National Public Radio

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

Ronald 1 Comment

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!

The Significance Of National Public Radio: Thoughtful, Incisive Coverage Of News And International Affairs, NOT Propaganda As Conservative Talk Radio Is!

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The Republican Party is out to destroy National Public Radio, which receives a small amount of its support from the federal government, but has been a major asset to the nation in all the years it has existed since Lyndon Johnson first promoted the concept in 1965!

National Public Radio offers thoughtful, incisive coverage of news and international affairs , not the propaganda and distortions of Conservative Talk Radio!

Listening to Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage, Mark Levin, and the other hate mongers who promote division and falsehoods over the airwaves, offers nothing but ignorance and distortion of the world we live in, and all hate anything foreign and prefer to promote narrow minded Christianity over open mindedness and tolerance. These despicable talk show hosts would rather enrich themselves than educate the American people in basic values and principles of our American democracy, or to assist them to appreciate the contributions of civilizations and societies around the world!

National Public Radio regularly gains massive financial support from thoughtful, educated listeners, who understand how important it is to civil discourse!

If we did not have National Public Radio, we would not have as much knowledge and insight into world events as we do, as many news organizations have cut back on coverage outside the United States because of budget cuts.

National Public Radio offers us the ability to interact with the world in a way that enriches every person who listens!

President Obama and the Democratic Senate will insure that National Public Radio remains available in smaller media markets where there are fewer media outlets, but the budget cuts will make the job of NPR more difficult to disseminate its quality coverage.

For the GOP to attack NPR, and also the educational contributions of PBS at the same time, is a opportunity to look into their souls and see just how narrow minded and bigoted and evil the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Dwight D. Eisenhower has become!

Not for a minute would any of these outstanding Republican Presidents tolerate such a narrow minded and jaded view as the leaders of the party have presented themselves in today’s environment! This attack on NPR is an attack on education and tolerance and everything good in human beings, and the promotion of an agenda that could rightly be called an attempt at “mind control” by the plutocracy that now controls the Republican Party establishment, as it assaults human rights in the name of profit!

The House Republican Budget: Very Clear What The Party Is Trying To Do To America!

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The House of Representatives Budget plan devised by the majority Republicans is a clear cut attack on the middle class and the poor, and all of the social and economic progress of the 20th century Presidents and Congresses which brought prosperity and a growing middle class to American society!

The budget document is an obscene attempt to promote the super wealthy and corporate agenda at the expense of the middle class, and the poor, and with no compassion or conscience displayed at all!

Imagine this:

1. The destruction of 700,000 jobs due to the budget cuts.

2. Cutting of three million low income people from community health centers.

3.Cutting of food and health care assistance to pregnant women, new mothers, and children.

4. Major cut in funds for Head Start.

5. End of federal funding for National Public Radio and PBS.

6. Forcing states to fire teachers and aides, making class sizes dramatically larger.

7. Cutting of some or all financial aid to over 9 million college students who are low income or middle income.

8. Slashing of funds to the National Institutes of Health, cutting research on cancer, Alzheimers, and Parkinsons diseases.

9. Cutting all support of Planned Parenthood, and family planning programs.

10. Putting 10,000 veterans into homelessness because of cuts in housing vouchers.

Other plans are in the works to prevent all abortions, cut the Environmental Protection Agency ability to protect against industrial pollution, and to do nothing to create new jobs, hoping to make economic conditions worse, with the hope that the American people would blame the Democrats and President Obama for the poorly performing economy!

This is a time for all decent people to make clear through calls and emails to their Congressmen and Senators that they will not tolerate the war on America’s middle class and the poor being perpetrated by the Republican Party!

It is time that excuses for budget cuts be replaced by tax increases on the wealthy and the corporations, who have to take responsibility on the national and state levels to help resolve the inequities that exist in America. They have received enough benefits over the past ten years, and really the past thirty years, and it is time to pay up as good, responsible Americans!

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!

Florida Governor Rick Scott: 30 Days Evaluation Bad Sign For The Future! :(

Ronald 4 Comments

Florida’s Republican Governor, Rick Scott, who suddenly emerged just nine months ago in politics, after having brought about the greatest Medicare scam ever through his health care company in the mid 1990s, has now been in office one month, and it is not a good sign for the future of Florida politics! 🙁

The concept that a corrupt, crooked business executive, who enriched himself on fraud, and yet was able to avoid prison time for his transgressions, could go ahead and spend $73 million of his ill begotten fortune to “buy” the Florida governorship, is enough of an outrage by itself! 🙁

But Scott, who overcame the GOP establishment in the state to win the nomination for Governor over Attorney General Bill McCollum, and went on to defeat Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink in the closest gubernatorial election in history (about 50,000 votes), has now shown just how arrogant and destructive he really is! 🙁

Scott is setting out to destroy the Florida Retirement System, and is trashing the public servants of Florida, who went into public service understanding the low pay of most public jobs, but were drawn to the FRS as an important benefit that made up for the lack of competitive salaries.

