http://www.indiewire.com/2017/02/trump-wants-to-kill-pbs-national-endowment-for-the-arts-1201785102/ The NEA supports Art Therapy, which helps both the Elderly and veterans returning with Brain Damage and PTSD... and PBS helps bring educational an quality programming to millions of underprivileged children... I remember watching things like Sesame Street when I was super young and looking back can see how it helped reinforce basic skills like math and english. It isn't surprising, to be honest... they don't want intelligent critical thinkers... they want people that won't question what they tell them to believe. Cest 'la vie... Meanwhile, they are willing to spend tens of millions a weekend at Trump owned properties... it must be nice to be able to pay yourself millions out of the Taxpayers pockets without any sort of oversight...
We live in a bad joke, if PBS goes I don't think I would feel it, I'm so numb inside, I feel like a goth teenager.
This is just the latest round in the right wing war on the free press. Republicans have long hated the free press.
Public services of all kinds are on the chopping block. First, what's regarded by many as "frills" - art and culture, educational children's programming, community information and issues - not least important of those being the African-American community, which is currently represented exclusively on PBS - and history with no fictional bias. Then science and nature. Next, affordable health insurance, pensions, housing and welfare benefits. Then public schools. Then all government functions outside of the tax[below $1,000,0000/yr]collection, military [borders included], spying and crowd control [in all forms]. This is the only possible agenda of an administration that has 1. declared itself, repeatedly, an enemy of all public institutions and then 2. appoints to the head of each department the most virulent enemy of that department. The ultimate goal, quite obviously, is to abolish government for of or by the people. The only up-side is, there will not be much empire left for the dynasty lined up behind this superannuated Nero to inherit.
That would be a start, but you can't possibly keep up with funding all the services they're about to withhold. Especially as they are, at the same time, giving themselves massive tax exemptions, and putting the entire burden of government on the lower 99% of the population - which actually only about half, since so many are already below the poverty line, and a lot more about to sink. There will be no new jobs, except as prison and border guards, and maybe some service, construction and farm labour - at bare subsistence level, since the minimum wage laws will also be struck down and unions disenfranchised. Especially as the budgets of clandestine agencies, military spending, and the militarizing of police are about to rise yet again (Arms manufacturing is a big, lucrative industry!) Also, expect a ban on political protest, once the fiction of paid protestors stops working even on the dumb-as-dirt Trump support base. You'll have to think long and hard about where to commit both your money and your energy. There's some very, very dark time coming.
Moving to Canada, Iceland, or any of the Danish nations sounds like a good place to put said money and energy TBH... seems like now is a good time to GTFO of dodge before we are sealed in by Iron Curtain 2.0 / Berlin Wall Redux
But Canada is fast - i mean, really fast! even in the very cold prairies - filling up with refugees, and no end in sight. Denmark certainly can't sustain another onslaught. Iceland has always had the good sense to control immigration very tightly (It's a tiny island with little vegetation.)
Aye, but Iceland also uses geothermal power for the bulk of their needs Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I've always supported public TV and public radio with donations but I quit a couple of years ago. Public radio became whiny and way too one-sided (leftist) and the local PBS station shows in "full screen" mode, chopping off both sides of the picture. Meh.
Well that's certainly one valid response to the stifling of all diversity of expression. Who needs a culture, anyway, when they have .... um... What will they have left, exactly?
That's an arrogant position, to think that only NPR and PBS have any culture. There is plenty of crap on both. Plenty. Watch PBS for one whole day. 24 hrs. And then you'll see. Meh. Yours is the same arrogant attitude that fills NPR and PBS. NPR and PBS are as biased to the left as Fox News is biased to the right. I don't care for either side anymore.
As I say, that's a valid response. If these stations are, indeed, biased to the left, then the left disappears. Fox isn't disappearing. Crap isn't disappearing. You didn't answer my question: What will people have?
Complete bullshit. They are biased to the right, if anything. Where does that kind of strange nonsense get started? (And sorry to step on the question of what would be left were they gone - but seriously, once granted that kind of presumption stifles any possibility of thought)
To the right. Yes, of course. To the right. (giggles) You're a funny guy. (walks away giggling . . . Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!)
It's just a plain and obvious fact. Anyone on the left will tell you the same thing. It's not a complete cooption, just a statistical or time and motion tilt on issues that have both left and right viewpoints (they tend to dwell longer and more frequently on the right viewpoint, adopt its framing vocabulary, and feature more of its spokesmen. When they make a mistake, as with for example their coverage of the selling of the Iraq War, it favors the right) NPR and PBS lean a bit right. Not much, but some. Apparently you have no idea what a left bias would even look like. Why not? For example: a left perspective does not involve giving time and respect to guys like David Brooks. An actual left bias - even a small one - would exclude him from the airwaves almost completely. If he's sharing the air, or anyone like him, the entire program has a rightwing bias (not a "balance", because fraud and bullshit does not balance good faith and honest analysis).
Thing is, afaik, PBS is the only network that covers Black issues and airs serious, well-made documentaries on American history. When that's gone, it will be all that much easier to revise history. Not everyone understands the implications, but it's important. In a racist and increasingly fascist regime, it's a crucial part of the strategy.
