NPR, PBS Soon Extinct?

We have to cut something to pay for the extra 13 months of unemployment benefits!

(Especially as we wait for tax cut revenue to replenish the coffers, though the coffers would fill up more and quicker if we had more economic stability beyond two measly years since no business owner/employer sketches anything out for such a short amount of time.)

Now the stories come that NPR/PBS is upon uncertain times.

I’ve yet to find the term “ELMO” or “THIS AMERICAN LIFE” listed as subsidies in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution.

At stake are hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding and the future of such popular programs as “Nova,” “This American Life” and “Sesame Street.”

And while public media has long been a favorite target for Republican lawmakers, the mounting federal deficit — coupled with a series of PR blunders — mean that threats to slash government aid to non-profit stations are no longer just idle boasting.

[…]

Should the government turn off the spigot, National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service will likely have enough corporate and donor support to limp along, but jobs will be lost and popular shows will have to be canceled. On a local level, some of the thousands of public television and radio stations will almost certainly have to close up shop.

What?! You mean progressives won’t reach into their pockets and dole out cash to keep alive the stations they love so fiercely? But, but, if they love them so much, why wouldn’t they pay to keep them operating? Are they too lazy or stingy to pay their own way? Is their interest purely slacktivist? It’s trendy in some circles to claim listenership of government stations but sadly trends rarely inspire passion.

Armed with the backing of President Obama’s deficit reduction committee, congressional leaders are gunning for the CPB and its $420 million budget. Funding from the CPB accounts on average for 15 percent of funding for the more than 1,100 public radio and television stations around the country.

The price tag for the new 13-month unemployment benefits extension is $56 billion; cutting CPB’s $420m budget would help to pay for unemployment. Of course, then those folks would be unemployed which made me realize that CPB is already a form of unemployment: government money but instead of paying people to do nothing, it’s going towards paying people to work. For the government.

The bottom line is that there are a million projects like CPB whose budgets could be slashed to pay for unemployment. The tax rate could be slashed more and made permanent and the revenue would create more jobs than any artificial government stimulus, as seen with the Department of Labor’s report wherein Bush’s tax cuts were shown to spur 52 straight weeks of job growth.

Why is it that some groups get a government handout to exist on public airwaves, artificially surviving even the slowest ratings because they’re the government, they can never go off-air. Meanwhile, hordes of independent, private sector companies fight for their line on the dial and pay their own way. I don’t even care if NPR, PBS was completely objective: show me in the Constitution where it states that the government is owed radio and television stations on the backs of the people? It’s a rhetorical request because the answer is: “I can’t.”

I don’t want to just hear and read talk about defunding these camps; the GOP better ball up, and ball up quick. Their fold on “tax cuts” (this wasn’t a “tax cut.” We need actual TAX CUTS and incentive by way of zero regulation to spur the private sector into creating the jobs that folks down on their luck desperately want) was embarrassing. It’s time to get tough or go home.