I ran across this and wondered what others thought.
http://mes…rt=2&off=1
Who Are Click And Clack ?
Seriously, My local radio carrier of the show stopped funding it some time ago. It’s gone from my radio.
I believe that if radio or TV programs are worth their weight in salt then they don’t need hand-outs to survive. They should get funding from some source other than a bankrupt treasury.
CSA
Here’s the video:
CSA, I think his point was that with all of the dire problems we face, de-funding NPR which takes the equivalent of half a raindrop from the Federal budget pool is a pretty asinine thing to be whipped into a frenzy about. Whether you think the government should fund NPR or not, there are more important things to be working on at the moment.
It Was Titled: POLITICS
" . . . half a raindrop from the Federal budget pool . . . "
The pool is empty.
Take care of the details (every little raindrop) and the big things will take care of themselves. No matter what you cut, the cuttee will make claims like the one you’re making. Nobdy feels their cause should be cut.
Personally, I’d favor an across the board cut of everything in the Fed budget. Figure out what percentage is needed and just cut.
Public radio and TV have long had a bias and now it’s coming to bite them in the rear. Funny how that works.
CSA
As is often the case with politics it seems that there is a great deal more drama than results. We need half the military bases in this country closed, a great many military procurement contracts cancelled and the wage cap taken off FICA taxes. But instead of tackling meaningful holes in the dike legislators strut and bray and smile to the camera for petty but high profile issues like this.
I’d favor redefining “tax breaks” to the wealthy as what it really is: Welfare for people who don’t need it. Stop giving the billionaires handouts, and oh by the way stop starting idiotic and horrendously expensive (in both dollars and lives) wars and it’s amazing how much money we’ll have so that we don’t have to cut.
Very well put, Rod!
Just because public radio doesn’t have the right-wing bias of Fox News doesn’t automatically make it biased. It just makes it not idealogically conservative. Outside of the Tea Party conservative mentality there are lots of ways of thinking and approaching things that are not necessarily “liberal.” The problem comes in only thinking that there are two alternatives, when in fact there are many, including middle-of-the-road.
Poly= many, tics= bloodsuckers!
It’s a political stunt but in my opinion, NPR should not receive one dime of Federal (a la tazpayer) money, along with PBS, National Endowment for the Arts, and thousands of other sinkholes.
Regarding the NEA, I remember reading a story from about 15-20 years ago about a lady who received a 50,000 dollar “grant” to “fund her artwork”. What did the artwork entail?
Keeping in mind this is 20 year old dollars, this lady along with her husband and 2 children spent a week in Puerto Rico where her artistry as it was called consisted of a very brief video of her skydiving from an airplane.
I don’t know what a week in PR cost 20 years ago but my gut feeling is that the total cost was nowhere near 50 grand. This lady went on in great length using artist babble about how this was a “boon to mankind” and would “benefit everyone all over the world”. Jeez.
Granted, 50 grand is a drop in the bucket but enough drops can create a pretty heavy thunderstorm.
(Or how about 4 million dollars for a pig statue and things of that nature in OK.)
Without a doubt there are a great many people who have learned to game the system and they become poster children for the anti-entitlement crowd. It amazes me that similar disdain is not shown for the grand scale gaming by way of lobbyists.
I’m of the opinion that the purpose of taxation was never intended to be the subsidizing of entertainment and tax dollars should not be used for that purpose. A generation of so ago it could have been argued that the tax dollars allocated to NPR, PBS and the like were being invested in education, but with the multitude of science and educational channels available now the srument is no longer valid.
There are also countless drains on our tax dollars that were once valid, such as farm subsidies having been valid during the depression, that should all be discontinued.
Even such agencies as the National Highway Association soak up tax dollars and dole them back to us at a rate very much lower than $1 to $1 and in a manner as to control the actions of states toward the whim of the federal government in areas where no constitutional or legal authority exists. In the early '70s states that resisted reducing their speed limits to 55 mph were threatened with the withholding of federal highway funds, and that just one small example or the way these fudns are used to circumvent state’s rights. It’s time the funding of agencies such as this are reviewed to see how much actually goes toward their original mandates.
With respect to Rod, numerous military bases were closed in the '70s and 80s and numerous contracts cancelled. I think the military has already made its sacrifices. Current contracts are in the interest of making our troops safer and in using technology to conduct combat activities without putting troops in harm’s way. This work should and must continue. In the interest of full disclosure, I admit to being both a proud veteran, father of a Navy Seabee, and a former member of the military industrial complex (a few decades in manufacturing working under DOD contracts). My son is also headed to Afghanistan for a 16 month tour this year, and I want him to have the absolute best gear possible. We should not compromise our troops.
I’ll agree that we should send our troops into battle with the best equipment we can provide. But I’ll point out that if we would stop getting ourselves involved in places we have no business being, your son would not be going to Afghanistan this year, and so we would not have to provide him with such things. Had we not decided to invade Iraq, and instead have focused on getting the initial (justified) job done in Afghanistan, it is very likely that we would not be there, at least not in such numbers, today. Beyond the obvious advantage that our nation’s kids would not be placed in harm’s way, we would save an astonishing amount of money without having to shut down contracts providing troops with proper gear.
