{"id":4327,"date":"2012-10-17T19:35:43","date_gmt":"2012-10-17T23:35:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=4327"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:43:17","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:43:17","slug":"paying-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2012\/10\/paying-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"Paying Bill’s Salary"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Mitt Romney created a splash, along with a backlash, with his showy tough-love stance on Big Bird and Jim Lehrer, two stalwarts of public broadcasting.\u00a0 It seemed Mitt couldn’t get the words out fast enough, how much he loved Big Bird, and Jim too (blush!<\/em>), but he was not going to borrow money from China to pay for them.<\/p>\n

“Big Bird is going to be just fine,” Mitt said<\/a>. “I don\u2019t believe\u00a0CNN gets funding [to] stay on the air.\u00a0 PBS will be able to make it on its own, just like any one of the other stations.”<\/p>\n

If this truly is Romney’s position (with Mitt, you never know), then he is as misinformed as he is glib.\u00a0 The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which supports PBS, is not just “one of the other stations.”\u00a0 CPB was created by an act of Congress in 1967, to consolidate the various sources of government funds for what was then called “educational television.” But the origins of public broadcasting go back much further, to the Communications Act<\/a> of 1934, which states:<\/p>\n

…it furthers the general welfare to encourage public telecommunications services which will be responsive to the interests of people both in particular localities and throughout the United States, and will constitute an expression of diversity and excellence, and which will constitute a source of alternative telecommunications services for all the citizens of the Nation.<\/em><\/p>\n

It was not the intent of Congress that public broadcasting should be self-supporting and competitive in a commercial media marketplace.\u00a0 What Romney did was to manufacture a false equivalency between public and commercial broadcasting, to pander to his base.<\/p>\n

It is hard to fathom the animus that hard-core conservatives have against PBS and NPR.\u00a0 Vocal opposition to government funding of public broadcasting<\/a> by Republican leadership dates back (at least) to 1994*, when Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House.\u00a0 It thrives to this day, thanks to efforts of libertarian think-tanks like the Cato Institute (founded by Charles Koch — yes, one of those infamous brothers) who would defund and liquidate not only public broadcasting but also air traffic control and global positioning systems, dams, the U.S. Postal Service and the National Weather Service, to name a few on their hit list<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even by the Cato Institute’s standards, CPB is small potatoes as paradigms of socialism go. On its website, Cato lists fifteen “salable federal enterprises” it thinks should be privatized, including CPB.\u00a0 By its estimation, those enterprises could be sold for more than $80 billion.\u00a0 Selling off CPB would bring in four-tenths of one percent (0.4%) of that total.<\/p>\n

Amtrak and U.S. Forest Service timberlands are also on Cato’s hit list — but we don’t hear Mitt Romney railing on about Amtrak, or how much he hates trees (in fact, he loves trees, especially in Michigan, because they are the right height<\/a>).\u00a0 Instead, Romney goes out of his way to target public broadcasting, PBS in particular, with a vigor disproportionate to its impact on taxpayers.\u00a0 What explains this right-wing venom directed toward the people who bring you This Old House<\/em>, Car Talk, <\/em>and the letters D and R?\u00a0 Much has been made of Mitt’s attack on Big Bird, but the character who right-wingers really want to throw in front of a fast-moving Thomas the Tank Engine<\/a> is the person of Bill Moyers.<\/p>\n

Bill Moyers made his name as Lyndon Johnson’s press secretary, and followed this with stints at CBS and PBS, hosting Moyers on America, Bill Moyers Journal<\/em>, and presently Moyers & Company. <\/em>Moyers has been a favorite target of the right, thanks to statements of his such as, “The corporate right and the political right declared class warfare on working people a quarter of a century ago and they’ve won.”\u00a0 Needless to say, people like the Kochs (the epitome of the corporate right and political right) take exception.\u00a0 To their thinking, the class war has not yet been won, and so the warfare must go on.<\/p>\n

Former Homeland Security hack and FEMA director Michael Brown (yes, the hell-of-a-job Brownie guy) is another “taxpayer” who can’t abide<\/a> either Moyers or PBS, as he reveals on his blog:\u00a0 “Funded by taxpayers through the Public Broadcast System [sic<\/em>], Bill Moyers uses his taxpayer salary to blast<\/a> a private organization, the National Rifle Association, as the enabler of death.”\u00a0 Citizen Brown then unleashes his own ideas<\/a> how tragedies like the midnight mass-shooting at that Aurora, Colorado theater should have been handled:<\/p>\n

No one knows if an armed citizen in the theater that night could have stopped or even minimized the killing, but we do know this: the police could not and did not arrive until after the killer had opened fire.<\/em><\/p>\n

We also know that if armed citizens had been in that theater the chance the shooter could have been stopped earlier is greater than it was with no one armed in the theater.<\/em><\/p>\n

