Shut off NPR funding?

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

I say, Republicans won't do it. So they should shut up.

Williams’s firing is plainly unjust. But it is not without poetic justice. Mr. Williams, whom I don’t know, has always struck me as a decent, honest guy, and a passionate progressive. But that insoluble combination makes him a bundle of contradictions: a commentator who calls it like he sees it#…# except to the extent his doctrinaire leftism won’t allow him to connect the dots, in which case he calls it like he’d like to see it — whether or not that’s how it is. Consequently, I’m having trouble working up much sympathy for him. When he is not decrying the political correctness that suffocates our discourse, he works to exacerbate it.

Have a look, for example, at this ode to affirmative action he wrote last year for the Washington Post, a newspaper that is a sort of Juan Williams writ large. He buys into all the disparate-impact voodoo that says you’re demonstrating racism — even if you haven’t got a racist bone in your body — if you in good faith design a test that is race-neutral through and through but yields results that diverge along racial lines. That is, Williams would deny a job to someone who has earned it, and who has not said or done anything that could be construed as racist, in order to “remedy” past discrimination — even if the beneficiary of this remedy has not himself been a victim of racial discrimination.

That is a shameful system: winners and losers picked strictly according to ruling-class biases. Yet, having enthusiastically endorsed that system, Williams demands immunity from ruling-class biases for himself whenever he, in his infinite wisdom, reckons the situation calls for blunt honesty. No one should be punished for truthfully voicing the fears of Islamic radicalism that most Americans share. But as Williams must know, the bien-pensant pieties he champions are the very muzzles that coerce Americans into silence.

Williams miscalculated. He figured that because he is a long-standing member of the NPR-certified Society of the Slavishly Right-Thinking, he could safely stroll a few steps off the reservation. Too bad he was wrong, but at least he got the chance to miscalculate. On the political right, we get no chance. In the NPR world Williams helped foster, we’re already condemned. It wouldn’t even occur to us to ask for the can’t-we-talk-about-this-face-to-face meeting that NPR denied to a stunned Williams despite his years of faithful service. Like the NPR news chief told him, there’s nothing we can say that will change their minds.

Juan Williams is getting the attention, but he’s just a sideshow. The real scam is NPR. It is no longer known as “National Public Radio.” On marketing’s scale of toxicity, “Public” comes in about where “Fried” did for Colonel Sanders. So NPR, like KFC, became a set of initials that formally stand for nothing yet bear a nostalgic ring, signaling to loyal patrons that NPR still traffics in the same old lefty gospel. NPR’s viewpoint is public only in the sense of who is picking up the tab, not whose perspective is being represented. Trouble is that when consigned to the market’s not so tender mercies, that gospel crashes and burns, à la Air America. Hence NPR strategically dropped “public,” intuiting that most of the real public might be inclined to shut off the spigot if it were constantly reminded that it is paying for this bunk. Better to let sleeping rubes lie.

So the former National Public Radio is now at pains to assure the pub — er, you know — that less than 2 percent of NPR’s support comes from federal sources (i.e., taxpayers). Instead, “the greatest portion of our funding comes from our stations.” Those, of course, would be public television stations, which, NPR’s fine-print concedes, get a lot of their “support” from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).

You’ll need CPR when you read up on the CPB’s budget. Like the Bush prescription-drug program that greased the skids for Obamacare, the CPB started in a Republican administration: President Nixon out to prove he could do the Great Society, too — smaller but just as enlightened and compassionate. As night follows day, CPB’s first year (1969) appropriation of $5 million mushroomed to well over 30 times that amount ($172 million) by the time the Carter administration was through.

For all the tough Reagan-era talk about slashing Leviathan, the CPB, like the Department of Education, became a monument to the GOP’s seduction by Washington, Inc. Far from being repealed (or replaced!), the CPB was maintained at roughly Carter-level appropriations — at least for a time. But it inexorably crashed the $200 million barrier by the end of the Reagan years and, in short order, the $300 million barrier under Bush the Elder. That is, Republican administrations flaunted their self-flattering commitment to “public” programming while NPR and the other CPB stations functioned as one long taxpayer-funded ad for liberal Democrats (along with whatever was necessary to keep Bill Moyers employed). The rest is history. The tab for this year will be a staggering $420 million, and President Obama’s requests in the out years (through 2013) reach $460 million.

