Public Broadcasting System

Project 2025: Attack On Crucial Government Agencies And Federal Regulations!

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Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation plan to promote massive right wing government in America, is a direct attack on crucial government agencies:

Eliminate the Department of Energy
Eliminate the Department of Education
Eliminate the Department of Commerce
Eliminate the Food and Drug Administration
Eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency
Eliminate the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Transform the Department of Justice to an agency controlled by the White House
Radically Change the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Radically Change the Department of Homeland Security
Repeal Dodd-Frank Financial Regulations
Reduce Business Regulations
End Funding of National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System
Privatize the Federal Aviation Administration
Repeal Net Neutrality regulations

The whole concept of an “Administrative State”, which has been part of American government since Theodore Roosevelt onward, and with both parties, Democrats and Republicans, is under threat, as it is also due to recent Supreme Court decisions!

Trump Proposal To Eliminate Corporation For Public Broadcasting (PBS And NPR) Must Be Prevented, Best Bargain In Government

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The total federal government cost for PBS and NPR (Corporation For Public Broadcasting) in the present budget is $495 million, a half billion dollars to promote education, knowledge, public affairs, history, science, culture on television and radio.

Formed in 1965 as part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs, PBS and NPR have done great work and deeds for more than a half century.

How much tens of millions of Americans have gained from both PBS and NPR is incalculable.

It only costs $1.65 per person in the federal budget, with both PBS and NPR also asking for and gaining private contributions from millions of Americans, who appreciate the good work it does.

Considering so much wasted money that is spent by the federal government, this half billion dollars is a pittance, well spent and worth sustaining.

It is all part of a plan of conservatives, Republicans, and Donald Trump to promote ignorance, and discourage education, as ignorant people can more easily be controlled.

This is a battle worth fighting, and hopefully, both these valuable contributions to public discourse will be protected, along with the National Endowment For The Arts and the National Endowment For The Humanities, which promotes the arts and humanities in higher education.

Fifty Years Of Corporation For Public Broadcasting, Public Broadcasting System, And National Public Radio, Due To Lyndon B. Johnson!

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The Corporation For Public Broadcasting was signed into law fifty years ago, in 1967, by President Lyndon B. Johnson, with the purpose of providing funding for public television and public radio.

Out of the legislation came the Public Broadcasting System (PBS), and National Public Radio (NPR).

Educational programming, including cultural and entertainment offerings, and investigation of history, science, nature, and news events and analysis, have been offered for a half century.

Children’s shows, including Sesame Street among its offerings, has enlightened the lives of generations of young people.

The American Experience; Nova; Frontline; Charlie Rose; Independent Lens; PBS News Hour; and Washington Week are among the great offerings of PBS.

On NPR, such programming as All Things Considered; Morning Edition; Fresh Air; On Point; and many Music shows are regularly available.

PBS and NPR are a great national treasure, and yet, if it was left up to Donald Trump and the Republican Party, it would be wiped out completely as far as tax support, although the total cost per person is extremely low, presently $455 million out of a $4 trillion national budget.

Each citizen in the United States pays $1.35 toward public broadcasting, a measly amount now in danger from a President who devalues education in a massive manner!

NPR gains 37.4 million listeners, and PBS has 350 stations across the nation. Listeners and watchers contribute about 86 percent of all funding, with federal, state, and local government putting in the additional 14 percent.

Public Media is one of the many gifts that Lyndon B. Johnson gave us, and it is essential to keep this wonderful contribution to our national culture alive and prospering with some government support!

Lyndon B. Johnson Forty Years After His Death: Mixed Legacy

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Forty years ago today, President Lyndon B. Johnson died at the age of 64, two days after the second inauguration of President Richard Nixon, an event he did not attend due to poor health.

Johnson had only been out of the Presidency for four years and two days, and one has to wonder had he run in 1968 and won, whether he would have died in office from the stresses and burdens of the job, and particularly the ongoing war in Vietnam.

Vietnam will always be the ultimate “Achilles Heel” of the Johnson Presidency, with the President hating foreign policy and just wishing for the Vietnam mess to go away, but his fateful decision to commit a half million troops to the war doomed the unity he had experienced in his landslide victory in 1964 over Senator Barry Goldwater, the greatest popular vote victory percentage in American history!