Scott is attempting to force all public employees to take a five percent paycut to contribute toward their pension plans, at a time when there have been no salary increases for a number of years. He also wishes to take other aspects of the FRS away, and make the pension system one of the worst in the nation! 🙁

Scott shows no respect for the significance and sacrifice of teachers, police, fire fighters, paramedics, nurses, librarians, prison guards, and all the other public servants who commit themselves to the myriad of jobs that the average Floridian takes for granted.

And Scott is declaring war on the teaching profession, which will only discourage new entries into the profession by young people, and will cause many to leave the field. To blame the teachers for failures of students, rather than place it on inadequate budgets and class sizes, and the essential role of parents and families on children’s learning, is an absolute outrage! 🙁

If teachers will not have respect, decent pay and benefits, and the backing of administrators, then we will lose the chance to gain the best young minds to go into our classrooms. Mediocrity will reign, and Florida will fall further back into what one could call a “third world” mentality, one of ignorance and
narrow mindedness! If we condemn and attack our teaching force, we lose the opportunity to gain the “best and the brightest” for the future and to put Florida into the 21st century!

Not only is Scott trying to destroy education, but also he has refused to enforce the Obama Health Care legislation, is sending back federal aid to implement it, and has encouraged legal attacks on the legislation, including the recent declaration by a Florida district court judge that the whole legislation is unconstitutional! Interesting that a former health care executive who engaged in fraud is leading the charge to destroy national health care, not giving a damn about the millions of Floridians and other Americans who have no access to health care! 🙁

Beyond all this, Scott refuses to communicate with the news media other than in so called “tweets”, comments no longer than 140 characters. He would rather speak to private groups such as the Tea Party, who he will be addressing privately this coming week about his budget plans. He requires journalists who wish to address him at a public gathering to stand up before asking a question, which he then answers in a few sentences, with no desire to really explain himself in detail. After all, he is the GOVERNOR, and need not be accountable! 🙁

His budget plans call for MASSIVE cuts in Medicaid and education, with no possibility of tax increases, even though it will devastate the state, lead to much higher unemployment, and make Florida more backward than ever. And unless his party in the legislature, more than two thirds membership in each house, have the guts to fight him, he will get his way. Realize that many Republicans have their private doubts about this man who refuses to explain himself in detail, and is known as difficult to talk to, even in private, as he thinks he has all the answers! 🙁

To top it off, there are now strong rumors that Rick Scott has national ambitions, and not just for 2016, even possibly for 2012! Newspapers in the state and National Public Radio are reporting that Scott hopes to make an impression with his budget, and his stands on the health care legislation, budget cuts, and education, and utilize it as a pretext to seek the Presidential nomination of his party! 🙁

A man who should be in prison for his Medicare fraud, who refuses to communicate with the news media, who is arrogant and nasty and dismissive toward his critics, who “bought” the Florida Governorship, seems to have no limits to his ego and ambitions! 🙁

This is the man that Florida has to deal with for the next four years at least, unless the whole nation is, somehow, bamboozled to make him our President in 2013. Let’s hope that terrible, nightmarish scenario never comes to be, and that maybe, just maybe, his own party in the Florida legislature may realize how his lack of ethics and belief in obeying the law in his past, may yet lead to such abuses in the state of Florida to warrant them to forget about party loyalty and move to impeach and remove him from office! 🙁

The Republicans And The State Of The Union: Not The Time For Obama To Cave In To GOP Threats! :(

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The Republicans have declared war on the federal budget, and the House membership of the party today unanimously backed a resolution giving Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, the Chairman of the Budget Committee, total control over the House budget bill for the remainder of the fiscal year 2010-2011.

This is fascinating for a party that is against centralized power and for states rights, that now they are willing to hand over total control to one Congressman over the federal budget. This makes Ryan a “Czar”, a title that Republicans are very willing to assign to advisers to President Obama who deal with different issues, but suddenly it is alright to have a financial “Czar”! 🙁

But Ryan, who will give the GOP response to President Obama’s State of the Union Address tonight, has already made clear that he wants to privatize Social Security, gut Medicare and Medicaid, and dramatically lower taxes on the wealthy, even more than they have already by deals between President Obama and the GOP leadership last month.