Yet we want the government to protect us from these deranged minds.\u00a0 We abdicate our personal responsibility to the government.\u00a0 We see the needy and the poor, and we ask the government to intervene.\u00a0 We see how poorly we plan for retirement and we ask the government to intervene.\u00a0 We see people uninsured for healthcare by choice or circumstance, and we ask the government to intervene.\u00a0 We see people unemployed and we ask the government to intervene.<\/em><\/p>\n

What are we not willing to ask the government to intervene into our personal lives so that we might escape or avoid personal responsibility?\u00a0 Nothing, it seems.**<\/em><\/p>\n

Bill Moyers wasn’t in that theater, but as far as Brownie is concerned, Moyers is at fault for expecting police to protect us, when we should arm ourselves.\u00a0 And we pay Bill’s salary!<\/p>\n

Well, we do pay part of it.\u00a0 Moyers does not say how much he makes, but from this table<\/a> (below) it appears that federal, state and local taxpayers kick in 40 cents of every dollar that he earns from public broadcasting.\u00a0 One right-wing site<\/a> that keeps track of such things claims Moyers has been paid over $20 million by U.S. taxpayers.<\/p>\n

In the end, it is<\/em> a political decision, how we spend our tax dollars.\u00a0 Mitt Romney is right,\u00a0 elections do decide what the government should pay for.\u00a0 It is tragic, however, how the\u00a0 ideology (as usual) completely obscures legitimate questions such as:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Is the CPB fulfulling its mission?
\n\u2022 Is its original mission still relevant?
\n\u2022 Who is the intended audience, and does CPB reach them?
\n\u2022 Are we able to measure the benefits to its viewers and listeners?<\/p>\n

Actually, we hear very little data or evidence to support either side of the funding issue.\u00a0 What we mostly get are ideological rants and knee-jerk defenses.\u00a0 (How could you think of firing Big Bird?!<\/em>)\u00a0 But I would like to see studies.\u00a0 They might help put my own position on more solid footing.<\/p>\n

\u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/p>\n

Personally, I don’t mind paying $1.35 in taxes a year (in addition to my annual donation) so that public broadcasting can continue.\u00a0 I rarely watch PBS but I do get most of my news from NPR.\u00a0 They have excellent reporters and their international coverage is better than any other network.\u00a0 As a taxpayer, I think I am getting my money’s worth.<\/p>\n

Using tax dollars to build a new football stadium, however, is another matter.\u00a0 Yes, I like to watch the Pittsburgh Steelers, but the NFL is fundamentally different than PBS and NPR.\u00a0 The NFL is a profit-making venture.\u00a0 The owners make money and most of the players make money.\u00a0 The commerical broadcast networks make money.\u00a0 Sportswear companies make money.\u00a0 Bookies make money.\u00a0 So it’s different, asking taxpayers to support local professional sports teams.\u00a0 Isn’t it?<\/p>\n

Why should I agree, as a taxpayer, to pay part of Bill Moyers’ salary but object to paying part of Bill Belichick<\/a>‘s salary?\u00a0 Truth be told, I have not been able to formulate a clear and consistent principle of my own with respect to the “proper” use of tax dollars.\u00a0 I would like to think that decisions to fund ventures with taxpayer money are based on measurable social and economic benefits, but I suspect emotional and political considerations win out.\u00a0 My guess is, despite Romney’s promises and threats, the fate of PBS will come down to some senator whose grandchildren like Big Bird more than he hates Bill Moyers.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

_____________________________________________________________________________<\/h5>\n
*\u00a0 “…the perceived leftish tilt of public-supported series like Frontline<\/em> and practitioners like Bill Moyers is fueling the [conservative] campaign to leave the field to corporations and foundations, which, it is hoped, will lean more to the right.” – Columnist Walter Goodman, New York Times, November 1994.<\/h5>\n
** Seems to me that Brown’s rant has a certain uncanny resemblance to Romney’s “47 percent” tirade.\u00a0 Apples never fall far from their trees, especially when rotten.<\/h5>\n
*** <\/a>Sources of funding for public television, from a 2010 CPB report<\/a>:<\/h5>\n
Contributions by individuals 22%
\nCPB (federal appropriation) 18%
\nState government support 14%
\nUnderwriting by businesses 13%
\nUniversity support 8%
\nFoundation support 7%
\nOther federal grants and contracts 5%
\nLocal government support 4%
\nAll other sources 9%<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mitt Romney created a splash, along with a backlash, with his showy tough-love stance on Big Bird and Jim Lehrer, two stalwarts of public broadcasting.\u00a0 It seemed Mitt couldn’t get the words out fast enough, how much he loved Big … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4327"}],"version-history":[{"count":67,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28372,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4327\/revisions\/28372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}