The House vote on de-funding NPR today

 Congress is rather famously--infamously, to me and a lot of us--today voting on whether to de-fund NPR (originally National Public Radio).

This drives me nearly crazy.

We fund churches and religions and all kinds of goofy institutions that merely call themselves "church", by way of insane tax breaks, then we give federal tax dollars to some nonsensical things called "faith-based institutions" (thanks very much, Dubya) but we want to de-fund this huge source of more logical, calm, clear-minded, rational news gatherers that serve this country so bloody well?

And for that matter, what they do for the arts and so, for all Americans, shouldn't be overlooked, either.

Today, on that very same NPR, there was a story about American soldiers who aren't getting Purple Heart medals even though they've gotten concussions from front-line wars and explosions.  The military is denying them.

If NPR weren't around, if this funding goes away, who is going to report on this kind of thing?  This information wouldn't exist but for NPR and the CPB and this federal funding.

There's another report out right now by and from NPR on "How Offshore Tax Havens Save Corporations Billions".  And you know what?  As citizens of this country, we need to know this stuff.  Does anyone think ABC, NBC, CBS or--laughably--Fox "News" is going to report on such a thing?

Hell no they wouldn't.

So you and I wouldn't know how this part of our tax laws and government is working.  Or, rather, not working, in this case.

Sure, corporate Amerika hates this high-brow information source because they don't want the likes of Bill Moyers and his reporting or the new "Need to Know" television program.  The less we know about corporations and what corporations do within our government and so, to us and the country, the happier the corporations are and the more tax breaks and cozy deals they get from their pals inside the government, whom they buy with "campaign contributions."

No NPR?  What's next?  No Corporation for Public Broadcasting?  No PBS?

Allow me to post some quotes here:

Jefferson, Education and the Franchise, by Professor Thomas Jewett 

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." (as cited in Padover, 1939, p. 89)

". . . whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that, whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them right." (as cited in Padover, 1939, p. 88)


From that same Professor Thomas Jewett, writing in Jefferson, Education and the Franchise:

The preparation of the voter so that he might express his opinion by means of the ballot, thus insuring political liberty, was one of the main goals of Jefferson's plan for education which asserted four basic principles:

1. "that democracy cannot long exist without enlightenment.
2. that it cannot function without wise and honest officials.
3. that talent and virtue, needed in a free society, should be educated regardless of wealth, birth or other accidental condition.
4. that the children of the poor must be thus educated at common expense." (as cited in Padover, 1952, p. 43)

Here, conversely, is but one example why corporations and their Republican lackeys don't want you and I to have the CPB, PBS, NPR or knowledge and information about what they're doing to, with and in our government:


"You can only get really unpopular decisions through if the electorate is convinced of the value of the environment. That's what natural history programmes should be for."  --David Attenborough 


The more we know and so, the more we vote and act, regardless of the topic, the less the corporations can get away with, ladies and gentlemen.


And they'll be only too happy to do just that--get away with all they can.


Keeping you and I ignorant suits them very nicely, thank you very much.


Links: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/17/npr-funding-vote_n_837014.html
http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/winter96/jefferson.html
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2313338
http://www.npr.org/2011/03/17/134619750/how-offshore-tax-havens-save-companies-billions?ft=1&f=1001
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170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting

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