David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place. Is our children learning?
… President Bush famously asked once, and now, he has answered his question: Nope.
Bush is proposing to slash the budget for public television –already only a mere droplet in the bucket in a $3 trillion budget he has proposed – in more than half, from $820 million to $420 million. And he apparently has stricken it from the books in the year 2011 – he’s allocated no money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting then, when traditionally it’s financed three years ahead of time to protect it from political meddling.
From the story:
“CPB President Patricia Harrison called the proposed reductions ‘draconian.’
“The federal funds make up about 16% of a local station's budget, on average. However, some small stations in rural communities depend on the money to operate and could be forced to shut down if the cuts are approved, she said.
"‘What the cuts do is hit those stations least able to continue,’ Harrison said.
This isn’t the first time the Bush Administration has persecuted CPB. In 2005, it was revealed that then-FCC chief Kenneth Tomlinson had authorized and paid for a possibly illegal monitoring of PBS programming for “liberal” content, which led to allegations of some sort of right-wing coup within CPB’s ranks and Tomlinson’s resignation before an investigation determined wrongdoing.
It’s sort of unfathomable that CPB is such a favorite whipping boy in Washington, when PBS is generally respected, if considered in some circles as slightly dotty. Together, they produce and air intelligent, educational and often valuable programming. And the tax dollars keep an awful lot of people employed and contributing to the economy, as opposed to, say, the billions upon billions Bush has flushed down that sinkhole in Iraq to Halliburton and Blackwater.
Bush seems to have an almost pathological belief in – and need to prove – that trope in some conservative circles that government just can’t help people. Witness just a couple of his greatest hits – the botched response to Hurricane Katrina and continued inability or unwillingness to accelerate the rebuilding of New Orleans and his vetoing of the overwhelmingly popular SCHIP bill, which would have provided health insurance to children. And now, here’s CPB, another baby he wants to drown in its shallow puddle of bathwater.
Ah. Still caught up in the fury of all that Super Tuesday blogging, it seems.