Hi Folks . . . In case you missed getting this from.If these outfits can afford to pay lavish salaries to their heads, they don't need taxpayer help.
By JIM DEMINTWhen presidents of government-funded broadcasting are making more than the president of the United States, it's time to get the government out of public broadcasting.While executives at the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR) are raking in massive salaries, the organizations are participating in an aggressive lobbying effort to prevent Congress from saving hundreds of millions of dollars each year by cutting their subsidies. The so-called commercial free public airwaves have been filled with pleas for taxpayer cash. The Association of Public Television Stations has hired lobbyists to fight the cuts. Hundreds of taxpayer-supported TV, radio and Web outlets have partnered with an advocacy campaign to facilitate emails and phone calls to Capitol Hill for the purpose of telling members of Congress, "Public broadcasting funding is too important to eliminate!"
PBS President Paula Kerger even recorded a personal television appeal that told viewers exactly how to contact members of Congress in order to "let your representative know how you feel about the elimination of funding for public broadcasting." But if PBS can pay Ms. Kerger $632,233 in annual compensation—as reported on the 990 tax forms all nonprofits are required to file—surely it can operate without tax dollars.The executives at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which distributes the taxpayer money allocated for public broadcasting to other stations, are also generously compensated. According to CPB's 2009 tax forms, President and CEO Patricia de Stacy Harrison received $298,884 in reportable compensation and another $70,630 in other compensation from the organization and related organizations that year. That's practically a pittance compared to Kevin Klose, president emeritus of NPR, who received more than $1.2 million in compensation, according to the tax forms the nonprofit filed in 2009.Today's media landscape is a thriving one with few barriers to entry and many competitors, unlike when CPB was created in 1967. In 2011, Americans have thousands of news, entertainment and educational programs to choose from that are available on countless television, radio and Web outlets.Despite how accessible media has become to Americans over the years, funding for CPB has grown considerably. In 2001, the federal government appropriated $340 million for CPB. Last year it got $420 million. As Congress considers ways to close the $1.6 trillion deficit, cutting funding for the CPB has even been proposed by President Obama's bipartisan deficit reduction commission. Instead, Mr. Obama wants to increase CPB's funding to $451 million in his latest budget.Meanwhile, highly successful, brand-name public programs like Sesame Street make millions on their own. "Sesame Street," for example, made more than $211 million from toy and consumer product sales from 2003-2006. Sesame Workshop President and CEO Gary Knell received $956,513 in compensation in 2008. With earnings like that, Big Bird doesn't need the taxpayers to help him compete against the Nickleodeon cable channel's Dora the Explorer.Taxpayer-subsidized broadcasting doesn't only make money from licensing and product sales. It also raises plenty of outside cash.
Last year, for example, the Open Society Foundation, backed by liberal financier George Soros, gave NPR $1.8 million to help support the latter's plan to hire an additional 100 reporters. When NPR receives million-dollar gifts from Mr. Soros, it is an insult to taxpayers when other organizations, such asMoveOn.org demand that Congress "save NPR and PBS" by guaranteeing "permanent funding and independence from partisan meddling," as the liberal interest group did last month. It was even more insulting when PBS posted a message on Twitter thanking MoveOn.org—the group that once labeled Gen. David Petraeus as "General Betray Us"—for the help.
The best way to stop the "partisan meddling" in public broadcasting that MoveOn.org complains about is by ending the taxpayers' obligation to pay for it. The politics will be out of public broadcasting as soon as the government gets out of the business of paying for it.
Public broadcasting can pay its presidents half-million and million dollar salaries. Its children's programs are making hundreds of millions in sales. Liberal financiers are willing to write million-dollar checks to help these organizations. There's no reason taxpayers need to subsidize them anymore.
Mr. DeMint, a Republican, is a senator from South Carolina.
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13 comments:
Maybe we should do the same for BP?
@ Thomas
Here here.
And while we are at it, where was this Republican outrage when Obama tried to limit CEO pay for businesses which took bailout money? Instead, we got sob stories about the poor executives who just couldn't make a living on 500K a year.
IMO, PBS/NPR can now officially be called Nice Polite Republicans. The line-up of "nooz" casters on both are often rightwingers, including some who *also* work at Fox, when not "reporting" on NPR or PBS.
Republicans made sure that both PBS and NPR would swing rightward in order to continue the propoganda of the Oligarchs. It's yet another disinformation campaign by the elites to *pretend* that PBS/NPR are so insanely "leftwing."
PBS/NPR were *never* particularly leftwing, imo, but they used to be more truthful and honestly fair in their reporting. These days? Not so much. I rarely ever listen to NPR anymore bc it's just Fake "nooz" lite. No thanks.
If these rightwingers are so morally outraged by this low of a salary at NPR/PBS, I agree with other commentaries, above. WTF was/is your moral outrage at the much much much higher salaries of CEOs, Bankers & those on Wall St... you know the *very people* that YOU rightwingers bailed out with YOUR tax dollars.
Geez: yet another example of a utterly false equivalency shipped out by the rightwing thinktanks. Like these salaries at NPR/PBS rightwing propoganda outlets are a big deal. Yet another bright shiney object of distraction to fool the rubes.
Get. a. clue.
Spot-on comments so far.
I like this bit of irony:
"If these outfits can afford to pay lavish salaries to their heads, they don't need taxpayer help"
Ya mean, like the banks?
