Trump Budget Proposes Killing All Funding for PBS, NPR and National Endowment for the Arts

1. It is your opinion that it is not wasteful. I don't think the government should be promoting these things.
2. I like the idea of having a choice as to how much to donate and whether or not I donate at all when it comes to organizations such as those mentioned.

 

And this is government controlled, how? As I've listened to NPR, it sounds nothing more than people reading off scripts or subjects approved by the producers. Nothing out of the ordinary. But, for the sake of this argument, we may as well argue why the FCC should be funded, since it regulates you can't cuss on public radio, or play profane music on public radio. Now, is the FCC funded by taxpayer dollars. No, but it is part of the government budget and is government-controlled and approval speech. Bottom line is this budget proposal violates free speech, and doesn't benefit the country whatsoever by doing so. If anything, it actually deprives the country since these outlets thrive on federal funding.

 

Chances are, they already do. Federal funding represents about 15% of the PBS stations budgets across the country. For some stations in smaller, more rural areas federal funding could make up 50% of their entire annual budget, for the stations in large urban areas federal funding might be as little as 5% of annual budgets. Overall though, it's 15%. Therefore the other 85% has to come from somewhere else....and private foundations and private donors make up a big huge chunk of this.

 

I tend to think of it as the government is promoting these things as benefitting the country, bearing fruit to We The People.
I don't consider this as if I was being forced to donate to a cancer foundation.

 

Trump's budget is DOA.

Nobody takes his proposals seriously.

 

Do you think those artists say give me money and they get it? They have to go through a process and some government approval team eventually coughs up some taxpayer money. According to their rules. They decide what is approved and what is not.

We can use your own example if you still don't understand.

 

Yes, high paying jobs would be nice.
What high paying jobs do you think we'll get?

 

They've HAD it for thirty years and more so how could you have missed it? And you are certainly free to send them your hard earned money.

 

1 example is aid to attend a college.
How many poorer students could be helped with $3B?

 

Why? You demand I pay for a bloated military, some stupid wall that won't help all that much.
We only get to pay for things you want? Not really.

 

Many years ago 60 Minutes did a documentary called (I think) "Dutch Treat" about how Holland spendt millions of public funds on subsidizing art. Anyone could declare him/herself to be an artist and receive a stipend up to the equivalent of $20,000 a year to live and produce art. The result was warehouses of "art" (visited by, I recall, Morley Safer) that no one would pay for but artists had produced and the government now had to store along with thousands of "artists" living on the public to produce art no one liked enough to buy. So what exactly was the public benefit of such waste, besides subsidizing loafers and egotists?

In our own North Texas cities, our local governments produce road building projects that have funds dedicated to "public art" in the budget. Why? I would rather have an additional lane of freeway, or more landscaping or better turn arounds than "art" that someone has decided we all must have placed in our consciousness about which we, the taxpayers, have no say.

If concerned citizens want to dedicate private money for public art, have at it. But to dragoon taxpayers into paying for silly nonsensical "art" should be stopped altogether.

 

Well, no. An obligation of a sovereign nation is to protect its people. The military is the instrument of that. The wall will stop the invasion of our country by illegal aliens. No sovereign nation has an obligation to compel taxpayers to buy monstrosities others declare to be "art".

Besides, tell us how an army with only three of 58 combat brigades being fully operational and many naval air wings unable to fly because of a lack of spare parts is "bloated". Leftists like to declare the armed forces budget "bloated" as they load it up with items like funding for social programs, funding for workers who are displaced by foreign competition and other things unrelated to national defense that take funds away from the trigger pullers where they belong.

 

Who cares who owns it. ALL THAT MATTERS is what slant the MSM takes and it sure as shiznit isn't to the right or even centrist. Its either a little to the left or way out there to the left....and its absurdly overly hostile to ANYTHING to the right. Its not even debatable at this point. Its comical.

 

Nope , using two rights to support Americans....

 

Nicely written reply,thank you.

I have looked up the financial impact for PBS, it is significant:

"PBS is funded indirectly by Congress through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB; which funds both PBS and National Public Radio). For fiscal year 2010, $281m out of CPB's $422m appropriation went to public television, $210m to local stations and $71m to PBS directly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pub...). In 2010, PBS had revenues of around $570m (http://www.pbs.org/about/media/a...), meaning federal funding via CPB accounted for about 12% of PBS 2010 annual revenues. Note that some of that federal funding for local stations will also make it back indirectly to PBS in the form of programming fees, so the total percentage could be considered higher.

More broadly, it makes sense to look at federal funding as a percentage of total US public television spending, which is much larger because the bulk of spending and production occurs at the local level. According to the Association of Public Television Stations (http://www.apts.org/legislative/...), total US public television revenues were $1.9 billion in fiscal year 2008, 19.2% of which came from federal sources (both CPB and non-CPB)."

Frankly from my own personal view, I don't think cutting federal funds from PBS is a good idea as it benefits too many people,to cut it out. There are millions of taxpayers wanting to watch PBS,thus THEIR tax dollars going there are already acceptable to them.

I think part of the reason why some people push for the cuts are based on a perception that it is too left leaning,thus should lose federal funding. I don't agree on this for PBS, but think it is true for NPR,which does have a strong liberal bias in it.

 

Manufacturing is making a comeback. I posted about the jump in number of good to high paying jobs in my area. It only stands to reason that with less illegals flooding the country there will be more demand to fill the open slots. As demand increases for skilled and semi-skilled workers, the pay will follow. We don't even need union dues to make good money. We just need common sense policy when it comes to immigration, legal or not.

 

We don't need more $$$$ to the military. We spend enough. We don't need to police the world, not our job.
Their is no other way into the country besides the Mexican border? Cubans come through Mexico?

Why do we need 58 fully functional combat units?

 

It isn't all that significant. The gov't spends $6.85M/minute.
So CPB is 41 minutes of gov't spending per year.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/government-spending-per-minute-685-million/

 

MFG jobs will make a comeback when our wages fall and/or other countries wages rise. If those jobs are competing in the world market.

 

Bottom line, this budget proposal defunding PBS/NPR say's zilch pertaining to their programming. They sold Big Bird to HBO and my guess is they paid no taxes. I'm opposed to any government funding of the media, any media.

 

Because something's shouldnt be left to the machinations of the market. Unfortunately we live in a day and age where educational doesn't equal popular. Doesn't make it any less essential.

 

Why do you want to send our children into potentially dangerous situations without the best protective gear available? Why do you hate Americans?

 

Yes, there are many manufacturing jobs that have left the country and continue to stay away, while other companies set to leave have pledged to stay since Trump's win. There's also billions being invested in new manufacturing all over the country. We are experiencing a manufacturing renaissance.

 

The problem is with your solution. You want art to be controlled by the machinations of government.

 

rich farmers have a right to subsidies too ?