usually rather large) number of potential beneficiaries have a legal right (enforceable in court, if necessary) whenever they meet eligibility conditions that are specified by the standing law that authorizes the program. The beneficiaries of entitlement programs are normally individual citizens or residents, but sometimes organizations such as business corporations, local governments, or even political parties may have similar special "entitlements" under certain programs. The most important examples of entitlement programs at the federal level in the United States would include Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, most Veterans' Administration programs, federal employee and military retirement plans, unemployment compensation, food stamps, and agricultural price support programs.
Authorization bill:
A (proposed) formal act (or “law”) of a legislative body (such as the U.S. Congress or a state legislature) that legally establishes a new government agency or program or else renews or extends an existing agency or program whose previous legal authorization to exist would otherwise expire with the passage of time. Authorizations may be for one year or more than one year — about one-half of current Federal spending is by agencies or programs subject to annual re-authorization, while the other half gets its legal basis either from longer term authorization bills or from permanent laws that provide spending authority automatically to ongoing "entitlement" programs like Social Security. Authorization bills also include specific figures as funding levels for the agencies and programs, but these sums are upper limits only (for the guidance of the appropriations committee) — no money can actually be spent or committed by the agency or program administrators until after a separate appropriation bill has also been passed and signed into law, legally enabling the Treasury to disburse the money.
Appropriation bill:
A (proposed) formal action by a legislative assembly (such as the U.S. Congress or a state legislature) that specifies exact amounts of the government's money that the Treasury may legally pay out (through new hiring, contracts for purchases, findings of individuals' eligibility for income transfer payments, etc.) for each of a list of particular pre-authorized programs carried out by governmental agencies over a specific period of time (normally one year).
There are so many aspects of this goliath that are clearly NOT Entitlements (as commonly defined and used), and are enacted via Authorizations contained within, but are clearly NOT to be funded beyond the prior FY (when it was enacted) without the passage of specific Appropriations bills. They simply can not be allowed to mash all of this garbage into this one bill and assume that they have going forward funding (especially into perpetuity like the example I described in my last post).
I don't think it would be difficult for the current House to put the kibosh on this illegal spending if they set their mind to it. Hopefully disallowing the spending for the current FY will hold off implementation, until the whole thing is sent into the trash-bin by SCOTUS later this year.
so, can be money be spent before it is repealed? Why couldn’t the house just refuse to write the checks. they were illegal as h*ll the way they put it through to begin with
hmmm. Do you think that maybe this dude that did the recording is NOT acting alone?
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