No. I advanced the proposition that cutting public funding was a piece of shit legislation, the purpose of which I do not understand. The reason you put forth is that you don’t want to have to pay for good public television because poor people are stupid and lazy.
Convince you? Convince you of what? That public TV has great programing enjoyed by the poor AND the not poor. That quality science shows are worth public support. That educational programing for kids (poor and rich-- I don’t know anyone who didn’t grow up watching Seasame Street and Electric Company no matter what their economical background) is worth continuing?
Not to agree with Bricker (because I don’t) but I know at least one person who never watched Sesame Street as a child (and is in the appropriate age range to have had it available at the time).
And believe me, when he told me that, my mind boggled.
I am glad you enjoy these programs. I enjoy medical shows on the Discovery Channel, anything Hitler related on the History Channel and the National Geographic programs. What do these have in common with PBS? They are educational and they can support themselves without my tax dollars. Why is one deserving of public money and not the other.
Why is Antiques Roadshow supported by tax dollars, but not the countless knock offs on channels like TLC.
And as I think about the crew that joins me on the serving line, actually doing some work themselves to help people that need it…
I’m amazed at how relatively few bleeding heart liberals there are. I’d say that of our regular twice-monthly crew, the mix has less than a quarter of people that support the notion that charity is a debt to be forcibly paid from the unwilling. (Full disclosure: this is a religiously-based and run shelter, which probably skews things away from the secular lefty; when I volunteered with CCNV in the late 1980s, I admit that I was the sole conservative voice there - but those guys were crazy. Helpful, but crazy).
Maybe it’s just the fact that the facility has “Christ” in its name. But I spend in the double-digit hours there monthly serving up food, and the majority of folks there are sympathetic to my way of thinking.
What do you do, besides insist that others empty their wallets? What do you PERSONALLY do?
I don’t see myself as selfish. I see someone whose only substantive contribution to helping feed the hungry is to insist that others open their wallets as selfish.
Yes, convince me. The History Channel and Discovery Channel manage to get by without a federal paycheck.
If Sesame Street is so widely watched, then surely companies will pay to sponsor it.
Look, I’m an opera fan.
I know that the opera companies in this area receive federal funding. I like that result, because I get quality opera. But why should you pay for my opera?
Just because it’s good?
How do we decide whose version of “good” gets the money?
The nice thing about the market is that no one needs to make that decision. The market decides what people want. I get the sense that opera prices would go up if there were no federal funding, and I can live with that. Because my sense of what I like has no moral entitlement to your money.
“Poor” person checking in here. Both as a child and now. Who is also grateful for growing up with things like Sesame Street, despite being born to a less-than-best intelligence parent who didn’t know that PBS was a good and valuable thing.
Why am I poor as an adult? Well, catastrophe did strike. Mental illness, something I never even knew I should have considered, reared its ugly ahead around all the things I did prepare for. Like loss of job or physical debilitation. And yes, just like those more fortunate, I worked my ass off to rise above the station I’d been born to. Sadly for me, it just didn’t do much good.
Do I consider myself “lucky”? Hell yes. Why? Because I wasn’t born in a third world country. Because I wasn’t born in the projects to a crack addicted mother. Because I was able to pull myself up by my bootstraps -and- be blessed with people in the position to help me when I absolutely hit rock bottom. If not for all that, so but the grace of Og go I even further.
Plus, I do have some luxuries now. My eventual ex-husband provides me with this wonderful outlet to the outside world, via the internet, that helps to keep my tenuous sanity in tact. Also, he ponies up the insurance (both health and automotive) that I’d not be able to with a waitress’ salary. Then there is the super cheap vodka that gets me through the occassional night when I contemplate my future (if anything should happen to said husband) without the medication that IS my link to functional life. For it WILL happen at some point. Unless a miracle of Og occurs, because thus far, waitressing seems to be as good as it gets to keep from sucking off the “public teat.” Or the free public TV I do without (I have no reception in my “white trash” environment) and he provides instead the every-once-in-a-while Netflix.
So, I’m beyond fortunate. There are so many who don’t have even close to that. Therefore, I want them to have anything I can offer, no matter how much I have worked for what little I do have. Since my compassion isn’t in short supply, I’ll gladly share. Because as I said, I can see how easily one could end up there. Nor do I care what circumstances found them there. Ya know why? Well, its because they might have children. Who live through that due to NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN. That’s enough for me.
And my thankfulness extends to them in whatever way I can. Volunteering, giving an extra $5.00 here or there that I refuse to miss and/or not begrudging some happiness if it is in the form of NPR or even a cigarette (although I don’t smoke). That $1.98 or whatever isn’t going to add up (in a lifetime even) to a $100,000 medical bill for a kidney transplant. I’m glad something might afford them a second of peace. I’m glad I had a chance to seize anything that came my way. Pitance or not.
I realize that all this is anecdotal, but I thought at least one person should chime in from “that side of the fence.” Take it for the grain of salt it’s worth.
::: raises hand as former “talented and gifted” child, etc. (as if that means anything in the real world) and still qualifies (I think/hope) as relatively “smart, determined and hardworking” who still has “serious trouble” :::
Furthermore, even as a liberal, I definitely would support PBS if their leanings were right/conservative/republican or whatever. Free education, in whatever form, is just that… free. I’d want it there because it isn’t commercially based in its opinions. Government, perhaps, but that would (I feel) change with each administration and over time, show opposite views thus creating a balance for the viewer to decide (if they stuck with it) their own stance. IMHO.
When I said “smart,” I meant some specific things. After reading faithfool’s post, I think the word “smart” may not be the best choice to convey what I meant to say.
