Posted on 02/18/2017 9:42:14 PM PST by SeekAndFind
The New York Times reported yesterday that the White House budget office has prepared a list of programs that could be eliminated in Trump’s first budget proposal. Among those programs are the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities and AmeriCorps. From the NY Times:
Work on the first Trump administration budget has been delayed as the budget office awaited Senate confirmation of former Representative Mick Mulvaney, a spending hard-liner, as budget director. Now that he is in place, his office is ready to move ahead with a list of nine programs to eliminate, an opening salvo in the Trump administration’s effort to reorder the government and increase spending on defense and infrastructure…
Many of those programs have been attacked by conservatives since the Republican “revolution” of 1994. Led by then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, the House of Representatives at the time repeatedly went after funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, whose supporters dragged Big Bird and Kermit the Frog to Capitol Hill to make their case…
Other agencies on the budget office’s list of cuts include the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Corporation for National and Community Service, which finances programs run by AmeriCorps and SeniorCorps. The memo also proposed reducing funding for the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, a nonprofit organization focused on urban development.
You probably don’t have to guess where this is going. Every time someone threatens to cut PBS funding, progressives roll out Big Bird. In fact, Obama for America did this in 2012 after Mitt Romney said he would cut PBS funding. Here’s an ad they created which has been viewed more than 3 1/2 million times:
The real problem with zeroing out these programs isn’t that it will kill Big Bird. Sesame Street could make it in the free market without the $500 million a year CPB gets in taxpayer funds. The real problem is that these cuts, which together amount to $2.5 billion a year, won’t put a real dent in our growing debt.
As the debt clock approaches $20 trillion dollars, it’s important to remember that government spending is overwhelmingly dedicated to two big entitlement programs: Medicare and Social Security. We spend nearly $900 billion dollars a year on Social Security and over $900 billion a year on Medicare and associated programs (Medicaid, CHIP, etc). Since that is where the real money is, addressing our debt without touching these big programs is impossible.
But back when he was a candidate, Trump said a number of times that he would not be cutting Social Security or Medicare. This clip shows about four instances where he publicly promised no cuts to these programs.
Cutting funds to CPB and the NEA could be a symbolic victory for conservatives who have long argued these programs are wasteful. I get that. But unless this is just a first step, one which leads us to eventually addressing the real drivers of our debt, these cuts aren’t going to make much of a difference.
But they brought ruin to themselves -- not just through partisan politics -- but through failure to produce programs of enduring value.
That's it in a nutshell, and I would add that it speaks to most all of the medium of television.
While not every show can, or needs to be, an 'epic' or a morality play, any aspiring 'message' will only be as effective as the willingness/ability of the audience to hear it.
And in our slow national 'slouch toward Gomorrah' over the past few decades, that receptivity seems to have become increasingly fuzzy year by year.
It is welfare. It has always been a pay-as-you go income transfer scheme. To call it a Ponzi scheme is an insult to all we’ll run Pyramid scams.
NPR...Give Them The BIG BIRD!
Amen!
The author’s point that the big money is elsewhere is still no reason to continue these programs.
Suppose I buy a run down house. I walk in and find ripped up couches and overstuffed chairs turned upside down, plus weeks-old garbage a foot deep in the kitchen. This guy is saying that we should leave the infectious garbage in place because it is insignificant in size compared to the broken furniture.
In my view this is just an excuse not to get started with a thorough house cleaning.
I never watch PBS anymore. Childrens shows, nature shows and history documentaries and filmed versions of my favorite books can all be found on cable.
Cutting the purse strings on PBS can’t happen too soon. My wie had the PBS news hour on the other night. I heard from a distance them snarking that Trump only had a fraction of his cabinet in place as if it was his short fall!
FAKE NEWS indeed. They will say they report the facts but Trump is correct in saying they distort the facts and spin them how they want the sheeple to hear them.
GET RID OF PBS. Defund them. I won’t pay by contribution and don’t want to pay by taxation.
