Yet another attempt to kill PBS

As Budget Debates Begin, Republicans Put NPR, PBS on Chopping Block

They never do give up, do they? Back in 2005 it was the CPB narrowly escaping the axe after sustaining severe cuts and a Republican vetted overlord, and in 1995 there was Gingrich's all-out war against PBS.

I especially love the rationale that since we're in a budget pinch, times are SO much more dire than every other occasion when they've trotted out this argument to try and kill one tiny little program that's caught their ire.

Eric,

If I were to pick any one thing to put on the chopping block it would be subsidies. Next up would be art museums, cancers that they are.

Fight smart, not fair.

I say axe the FCC; we don't need those fools.

Supported. We just need to wait for a different group to take up net-neutrality.

Fight smart, not fair.

Ugh. PBS and NPR are good programs. It'd be a pity to see them go.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

Why can't they cut down some of the censorship-related groups instead...ESRB...FCC

Wait, ESRB is independant from the government right?

"Every opinion that isn't mine is subjected to Your Mileage May Vary."

I'm actually okay with the ESRB for the most part. They just do the ratings right?

Fight smart, not fair.

I honestly don't give a crap about those ratings. It results in way too much overly needless censorships and restricts the freedom of developers. If soccer moms start predicatably bitching about it, well, we can always cut fundings from any organization they may have, "the economy is in a pinch" right?

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Plus some of their ratings are just downright bizarre. All it takes is a few more drops of blood to completely up the rating of some games? Nudity and sexual overtones is considered more dangerous than gore and violence?

edited 16th Feb '11 1:51:08 AM by Signed

"Every opinion that isn't mine is subjected to Your Mileage May Vary."

I have no issues with establishing a ratings system, and honestly prefer a warning when something includes Gorn. If they decide to sacrifice violence for a lower rating, that's a design decision. The fact that the way it's setup is stupid isn't a reason to condemn the entire labeling process.

Fight smart, not fair.

@Deboss: The 2010 federal budget is $3.456 trillion, the National Endowment for the Arts (which is who I assume you're complaining about) had a 2009 budget of $155 million, which works out to about an 0.004% savings. Way to make progress!

@Mark Von Lewis: So without the FCC, who exactly would be parceling out things like the radio spectrum? Silliness like this reminds me of people who suggest shutting down the IRS, ignoring the fact that whoever ended up administering income tax would be the IRS in all but name.

That it is, so are the ratings bodies for TV and film, all of it is 100% voluntary on the part of the industry. In fact, the one and only area in which the FCC has any legal authority to directly censor content is over broadcast airwaves licensed from the American people through the FCC, which they have only exercised on a handful of occasions over their entire history.

Everything else has been big movers in private industry groups like the MPAA and NAB exerting influence over the little guys among them.

Eric,

edited 16th Feb '11 2:24:38 AM by EricDVH

Wait, isn't PBS donation-funded? How can they "axe" it?

visit my blog!

PBS is partly donation funded, partly government funded (especially small, local stations,) and partly funded by business benefactors who have been getting increasingly large and advertisement-like clips to mention how generous they are ever since the proportion of government funding dropped.

edit: In their own words (that “CPB” part is the feds)

Eric,

edited 16th Feb '11 2:30:51 AM by EricDVH

Oh, yes, what a wonderful cut.

How about one less Trident submarine? BIG dollars there.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

Not to derail too much on low hanging budgetary fruit, but I nominate the most hilariously ripe target as Star Wars: $9.9 billion a year today, hundreds of billions wasted since the 1980s, scientifically impossible sham, illegal under both American law and international treaty, marketed as a solution to a problem we haven't had since 1991. Naked embezzlement would be putting it kindly.

Eric,

155 million wasted dollars that could have gone toward a new space shuttle or anything else useful.

edited 16th Feb '11 3:03:22 AM by Deboss

Fight smart, not fair.

No, not PBS! Where else will I watch my British period dramas?!

In all seriousness, this is absurd. PBS is awesome and does not deserve the budget axe.

edited 16th Feb '11 3:13:17 AM by Accela

I'd approve a better budget on the condition they show more science shows and less culture/art shows.

Fight smart, not fair.

@Deboss: I hate to open up a scrap between two horribly underfunded agencies that I both dearly love (the NEA and NASA,) but as tiny as NASA's budget is, it's in another league from the NEA or CPB. For 2010, it's $18.7 billion (0.5% of the federal budget,) of which only $6.1 billion is spent on space operations, including $3.1 billion for the shuttles.

Using tough times as an excuse to pick on financially insignificant fractions of the tax burden simply strikes me as playing dirty.

Eric,

This is the diametric opposite of what should be done with PBS. It should be funded 100% by the government, so nobody has to sit through those @!$#! pledge drives, ever again.

Hey, it works for England.

Eric,

Alas, there are a number of people in this country who go apeshit whenever you mention some place else as an example of a program working right. So maybe it's better to not mention the UK, at least not around certain folks...

The irony here is so thick it could be used as peanut butter. Actually, most local PBS and NPR stations are in the neighborhood of 80% private funded. It wasnt always that way, back in the '80's the ratio of private to public funding was probably reversed. Why did it change? Because the Republicans cut the funding, and in order to survive, they successfully turned to private sources. The irony? The content of programming has trended much more toward the interests and opinions of people who self-identify as liberals since the funding. After all, who is going to support a public broadcast station? That's right, well educated lefties. And now, since they pay for the lions share of the budget, they get to call the programming schedule. That's also why there's more cultural programming than science oriented shows. The more the government cuts, the more left wing it gets.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Meh, I've always thought PBS kind of sucked.

Now, see, if we restored government funding we could find a way to air more Cowboy Bebop.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

.... >_>

Go on...