A quick read of the Constitution, particularly the 10th Amendment, will serve to inform the reader that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which largely funds National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, never should have received a penny of taxpayers’ money, ever. Nothing, not a brass farthing, not a groat, not a red cent, not a wooden nickel, and not a brass oboul.
But for years, they’ve been absorbing this unearned, undeserved, and unconstitutional increment-until now, when the One Big Beautiful Bill turned the spigot off.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has now announced it will take its ball and go home.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) said Friday it will begin “an orderly wind-down of its operations” after seeing its budget cut through GOP-led legislation.
“Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” CPB President Patricia Harrison said in a statement.
“CPB remains committed to fulfilling its fiduciary responsibilities and supporting our partners through this transition with transparency and care,” her statement continued.
That makes it sound as though they’ve been considering this possibility for some time. Here’s my question: If their programming is worthwhile, if their message is good, why should they need to be propped up, endlessly, by the taxpayers? Any product or service that requires government subsidies to exist shouldn’t exist. The CPB could advise NPR and PBS to start ramping up their donation drives, or to perhaps start selling a few ads; instead, they seem to have chosen to surrender. Well, that was always one of the options.
“They have crossed over in many areas where they have gotten into commercialization, where they’re actually doing commercials on their air and not staying in their lane,” Rep. Mark Alford (R-Mo) told The Hill last month. “And I think there’s a liberal, progressive bent towards NPR and PBS.”
“I don’t think the American taxpayer should be funding journalism, but I was in the media for 35 years, and I competed as a commercial broadcaster against their product,” he said.
A liberal bent? That’s something of an understatement. NPR and PBS have been playgrounds of the nutcase left for so long now that it’s become a trope. Case in point: A friend of ours, who runs a coffee shop in a small town in upstate New York, has as a great proportion of his customers AWFLs – “Affluent White Female Liberals.” Comes with the territory, we can suppose. But among the AWFLs, there’s a subset, the hard core, the real strident Subaru-driving lefties, and he calls them the “NPR Ladies.”
Although we should note, these are the people who should be paying for NPR and PBS. If they want these leftie networks to stay in place, then fine, they can get out their checkbooks. If not, then pipe down while we gloat about no longer having a portion of our hard-earned money spent to make your Birkenstocks-wearing butt feel good.
Read More: This Week’s Tsunami Scare Proved One Thing – No One Relies on NPR
Rep. Alford is right; the American taxpayer should not be on the hook for this. And now, thanks to President Trump, the GOP-controlled House and Senate, and the One Big Beautiful Bill, we no longer are.
Editor’s Note: President Trump is leading America into the “Golden Age” as Democrats try desperately to stop it.
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