I have to admit that I listen to NPR every day. One game I play every afternoon is to see how long I can stand to listen without turning it off, or throwing up, or punching the radio from 4:00pm on (when they switch from music to fake news). Ten minutes is about all I can take. It is the reason I refuse to fund is as a contributor, and applaud all efforts to cut off taxpayer funding.
Trotting out the creased pants fetishist David Brooks as the token "Conservative" once a week does not count as balance.
It puts a big dent in money going to lilly whites, which in turn cuts the money going to democrats next election. Why can't republicans ever think strategically?
Great story.
Unfortunately, our liberals took over these institutions, PBS, NEA, AmeriCorps, ??? decades ago and turned them into deadly anti America PR havens/tools for their side.
Many of us woke to that reality during the Clintoon years when these institutions revealed that they would support the serial rapist and his dangerous wife instead of doing what was right and good for America.
They have gotten worse since then. In my MBA studies in the late 1970’s, one of our classmates had been a combat Marine officer in Nam.
His harsh advice re how handle a corrupt or dying business or institution like these organizations. Was to call in Navy and Marine jets to crater bomb the headquarters, then napalm the survivors that tried to flee, and finally mop up with Marine gunships/tanks and riflemen.
Then, leave the smoldering ruins and focus your time, effort and money where you can see good results. Let the destroyed entity be a warning to others what can happen if they loose sight of what the original purpose was.
Decades later, I’m in agreement with him except to salvage any good people if they want to perform/behave as intended not where they had ended up, and they then do their jobs properly.
I doubt if any good people are in PBS, NEA, AmeriCorps, ???!!
Glad you got something out of it.
It may be that it’s hard to get a critical mass of viewers to watch these shows and therefore pay for their production.
But “Little House on the Prairie” was a morality play that echoed our American heritage and was a big hit. In fact, that show was very popular in Japan as well.
Anything is possible in our internet age and the fact that the Deplorables are more organized than ever.
Excellent point.
When NPR Stations didn’t refile for their radio licenses, leftists would not let for profits purchase the bandwith.
AWESOME. NPR & PBS are such wasteful crap. They went all-in with one party and it paid off for 40+ years.
NO MORE!
How soon we forget how duplicitous the press was back in the Clintoon era.
The press that is attacking Trump is probably a hold-over from the days of Watergate. The leftist press and broadcaster figured they were doing important work.
But Watergate was proven to be a sham since Woodward and Bernstein were simply passing along the intelligence from Deep Throat, Feld, who was nothing more than a bitter guy passed over for promotion at the FBI and wanted to get revenge on Nixon.
So the Washington Post’s self-professed mission of protecting our democracy was merely Fake News. WaPo was merely taking side for an internal Deep State battle between Nixon and Feld. No wonder Woodward and Bernstein hid Deep Throat’s identity. And the Editor and Publisher must have also been duplicitous.
Now you can chalk all this up to a “corrupt press”. But a press cannot stay corrupt for decades unless the public tolerates that corruption.
Another reason Trump’s extreme vetting of the press is bound to do some long term good.
An interesting story about Felt by Woodward.
ttps://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-mark-felt-became-deep-throat/2012/06/04/gJQAlpARIV_story.html?utm_term=.55f3f94390c4
Wooddward had decades to write this "confession" of how he met Felt and what ensued. He had everything to gain by whitewashing any ulterior motive by Felt. He wanted to preserve his own legacy and power and prestige.
I suspect this story was a way of hiding his tracks and throwing so much information out there that everyone became confused. Nobody really asked why Felt ultimately came forward.
And who's to question him deeply? The MSM considers him a hero. They all went to journalism school (partly) to emulate Woodward and Bernstein.
They can't be called frauds! So they weaseled out of it and the coverup continued. But Pat Buchanan explained the way the plot really went to down in a brilliant piece, The Outing of Deep Throat.
Excellent link: http://buchanan.org/blog/the-outing-of-deep-throat-5057
Amazing how the Post and mediots have hidden the real story!
Excellent link: http://buchanan.org/blog/the-outing-of-deep-throat-5057
Amazing how the Post and mediots have hidden the real story!
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