Sunday, February 13, 2011

NPR and PBS are in danger of being eliminated by Congress


Our Republican Congress is aiming to eliminate all funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which would erase National Public Radio, PBS, and other public media from our lives. The cuts are claimed to be due to budget constraints, but a small fraction of a percent of the total budget helps to pay for public media.

In Ohio, we have already seen strong-armed (and successful) efforts to eliminate statewide rail from the radar, after years of planning and even federal funding allocation. More recently, newly elected Ohio Governor John Kasich has cut $70 million in state transit funding. Now, the possibility of nixed public media is threatening.

Please visit the CREDO action petition site to learn more about looming elimination of public media funding.

Below, I have included my letter to Congress via the petition in the link above. Please, strongly consider sharing your words with Congress.

Respectable members of Congress,

The high cost of eliminating public television and radio is abominable. The higher cost of eliminating public options across the board is stifling and offensive. In the past two months, as an Ohio Resident, I have witnessed years of statewide rail planning quashed by the sentiment of then-governor-elect John Kasich. He has since eliminated $70 of public transit funding in Ohio. Now you want to take away public radio and television for all, in the name of "budget issues".

I am offended by the narrowly representative interest of Republicans in Congress, who aim to take action against an "overinflated government". However, it is the government-aided non-profit organizations, institutional and public construction projects, and others that defend a public process and provision for all. In the case of PBS and NPR, listeners and viewers keep them afloat but government funding keeps it alive.

We need public radio and television to maintain last remaining near-non-partisan media outlets. Private enterprise has changed the way we are delivered the news--special interest groups with enormous lobbying power, former big oil/ag/industry executives appointed to government positions, and so on. These decisions are not in the interests of Americans but in the interests of the sovereign well-dressed and self-interested.

Please do not take away from us what millions actively support and value.


Sincerely,
XXXXXXX