NPR flacks quip that their enterprise should really be called National Private Radio. That’s because of the purported pittance of its budget that it says comes from taxpayers — the aforementioned 2 percent. When you hear that nonsense, bear in mind that NPR’s lifeline — taxpayer underwriting of the CPB — has actually metastasized into about 9,000 percent of its original size. That pile of CPB dough, once channeled back to NPR through its “member stations,” is laundered of its “public” character because CPB masquerades (courtesy of federal law) as a private company. Indeed, it says it is a private non-profit company because the annual hundreds of millions it rakes in from you do not come directly from you; they flow through Uncle Sam. In Washington finance, this hocus-pocus makes you a “non-profit.” A profit, by contrast, is the grimy stuff Fox News earns by producing programs people actually want to watch.

I’d feel worse for Juan Williams if he hadn’t so contentedly exploited this arrangement.

Andrew McCarthy
NRO

Don't fret about my eternal soul firespin, it's an excerpt...
__________________
“I used to think the left wing was the home of tolerance, open-mindedness, respect for all viewpoints…
But, now I’ve learned the truth the hard way.“
Juan Williams

 

[toubab]

I say, Republicans won't do it. So they should shut up.




Andrew McCarthy
NRO

Don't fret about my eternal soul firespin, it's an excerpt...
__________________
“I used to think the left wing was the home of tolerance, open-mindedness, respect for all viewpoints…
But, now I’ve learned the truth the hard way.“
Juan Williams

I say they will.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

They don't have the votes to over-ride Dear Leader's veto.




He will most certainly veto any bill that includes cutting off of PBS.

Why do Republicans hate Children?

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

They don't have the balls to stand up to the manufactured outcry and they are full of moderates who love shit like NPR and PBS as much as they hate FOX and Sarah...




Wake up Neo...

knock knock

 

[toubab]

They don't have the votes to over-ride Dear Leader's veto.




He will most certainly veto any bill that includes cutting off of PBS.

Why do Republicans hate Children?

No, he can't do a thing about it if the House refuses to fund NPR. All spending originates in the House.

 

[toubab]

They don't have the balls to stand up to the manufactured outcry and they are full of moderates who love shit like NPR and PBS as much as they hate FOX and Sarah...




Wake up Neo...

knock knock

Even the moderates will get on board.

Neo what?

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

No they won't.





Their schtick is looking "reasonable" and "thoughtful."

What part of axing Barney is going to look either to them?

It's only 2%!!! It's like asking them to take pork as a serious part of budget-cutting; it amounts to a drop of piss in the milk bucket...

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

The overwhelming reaction from all sides to NPR's recent firing of Juan Williams has touched something deep in our psyche. Everyone who has ever been fired for reasons he thought were unwarranted has longed for the chance to go public and garner sympathy for his cause. We are all saying, "Way to go, Juan!" as we watch our post-firing fantasies unfurl before our eyes.

This is the stuff of hit Hollywood movies. Juan was fired in a despicable manner by totally unsympathetic bosses over an incident almost everyone agrees is insignificant and unwarranted. On top of this, Juan is a dedicated liberal who devoted himself for ten years to the NPR cause only to get thrown under the bus when CAIR exerted pressure on the people he thought would support him. The best part of all is that this was done in the broadcast world, which guaranteed that Juan's story would be pushed out to everyone in America. Talk about a platform for grievance! To top it off, Juan is immediately offered employment by his conservative supporters, who go out of their way to show support for an esteemed colleague with an even more lucrative contract. Folks, this truly is the stuff of dreams.

We've all been there. Unceremoniously fired over an insignificant event and left to our fantasies for sympathetic retribution that avenges our honor over the uncaring fools too stupid to realize they have made a colossal mistake. Everyone in America is living vicariously through Juan Williams and saying to himself that this is the way it's supposed to be. Even those who don't particularly like Juan's views are cheering him on for living the fantasy they've only been able to dream about until now.