When I combined “smart” and “determined” I meant to convey a state of having the mental acuity to reason through things without getting false or misleading information from your own mind, and the wherewithal to act in accord with the conclusions you reach.
When someone suffers from mental illness, that process is broken. I don’t know the details of faithfool’s situation, but even crushing agoraphobia can prove an impossible burden to overcome… and it’s not that an agoraphobic isn’t “smart” – but they simply cannot overcome the false signals their brain is sending them.
For that matter, debilitating physical ailments have the same effect – no matter how determined you are, if you have physical problems that prevent you from succeeding, your determination may not avail you.
I should never have typed that last paragraph, the “show me that person” one. It was a product of anger, not reason, and it doesn’t reflect how I feel. I know that people may struggle through no fault of their own. I still say that the idea of a debt to those people, enforced through taxation, is wrong. There is a moral claim on me, from God, to help those eho need it. There is NOT a moral claim on me from YOU, either for you or for others by your proxy.
But I don’t mean to say that everyone can succeed if they are determined and smart. For some, bad luck will befall them, and I should not have suggested otherwise.
What do you do, besides insist that others empty their wallets? What do you PERSONALLY do?
I don’t see myself as selfish. I see someone whose only substantive contribution to helping feed the hungry is to insist that others open their wallets as selfish.
That’s a very tenuous construct, it falls apart at the merest touch.
You advance the notion that only such persons as pass your moral bar have any standing. What do you do to help the poor and homeless, you ask. If it isn’t sufficient, by your lights, then they cannot advance any agenda.
Sez who? A philosophy of sharing and caring is not dependent upon its advocates. Sister Hosanna of Our Lady of Perpetual Motion is on equal footing with a lawyer! (Please note: I am not accusing anyone of being a lawyer, I am merely using a universally recognized symbol for depravity, greed, and corruption).
Simply put, I need neither your permission nor your approval, nor any other of the members of your Christian Objectivist sect.
I worked with the Coalition for the Homeless and surveyed homeless hotels, exposing what the city was paying thousands of dollars a night for when I was in college. That was until they made the “only men could go” rule whent a few of us girls got threatened by the landlords.
When my children’s elementary school didn’t have an after school center, my husband and I came up with a plan to institute one, using both public and private money and showed other PTAs how to get this done to.
I donate my time and energies to the Prospect Park Alliance, of which my husband is a Board member, as he is on FAC (Fifth Avenue Committee) . These days I’m pretty busy working two hours away from home to do much more than man booths during the street fair or hand out handkerchiefs on We Gotta Have Park days, carry Christmas trees to the mulched-- things like that. My husband does the heavy lifting here. He’s the lobbyist and urban developer.
But what public works I do or do not do have nothing to do with the public work being taken away. And the only reason this particular good work is being dismantled is because, um, why again Bricker?
You are mischaracterizing Biggirl’s point if you think she’s insisting others empty their wallets.
Are people who support the war in Iraq insisting people empty their wallets too? Why is it that this accusation is hurled at people favoring social welfare-type dealies, but not people looking to drop bombs on a third-world country?
In the long run, who is wasting more of your money?
I didn’t have cable growing up. Maybe my parents were too busy being frugal like Bricker to pony up for it. Fortunately, my sister and I were able to enjoy the riches PBS had to offer. I grew up on Sesame Street, Electric Company, Square One, 3-2-1 Contact, and an assortment of low-production kid shows.
Why am I a scientist today? Because my mother bought a set of World Book encyclopedias and because 3-2-1 Contact was my favorite show.
Take away PBS and you HAVE to get cable TV to have anything worthwhile on television. I don’t think that’s unfair, but I do think it’s a lousy thing for an advanced civilization like ours.
Maybe all PBS has to do is get some more underwriters or something. Like someone else said on this thread, maybe this is for the best. If PBS cuts its ties with the conservative blowhards that think capitalism is the end-all, be-all to everything, then maybe the quality of stuff it airs might actually go up.
Mebbe. And maybe someone that forces everyone else to open their wallets at gunpoint, but doesn’t lift a finger himself, isn’t practicing what he preaches. Maybe he’s a lazy SOB, willing to assauge hs own conscience by forcing others to pay, but unwilling to actually help by dint of his own effort.
How are those of us who want a more welfare-active government any different, in your hyperbolic logic, than those who want a more:
-internationally-active government (hawkish neocons and their deluded followers),
-an enforcement-heavy government (folks who pride themselves on being tough on crime and favor mandatory setencing, bigger police forces, and more prisons)…
-or a Big Brother government (people favoring the Patriot Act, searches at borders and airports, survelliance cameras on every street, and national ID cards)?
Are these people holding a gun to your head too?
Are you holding a gun to my head if you’re for these things and I’m not?
Public television is necessary. As is public radio. These are FUNDED by the government, but not controlled by it other than very loosely. Both of these institutions are known (among non-nutjobs) as fairly neutral politically, concentrating mostly on their missions of education and sponsorship of cultural awareness.
Network and cable television are funded by AND BEHOLDEN TO corporations. Their ONLY mission is to make profit for the corporation. Everything is subsumed to corporate interests. The only people that network and cable care about are the ones that sign their paychecks. This influences everything from what commercials get shown during Saturday morning cartoons (or which Saturday morning cartoons are just half-hour commercials) to which news stories actually get reported.
So yes, I trust public television and radio much more than I trust corporate television and radio. If we don’t sponsor non-commercial outlets or news and education, then the news and education we get are going to be heavily chosen for us by people who have absolutely no responsibility to our welfare whatsoever.