"We're mad as hell, and we're not going to take it anymore!"
Posted on 03/20/2011 12:31:21 PM PDT by Kaslin
When cutting family expenditures to balance the household budget, thereby avoiding the repo man and the bankruptcy judge, one has to set priorities.
Does the mortgage come first? What about saving for college? How does swapping that leaky legacy faucet for a Price Pfister designer model stack up against continuing to pay those regular life insurance premiums or making the car payment?
Of course, for dysfunctional families, perhaps alcohol or drugs or cigarettes would, pathetically, rank at the very top. Even lacking a popular social disease, some folks might prefer a new gadget or cable TV or a new video game before buying health insurance or school supplies or fixing a broken appliance.
Sad to contemplate, certainly, but, in some cases, no doubt true. In these instances, as much as we profoundly disagree with the choices made, it is at least their money.
But what about when it is our money?
National governments have to set priorities as well. Eventually, at least. (Mr. Obama, please take note.)
Actually, the federal government is piling on debt at such a frightening pace that it is nearly universally acknowledged to be unsustainable. Now both Democrats (save the Obama Administration) and Republicans are looking to make cuts.
Sure, the Democrats’ offer teensy-weensy cuts — only roughly one-tenth the spending reductions House Republicans are proposing. But regardless of the level of sanity regarding the magnitude of the budget problem vis-à-vis the minuscule budget tightening put forward, any level of spending cuts will necessarily induce a discussion of priorities.
This past week, the House of Representatives voted along party lines to defund (i.e. stop subsidizing) National Public Radio, slicing $50 million dollars from an appropriation for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Republicans claim, rightly, that $50 million is $50 million in savings. This is a point many congressional Democrats don’t seem to understand . . . along with missing the principle of addition: $50 million in savings enough times equals billions.
Republicans complain that NPR has a very liberal bias. Right again. (Same for PBS.) The evidence is not merely the recent gotcha video of an NPR exec callously dismissing a large portion of the country as “crazy.” One also notices the bent when looking at the demographics of NPR’s audience.
But I oppose National Public Radio for the same reason I opposed the Bush Administration spending public money compensating columnists to write favorable opinion articles. A free press is undermined when government controls or competes with private media. State-run, state-owned or state-subsidized media is a bad idea, whether in Egypt, Iran, China or these United States.
In addition to saving precious dollars, zeroing-out funding for public propaganda is a positive for freedom. For Democrats and most progressives, having a government-funded media news source is essential to block “corporate influence.” Never mind that “corporate” media aren’t terribly “conservative” — consider the “right-wing” MSNBC.
Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) warned Republicans they would face a “razor blade-sharp reaction from the American people as they find . . . there is radio silence.” Silence? (Well, maybe, static hiss.) Of course, even NPR officials say they raise enough private funding to manage without the public subsidy.
Others simply hate commercials — as if NPR’s plugs for outfits that give them money don’t count as commercials. But the fervent desire for fewer commercials is at least understandable.
What’s not understandable is the over-riding issue lost in jabber about whether some of us have to listen to commercials: If we cannot cut funding for radio or TV programming, where should the cuts be made?
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) argued that NPR “programming is vital to over 27 million Americans.”
Vital?
Forget that there seems already to be a healthy abundance of TV and radio news and entertainment. Even if there were not, is NPR more necessary for life than food, shelter, medical care and education?
What school kid should get shortchanged, what medical treatment refused, what soldier denied better equipment, before we risk the possibility that a local radio station might go out of business?
Should we risk financial meltdown to make certain “Car Talk” gets its piece of the borrowed federal pie?
If we can’t deny ourselves the luxury of lavishing funds on someone’s favorite TV or radio program, we will not survive.
In that case, we’ll need all the diversionary entertainment we can get.
We’re not going to make it,are we?
I just read something that said sometimes the things that look like bad things really are mercies. I can see people having to give up television and so much of what is part of our modern world as doing a good thing in families. Families are broken apart today as in no other time; other than the refugees from countries that are torn by terrible civil war, we are torn up here because people are so involved in all of this garbage - watching television (and, yes, you March Madness nuts are just as bad), keeping our noses in technology (ipods, ipads, pcs, blackberries, etc. etc.) and on an don.
After having worked with little kids this past few months, I have never seen so many disconnected and out-of-touch parents.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t consider Earth my home. I am but a pilgrim here.
