Since the loss of the election, there’s a new reason the progressives are in a panic.
They may lose some of their favorite, government-funded programs. On the grand scheme, these programs (NPR and PBS for example), consume billions of dollars each and every year.
Not only are they overly expensive, but their expenses increase each year. Past attempts to eliminate these expenses have been unsuccessful. Now that Republicans control both Congress and the White House, a task once thought impossible, is now within reach.
National Public Radio | Photo Credit WikiMedia Commons
NPR and CPB Accepting Billions
National Public Radio (NPR) and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) are two examples of non-profit organizations that are funded by the government. Despite belonging to the government as non-profits, they are high-priority government programs with an overall liberal agenda.
During the 2013 government shutdown, NPR was given a $445 million dollar advance while cancer trials within the National Institutes of Health were completely cut. This is outrageous, but it continues to happen each and every year.
Some of this responsibility falls on Senator Harry Reid, who is a patron of the arts who has referred to bills trying to eliminate arts as “mean-spirited.”
He discussed such events at the cowboy poetry festival in Nevada. A program where “tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist.”
National Public Radio | Photo Credit WikiMedia Commons
Paying the Arts Instead of Health Care?
While the arts are beneficial to some, providing money for arts over health is something else entirely. One premier PBS station is WGHB, which creates over two-thirds of the programming for PBS. The Boston Herald published an article about the payroll for these executives.
The Herald said, “Executives were raking in upwards of $200,000 a year while oiling in the lap of a luxurious $85 million multimedia palace dubbed “The Taj Mahal.” Within this luxurious dwelling, there is a state-of-the-art recording studio, a 200-seat amphitheater, a Hamburg-Steinway grand piano, and smaller details such as waterless urinals. WGBH’s CEO, Jonathan Abbott, rakes in about $425,000 annually.
To defend these salaries, WGBH claims they are competing with larger media companies in terms of talent, but it’s apples and oranges when comparing government-funded programs to for-profit companies. Hopefully the Trump Administration can slow down these bloated salaries in the next four years.
So what’s more important to you? Public radio or health care?
