Trump Consistently Tries to Eliminate Funding for PBS & NPR With Proposed Budgets

When I was a teenager, one of my favorite bands was hardly a hugely popular one. It was the Dead Kennedys, and in fact, they had stopped being a band years before.

The frontman was Jello Biafra, and he was notorious for being outspoken. Anyone who knows him knows that he does not hold back. Now, I cannot say that I agreed with him on literally everything, but it was hard not to be impressed with his piercing insights about what was actually happening in American (and world) politics, and what it meant for the future. He saw that money and corruption ruled (which is hardly unique to him, of course), but in hindsight, he was able to put the pieces of the puzzle together better than anyone else that I knew of at the time.

Indeed, he got more right than almost anyone, even though he often is not taken seriously. But he said some things that bothered and challenged me at the time. One of the things that he said was that the two major parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, agreed with each other too much, and were far more alike than different. At the time, I leaned more towards the Democrats, and could hardly believe that anyone would suggest that there was not all that much of a difference between the two parties. Time has proven him right, however. It began to look like that by the time that Clinton was elected, and was sometimes referred to as "Republican light." It became almost glaringly obvious by the time of the 2000 Presidential election, when there were so many similarities between the two major party nominees, that their names were sometimes joking used interchangeably, as Bore and Gush, just to underscore how often they agreed with each other. Of course, they would argue against that, as would their supporters. But for many of us who had gotten turned off already by the two major parties, it began to feel depressingly undeniable.

Another thing that he said which scared me, mostly because it felt somehow also undeniably true, was that American democracy was slowly but surely eroding, because the tyrants in charge had figured out that a de facto, albeit unofficial, dictatorship could be brought to power through patience. Biafra said that this takeover would not happen in some nightmarish sweep of power, or some violent and dramatic military coup d'état. Rather, it would be ushered in slowly, through small actions and attacks on democratic traditions and institutions, that hardly anyone would notice. The process of bringing the dictatorship would take something like 30-40 years. He pointed it out at the time: Reagan attacking the unions, the great emphasis on inflating the military budget, religious views increasingly being pushed on the people and exerting itself politically, the corporate welfare state that was beginning to grow far greedier, and working to control corrupt Washington politicians in order to further their agenda. It still seemed that the end result would be far off at the time, but man, time flies.

Sure enough, all of that has come to pass. Now, the erosion of what was American democracy has become so obvious, that it can hardly be denied. Only once again, those who favor this de facto American fascism (some have called it "fascism-lite") also have become such masters of manipulation, that they themselves point out this erosion, but they turn it around and blame the very institutions and spirit of democracy in order to use it to undermine democracy. Now, attempts to try and make society more equitable, such as those envisioned by Lyndon B. Johnson and his Great Society, are constantly under attack and seen as authoritarian, much like white supremacists and segregationists at the time also argued. Now, immigrants coming to America to seek a better life are viewed as invaders taking away American jobs, and even often accused of massive voting fraud, even though those who accuse them of this have not offered a shred of proof to back up these wild claims.

Well, another way to suppress liberty and democracy is simply to silence criticism. Now, while other presidents - particularly Republicans - have tried to minimize expenses allocated to the arts and sciences, and to things like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps fund stations such as PBS and NPR, and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), none have been as blatant as Trump has in their desire to kill these. Trump basically is trying to end them, by providing no money in his proposed 2020 budget, because he and his supporters would claim that there is no money. Funny, how there is plenty of money for huge budget increases for the military industrial complex (Trump has given the Pentagon even more than it asked for), as well as for tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.

So far, Congress has ignored Trump's proposal to end these programs. But he keeps trying, and this  kind of endless repetition has worked in the past. It would, not surprisingly, make radio broadcasts that tend to take an unflinching view of American politics, and of Trump and his administration in particular, much more difficult for rural areas. And rural areas, of course, are where Trump gets his most loyal support.

“The Administration does not consider NEA activities to be core Federal responsibilities,” the proposal said.

Of course it doesn't. Why would it? After all, most of those stations are not only not soundboards for the president, like FAUX News and Brietbart, but are usually outright critical of him. So, it behooves his and his administration to attack them. And the way that they are doing it is by budget. Here are some of the details:

The 2020 request, which was released in its entirety Monday, calls for scrapping $435 million from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $126 million from the NEA, leaving both with a few million dollars to manage an orderly shutdown.  The overall budget will spend $4.7 trillion on discretionary and mandatory programs.  

Yes, Trump has been trying very hard to undermine democracy and individual liberties, on a daily basis, and in myriad ways. This is just the latest in a tireless attack on our civil liberties, and on our American democracy itself. But this is crucial, because it also, if successful, would effectively kill some of the strongest voices that speak and shed light on the darkness that Trump and his cronies are trying to spread, and to make us all realize that this emperor wears no clothes.

Trump renews call to pull arts, PBS funding BY NIV ELIS - 03/18/19

https://thehill.com/policy/finance/434586-trump-renews-call-to-pull-arts-pbs-funding?fbclid=IwAR1D70iBp9c2DxKWaakEcmBHbFRKvuZhkR4EX_DFLXu4Yiw0q3_Y91_QMd4