Johnson did so much good in expanding the vision of the New Deal of FDR, the Fair Deal of Harry Truman, and the New Frontier of JFK, and accomplished everything they pursued, and failed to accomplish in their Presidencies. And just yesterday, President Barack Obama evoked the image of the Great Society, and the goals that he outlined to expand that Great Society a half century later, after a long time in the political “wilderness”.

Without Johnson as President, we would not have had the following, in many cases, EVER up to now:

Medicare
Medicaid
Immigration Reform
Federal Aid to Education
Civil Rights Act
Voting Rights Act
War on Poverty—Office of Economic Opportunity, Job Corps, Project Head Start, Model Cities, and other programs
Environmental Legislation
Consumer Legislation
National Public Radio
Public Broadcasting System
National Endowment For The Arts
National Endowment For The Humanities
Gemini and Apollo Space Programs
Cabinet Agencies–Department of Housing and Urban Development and Department of Transportation
First African American appointments to the Cabinet–Robert Weaver–and the Supreme Court–Thurgood Marshall

Can anyone imagine NOT having most, if not all, of these programs and agencies?

Some might have been accomplished over time under other Presidents, but it is hard to conceive that much of it would have occurred with the rise over time of the conservative movement to power under Ronald Reagan, and Reagan’s impact on the next thirty years of American government until now.

As always is true of any President, Lyndon B. Johnson will remain highly controversial, but it is worth remembering his positive legacy on this, the 40th anniversary of his death, while not overlooking the damaging effect of his foreign policy actions, particularly in Vietnam.

The Budget Battle Over H.R. 1: Dishonest GOP, So No Further Cuts!

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The House Republicans claim to be working toward deficit reduction, and are threatening a government shutdown, and the answer, after looking at what they are demanding, is MAKE MY DAY! GO AHEAD AND SHUT THE GOVERNMENT DOWN! YOU WILL BE BLAMED FOR IT AS IN 1995!

The whole discussion is dishonest, because the debate is not just over deficit reduction!

Understand that the Democrats and President Barack Obama have agreed to $33 billion cuts, while the Republicans have demanded $61 billion, and some Tea Party Movement members of the GOP still want $100 billion!

But while the Democrats have compromised, the Republicans have not, and they have an agenda beyond deficit reduction!

The conservatives are trying to promote other causes in H. R. 1, and the Democrats need to stand strong and proud and show they have some backbone!

Why is this the case? Consider the following:

The Republicans want to block funding for the Obama Health Care law!

The Republicans want to ban funding for financial regulatory reform!

The Republicans want to block the Environmental Protection Agency from reducing mercury and other pollutants from cement plants!

The Republicans want to block the EPA from reducing carbon dioxide pollution from power plants and refineries!

The Republicans want to block Department of Education regulations on for-profit colleges, which have victimized students with high debts without helping them gain employment, an extremely corrupt system!

The Republicans want to prohibit funding for a consumer products complaints database!

They also want to prohibit federal funds being used by Planned Parenthood for women’s health services!

The Republicans want to wipe out family planning programs for poor women, which includes medical and health services!

Also, the desire is to wipe out National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System gaining any federal funding!

This attempt to wipe out education, health care, environmental protection, financial reform, and consumer reform, and ignore women’s issues is an attack on basic needs of the American people, in favor of the rich and the corporations, and MUST NOT be agreed to by Democrats!

As the old saying is, the Democrats should declare that they will negotiate a fair reduction in the deficit, but will NOT agree to such outrageous demands as above until HELL FREEZES OVER!

Republican Attack On PBS And NPR: Attempt To Suppress Knowledge And Analysis!

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The Republican Party is setting out to destroy the public education system nationally and in many states, and part of that attack is the plan to zero budget the Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio.

Both PBS and NPR have been contributing to the knowledge, entertainment, and education of the American people since the mid 1960s, part of the many contributions of the Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson.

But because conservatives and many Republicans hate both PBS and NPR because of their perceived liberal and progressive bent, they want to wipe it out, and take away all of the benefits of both over the past 45 years.

This is, effectively, promoting censorship and ignorance, and it should be condemned, and petitions, emails and phone calls need to be sent to the House of Representatives to call upon them to stop these intolerant steps, as they try to suppress freedom of expression.

The amount of public funding of PBS and NPR is so minimal, and will not have any real effect on the national debt or deficit.

It is short sighted and demagogic to call for the removal of public support for television and radio programming that is the highest quality found in the communications industry today!