And the Republican Study Group, a group of Congressional Republicans even MORE conservative than Speaker of the House John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and Paul Ryan, wants more draconian cuts in the federal budget immediately and long term, including gutting Amtrak, PBS, NPR, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and funding for research on many diseases, including cancer, AIDS, and heart disease. And also the goal is the wiping out of the Department of Commerce, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Education, and the Department of Energy! 🙁

And to add insult to injury, Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, the Tea Party favorite, will give her own response to the President’s State of the Union address, after Congressman Paul Ryan gives the official response!

And Eric Cantor, House Majority Leader, has made it clear that the Congress will NOT give any aid to any state or city to avoid layoffs of police, firefighters, teachers, and other public servants, therefore guaranteeing massive losses of jobs, and adding to the unemployment rate!

Rather than working to create jobs, the GOP is warring on the job market as it is, and has only destructive intentions as part of a war, not only on Barack Obama’s health care plan and other reforms, but also with the express purpose of destroying the Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson and the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt! 🙁

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said today that if President Obama offers a message that includes all of what the GOP wants, they will be glad to support him!

What gall and nerve, without any indication that the Republicans in Congress are willing to make any concessions, but just expect Obama to cave in ! 🙁

The answer is that the President needs to make clear that he is willing to work and negotiate with the opposition party, but will not surrender the right to disagree and use his Presidential powers to protect government programs and the historic accomplishments of Roosevelt, Johnson and even Richard Nixon!

The President and the Democratic Party and progressives and liberals everywhere MUST understand that this is a battle for the heart and soul of the American nation, and they cannot cave in to the destructive tendencies of the Republican party, and must stand and fight to the bitter end, and stop worrying about those who say they are unwilling to negotiate and compromise, and tell them to look in the mirror at themselves! 🙁

National Public Radio Wrong To Fire Juan Williams Over Fears Of Muslim Garb On Airplanes! :(

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Political commentator Juan Williams, who has long been involved in the civil rights community with his writings and work on African American history, has just been fired by National Public Radio for expressing his views about Islamic clothing.

Williams said on the Bill O’Reilly show on Fox News Channel that he is not prejudiced against the Islamic faith, but that it strikes fear in his heart when he sees people in full Islamic clothing on airplanes, as it brings back memories of September 11, 2001.

Such a statement is purely freedom of speech; it is not expressing anti Islamic hatred, as many others have done.

It is a common thought of many Americans because of the events of September 11, as it makes many Americans uncomfortable.

It is not stating that Muslims should not be free to wear such garb. It is just an opinion and expression of a fear which is quite common.

Juan Williams is a quality journalist, and firing him is unjustified! It does not make NPR look very good, as it is stifling freedom of speech!

This is not the same as Rick Sanchez being fired by CNN for his anti Semitic comments about Jews in the media, and perceived discrimination against Hispanics in the media, including himself!

If one is a journalist, and cannot express his thoughts in a non hateful way on a cable or television or radio channel without fear of losing his job, then we have really become a nation where civil liberties itself is under attack!

And since NPR has a reputation as a “liberal” or “progressive” channel, it is especially reprehensible to be seen as intolerant, and lacking an open mind to allow a diversity of opinion!

NPR has done the wrong thing, and it should reverse itself and rehire Juan Williams, and recognize what he is: a quality journalist who deserves respect for his non hateful opinions!

A Journalistic Legend Is Gone: Daniel Schorr, 1916-2010

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Just as I was leaving for my NYC vacation, the news came that journalistic legend Daniel Schorr had passed away at age 93!

Daniel Schorr was one of a rare breed of journalists that we are unlikely to see again in a field that has changed so much!

Schorr worked for the Christian Science Monitor for decades! He also reported for the NY Times until he went to CBS News as part of the great group of journalists who worked for Edward R. Murrow!

He became controversial during the administration of President Richard Nixon, deeply hated by the President, who put him on the “enemy list” for his open opposition to the Nixon policies and his investigation of Watergate!

He then worked for CNN, and after a few years, went to National Public Radio, where he worked until his death! The author had heard his commentary very recently, and wondered how long he had been serving as a journalist, checking it out as being over 60 amazing years!

Schorr spoke his mind, but it was based upon careful scholarly research, not just personal opinion! He was a walking history book, having been intimately involved in our politics through his coverage of presidents from Eisenhower to Obama!

He was the winner of three Emmys during the Watergate years, as well as a Peabody for a lifetime of reporting, and numerous other awards, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Society of Professional Journalists!

Daniel Schorr was a thought provoking and insightful journalist who gave pleasure to his listeners on many channels over the years, and he cannot be replaced, any more than Walter Cronkite, one of his colleagues at CBS, can be replaced!

Journalism will never be the same, but he left a legacy that will endure!