I also agree with you that agencies need to be reviewed to ensure that they are meeting their original goal, but too often such calls for review turn readily into calls for cutting “big gubmint” without thought as to where those cuts will be applied.
I think it’s very hypocritical for a congressperson to stand up there and say one word about grandstanding when they all do it, including Wiener.
By nature I’m very conservative and a registered Independent but other than a couple of issues I supported our recently departed 2-term OK govenor Brad Henry, who is in theory a liberal Democrat.
He is head and shoulders above his 2-term predecessor, Republican Frank Keating, who is a hypocrite of the nth degree and far more liberal than Henry. Keating even refers to himself as an “arch conservative” and nothing could be further from the truth.
Speaking of waste on a smaller scale, a couple of years ago the city here was discussing shutting down a small sub-station for the fire dept as they “did not have enough funding to keep it open”. This led to an outcry of course.
The problem was that while the city was saying this they were contracting with a local artist to decorate a park. This artist cut out a bunch of lifesize cattle silhouettes along with several cowboys on horses and a token Indian on a horse. Trees were all removed and replaced with several dozen of these eyesores, all within a 100 feet of the main road.
Price steel plate, the high fees paid for doing this, and the cost of installing them and it would fund that little fire station for who knows how long.
As if that’s not bad enough, this beautiful park (which consisted of many trees and a natural spring) has had about 80% of all trees removed and replaced with equally worthless crap like the above.
As if it’s not bad enough, this artist also stuck 4 or 5 of these things out a field 5 miles out of town and several hundred yards off the highway. Driving by they appear to be the real thing but since the fields around here have real cattle in them anyway what’s the point.
We should not be in Iraq. Afghanistan is harboring the leader of a group that attacked our country, but the debate on whether we should be there is multifaceted and could go on forever. Either way, we need to keep investing in improving our military technology and maintaining a defense-ready posture. There truely is a national defense conceen here. There are nations that would seek to destroy us were we to allow our military dominance to slip.
We do seem to be getting into other people’s fights these days. Sadly, I see another one coming. We’re considering flying into another country and forcing their planes to not fly overe their own autonomous territory. We have no business doing that. The moment we have to shoot down the first plane we’ll be committing and act of war. Should Gadaffi defeat the insurgents in Libya, we’ll most certainly be at war just for having taken the stance of threatening a “no-fly zone”. Our national security interests are not being served by our current actions. Actions such as these serve to emphasize to me that it’s critical that we continue investing in our military. Our security depends upon it.
Even If Any Of This Crap Was Worth Spending Tax Revenue On, The Point Is That Our Governments, Federal And Most States, Are Beyond Broke. Years Of Spending Money We Don’t Have, Got Us Into This Situation.
I must live within my means (I too, am very conservative.), I’ve always made my budget balance and I expect no more and no less from elected folks.
The problem is not a short supply of tax revenue, the problem is too much spending. Enough is enough. I think this NPR thing is just one small useful example of money oozing out of a broken system.
CSA
I say make the little cuts as the 100 millions will start to add up. One thing I don’t get about living with-in your means is, it is said that the ecomomy “will not improve until customer spending goes up”. It is then related that this customer spending will be done on credit, but then at the same time we are lectured in the evils of credit. The way to save is to cut spending but the way for the economy to grow is through customer spending and if the customer cannot use credit the spending will not be enough.
The “uber rich” are doing just fine as the stock market is again feeding them. When wealt is generated and a product is not created the stage is set for a big fall.
This really isn’t the place for this, but having spent some time in a headquarters of a major command that had dealings with all aspects of eh government except welfare, it is clear to me that the politicians will not be able to solve the budget problems.
The problems are with the bureaucrats. The government is full of dedicated and conservative people in management positions who would love to see the budget reduced, in every department but theirs.
The reason has to do with evaluations. It is not how well you do your job that counts. The two main “bullets” that affect your chance for advancement is the size of your budget and the number of people under you.
I fully support having a robust and capable military. I have no problem with defense spending. But I want it to be defense spending, not “stick our nose where it doesn’t belong because we can” spending.
I absolutely agree with the idea that invading Afghanistan was the right thing to do. You’re entirely correct that they are (or were, since we don’t know where he is at the moment) harboring bin Laden. Where we screwed up was by invading Afghanistan, and then getting distracted by the new shiny in Iraq, therefore letting the mission in Afghanistan fizzle and stagnate. At this point, we’re not going to catch bin Laden. We don’t have the numbers, and even if we put more boots on the ground, he’s had 10 years to make himself a whole huge network of hidey-holes. The best we could do would be to pull out of both countries, and to tell Afghanistan “You’d better hope he doesn’t do anything else, or we’ll be back, and we’ll be serious.”
I completely agree with you on Libya as well. I’ve already said elsewhere that if we stick our nose in there, Obama will have a guaranteed loss of my vote in '12.
Let’s hope we’re both wrong about Libya.