NPR: House Passes $9 Billion Rescission Bill Clawing Back Already-Appropriated Billion Dollars for NPR and PBS

I want to cite NPR for this. Might be one of their last stories.

Congress rolls back $9 billion in public media funding and foreign aid

Waaah. Scramble the Bird Hands.

The House has approved a Trump administration plan to rescind $9 billion in previously allocated funds, including $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) -- a move that cuts all federal support for NPR, PBS and their member stations -- and about $7 billion in foreign aid.

The vote of 216-to-213 included all but two Republicans in favor of the cuts. The bill goes next to President Trump for his signature.

Immediately after the vote, NPR CEO Katherine Maher issued a statement calling the cut an "irreversible loss" to the public radio system. She said the effect would be "an unwarranted dismantling of beloved local civic institutions, and an act of Congress that disregards the public will."

Bird Hands locked in attack position.

"Public funding has enabled the flourishing of a uniquely American system of unparalleled cultural, informational, and educational programming, and ensured access to vital emergency alerting and reporting in times of crisis -- all for about $1.60 per American, every year. Parents and children, senior citizens and students, tribal and rural communities -- all will bear the harm of this vote," Maher said.

North Carolina Rep. Alma Adams was among the Democrats who rose to defend public broadcasting. "When Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina last year, public broadcasting was there when traditional communications failed," she said. "Widespread power, cellular and internet outages meant that for thousands of North Carolinians, public radio was how they received their news."

The House move follows a "vote-a-rama" late Wednesday and into early Thursday in the Senate to consider a series of amendments to the rescission package -- all but one of which failed on largely party-line votes. Republicans repeatedly voted to block changes to President Trump's request, known as a rescission. The single amendment that passed was aimed at protecting PEPFAR, the U.S. AIDS relief initiative created under President George W. Bush.

The House vote on Thursday means CPB will lose $1.1 billion meant to fund it through the next two years, while the bill also cuts $7.9 billion in other programs. CPB acts as a conduit for federal money to NPR, PBS and their member stations. Although NPR, which produces news programs such as Morning Edition and All Things Considered, relies on direct federal funds for only a small portion of its budget, its approximately 1,000 member stations get a heftier portion of their operating revenue through CPB.

The network has warned that many of those stations -- especially those broadcasting to rural areas or to underserved audiences, such as Native Americans -- could be forced to shut down as a result of the funding rollback.

Weird that the Bird Hands People never mention the real audience served by NPR -- wealthy white women drinking boxed wine, ignoring their children, masturbating to Kamala Harris speeches, and casting spells to reunite the timeline.

You may wonder what I meant by that. Consider it foreshadowing for a later post.

South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds announced earlier this week that he had struck a deal to use money allocated during the Biden administration to continue funding 28 stations serving Native American listeners in nine states. However, Native Public Media President and CEO Loris Taylor called the compromise "structurally impractical," in a letter to Rounds.

You might remember that the Senate diverted some money earmarked for "climate change" to fund Native American radio stations. I guess this is what they're talking about.

It's gay and Mike Rounds has disqualified himself forever from any higher office. Fuck you. The GOP does not need any "male" Bird Hands People.

PBS CEO and President Paula Kerger said Thursday that the move to cut public broadcasting "goes against the will of the American people, the vast majority of whom trust PBS and believe we provide excellent value to their communities."

Just another completely fair-and-balanced report from NPR.

With its nightly PBS News Hour and children's programming, such as Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, PBS gets around 15% of their revenue through CPB.

"These cuts will significantly impact all of our stations, but will be especially devastating to smaller stations and those serving large rural areas," Kerger said. "Many of our stations which provide access to free unique local programming and emergency alerts will now be forced to make hard decisions in the weeks and months ahead."

A Harris Poll last week found that 66% of Americans support federal funding for public radio, with the same share calling it a good value. Support included 58% of Republicans and 77% of Democrats. The online poll surveyed 2,089 U.S. adults with a 2.5 percentage point margin of error.

In recent years, NPR has landed increasingly in the crosshairs of conservatives, who have accused the network of left-wing political bias and "woke" programming. The publication last year of an essay authored by then-NPR business editor Uri Berliner critical of the network's coverage only reinforced the notion, providing ammunition to NPR's detractors.

In the piece published by The Free Press, an online site embraced by journalists who believe the mainstream media is too liberal, Berliner argued that an NPR drive for greater diversity in its workforce had actually narrowed the network's viewpoint.

Shortly after the piece was published, Berliner was suspended and later resigned and became a contributing editor for The Free Press. NPR's chief news executive, Edith Chapin responded to Berliner's essay by saying the network covers "a wide range of challenging stories" and that inclusion among its staff and sourcing "is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world."

...

Democrats and Republicans alike have also raised concerns about the rescission process -- a rare move that hasn't been attempted in a quarter century. The lawmakers said rescission would make it harder for lawmakers to pass future appropriations bills to fund the government ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline.

"The only way we can fund the government is to get at least seven Democrats to vote with us at the end of Sept. 30, or we can go into a shutdown," Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said on the Senate floor Wednesday. "If I'm a Democrat, and you're trying to get me to vote and get to a 60-vote threshold to fund the government, and you've just betrayed a prior agreement and a prior appropriation -- what are the likelihood that they're going to do that?"

Can't wait until this asshole is out on the street begging for donations from George Soros.

Years back, my friend Mike Flynn -- the editor and Breitbart writer, not the general -- was part of a campaign called Defund the Left. The left, you see, constantly gets the government to pay for its own political operations to undermine the United States, capitalism, and the government themselves. The left is made up of communist revolutionaries, and communist revolutionaries, you may know, are not exactly in-demand as employees.

So what the left does is create thousands of make-work positions in the federal government to keep these communist revolutionaries paid by the loyal American taxpayers they wish to subvert, overthrow, and then enslave.

The left exists like a malignant parasite within the government and the major mediating institutions that serve a government-like purpose. This parasite will kill us, and in the meantime, it sucks us dry providing nothing in return but constant subversion and perversion.

We have to get serious about finally Defunding the Left.

This is a good first step, but it's only a first step, nothing more.

Below, some whining from the left about taxpayers no longer funding part of their political operations to enslave them.

posted by Ace at 01:18 PM

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