What’s a television ??(??)
nobama's job is to drive our country into bankruptcy and banana republichood. Given that, he can't borrow/spend the money fast enough.
My tax dollars shouldn’t be supporting any tv station. We have a tv around here somewhere, in a closet or someplace, waiting in vain for someone to adopt it.
Cable is fifty to a hundred a month, no doubt. That’s insane. Everything is available on the computer and nearly all of it free.
Several of the States right now have foreseen that the abuse of the dollar has gone beyond reckoning. By “reckoning”, I mean the Democrats have achieved what they wanted to: to make debt so vast that it cannot ever be repaid, or even substantially reduced.
Their perversity in doing this is really theirs, whatever their wacky reasoning tells them it is, and like some super villain plot in a science fiction fantasy, logic and reason don’t enter into it.
“Of course we will crash the Moon into the Earth, because then WE WILL WIN! Bwahahaha!”
One could speculate endlessly about their rationales, but it truly doesn’t matter, because whatever it is, they will never get it, because even though every Marxist Keynesian economist-sorcerer who has ever lived has sworn his life and eternal soul to the alignment foreseen in the sacred scrolls of the Illuminati on just the night when the giant emerald is inserted in the eye of the demonic newt in the sacred temple of Cluthulhu, for the simple reason that it is not going to work.
The day after the great scheme has come to fruition will not be the start of the Age of Aquarius, or The End of Time, or The Coming of Moloch To Rule Over All The World, or whatever the hell the Democrats crave. Instead, it will be just another Thursday at 3:00pm, and somebody is going to have to clean up after all these imbeciles as hopefully they hurl themselves off cliffs in rage and despair because the UFOs haven’t picked them up.
Which leads us back to what the States are starting to do about it, which is to start making their own currency, backed by gold and silver, so that no matter how funky things get in Washington, D.C., at least their people will be able to function.
My only suggestion to them is to not limit their State to the constitutional State currency based on gold and silver, but instead to set up a non-governmental public-private corporation to issue a “scrip” currency under tight State control and supervision.
This will avoid the constitutional requirement of State currencies having to be backed by gold and silver, mostly because there isn’t enough gold and silver around for this to be practical; and also because States will need to be much more self-sufficient if the dollar becomes unstable or worthless.
That is, if they need wheat, they grow wheat, which something like 45 of the States already do. And if they make something that is rarer, they can swap with other States for things those States make.
If they do this, they will get by quite well, and can tell the federal government “No!” when it decides to enter the new, “Amero” or whatever stupid international currency the internationalists destroyed the dollar to accomplish.
Finally, after all the hubbub has died down, maybe we can come together as a nation to put all the Keynesians who didn’t jump off of cliffs into federal prisons for the rest of their natural lives.
My neighbor canceled his cable TV which cost him $80.
But he kept his hi-speed internet and grabs the broadcast live feeds off the internet. He never misses a show either doing the same thing...and downloads the shows for free with bittorrent.
Miss you TV? Just connect your HDMI from the laptop to the TV.
It’s a gadget for brainless zombies to watch the idiot pResident enter his nCAA brackets.
Fascinating. I wonder if he spelled Syracuse correctly?
Penn State Nitally Lions lost in the 1st round.
Me too...
What were they seeded? Did the Obamination pick them? I was hoping they’d have gone further in the Brackets.
“We’re not going to make it,are we?”
Not even close - sorry. The key now is to crash prior to the 2012 election. If we can pull that off, then, at least, we might have some adults (or near-adults) in power to clean up the mess.
It’s good to be a rich retired Republican.
I’ve got HD cable and flatscreens in every room including my auto shop.
Where do you get tv live feeds off the internet? The channels own websites don’t have them and at best only some shows are available a day later.
“I can see people having to give up television...”
We are giving up Dish Network after our contract is up. Paying for 50% of channels that are nothing but commercials for products no one would ever buy and reality shows is not worth the expensive rates. We’ll get the cheapest cable company we can find and be done with it.
I did the same thing. It was $90 a month (Dish). I very seldom ever watched it. I have a Roku in the living room for Netflix if I get the urge to totally zone out. Stay current on news with FR, online local newspaper, and Fox online.
"We're mad as hell, and we're not going to take it anymore!"
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