Saturday, March 18, 2017

Do NPR, PBS, and the NEA really need government funding?


As usual, the hysterical New York Times wants you to think that President Trump will take food from the mouth of babies or leave us at the mercy of polluters.  
Washington’s response is also rather predictable. After all, they’ve grown accustomed to all that money being spent in their city.
In fact, the Trump budget is based on principles that the Founding Fathers would love, i.e. the federal government has no business running everything or funding radio, TV, or the arts!
It would put the federal government in its place and let the states run these programs, as the Washington Times opines:
The bigger question is this: Which activities are properly performed by the federal government, and which activities are properly left to other bodies, such as states, local governments, the private sector or nonprofit organizations?
 
For much of the Washington news media, cutting federal funding for something is the same as opposing that thing. 
Trump’s budget, however, makes a distinction that these critics miss. 
Federal funding should be for things that are best done by the federal government. 
Many things are better done at a level of government closer to the individual, or even outside government altogether.
We used to believe these things in the U.S. until we had a President Obama who felt obliged to opine about school bathroom policies or to use the EPA to do what the Congress would never approve.
Are we really better off having a federal Department of Education soaking up resources that would be far used at the state level? Send the money to the states and let them spend the dollars as they see fit.
And what about NPR? I am old enough to remember when NPR and PBS were introduced. Do we need them today? PBS shows draw huge audiences that advertisers would love to reach. Let NPR and PBS sales executives sell time and stop taking money from Americans who don’t watch or listen to them.
And what about the arts? Let the artists seek their own patrons and supporters. It worked for Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. We had pretty good art in the U.S. before the NEA was created.
President Trump is not taking food from the mouths of babes. He just wants states, not federal bureaucrats, to decide what babes get the food.
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