Limit executive compensation? Heavens no! How could they ever retain the stellar talent that was such a rousing success in 2008? It would be anti-capitalist.
Isn't it odd that for all the teabagger party screechy faux populist rehetoric, that they are curiously silent on the issue of bailouts/corporate welfare? Well, almost silent. They seemed to zero in especially on the automaker bailouts. Yeah yeah, that the money actually was instrumental in helping the makers bounce back, they were angry, of all things, that the icky unionized ( gasp ) people that actually use their hands didn't lose their jobs.
What a freaking fraud the tea party is.
190 million dollars per day...is what we spend in Afghanistan-per day. And they want to whine about 451 million for a whole year of PBS? End the Afghan war 3 days early, keep PBS.
If we compared Ms. Kerger's salary to the salary of a Network President I bet we'd think we were getting a really good bargain.
Funny a lot of the programming I watch on PBS (Nova for one) is funded by---David Koch. I wonder why Demint mentioned contributions from George Soros and not David Koch? I bet both of them sponsor programs that they like.
And is it really all that sinister to suggest viewers contact their representatives if they want to keep watching PBS? I want to keep watching PBS. They have some excellent programs, the type that aren't produced elsewhere-and probably won't be if PBS shuts down.
What makes you previous commentators believe we out here in "fly over country" liked Barry and "W" bailing out the banks?There is ample evidence ( like this past November)that we didn't approve of the bailouts.
No, Conservatives are not being hypocritical about NPR. Accepting Soros money does from any reasonable business view,entitle some form of deference to Mr. Soros. With generous help like his, PBS therefore doesn't justify mixing taxpayer money with Soros money.
Who said anything about "fly over country"?
What do you think George Soros is doing that NPR is avoiding criticizing?
And why are deficit hawks so intent on focusing on small fries like NPR and PBS, when they are a drop in the bucket compared to health and military spending?
Hate to say it, Anon, but YOU are the first self-identified conservative who says that you don't approve of the bank bailouts. I certainly see NO other evidence that conservatives don't approve of it (and I have conservative acquaintances - admittedly, they're not you, who are very much in favor of it), but I'd truly be happy to follow any links that you want to provide.
As far as George Soros contributing to NPR/PBS is concerned, *what about all the other* elites who contribute to PBS. As Bebe indicated, David Koch contributes *lavishly* to NPR and PBS.
- are you "just fine" with rightwing elites contributing to NPR/PBS and only "upset" when the one, lone leftie millionaire contributes??
- if yes: why? Why is "ok" for rightwingers, like Koch, to contribute but it's "not justified" to "mix taxpayer money with Soros money"???
- if no, then why did you only decry Soros contributing to PBS/NPR and not decry the likes of these rightwingers contributing lavishly over the years to NPR/PBS:
David Koch
Annenberg Trust
Armen Hammer Trust
David Hewlett
There's a lot of corporate underwriting from such large companies as Johnson&Johnson, Exxon, Honeywell, Franklin Templeton Investments, etc. These companies get to essentially "advertise" on PBS and NPR.
- do you agree that it's fine to "mix taxpayer dollars" with major corporations, who undoubtedly want to slant programming to look favorably upon them? Or do you not agree with that, either? I'd really like to know.
So, what is it: rightwing double-standards that say one, lone leftwing millionaire, George Soros, is tainted & should never, ever contribute to vaunted "public" broadcasting, but a whole host of rightwing millionaires and major rightwing corporations can freely do so because there's, what?, no conflict of interest?
Are you kidding me??
I'd be interested in specific answers to my questions. Would truly love to have an honest and genuine answer explaining the "logic" of how this works for you, as a conservative (not being mean-spritied. I'm truly curious). Inquiring minds really want to know.
I don't know what the big deal with bailouts is in fly-over country. They accept handouts/bailouts from taxpayers in blue states every single day.
http://www.insidepolitics.org/heard/heard8999.html
This is RW standard operating procedure.
Conservatives pundits/politicians project what is wrong with the "left", as the they do the very thing they're ostensibly peeing their pants over.
Seen it a hundred thousand times before. And so have you if you're paying attention.
Why you "fly-over" people (YOUR term - developed by RW think tanks, not mine) fall for this? Why can't you see that you are being played like a tuba at a John Philip Sousa rally?
Do you *really* want an aristocracy ruling over you rather than a republic representing you?
Really?
Because that is exactly what you're going to get if you keep embracing the slick propaganda of conservatism. Conservatism is ANTI-DEMOCRACY.
And democracy is anti-conservatism.
The hard part is that you have to weigh the evidence and really think about this.
I'm extremely leftwing, and I've been contributing to NPR/PBS for years. According to the logic of the Anon-conservative who posted up above, my "tainted" leftwing contributions should also "not be mixed with taxpayer funding."
Agree that the logic of freaking out about George Soros' alleged contributions make absolutely no sense. Citizens of all political persuasion contribute to NPR/PBS, and that money just goes into the general funds, along with George Soros' money, or the money from a whole host of rightwingers & rightwing corporations.
Big effen deal.
Anon: We weren't talking about conservatives favoring the bailout.
We were talking about conservatives opposing limits on CEO compensation to banks that received bailouts, even though the compensation cap was about equal to the aforementioned PBS salaries.
This is provably true. You can look up politicians and pundits arguing that no good CEO would ever work for the paltry amount the president of PBS makes.
Yachts are expensive to keep up...
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