Obviously biased, and rather anti-semitic as well. http://dailycaller.com/2011/03/08/n...conservatives-and-tea-party-touting-liberals/ NPR executives caught on tape bashing conservatives and Tea Party, touting liberals And with all the talk of slashing their funding... http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/we...uts-ron-schiller-on-administrative-leave.aspx NPR Cans Ronald Schiller
The worst part is where he says NPR would be better off without Federal funding. The guy is a slimeball; I remember him giving a talk to us about our obligations to "repay" the U of C (he used to run their alumni fundraising office). I'm sure he was trying to read the people across the table and shine them on. I don't really believe he has an opinion of his own he wouldn't sell for a donation.
And now Vivian Schiller (no relation to Ron Schiller) is gone, forced out by the NPR board. Too little, too late, IMO. Man, did NPR kill the golden goose. I look forward to listening to an NPR and watching a PBS detached from the government teet.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss... http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/03/ceo-3-10-2011.html
I'm unclear on what the problem here is. Is anyone who has made a political contribution unfit for a job at NPR? Why? barfo
Why should the govt. give $400M+ that turns out to be a campaign donation (free political ads) and is messing with freedom of the press by funding it in the first place?
Just to be clear, donating to democrats, bad. In office republicans donating public money to private industry in wisconsin, then running out of state money and killing unions, good.
By this logic we certainly have to disbar every judge in the land who has ever made a political donation in their previous life (nearly all, I suspect). I mean since PBS is America's Most Trusted Institution then our Justice System is already only 2nd at best.
Right from the horse's mouth... http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/la...-it-serves-liberal-highly-educated-elite-wond
I think we should cut all those programs that woman brings up. I don't find the argument "it's just a small percentage of the Federal Budget" argument very convincing. My thought is that if you start collecting nickels and dimes, pretty soon they add up to dollars. Nor do I find her argument about getting news to those poor ignorant flyover states that begin with "I" very convincing either. They all have cable, satellite and teh interwebz. CPB fulfilled its mission by getting news outlets to rural areas, but now private enterprise does it as well or better. I should note that I'm an avid NPR listener and watcher of public television. I understand that others have been subsidizing my personal enjoyment and news outlet. I'm more than willing to up my contributions to both OPB and CPR and plan to do so if their Federal funding is removed. I would hope other fans of public broadcasting will do the same.
And similarly, the nuke boys in Fukushima could have said Friday "well, we've got a lot of safety problems here. Let's start by putting in a non-skid surface on the men's room floor, someone could slip and hurt themselves in there." barfo
That's nice for you. However, a lot of people think that a network funded by taxes from all Americans, both liberal and conservative, should strive to be neutral rather than support the liberal point of view. I really see no logic to conservatives having to fund a network that is adamantly opposed to their values.
My point is, TH, that it's not the point of my contention to give them public dollars. I think CPB has met its goal of ensuring that everyone in the country has access to news, so it should be defunded. Any other argument for keeping it or defunding it is secondary.
Except that providing for the common defense is outlined in the Constitution, where I haven't read anything about public broadcasting in that document. And if you have a beef about "liberals" having to pay for Iraq and Afghanistan, you should probably go back and see who voted to fund those conflicts. You'd find plenty of "liberals" signed up.
Not the ones I respect (Ron Wyden for example). Also I'm fairly certain, had conservatives been actually serious about budget cutting, the funding for NPR (and the condemnation of Teachers/unions) wouldn't have been brought up as a serious issue, considering it's small potatoes compared to the real waste of tax money and the structure of the system. But they're easy targets, and people can beat their chest and be proud that they found someone/something to blame for the issues instead of actually trying to fix it. I liken it to complaining about your car running bad and getting horrible gas mileage, and then proclaiming you found a major reason why, and replace the light bulb in the dome light. After all, it shed light on the situation! If we're going to claim that NPR shouldn't be funded due to the reasons shooter wrote (or the other reasons listed/referred to), then I'm afraid we should be cutting the funding on a LOT of stuff. But what happens when we do that? It makes it worse for the society, because we can't afford to fund a lot of stuff that the government does for us. If you take away a lot of the public funding of things, you leave it solely for the wealthy who can afford it. And I don't believe NPR has a "liberal slant", as much as some people are so conservative they think anything 1 degree to the left of them is "too liberal". But I might as well be yelling at the clouds when trying to get certain factions of politically active people to use their logic brain instead of their sheep brain. NPR/Public Broadcasting gets very little of their total budget from the Government (which creates an argument for both sides of the coin here). The amount they get doesn't mean that the government any say. And if we're going to go off of the "funding" issue, and control/influence, there is a lot of funding the government does that is far worse influence. Also, if we're going to bring up what is in the constitution for what the government has to fund, we're going to have to cut a lot. AND if we're going to follow the constitution closer then we do, we might have to start arresting former Presidents, and cabinet members for violating it. And we didn't really get a declaration of war from the congress till after we were already there. So, there's always that.
If you're talking fiscal conservatives (social conservatives often have little interest in limiting the role of government), then they've been wildly underrepresented in Congress. Hell, take a look a the House Leadership; they can barely scrape together a measly $61B in cuts from discretionary spending, and those are supposed to be the guys who are limiting spending! It's a joke. We borrow $4B a day. It can't continue. We've been able to borrow that money because we're the world's benchmark currency. We're the world's currency because we're a safe haven. Borrowing erodes that stability. It has to stop or we're going to be replaced. At that point, the taps are shut off. Government has to radically trim back and requires a full reorganization. Dump the Departments of Education, Energy and Transportation. Cut way back on HHS and Agriculture. Whack the superflouous Generals and Admirals at DoD. Get serious about closing bases domestically and abroad. Start demanding payment from countries for us ensuring their security (Korea and Saudi Arabia come to mind). Give states more power to run those issues themselves. And then it's time to be upfront with people 55 and under. You're going to have to pay more for Medicare and you're going to have to retire later, much later in fact. Like I said, I like public broadcasting. I understand my commitment to it is going to have to increase if I want it to continue in my area. If I think CPB is being run well, I'd be happy to directly pledge to them. I hope others do the same.
