Graham: Sorry Big Bird, dumbest waste of tax dollars is (Finally!) about to die
The Senate just passed its version of the billion rescission bill bringing the country one step closer to ending the the bulk egregious and indefensible federal spending in the modern era Population broadcasting The million that taxpayers are forced to fork over for regime radio and TV yearly is such a small slice of the trillion spending total it s more like a spending scrape than a cut However what these federal funds lack in volume they make up for in stupidity Whatever the merits of a government-funded radio and TV structure in the era of AM radios and VCRs spending even a single dollar on broadcasting in the America of is beyond insane There are more Americans who own cellphones than can receive an NPR radio signal The typical American can watch competitive nude curling from Canada on a phone in French and with subtitles and Democrats are demanding we dump tax dollars into authorities TV The fact that this media includes news from overtly political outlets with a partisan agenda doesn t help But ultimately it appears the jig is up And the old White people clinging to their NPR and PBS know it Which is why having failed to stop the coming spending cuts with preening puffery and shameless dishonesty defenders of taxpayer dollars for inhabitants media have pulled out the last tool out of their political toolbox Sheer stupidity How else to describe the Democrats new argument that the real reason for the millions in tax money isn t the arts or schooling but urgency response and citizens safety Large rural communities don t have a lot of other options for media contact except PBS and NPR NPR CEO Katherine Maher mentioned this week Broadband facility is not universal and heck even cellphone utility is not universal There s a real understanding of the need there as well as for urgency alerting in which populace media plays an extraordinarily major role Exigency alerting What happened to Bert and Ernie I grew up in one of those underserved rural communities in South Carolina And I know that when the tornado sirens went off the first thing my parents did was rush to the TV and turn on reruns of Downton Abbey Simon they say a flood s a-comin my mother would cry out We better get that Ira Flatow fella on the radio And I love the argument that the key demographic for constituents radio is rural America It s PBS and Pick Em Up Trucks baby I ve been suffering through pledge drives and radio-thons my entire life and I ve heard plenty of pitches for Morning Edition and Masterpiece Theater But I ve never had anyone in general broadcasting ask me to kick in for a Nina Toten-Bag to make sure survival camps in the mountains of Idaho can still get radio access to Amanpour Co This is all a silly smokescreen Nobody believes it because everybody has wifi or broadband or Starlink or something Keeping a radio and TV station fully staffed and operational is just a jobs operation for leftwing journalism majors If taxpayers feel the need to subsidize radio the cutting-edge apparatus of the Coolidge administration why don t we give the money to the private radio stations that have gone out of business in the past decade About AM stations have gone dark over the past years and FM stations have done the same since the COVID pandemic Why aren t those stations pillars of our democracy and way of life as Rep Maggie Goodlander D-N H noted when she voted to keep giving money to NPR and PBS Supporters claim that without NHPR and PBS you won t get the local news you need leaving you tragically uninformed about life in your public As the Media Research Center has shown and listeners viewers of NHPR and local PBS can attest inhabitants radio and TV provide very little local news A review of content uncovered just percent of daily programs is locally produced news and a key part of that is reading the national news off the NPR wire So what s the point Why do Democrats fight so hard over a scarce bucks for a system that can t even cry They re killing Big Bird anymore Sesame Street was sold to HBO and is now on Netflix Privilege What do the liberal elites have left School choice is letting commoners like us send our kids to private schools based on oh the horror merit College degrees are commonplace and economically inconsequential If you re a dad trying to impress co-workers in current times you don t brag My son s going to Harvard especially around your Jewish friends You say My daughter s learning to be an HVAC The one thing the suburban liberals can still foist on their fellow Americans is to make us pick up the tab for Antiques Roadshow and Wait Wait Don t Tell Me What are PBS and NPR other than a leftwing streaming arrangement for affluent middle-age White ladies And when the rescission bill passes they won t be able to use taxpayers passwords to pay for it Michael Graham is the managing editor of InsideSources com
