Tag Archives: spending

Defund PBS and NPR

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Howard Husock, of American Enterprise Institute, thinks that is a bad idea. Unfortunately, his argument for continuing to send taxpayer money to these entities is pie in the sky irrationality. He does acknowledge the deep progressive tilt of National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, and his own abuse by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a Congressionally-created entity that partially funds PBS and operates NPR, when he was a member of CPB‘s board of directors over a pro-ideology diversity op-ed he’d written: CPB stripped [him] of [his] committee assignments and accused [him] of violating [his] fiduciary duties. Because thought diversity is intolerable.

Nonetheless, he wants our taxpayer money to continue flowing to this left-wing “public” company and its subordinate formations.

Were PBS and NPR (and, I say, CPB) successfully shorn of taxpayer funding, Husock worries that

liberal foundations—many of which already support NPR and individual PBS programs—will step in to keep NPR and PBS alive. The Ford, Gates, Hewlett, Rockefeller, Kellogg, MacArthur, Robert Wood Johnson, and Open Society foundations have been NPR financial supporters and could easily fill a funding gap or even donate directly to the CPB, a chartered nonprofit.

He didn’t recognize the so what in his own words. Those entities already financially support those left-wing outlets; it won’t matter that those entities, and others, would step in to fill the gap from the loss of taxpayer funding. It won’t matter because what those three outlets publish won’t change.

Husock had this rationalization, too:

There would be no more congressional hearings about NPR‘s ideological bias, as were held in May. But the imprimatur and implied government seal of approval—the “national public” branding—would remain.

The former is another so what. Congress doesn’t do anything about that naked bias other than waste time on public virtue-signaling—by both parties—hearings. The latter is a matter of messaging, something the Republicans are heroically bad at. The outlet, in fact, wouldn’t be public anymore because it wouldn’t be receiving public funds anymore.

Husock closed his fantasy with posits of what Congress should do instead of cutting off the taxpayer dollar spigot: emphasize the purpose of promoting local “journalism,” ban advertising for “causes,” make CPB board budgeting debates and decisions public.

See above regarding Congressional inaction. Ask also—which Husock did not ask—about definitions of such things as “cause” and “journalism.” Then ask—which Husock also did not ask—about enforcement mechanisms.

Skip over the messy pie in the sky time-wasters. Defund NPR, PBS, and CPB.

Another Misapprehension

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Some tax cuts are better than others goes the headline, and that’s true enough. But then the newswriter wanders afield.

…extending the lower individual tax rates that expire after 2025—by far the largest component of any likely tax bill and the one that directly affects the most voters—would put more money in consumers’ pockets without driving a meaningful change in the economy’s long-run trajectory. There is broad bipartisan support for retaining those lower tax levels that Republicans created in 2017, but keeping individual tax rates in place is unlikely to change most people’s decisions about whether and how much to work.

It’s certainly true that not all tax cuts would change, or have any effect, on us taxpayers’ spending behavior. So what? Those favoring higher taxes have yet to articulate a coherent government need for the money, beyond expansive welfare payments and expansive welfare transfers to the States—all without any sort of work requirement.

At bottom, too, it’s our money, not government’s, and we should be the ones who decide how to spend it, or not. Nor do the taxers and government bureaucrats and politicians get to tell us how or whether to spend our money—not directly (that’s part of the intrusiveness of Obamacare that has yet to be corrected), and not indirectly by taxing us and spending our money in government’s name. We’ll allocate our money to our financial needs and desires far more efficiently and with far more specificity than government can ever be capable of.

Full stop.

A Cost of Government

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The Congressional Budget Office is saying that the Progressive-Democrat Biden-Harris administration’s Medicare prescription drug scheme could cost taxpayers more than $20 billion over three years.

The budget analysis arm of Congress said the increased costs are due to the government subsidizing many seniors’ premiums by sending money to insurance firms, and it would cost at least $5 billion extra in 2025 alone and add to the deficit.

If the administration really wants to spend our tax remittals on subsidies for seniors’ prescription drugs, it would be orders of magnitude more efficient to send those subsidy dollars directly to the seniors and let each individual senior use the money for his own particular medicine needs.

That’s anathema, though, to Progressive-Democratic Party politicians. That would put the decision-making, the responsibility, in the hands of us average Americans as individuals, in the hands of individual geezers in the particular case. Party doesn’t think we’re capable of making our own decisions, though. Party insists that only its members who are in government are capable of such decision-making; the rest of us really need to just sit down and do as we’re told. And experience the joy of that.

A Misapprehension

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This one is, surprisingly, on the part of The Wall Street Journal‘s editors. In an otherwise cogent editorial with several sound points regarding former President and Republican Party Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s offers of specially targeted tax cuts, the editors closed with this mistake:

Mr Trump is now proposing to narrow the base, so [tax] rates will have to be higher.

Not at all. Alternatively, and far more optimally, with a narrower tax base, spending will have to be lower. That’s universal, too. With reduced (tax) revenues for any reason, spending would need to be lower. With current government spending, in fact, even with flat revenues, spending badly wants reduction.

It seems the august editors have lost sight of the cause of our nation’s deficits and debt, the cause extant throughout our history.

What She Said Then, What She Says Now

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News outlet writers are starting to object, however mildly, to Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ reluctance to do interviews and news conferences. Harris did do the one interview recently, with a friendly interviewer and while accompanied by her Comfort Running Mate, but that’s it. The press does have a beef about her apparent fear of sitting for unscripted interviews with objective interviewers—and doing them frequently and alone—and to have unscripted, free-wheeling news conferences of some duration and frequency where she wouldn’t know the questions in advance.

The press, though, couches their objections in the premise that without these interviews and news conferences, they won’t know what her platform is or what policies she intends to push were she elected.

Those of us outside the press, us less credulous average Americans, do know what her platform and policies are—Harris has told us quite clearly over the last several years, right up to mid-2024 when she supplanted Joe Biden as Party’s candidate.

Here is her platform made manifest, from what she has said and what she’s saying now, even if her remarks today are scattered about, and her remarks yesterday are being busily ignored by those same news outlet writers.

What She Said Then What She Says Now
There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking. I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020 that I would not ban fracking, as vice president I did not ban fracking, as president I will not ban fracking
“an undocumented immigrant is not a criminal”
And: once pledged to close all privately-run immigration detention centers “on day one” during her first presidential campaign		 Harris’ campaign manager: “I think at this point, you know, the policies that are, you know, having a real impact on ensuring that we have security and order at our border are policies that will continue”
January 2017 criticized t Obama’s refusal to veto a UN Security Council resolution on Israeli settlements. Israel has a right to defend itself, and how it does so matters.
I also expressed with the prime minister my serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza…the images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third, or fourth time.  We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies [not set at the feet of Hamas].
What She Said Then What She Still Says
Tax each stock and bond trade
Roll back 2017 tax cuts
Raise capital gains tax rates at the same rates as ordinary income		 Raise corporate taxes
Tax unrealized capital gains
4% “income-based premium” on households making more than $100,000 annually to pay for her version of “Medicare for All”
$10 trillion in public and private spending over 10 years to create millions of jobs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions		 Expand child tax credit and Earned Income Tax Credit, to be paid for by “there’s a great return on investment.”
Spending $25,000 via “tax credit” to cover the down payment costs for “first-time home buyers”

Do we believe her when she was saying what she believed, or do we believe her foxhole conversions of convenience today? I suggest, on the other hand, that where her positions today are substantially of those from yesterday, we certainly can take her at her word, and these are part of her clearly stated platform, also.