Republicans Want To Get Rid Of PBS and Sesame Street

Beebers

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 14, 2003
Messages
1,289
Reaction score
3
Well, gosh, let's see - I think a few of our illustrious Senators could afford to kick in a little in the way of donations, share a little of the burden of regular Joe Donator who gets hit up every ten seconds through both his taxes and voluntary donations to keep PBS and NPR going.

Senator John Kerry D-Massachusetts, net worth -
165.4 miliion himself, 626.3 million and up inclusive of his wife's money


Senator Ted Kennedy D-Massachusetts, silver spoon baby, net worth 44 million on paper in the U.S., unknown assets and monies stashed elsewhere in countries which are tax havens

Senator Jay Rockefeller D-W. Virginia net worth estimated 82 million

Senator Herb Kohl D-Wisconsin net worth 111 million

And so on. And on. Numbers are on the low estimate side based on financial disclosures and do not include: their annual Federal salaries, pensions, nor primary residences. Surely a donation from any of these well-heeled people would take no skin from their noses, all things considered.

Both NPR and PBS staff are quite well-paid with your tax dollars, no one is on the soup line, though they'd like to have you think so. Also, they are both tax-exempt entities -

http://www.mpetrelis.blogspot.com/2004_11_14_mpetrelis_archive.html


At any rate. All hypocrisies aside - go to senate.gov and house.gov. Locate your own Senators and Congresspeople. There will be contact information there for fax, phone and e-mail. There will be guides to current bills up for consideration and daily roll calls and votes on the floor. Contact your reps and politely express your views. This is a participatory nation, so, participate. You can also contact any representative from any other state or district at any time, you do not have to limit contact to just your own reps.
When contacting politicians it's helpful to have the Bill # at hand and the Bill # should always be mentioned. When they hear from enough people, and usually enough people means only a thousand or so, they will listen. When there's something you feel strongly enough about, you can rally five or ten or fifteen friends to do the same, and have them rally their five or ten or fifteen friends to contact their rep, and so it grows. It is a fallacy, a myth, that all we can do is sit around and wring our hands over things.
 

beaker

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2002
Messages
7,761
Reaction score
858
Very good point beebers. You know my headline should have been "politicians want to snub out PBS", as I find both sides of the political aisle in power highly corrupt:smile:

I wonder what fiscally conservative Sam the Eagle would have to say about this.
 

Kimp the Shrimp

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 30, 2004
Messages
4,382
Reaction score
12
beaker said:
Very good point beebers. You know my headline should have been "politicians want to snub out PBS", as I find both sides of the political aisle in power highly corrupt:smile:

I wonder what fiscally conservative Sam the Eagle would have to say about this.
i said the same thing days ago
Kimp the Shrimp said:
Stop this Leftist Rhetric It takes Democrats and Republicains to approve the budget
 

Ilikemuppets

Well-Known Member
Joined
Sep 8, 2005
Messages
15,138
Reaction score
25
I wouldn't worry about Sesame Street being eliminated because it's a self supporting show. It has depended less on funding over the years, that's not to say it doesn't need it.
 

Dantagon

Member
Joined
Jun 11, 2006
Messages
17
Reaction score
0
They may be self supporting, but if they were to lose PBS, where could they show the show and still manage to get it out to the same general audiance. I hope this will be the same as last year. A major flop by the Republicians.
 

CensoredAlso

Well-Known Member
Joined
Sep 16, 2002
Messages
14,028
Reaction score
2,292
Yeah I doubt this will be go through. But it is still disapointing that they choose to take that stance against PBS. PBS is one of the few stations left that has quality programming.
 

Ilikemuppets

Well-Known Member
Joined
Sep 8, 2005
Messages
15,138
Reaction score
25
Here's an article about what they might do to help solve the some of these problems.http://www.tv.com/story/story.html&story_id=4902?tag=headlines;title;2. it looks like one of there options would be more commercials tie-ins and and broad band and on demand channels. But its not the end of PBS or anything like that.

One of the thing that concerned me was the trouble with making the switch from analog signals to digital signals. More commercials could also affect the quality of their stations.
 

Fragglemuppet

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 21, 2005
Messages
4,103
Reaction score
212
It is good that they are trying to do something to save the network. Still, besides the horrible idea that they would even think of getting rid of it, it is also frightening, because it is not over yet. I believe they won't win this time, but as someone suggested earlier, every attempt is closer and closer, and this one isn't over yet!
 
Top