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De-fund NPR and PBS

Defund NPR and PBS!

  • I agree!

    Votes: 41 47.7%

  • I disagree.

    Votes: 45 52.3%
  • Total voters
    86
megaprogman said:
By not conservative, options include centrist, moderate, libertarian, liberal, fascist, socialist, communist, constitutionalist, theocratic, etc. I find it interesting that you have such a one or the other view.
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don't forget the dreaded "independent" :)
 
Ikari said:
C-Span is informative.
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Who isn't informative? Anyway I don't deny that NPR has a slight liberal lean, my facetious comment was more directed at bigfoot who interpreted mega's "not conservative" comment as synonymous with liberal.
 
StillBallin75 said:
Who isn't informative?
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All our entertainment news sources.

StillBallin75 said:
Anyway I don't deny that NPR has a slight liberal lean, my facetious comment was more directed at bigfoot who interpreted mega's "not conservative" comment as synonymous with liberal.
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Well that's what they like to do these days. It's a form of divisive argument and intellectually weak attempts to excuse ignoring one's points.
 
Ikari said:
Oh there you go again, trying to insult my political lean with your predetermined stereotypes on what I'm supposed to feel and how I'm supposed to act. Sorry, you ain't god. I'm a realist, I want change that changes things. I want to bring the government under control, limit its actions, decrease its spending. But those must be done in real terms. Cutting something which is fractions of a percent is not going to do anything to solve the problem. The best it can do is provide distraction from the other problems which need to be addressed. I'll cut NPR when NPR will change something. It will be nice if we get to that point. Till then, trillions on a war and you want to moan about one molecule of water in the sea.
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Its going to do everything to solve the problem.........by removing government from every piece of sacred ground it has invaded.

Whether DNC TV/RADIO is the first or last eviction......lets do it and be done with it. As soon as your done defending it........while you talk about cutting "other things".......like every statist in Washington.
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Badmutha said:
Its going to do everything to solve the problem.........by removing government from every piece of sacred ground it has invaded.

Whether DNC TV/RADIO is the first or last eviction......lets do it and be done with it. As soon as your done defending it........while you talk about cutting "other things".......like every statist in Washington.
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No, the problem is out of control government spending and usurption of power. Cutting NPR does not address the main problem. It's a diversionary tactic to make some of our more ADD prone citizens forget about the actual problem. You're not limiting government by getting rid of NPR. Now if you went after improper use of military, adsorption of powers such as legislative power by the executive, the massive subsidies and tax breaks to companies, etc.; then you'd be addressing the problem at hand. Till then, you're just pissing in the wind. Good luck with that.
 
Ikari said:
No, the problem is out of control government spending and usurption of power. Cutting NPR does not address the main problem. It's a diversionary tactic to make some of our more ADD prone citizens forget about the actual problem. You're not limiting government by getting rid of NPR. Now if you went after improper use of military, adsorption of powers such as legislative power by the executive, the massive subsidies and tax breaks to companies, etc.; then you'd be addressing the problem at hand. Till then, you're just pissing in the wind. Good luck with that.
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Right....because (insert any number) million taxpayer dollars.......isnt that much.....

.....when millions of taxpayer dollars are regarded as meaningless and disregarded......this shall herald the end of the Republic.
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Badmutha said:
Right....because (insert any number) million taxpayer dollars.......isnt that much.....

.....when millions of taxpayer dollars are regarded as meaningless and disregarded......this shall herald the end of the Republic.
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Millions is NOT a lot on the scale of the government budget. No. We have spent well over a TRILLION on wars we didn't need to get involved in. BILLIONS in subsidies and tax breaks for protected groups. We have laws which are out of control, a significant portion of our adult population will be in jail at some point in their lives. But yes, let's worry about a few million. You know how much a million is to a billion or trillion?

People really need to learn math.
 