...

When we are denied the ability to speak freely about our concerns for fear of being labeled judgmental, we develop an attitude that suppresses concerns and fosters contempt of the situation and the climate that chills our ability to speak. The comment that might freely be made and met with mild unthreatening criticism is now suppressed, catalogued with similar examples, and left to fester without benefit of alternating viewpoints that might serve to enlighten the individual and mitigate his thinking. He or she is left to seek out like-minded others with whom to share their common views and grumble over their inability to speak freely.

Tom Roberson
The American Thinker

 

[TWB]

Like alot of things, its a hollow rallying cry. I think less than 2% of the funding comes from the US government, anyway.

I almost wish it would be defunded so the red herring would be taken away from the conservative crybabies.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Like alot of things, its a hollow rallying cry. I think less than 2% of the funding comes from the US government, anyway.

I almost wish it would be defunded so the red herring would be taken away from the conservative crybabies.

2% directly, but as pointed out, that's a number that while truthful, does not tell the truth of how much public funding actually goes into NPR.

When I think of government funding of any sort of press, I think of Catholic School, not likely to teach anything bad about Catholicism, or Pravda...

 

[trysail]

Like alot of things, its a hollow rallying cry. I think less than 2% of the funding comes from the US government, anyway.

I almost wish it would be defunded so the red herring would be taken away from the conservative crybabies.

Not so fast. That's a very misleading figure. The funding has been laundered and sanitized. Remember, you're not dealing with forthright people; you're dealing with politicians and habitués of Cancer On The Potomac ( a/k/a The District of Confusion ).

 

[off2bed]

Cut off other people's money, and liberals go silent. No one wants to pay to hear them. Network news shows are money-losers and CNN's ratings are beneath the layer of scum at the barrel's bottom. We all know what happened to Scare America.

 

[phrodeau]

2% directly, but as pointed out, that's a number that while truthful, does not tell the truth of how much public funding actually goes into NPR.

When I think of government funding of any sort of press, I think of Catholic School, not likely to teach anything bad about Catholicism, or Pravda...

When I think of Andrew McCarthy, I think of lying.

National Public Radio has not changed its name.

 

[TWB]

Funny, because there is alot more money from private sources than from the government. 98% from private sources, so obviously you are just completely wrong. People do want to pay to hear NPR.

You may not, but your status as a human is in question.

 

[off2bed]

Funny, because there is alot more money from private sources than from the government. 98% from private sources, so obviously you are just completely wrong. People do want to pay to hear NPR.

You may not, but your status as a human is in question.

Those private sources are notoriously extremist liberal groups.

 

[TWB]

Those private sources are notoriously extremist liberal groups.

Yeah, those crazy notorious liberal groups like the Kroc's who started that bastion of liberalism: McDonalds.
Oh and those libby nutjobs like Allstate, Merck, and Archer Daniels Midland.

 

[phrodeau]

McCarthy: "A profit, by contrast, is the grimy stuff Fox News earns by producing programs people actually want to watch."

No, a profit is the stuff Fox News earns by producing programs that advertisers and cable companies are willing to pay them for.

 

[rosco rathbone]

I grew up with NPR on the radio at all times because my mom loved it. I think I've got Cokie Robert's voice and the "All Things Considered" theme-jingle permanently branded on my cerebrum.

 

[trysail]

Yeah, those crazy notorious liberal groups like the Kroc's who started that bastion of liberalism: McDonalds.
Oh and those libby nutjobs like Allstate, Merck, and Archer Daniels Midland.

Good god— all of whom exist by virtue of the sufferance of the pols, extortionists, shake-down artists, swindlers and professional rent-seekers who inhabit the cesspool known as Cancer On The Potomac ( a/k/a The District of Confusion ).

 

[rosco rathbone]

Good god— all of whom exist by virtue of the sufferance of the pols, extortionists, shake-down artists, swindlers and professional rent-seekers who inhabit the cesspool known as Cancer On The Potomac ( a/k/a The District of Confusion ).

