Why We Should "Stamp Out" PBS and NPR!

Just so there's no confusion, this post is a satire (except for the last two paragraphs). -- AWO

It was well over a half century ago that I served my country in the Air Force for four years to help prevent the scourge of International Communism from spreading to The Bronx. We needed more guns at that time as we need more guns today.

As wise people say: "You can’t be too thin, too rich, or have too many guns!"

I wonder today why we have limited our defense spending to a paltry $750 billion a year (even though many claim that the actual number is closer to a trillion dollars).

I am appalled that so many of my liberal friends refuse to recognize the importance of maintaining a military presence throughout the world. The military is deployed in more than 150 countries, with more than 369,000 of its 1,580,255 active-duty personnel serving outside the United States and its territories. These deployments put aggressive nations on notice that we are not to be "messed with." If we had troops in Libya, things would certainly be different.

But clearly, as a nation, we can’t tolerate wasteful spending and unneeded expenditures such as the one we make to the Corporation For Public Broadcasting.  

The tax-and-spend liberals would have you believe that this expenditure is needed. I would point out to them that there are well over 12,000 commercial radio and television stations licensed in our country and that  "educational" broadcasters can be easily done away with.

Here's a listing of countries with "public broadcasting" outlets. As you can plainly see, they are limited to mostly Third World countries: Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, East Timor, Ecuador, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Greenland, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kosovo, Latvia, Lebanon, Libya, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malaysia, Malta, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Venezuela, and Vietnam.

Congress and the White House are having a "dust up" as House Republicans hope to cut the $430 million currently slotted for the Corporation For Public Broadcasting. Three-quarters of that appropriation supports public television, with the final 25 percent designated for public radio. While most of that funding goes directly to approximately 1,300 television and radio stations around the country, federal funds make up only about 10 percent of NPR's budget, either through competitive grants or indirectly from member stations that pay fees to carry NPR programs. CPB also provides funding to many specific "left leaning" programs, such as Nova, PBS Newshour, Sesame Street, and Story Corps.

In my opinion, were we a concerned nation about our defense we could take the $430 million of CPB money and instead buy an additional F-22 Raptor fighter and have enough left over to buy a few tanks. (The F-22 is said to cost about $350 million each.) As an unexpected bonus, this state-of-the-art weapons system does not work very well and has a tendency to crash from time to time.

OK, OK, enough fooling around.

Publically supported broadcasting contributes to making us a great nation in that it "serves" other than the concept of making profits from the media. If the Republicans in Congress want to eliminate CPB, why don't they also suggest that we close down all federally-funded parks and museums as well?

With almost 11,000 commercial radio stations and almost 1,400 commercial television stations trying to make money, is it too much to ask that the feds at least partially fund public radio and television broadcasters who are indeed carrying out the requirement of commercial broadcasters, who are supposed to "serve in the public interest, convenience, and necessity" and DON'T!