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I don't know if we should defund NPR and PBS. They are an extremely small chunk of our budget. However, I do believe that they should be held accountible and be forced into neutrality. Right now NPR and PBS are liberally biased and our tax dollars shouldn't be funding biased "public" informants.
 
digsbe said:
I don't know if we should defund NPR and PBS. They are an extremely small chunk of our budget. However, I do believe that they should be held accountible and be forced into neutrality. Right now NPR and PBS are liberally biased and our tax dollars shouldn't be funding biased "public" informants.
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Who cares about neutrality? NPR and PBS are charged with providing culture and the arts to the public, not being neutral. Culture and the arts have a left-wing bias. That's just a fact of life. NPR and PBS are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing, enlightening the public. It's only "propaganda" if you have something against tolerance and diversity, which so many people do around here.

But the point is, it doesn't matter what NPR and PBS are doing. If they cost only a single cent of taxpayer money it is too much, because the United States simply cannot afford anything nonessential right now.
 
Khayembii Communique said:
The amount of money public sector workers make is pretty minimal in comparison to the amount corporations save on tax breaks. This means nothing to conservatives.
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that only makes sense if one holds the position that all money belongs to the government and taking less taxes from those who MADE the money is the same as actively giving money others made to NPR
 
Guy Incognito said:
Who cares about neutrality? NPR and PBS are charged with providing culture and the arts to the public, not being neutral. Culture and the arts have a left-wing bias. That's just a fact of life. NPR and PBS are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing, enlightening the public. It's only "propaganda" if you have something against tolerance and diversity, which so many people do around here.

But the point is, it doesn't matter what NPR and PBS are doing. If they cost only a single cent of taxpayer money it is too much, because the United States simply cannot afford anything nonessential right now.
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culture and arts are leftwing? LOL

but the last sentence actually made sense
 
Guy Incognito said:
Who cares about neutrality? NPR and PBS are charged with providing culture and the arts to the public, not being neutral. Culture and the arts have a left-wing bias. That's just a fact of life. NPR and PBS are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing, enlightening the public. It's only "propaganda" if you have something against tolerance and diversity, which so many people do around here.

But the point is, it doesn't matter what NPR and PBS are doing. If they cost only a single cent of taxpayer money it is too much, because the United States simply cannot afford anything nonessential right now.
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Culture and arts are not left-wing, come on.

And while I agree with the last statement, cutting NPR will do nothing to solve the problem. It's like saving a dime when your millions of dollars in debt. Great, saved a dime. But you didn't make any improvement in the situation. I just feel that this whole NPR/PBS thing is nothing more than a deflection topic so that we stop looking at ways to actually cut the budget down or control government. Saving dimes is necessary at some point, but you have to get to the point where it makes a difference. Before that, there's no point in doing so because functionally you will not have affected the system at all.
 
Ikari said:
Culture and arts are not left-wing, come on.

And while I agree with the last statement, cutting NPR will do nothing to solve the problem. It's like saving a dime when your millions of dollars in debt. Great, saved a dime. But you didn't make any improvement in the situation. I just feel that this whole NPR/PBS thing is nothing more than a deflection topic so that we stop looking at ways to actually cut the budget down or control government. Saving dimes is necessary at some point, but you have to get to the point where it makes a difference. Before that, there's no point in doing so because functionally you will not have affected the system at all.
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What I find sad about this is that targeting these tiny programs actually costs political capital. Every cut builds opposition, because someone is losing something they used to be getting. So when we spend political capital on this ticky-tack stuff, we make it that much more likely that we won't balance the big stuff. By making the fight about a tiny percentage of the budget, we're just wasting time. NPR could easily be defunded as part of a bigger budget bill, as the political fight would then be over the big fish upstream.
 
GhostlyJoe said:
NPR could easily be defunded as part of a bigger budget bill, as the political fight would then be over the big fish upstream.
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I'd support that. It's slash and burn time. The trouble is nobody in Washington is serious about making cuts, so what you call tickytack might be the only cuts we can make.
 
