GAY RELUBRICANTS Where are you now? lulz

Great article about the npr bs:
http://demint.senate.gov/public/ind...ecord_id=6a89220c-f5ed-4730-b214-1bd19c214e65

March 7, 2011
Public Broadcasting Should Go Private
If these outfits can afford to pay lavish salaries to their heads, they don't need taxpayer help.
The Wall Street Journal
by Jim DeMint
When presidents of government-funded broadcasting are making more than the president of the United States, it's time to get the government out of public broadcasting.

While executives at the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR) are raking in massive salaries, the organizations are participating in an aggressive lobbying effort to prevent Congress from saving hundreds of millions of dollars each year by cutting their subsidies. The so-called commercial free public airwaves have been filled with pleas for taxpayer cash. The Association of Public Television Stations has hired lobbyists to fight the cuts. Hundreds of taxpayer-supported TV, radio and Web outlets have partnered with an advocacy campaign to facilitate emails and phone calls to Capitol Hill for the purpose of telling members of Congress, "Public broadcasting funding is too important to eliminate!"

PBS President Paula Kerger even recorded a personal television appeal that told viewers exactly how to contact members of Congress in order to "let your representative know how you feel about the elimination of funding for public broadcasting." But if PBS can pay Ms. Kerger $632,233 in annual compensation—as reported on the 990 tax forms all nonprofits are required to file—surely it can operate without tax dollars.

The executives at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which distributes the taxpayer money allocated for public broadcasting to other stations, are also generously compensated. According to CPB's 2009 tax forms, President and CEO Patricia de Stacy Harrison received $298,884 in reportable compensation and another $70,630 in other compensation from the organization and related organizations that year. That's practically a pittance compared to Kevin Klose, president emeritus of NPR, who received more than $1.2 million in compensation, according to the tax forms the nonprofit filed in 2009.

Today's media landscape is a thriving one with few barriers to entry and many competitors, unlike when CPB was created in 1967. In 2011, Americans have thousands of news, entertainment and educational programs to choose from that are available on countless television, radio and Web outlets.

Despite how accessible media has become to Americans over the years, funding for CPB has grown considerably. In 2001, the federal government appropriated $340 million for CPB. Last year it got $420 million. As Congress considers ways to close the $1.6 trillion deficit, cutting funding for the CPB has even been proposed by President Obama's bipartisan deficit reduction commission. Instead, Mr. Obama wants to increase CPB's funding to $451 million in his latest budget.

Meanwhile, highly successful, brand-name public programs like Sesame Street make millions on their own. "Sesame Street," for example, made more than $211 million from toy and consumer product sales from 2003-2006. Sesame Workshop President and CEO Gary Knell received $956,513 in compensation in 2008. With earnings like that, Big Bird doesn't need the taxpayers to help him compete against the Nickleodeon cable channel's Dora the Explorer.

Taxpayer-subsidized broadcasting doesn't only make money from licensing and product sales. It also raises plenty of outside cash.

Last year, for example, the Open Society Foundation, backed by liberal financier George Soros, gave NPR $1.8 million to help support the latter's plan to hire an additional 100 reporters. When NPR receives million-dollar gifts from Mr. Soros, it is an insult to taxpayers when other organizations, such as MoveOn.org demand that Congress "save NPR and PBS" by guaranteeing "permanent funding and independence from partisan meddling," as the liberal interest group did last month. It was even more insulting when PBS posted a message on Twitter thanking MoveOn.org—the group that once labeled Gen. David Petraeus as "General Betray Us"—for the help.

The best way to stop the "partisan meddling" in public broadcasting that MoveOn.org complains about is by ending the taxpayers' obligation to pay for it. The politics will be out of public broadcasting as soon as the government gets out of the business of paying for it.

Public broadcasting can pay its presidents half-million and million dollar salaries. Its children's programs are making hundreds of millions in sales. Liberal financiers are willing to write million-dollar checks to help these organizations. There's no reason taxpayers need to subsidize them anymore.​
 
those salaries are below commensurate with their positions in the real world. as usual you have no idea what you're talking about.
 
No. Even if it were true, it's Not Relevant.


As usual, you're desperate to keep the handouts rolling. no one is surprised.
It's COMPLETELY relevant because that's the whole argument; how much they get paid and therefore how much NPR costs to run. That's the whole crutch of the argument. And, just like most union positions, the salaries are LESS than most of the private sector.
 
On this note, don't cut anything.

1,000,000 projects can't possibly add up to much. . . .

Social Security, Defense, and Medicare. Those make up 70% of the entire budget. Any noticeable budget plans will address these three issues primarily. Everything else is political bullshit. The heart of the budget problem and the reason the budget will never improve is because both Republicans and Democrats love the big 70% items. People want their entitlements. Just cut from someone else. Don't take mine.
 
didn't the GAO reveal that this will actually net ZERO savings? more hot air from the right pretending like they give a shit and are making a difference.
 
handouts? you mean like what is happening with the war on drugs and privatization of our corrections system? or are you talking about the zillions of dollars we waste per year on national offense? a couple million for NPR means NOTHING
 
Yea, cutting 400 million usually nets zero. is our system so fucked up the money is still spent regardless?

Its gonna costs us approx. 400 million to track down and stop these checks because our government is so horribly inefficient?.
 
handouts? you mean like what is happening with the war on drugs and privatization of our corrections system? or are you talking about the zillions of dollars we waste per year on national offense? a couple million for NPR means NOTHING

A penny saved...

We need to get rid of the war on fictitious ideas like drugs and reduce the prisons we need doing so to end privatization of them.

theres never an excuse for gluttony yet you guys want to justify it. Npr should be able to sustain itself then it can lean whichever way it wants.
 
I don't care about the NPR thing really. in the grand scheme it's meaningless. we have bigger things to address but we're wasting time on this stupid nonsense which leaves me pretty incredulous.
 
We should get rid of homeland security, reduce defense spending, and severely reduce social security as well as the taxes that goto social security. Like wise, eliminate ss benefits for people like me and you and reserve it for disabled, etc. instead of simply retired.

it would have to be phased down to this since people for the last seventy years have paid into it and expect it to live on, but the younger generations could have the burden put onto themselves if we didn't pay what we do into ss currently.
 
I don't care about the NPR thing really. in the grand scheme it's meaningless. we have bigger things to address but we're wasting time on this stupid nonsense which leaves me pretty incredulous.

Amstel has a valid argument. It's just a stupid valid argument, with respect to the real budget pitfalls.
 
it's Not Relevant.

finally you catch onto something. it's not relevant because we exploded their salaries plus the entire funding for npr over some shitty little country that isn't a threat to us in the course of a single day yet you haven't bitched once about. you, like the rest of your party, are a goddamn hypocrite.