Granted that your point if correct in the end, the problem is that there
are things in existence that you have to put up with for historical
reasons.
As an example take social security. Let's say you get the government to
get rid of social security. How do you handle the moneys that people
have had taken for social security to date. As an example I am 70 and
retired. I put the max amount into social security from the time I was
18 until the time I retired. That is over 45 years of max deductions
taking for social security. Do you plan on giving me back what was
taken in a lump sum so I can have my retirement. How do you account for
the interest I would have received for all those years. And you are
talking about millions of people in that circumstances. How do you
handle people who are 50 and have paid in for 30+ years. Gonna give
them their money back? What you have to do is account for all that
first before you decide to cancel social security or medicare, etc.
Same with NPR or PBS or CPB. What are you going to do with those
stations and employees and their programming. They have taken over the
primary support of certain types of programming. In the old days when I
was a kid we did have all kinds of programming on radio and we had the
classics on television as well as the currently popular entertainment.
How are you going to handle that situation. The people who are involved
in these less popular entertainments are needed as well. You need a
plan to handling that as well. It is all well and good to say let the
market decide but the market decided in the popular cable shows. There
is no niche for these entertainments in the popular markets as there was
because the government took over that function. You need to account for
getting that out there in some way for now to handle that. Right now
what is happening is that FOX, who, remember, already had Juan working
for them on a part time basis stepped up and hired him full time. That
covered that situation and the same will happen with Mara Liasson as the
dingbat CEO of NPR mentioned she was also on thin ice with NPR. Come up
with a plan to handle what NPR is offering that gets those offerings
back out there in the general market and then cut them off. That is
what needs to be done.
I would suggest that the same approach be taken with all the entitlement
programs. You need to have a soft landing for those who are the
"entitled" or else you will be hit with the same game that the Libs are
playing over and over every time you talk about losing this or that
entitlement, "but what about the cheeellllldddddrrrrreeeeennnnn" or
whatever else is there. You have to be ready to answer to that. You
have to get people back to thinking about taking responsibility for
their own lives. For far too long that has not been necessary as the
government has gone about educating people that Big Daddy will take that
nasty problem off your hands so you don't have to deal with it. People
have to be brought back to the point where they WILL deal with these
problems. It ain't here yet and that has to be reversed but it has to
be reversed in a way that the public will be ready to deal with it.
Again something that has to be ready on Day 1 if you are going to do
these things. You have to decide what parts of what the government has
taken over are really needed and what you are going to do to replace
those functions in the short term or you will not be able to sell it.
Your only other option is to make the public agree that those functions
are either not necessary or something they can do without for now until
they find a way to handle them in the near future. Again that is
something you don't have the luxury of doing right now.
On 11/03/2010 07:39 PM, MJ wrote:
/"The right-wing reaction to the firing of Williams by NPR shows the
true nature of conservatives. As Jacob Hornberger recently wrote:
“Conservatives have come to accept the basic principles of the welfare
state and have chosen to devote their lives, resources, and efforts to
reforming it and improving it with what they call ‘market-oriented’
reforms.” "
/*NPR Flap Shows True Nature of Conservatives
*by Laurence M. Vance, November 3, 2010
Although it isn’t often that conservatives and Fox News come to the
defense of a liberal journalist, I come not to congratulate them, but
to condemn them.
Award-winning liberal journalist Juan Williams was fired by NPR on
October 20 for politically incorrect remarks he made about Muslims on
/The O’Reilly Factor/. Fox News then granted him a $2 million,
three-year contract.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich wants Congress to investigate NPR
for censorship and calls for “consider cutting off its public funding.”
NPR is “promoting a one-sided liberal agenda,” says Republican Senator
Jim DeMint. He plans to introduce legislation stripping NPR of its
federal funding.
Former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee says he will no
longer accept interview requests from NPR. He is likewise calling for
cuts in NPR’s federal funding, as is conservative darling Sarah Palin.
House Minority Whip Eric Cantor says the firing of Williams undermines
free speech. He wants to include NPR’s federal funding in a contest
that lets Americans vote on programs for Republicans to cut from the
budget.
The right-wing reaction to the firing of Williams by NPR shows the
true nature of conservatives. As Jacob Hornberger recently wrote:
“Conservatives have come to accept the basic principles of the welfare
state and have chosen to devote their lives, resources, and efforts to
reforming it and improving it with what they call ‘market-oriented’
reforms.”
NPR has been around since 1970. Yet, we rarely hear calls from
conservatives or Republicans to eliminate its public funding unless
its “liberal bias” becomes particularly egregious. Republicans under
Gingrich controlled the Congress during the last six years of
Clinton’s presidency. Why didn’t they drastically slash the funding of
NPR then? During the Bush presidency, Republicans controlled the House
for six years and the Senate for over four years. Why wasn’t NPR’s
budget eliminated then?
It is only when some government agency or program does something that
conservatives and Republicans don’t like that they ever talk about
cutting its budget or eliminating it. Does House Republican whip
Cantor object to “free-speech zones” where critics of the president
are relegated? Of course he doesn’t, at least not when the president
is George W. Bush or other Republican.
NPR is a creation of LBJ’s Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).
The CPB gives funds to local public radio stations that in turn give
money to NPR for the right to receive programming. Eight of the nine
current members of the board of the CPB were appointed by President
Bush. Why did Bush bother to make the appointments? The CPB budget for
fiscal year 2009 (Bush’s last budget) was $400 million. Why did Bush
sign any legislation appropriating funds for the CPB?
Something similar to the NPR flap happened during the early 1990s
regarding the National Endowment for the Arts’ (NEA) funding what
conservatives charged was blasphemous and pornographic art. Although
the budget of the NEA was cut to just under $100 million in 1996, its
budget for fiscal year 2009 (again, Bush’s last budget) was up to $155
million.
Conservatives miss the real issue here. The real issue is not
censorship by NPR. The real issue is not NPR’s liberal bias. The real
issue is not how much of NPR’s budget is funded with tax money. The
real issue is not whether NPR or the CPB or the NEA is funded with
tax money at all.
The real issue is whether the federal government has any business
forming a network of radio and television stations, allocating the
broadcast spectrum, licensing the stations, regulating communications
via the Federal Communications Commission, and setting up
quasi-private non-profit corporations like the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting.
The real issue is whether we should have a nanny, regulatory,
interventionist state.
Statists come in two varieties: left and right, Democrat and
Republican, liberal and conservative. Only libertarians see the real
issues, and only libertarians have real solutions, ones based on
genuine principles of liberty.
http://www.fff.org/comment/com1011d.asp --
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