The more I think about Governor Romney’s comments about cancelling funding for PBS, the more angry I get. He makes it sound as if so much money will be saved, as if it will go so far to balance to budget, as if it will make the tax burden on Americans so much lighter.
The truth is far from that and anyone who buys it isn’t paying attention to facts.
I found a CNN article written by LeVar Burton and Mark Wolfe. It’s an opinion article, but I can’t gainsay anything in the article. There are a lot of good hard truths in it.
The number one truth in it is that PBS provides free educational programming with no commercials to households across the country. It promotes literacy, early childhood education, and provides resource materials for teachers of all grades of public schools. We all know that public schools are hurting for funding, so this gives them additional assistance.
According to the article, PBS funding is $1.35 per person per year. That’s less than the cost of two cans of soda from a vending machine and it pays for programming for a year.
Talk to your Legislators. Make them know it is important to fund it. Don’t let the hard work of those who have gone before be swept away by one misguided, misinformed, out-of-touch politician who thinks the middle class starts at a 6-digit annual income or by others in his party who think those who aren’t rich are just lazy.
Disagree. 1) government only supplies ~10% of PBS funding 2) plenty of other ‘free’ programming out there 3) developmental kids do NOT need to be raised by TV, let’s stop pretending it’s Ok 4) the jittery style of changing topics every 60 – 120 sec trains kids to expect new stimulus that often, and has been linked to the explosive rise of ADD 5) If you can’t cut the easy, low hanging fruit, how the hell are you going to cut the big, significant shit? 6) There Is *NO* Money. For ANYTHING. Period! What happens when we, as a country, have Hoovered up all cash from everyone on the planet? No one has anything to loan us anymore, but they still expect the interest payments. So, not only do we have to cut spending to match income (currently 60% of all spending) but we’d have to go further, to keep up the payments. So, we’re at like 40% current? What happens then?
NO food stamps, NO medicare, NO federal unemployment extensions, NO federal welfare, NO student loans, etc, etc… You think Greece has “Austerity measures?” You ain’t seen NOTHING yet. We have less than 10 years to get spending right side up, or it gets REAL ugly. There’s a whole buncha stuff that we just can’t afford, federally, anymore.
A more sensible appeal to those who wish to continue to support it is to urge them to donate during the pledge drives – either just the $1.50 that the fed won’t be paying for them, or $5 to compensate for their neighbors too… Who knows, PBS might even come out ahead.
Bottom line, it’s Not a Federal job, and we should NOT be spending Federal $$ on it.
Just My $.02, fwiw, ymmv!