Guy Incognito said:
I'd support that. It's slash and burn time. The trouble is nobody in Washington is serious about making cuts, so what you call tickytack might be the only cuts we can make.
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Which will be the real tragedy in the end.
 
megaprogman said:
By not conservative, options include centrist, moderate, libertarian, liberal, fascist, socialist, communist, constitutionalist, theocratic, etc. I find it interesting that you have such a one or the other view.
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Well then, do you think they should have a political agenda?
 
GhostlyJoe said:
Which will be the real tragedy in the end.
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It's the tragedy we live with. Sure Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are what needs to be cut, but as you observe, all that takes political capital and we haven't got a single politician brave enough or stupid enough to cough up enough political capital to make even a dent in the big three. So I, for one, will take what I can get. Cut NPR and PBS. Cut the post office. Cut everything non-essential that can be cut.
 
Guy Incognito said:
It's the tragedy we live with. Sure Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are what needs to be cut, but as you observe, all that takes political capital and we haven't got a single politician brave enough or stupid enough to cough up enough political capital to make even a dent in the big three. So I, for one, will take what I can get. Cut NPR and PBS. Cut the post office. Cut everything non-essential that can be cut.
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Yet what's essential is subjective. For example, I value the post office, and many businesses rely on it. I'd vote to save it. Same with something like Title X. I see its value, and from my limited reading about it, there's a good argument that it actually saves money based on the value it creates. Is cutting it really a step in the right direction?

That's what I mean about these political battles. We're spending political capital anyway. Basically, we're wasting our ammo on field mice when there's a herd of buffalo coming over the hill.
 
GhostlyJoe said:
Yet what's essential is subjective. For example, I value the post office, and many businesses rely on it. I'd vote to save it.
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You're voting selfishly. I'm talking about what's essential for the American people, which is objective.

GhostlyJoe said:
Same with something like Title X. I see its value, and from my limited reading about it, there's a good argument that it actually saves money based on the value it creates. Is cutting it really a step in the right direction?
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That depends on how good the argument is that it saves money. Does it really save money? What is the bottom line for the taxpayer? That is how we determine what to cut.

GhostlyJoe said:
That's what I mean about these political battles. We're spending political capital anyway. Basically, we're wasting our ammo on field mice when there's a herd of buffalo coming over the hill.
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Well, when you only have a varmint rifle, what good is going after buffalo anyway?
 
Guy Incognito said:
I'd support that. It's slash and burn time. The trouble is nobody in Washington is serious about making cuts, so what you call tickytack might be the only cuts we can make.
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But all of this to me seems like nothing more than diversionary tactics. Get us caught up in arguing over .001% of the budget so we don't worry about the other 99.999%. I don't think anything will come from cutting NPR, the money saved even if we do cut it will just be used elsewhere. I don't think we should waste our time and get distracted over things like this because things like this really are zero factors. We need something that makes a difference.
 
Guy Incognito said:
You're voting selfishly. I'm talking about what's essential for the American people, which is objective.



That depends on how good the argument is that it saves money. Does it really save money? What is the bottom line for the taxpayer? That is how we determine what to cut.



Well, when you only have a varmint rifle, what good is going after buffalo anyway?
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You use my own metaphor against me! ;)

What's essential is certainly not objective. Even the notion that we have to completely eradicate the debt is a subjective judgment. I certainly think we must, but many people argue that now's not the time or even that it's healthy to carry some debt.

As to your second graph, I agree with that rational approach.

As to the buffalo, I think we have the means to take him down, but, as you point out, not the will.
 
While that is true Ikari, it is rather unlikely there will be significant headway in agreement on the big ticket items. Perhaps in the short-term we will have what some would consider modest cuts, but I would say are fairly large (5-10% at most). Take lessons from Reagan administration. It was a heavily ideological administration, but political reality came crashing down. While there were cuts in many areas, the most heavily targeted were programs that benefited the poor, but were not seen as insurance and were not widely defended. This became a common liberal criticism, but there was comparatively little resistance in comparison to those that benefited the rest of the population who could afford to lobby against dramatic cuts.
 
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