Right on, man.

 

[off2bed]

One of the tangled network of funders is the Annie B. Casey Foundation. They in turn fund other groups who fall in line with their radical leftist agenda.

Among the many hundreds of Casey Foundation grantees are the following: the Tides Foundation; the Tides Center; the radical Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN); Advocates for Youth; National Public Radio (NPR); the Brookings Institution; the Alan Guttmacher Institute; Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), Inc.; the Council on Foundations; the Fifth Avenue Committee; the Colorado Progressive Coalition; the Brennan Center for Justice; My Sisters Place; Public Broadcasting Service (PBS); the Women's Funding Network; the Arab American Institute Foundation; the National Organizers Alliance; the Rockefeller Family Fund; the Funders Network on Population; the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation; the Aspen Institute; Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S.; Planned Parenthood; the Public Justice Center; the National Council of La Raza; the Save Middle East Action Committee; the See Forever Foundation; the Institute for Womens Policy Research; Childrens Rights; the Coalition on Human Needs; the Food Research and Action Center; the Coalition for Juvenile Justice; the Center for Law and Social Policy; We the People Media; the Center for Participatory Change; the National Trust for the Development of African American Men; the National Latino Fatherhood and Family Institute; the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy; the National Indian Child Welfare Association; the Center for Community Change; Girls Incorporated; Reproductive Health and Rights; the Social Policy Action Network; Progressive, Inc.; the Center for Black Womens Wellness; the Center for Community Alternatives; the Immigrant Advocacy Center; the Tavis Smiley Foundation; the American Bar Association Fund for Justice and Education; the Urban Institute; the Kingsley House for the Black Men United for Change; the Youth Law Center; the Neighborhood Funders Group; the American Institute for Social Justice, Inc.; the Homeless Persons Representation Project; the Institute for Justice; the National Immigration Law Center; the New America Foundation; the Committee for the Prison Moratorium Project; the Independent Media Center; the Womens Prison Association and Home; the Multicultural Youth Tour of What's Now; the Martin Luther King Jr. Association for Nonviolence; the Institute for Gay and Lesbian Strategic Studies; the Handgun Epidemic Lowering Plan Network; the Childrens Defense Fund; the Black Women's Agenda, Inc.; the Institute for Community Peace; Direct Action for Rights and Equality; the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice; the Center for the Study of Social Policy; the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights; Children Now; the Center for Third World Organizing; the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; the Crispus Attucks Development Corporation; Lawyers for Children; The Children; the Legal Action Center; Demos: A Network for Ideas and Action; the Juvenile Justice Association; Hispanas Unidas; Doctors Against Handgun Injury; Bread for the World Institute; the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management; Alternative Directions; Alianza Dominicana; the Greater Baltimore Crisis Pregnancy Center; the InterTribal Voices of Children and Families; the Juvenile Law Center; the Interaction Institute for Social Change; Girls Inc.; and the Ms. Foundation for Women.

 

[notbert]

where else can you hear the blues but on npr radio?

another example of republican racism.

 

[Janlou]

Subsidizing HATE with Taxpayer $$$

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130534982

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eIJJKLd0po#t=7m20s
Full interview here:
http://www.erim.net/archives/gene-simmons-and-terry-gross-interview

 

[mercury14]

A better question is how you became so stupid that you read the NRO.

 

[Karen Kraft]

****
It's only 2%!!! ****

Ummm... not really.

That was their initial comment. But that figure is limited to direct monies received from public sources. It does not include the zillions received by way of local affiliate stations' kick back to them nor the hardware (towers, etc.) grants received by participating radio stations. It's millions and millions, not just the 2% they were originally claiming.

In any event, the left needs to compete with everybody else for the airwaves. No longer should they receive taxpayer funding to advocate the party line. This isn't the 1960s where CPB was arguably necessary for news and information to reach many parts of America. There are more than enough outlets for that material and the CPB should be defunded.

In essence, without that being the case, it can be argued that Juan Williams was fired by the Government because his feelings about things are outside officially approved governmental doctrine. See how that sort of thing can be said and understood by people? Not good.