Everyone in politics is against waste, fraud and abuse…until they find themselves in a position to do something about it, then they go radio silent. They talk a good game, but that’s it. Action, in politics at least, is a difficult commodity to come by. Rather than waiting for everyone to agree, or even some from the other side to come on board, Republicans need to strike hard while they can and gut as much of the garbage in government as they can, starting with National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service.
Isn’t it odd how so many people get rich off taxpayer money? I bet you aren’t one of them, I know I’m not. But people do – cash flying out the doors and windows of government agencies and landing in bank accounts of mostly left-wing activists while we get stuck with the bill. With the Department of Government Efficiency, that gravy train is at risk, maybe not of being stopped completely – Democrats will fight tooth and nail to protect their own and only their own – but of being exposed, which could be worse.
The left doesn’t want people to know that so many of their own got rich off of our money. Pretty much every show you see on PBS is produced by a leftist and they are paid handsomely with tax dollars to make it. Then, when the DVDs or digital copies go on sale, we don’t recoup our investment with a little profit, no, everyone but us gets paid. We, the taxpayers, take the risk and everyone else gets the reward. Does that seem fair?
Let these people compete in the open market. Some channel, some network out there will happily shovel Ken Burns whatever he wants for his next “God, this country sucks but we’d suck less if we simply elected Democrats” multi-parted “documentary” so we wouldn’t have to. But I bet Burns would hate it because their money would come with accountability attached to it – the kryptonite of the left.
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On the radio it’s just as bad. Literally dozens of people earn six-figure salaries for positions ranging from host to God knows what. And those are only the ones they’re forced to report (and two years ago, which is the newest data available).
Who knew you could get rich off of “charity” work? No wonder so many Democrats become multi-millionaires “helping" the poor.
The testimonies of the CEOs of NPR and PBS last week should have been the death blow for both, but this isn’t the first time these people have been exposed. Previous occupants of those jobs have been fending off accusations of bias and mismanagement for as long as I can remember.
“Taxpayer funding is just a drop in the bucket, a few pennies of each taxpayers’ taxes, not enough to even notice,” they have always said. But every drop in a bucket gets you wet, not individual ones, and “pennies” from a hundred million plus Americans adds up.
Most importantly, and the biggest tell they offer, is if it’s such a tiny, insignificant even, amount, why do they fight like hell for it every time it’s an issue? Lobbyists are hired, a PR strategy launched, and the highly paid leaders willingly humiliate themselves for an amount of money they make seem like they wouldn’t bother to stoop to pick up off the street.
There’s a disconnect in there somewhere, right?
PBS and NPR don't run the stations across the nation that carry their programs, they license programming to them. Those affiliates pay fees to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to be a part of the group. Appropriations for those stations, and ultimately those fees, doesn’t manifest itself from sales of Rick Steves DVDs.
There is a lot more happening here than we know and can see. The way government runs its accounting and how they hide so much of it in the form of grants or deliberately confusing appropriations isn’t an accident. DOGE is catching the surface stuff, the payments and deals Democrats and the administrative state were too arrogant and lazy to hide because they’d been getting away with it for so long. When they dig down deep, that’s where they’ll find the real money.
And that’s where Republicans have to start pulling. Weeds grow back if you don’t destroy the root, PBS and NPR are the same way. No money, not one dime, explicitly. Destroy the infrastructure that funnels money to them and forbid, in legislation, its reconstitution without the expressed, on the record will of Congress and the president.
Let these money-making enterprises make money on their own and live within the means they provide for themselves, like everyone else. They can spend more time begging or hobnobbing with the wealthy leftists they cater to and get them to pick up the difference. Leave taxpayers the hell alone.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.
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