As a Progressive (not Liberal), Citizen, and Tax Payer I feel that I have the same right to have my ideology represented via public expenditures as any other Citizen and Tax Payer.  That is; equally or not at all.  I often listen to my fellow Americans who are Right leaning, express their positions as though they were some sort of divinely inspired or natural truth.  They are no more so than my own. 

Since we are discussing public monies; I feel that many of us who are Progressive would rather see our contributions to the public weal spent on such things as NPR, Public Television, a Single Payer National Health System, Education, and Infrastructure than subsidies for corporations and replacement of taxes not payed by our wealthiest citizens.

Please understand that I am cognizant of your sentiments about the expenditure of your contributions. I am, truly I am. Yet you seem to expect my contributions to somehow be less precious than your own.  Herein, lies the dichotomy between our philosophies.  I don’t propose to place myself on a higher moral, social, or ethical foundation.  Please refrain from doing so viz my beliefs.

NPR should be permitted to go on doing what it has done since it was founded in 1970. But it should do it without the support of taxpayer dollars. NPR’s net income is $18.9 million. Its endowment is $258 million. Sixteen percent of that cash infusion—roughly $41.3 million—comes from straight-up federal funding, with another 10 percent coming from competitive grants awarded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is also at least partly on the public dole.
The pipeline through which that money is funneled to NPR needs to be sealed—permanently. This observation is made not out of spite or solidarity with conservatives but out of simple economies in general (it’s money that doesn’t need to be spent) and the current state of U.S. coffers in particular (it’s money we don’t have).
Do liberals understand what the word “Broke” means?

Mr freeze, feeling a little threatened? Of course you are, or you would be welcoming everyone’s opinion? Now to important matters.

From the book “The Decline and Fall of Public Broadcasting” by David Barsamian, 2001:

“In 2000 NPR formed an alliance with NAB to block the licensing of microradio stations. According to the New York Times, “National Public Radio prevailed with the assistance of the commercial broadcasters” in putting a bill through Congress that overturned an FCC ruling that would have allowed the licensing of microradio. As the Times explained, tucked away in legislation that Clinton signed was a provision sought by NAB and NPR that sharply curtails Federal Communications Commission plans to issue licenses for low-power FM radio stations to 1,000 or more schools, churches and other small community organizations. The provision, by setting new technical standards and repealing those already determined by the FCC, makes it all but impossible for licenses to be issued in cities of even modest size…. The FCC’s low-power radio plan was conceived last January to counter the huge consolidation in the broadcasting industry that the agency’s chairman, William E. Kennard, concluded had led to a sharp decline in the diversity of voices on the airwaves. Kennard saw the plan as a cornerstone of his agenda to promote civil rights issues at the FCC….
“This is a resource that everyone has to share,” Kennard said in an interview. “We can’t allow people who have the spectrum to use their political clout to shut out voices that don’t have the same clout. This highlights the power of incumbency. Companies that have spectrum guard it jealously, and they can use Congress to prevent new voices from having access to the airwaves.”
This is a serious blow for democracy.”

Fat freddy, I do not deny that “our” government, often times, but not
always in concert with corporate support has masterfully propagated the
debasement of language to forward certain agendas. In this day in age I
find it difficult to separate corporations and governments, as both are
funding each other in a perpetual cycle, ie subsidies, taxation, campaign
funding, tax cuts and now bailouts. Although, now it seems that with the
ruling on Citizens United v Federal Election Commission, 130 S.Ct. 876
(2010), that there has been considerably more pushback from
corporations. It seems to me that the US is not and hasn’t been a “free
market” for over 100 years, but actually a “corporate capitalist” economy.
Corporate capitalists require government power to defend their position.
The accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of a relatively small
oligarchy has always made economic equilibrium impossible, and it has
always been necessary for the government to intervene to prop up demand
and insure order. This is the one constant in capitalist history: as corporate
power has grown, the size and expense of government has grown; there
are no exceptions to this rule. The real historical battle has not been
between “free-market” and “socialist” economies, but between left-wing
and right-wing Keynesianism; the left-wing would give greater weight to
social concerns, and the right to corporate concerns, but both rely on
government power, or in some cases lack thereof. Great fortunes need high
fences to protect them, fences made of laws and regulations in fortune’s
favor; and these high fences need big governments to build and defend
them.

call me Roy, March 22 at 1:00 am,

Everything you state is ridiculous, there is more
truth on PBS/NPR than all the Conservative
Networks combined.  Conservatives should not
be worried about the one PBS/NPR partially
liberal network, since Conservatives have so
many completely Conservative Networks. 

For the public’s greater majority to be
represented at least in the media, there needs
to be at least one totally liberal network to
combat all the subjective propaganda of
conservative EXTREMISTS on FOX and all the
other conservative subjective networks.  Even
MSNBC is more conservative than liberal, so why
complain and lie about PBS/NPR. 

The Public owns the airwaves and PBS/NPR is the
only source of anything anywhere near factually
objective in the line of news reporting and
information of benefit to the public.

Call Me Roy -

Once again you’ve shown up to post your “mental feces” on this thread. NPR didn’t “lump” the anti-IRS guy in with anyone. YOU are, in your I-should-be-taking-my-meds way, projecting your paranoia about what NPR broadcasts.

Only in the mind of the uneducated (there are a lot of you) could an anti-NPR statement such as yours be concocted.

Would you please self-censor yourself and not show up on these boards?

Actually there is nothing scary about NPR.
You remember Air America don’t you?

Remember Joe Stack, a disturbed man who crashed his small plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas back in February, was not known to have any ties to any tea party group, any “patriot” group, or other right-wing groups. His manifesto reads like a confused communist rant with hate for the U.S. government and George W. Bush liberally sprinkled throughout. But NPR lumps this nut in with the right with claims that they are all dangerous to government officials and facilities.
NPR similarly uses as proof of these dangerous patriots the disturbed actions of John Patrick Bedell who opened fire on officers near the Pentagon on March 4. Bedell was an anti-war protestor, heavy marijuana user, and exhibited paranoia for which he refused to seek medical help. Bedell also has no known ties to tea party groups, any political organizations, or NPR’s frightening “patriot groups.”
Yet NPR put forth both of these sick-minded men as examples of “patriots” that have become dangerous and unstable. If NPR wasn’t saying so why include them in this report?
Naturally for its “expert” on dangerous patriots NPR turns to Mark Potok, the director of the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center. As always, Potok cites claims of a “huge growth in the so-called patriot movement that includes militias out there.” Not that NPR offers any actual proof other than Potok’s say so, of course. “We’ve seen in particular a huge growth in the so-called patriot movement that includes militias out there,” Potok says. “And I think that some of the violence that we’ve seen, such as the Pentagon shooter and the IRS, are at least in some way a reflection of that rage.” Potok says there are now more than 500 patriot and militia groups active in the U.S., more than triple the number in 2008. Again, NPR trots out Potok to warn of those evil, evil right-wing patriots and tries to back his claims up with two crazy people that have no ties at all to those same right-wing patriot groups that are being blamed for this “upsurge” in violence.
What NPR doesn’t tell you is the sort of people that work wt. the SPLC. Chip Berlet, for instance, is one of those people. Berlet has all sorts of extremist, left-wing associates (like anti-American billionaire financier George Soros) and is a member of other far left organizations such as the Socialist Workers Party. Here is an entry on Berlet in discoverthenetwork.org nestled in a page about the left-wing Tides Foundation: Berlet is a senior analyst for Political Research Associates, and has had affiliations with the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Friends Service Committee, the Christic Institute, the Socialist Workers Party, the National Lawyers Guild, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. To show how unbiased SLPC’s Chip Berlet is, he once wrote that, “right-wing foundations and think tanks support efforts to make bigoted and discredited ideas respectable.” Not too biased there, eh?
Discoverthenetwork.org also has a page on the SPLC itself.
So, for its expert on those monstrous patriot groups, NPR turns to a group that has ties to the Socialist Workers Party, George Soros, and the anti-Christian ACLU and then expects us to think such an organization should be accepted as an unbiased news source! Apparently NPR does expect us all to accept as gospel its left-biased report on how dangerous those “patriots” are, but I hope America is more skeptical than that.

Remember folks, our tax dollars support NPR.

You want scandal? You want scary conversations? Here’s NPR breaking the story
about torturing Iraqis to get information about the whereabouts of the still
missing WMDs. Of course, National Pentagon Radio played it strictly for laughs.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1290449

Don’t bother contacting the NPR ombudsman about this story; I already tried that
without success.

It is nice to entertain the thought that NPR could function without any
government funding—but only if they didn’t have to end up bowing to other
equally undesirable money sources.

What’s scary is the “Fuxx Nuzz informed public” thinks the Repo-your liberty thugs” are actually going to balance the budget by reducing NPR to ashes, thus, putting more people out of work and save what? a couple hundred million dollars and Fuxx Nuzz from having to spend millions lying about the truth and good NPR does?

The problem the “extreme” Right, O’Keefe notably, has with NPR, is that NPR deals with facts. Regardless that NPR recently has been less incisive, they do go into background detail. They do present the fact with experts in the associated field being covered unlike the fog-horn propagandists on MSM.

If they do lose public funding, I hope they take a tougher stance on the crazy corporatist sponsored government we are compelled to support with our taxes.

I will tell what is scary about NPR. They replace the smaller, individual, and closer
to place radio stations when they emerged and overwhelmed the radio waves. That
and they are totally focused on NYC and the east coast. West coast gets no shrift.

TDoff

Priorities? What makes you think the government will ever spend our money on things that are in the people’s best interests? The government can take our money at will, through force, or the threat of force. If a robber comes into your house and steals your money, do you really think he cares what you think he should spend it on? Perhaps if the government was funded on a voluntary basis they would be more aware of what the people really wanted.

Free your mind from the disease of statism.

http://www.voluntaryist.com/fundamentals/introduction.html

NPR is more fair and balanced than any other
network, but NPR must be about
representing the liberal left’s green and yellow
political sides of the political
spectrum as all the other networks represent
ONLY the conservatives and the conservative
right’s Blue, Purple, and Red sides of the political
spectrum.  Green and Yellow liberals of the left
hardly get any representation at all, even on
NPR, because the corporate conservatives of the
right simply don’t want to allow any recognition
of the Green and Yellow Left, as in Britain, there’s
a bloody war against the wearing of the liberal
Green and/or Yellow, which St. Patrick Day that just
passed was a definite reminder.

F** F*****. WTF? I said nothing about GB and the TPers. Since most of US still consider the US a ‘democracy’, as irrational as that is, We the People are ultimately responsible for it’s actions. And I think our priorities and actions are frequently effed-up.

TDoff

And who gave the order to fire those missiles? Glenn Beck and the Tea Partiers?

If organizations funded by Koch Industries are slanted towards propaganda that serve the interests of Koch industries, aren’t organizations that are funded by the government slanted towards propaganda that serves the government?

Place rationalizations and justifications here:

http://www.wirelessinfo.com/images/upload/Image/Blog/Images/2007/06/04/phoneInTheToilet.jpg

It’s all a matter of priorities. Just the cost of the Tomahawk missiles fired into Libya yesterday, in one night, could restore the NPR funding for over 13 years. Or pay the salaries of more than 1,300 teachers for a year.