Two Republican senators on Friday introduced a bill to stop taxpayer subsidies to public radio and television.
Since 2001, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has received nearly $4 billion in taxpayer money for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
Sens. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said with the nation on the brink of bankruptcy, some decisions to cut spending are difficult — but not this one:
“Americans struggling to make ends meet shouldn’t be forced to fund public broadcasting when there are already thousands of choices for educational and entertainment programming on the television, radio and Web,” DeMint said. “President Obama’s own bipartisan debt commission proposed ending these unnecessary subsidies to public broadcasting. NPR boasts that it only gets 2 percent of its funding from taxpayers and PBS gets about 15 percent, so these programs should be able to find a way to stand on their own.”
Coburn called subsidies for public broadcasting “indefensible.” “The federal government has no business picking winners and losers in today’s highly competitive media environment. NPR and CPB will do just fine without largesse from Washington,” Coburn added.
CPB was incorporated as a private, nonprofit corporation under the authority of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, and its first taxpayer subsidy in 1969 was $5 million. In the current fiscal year, CPB is slated to receive $430 million from taxpayers, and President Obama recently asked for an increase to $451 million, the senators said.
PBS President Paula Kerger received $632,233 in compensation in 2009, according to the tax forms that nonprofits must file, while NPR President Emeritus Kevin Klose received more than $1.2 million in compensation.
DeMint and Coburn also noted that in 2010, NPR accepted a $1.8 million grant from the Open Society Foundation, backed by liberal financier George Soros, to hire 100 reporters. Additionally, NPR has an endowment of over $200 million, they said in a news release.
These are tough times and we have to cut spending… on liberal propaganda.
It’s the story of Galileo and the Catholic Church. Only this time, the Darwinians refuse to look through the microscope, and the penalty isn’t house arrest. Read Jerry Bergman’s story in the Toledo Blade. (H/T Access Research Network)
Who is Jerry Bergman?
Jerry Bergman is a mild-mannered, soft-spoken, and balding college professor, author, and member of Mensa – a group of people whose IQs are in the top 2 percent of the population.
And what happened to him?
“In 1979, I was let go by Bowling Green State University openly due to my increasing disillusion with Darwinism,” he said in a lecture Monday night at WLMB-TV, Channel 40, Toledo’s Christian television station.
What has he been up to since?
For the last 30 years, Mr. Bergman, 62, has interviewed hundreds of people in academia and documented cases in which he contends that careers were derailed because of doubts about evolution.
The results of his interviews and research are compiled in his latest book, Slaughter of the Dissidents: The Shocking Truth about Killing the Careers of Darwin Doubters, published last fall by Leafcutter Press.
Well, these cases must deal with young-earth creationists, right?
The students, professors, and scientists suffered not because they were advocating the teaching of biblical Creationism or Intelligent Design, he said, but for questioning or debating aspects of Charles Darwin’s famous theory.
Well, this guy is a fringe scholar with fewer degrees and published papers than Richard Dawkins, right?
Mr. Bergman has nine academic degrees, including a doctorate in education from Wayne State University, and currently teaches at Northwest State Community College in Archbold, Ohio, and the University of Toledo’s Health Science campus. In 35 years as an educator, Mr. Bergman has taught college-level courses in biology, microbiology, chemistry, biochemistry, genetics, pathology, anthropology, geology, and statistics, among other subjects, and has published more than 800 academic papers.
But surely this is an isolated case?
Publicity over the lawsuit, however, led other academics to contact him with similar stories, he said. He has since compiled a list of 3,000 cases alleging discrimination due to religious beliefs, and personally has interviewed more than 300 people in such situations.
“It’s unlikely today that an out-of-the-closet Darwin doubter will survive in academia,” he said. And there’s much at stake because a PhD requires a huge investment in time and money, averaging nine years of school and $300,000 and $500,000 in costs, he said.
Rather than risk losing everything over one’s personal beliefs, Mr. Bergman said he advises people to “stay in the closet until things change” and to seek change through legislation.
Is it possible that Darwinists could be so blinded by faith in materialism, that they would protect their monopoly in the the public square by censorship of their opponents?
BONUS:
Here is a video of Casey Luskin, whom I blogged about before, on Fox News, explaining how well leftists in academia respond to scientific evidence contrary to their own assumptions of naturalism and materialism. And click here for some examples of how well Darwinians do in debates with the top atheist scholars, like Michael Shermer.
By the way, if you haven’t seen the movie “Expelled” yet, what are you waiting for? You get to see Richard Dawkins attribute life to unobservable aliens.
This is a must-see movie that explains how freedom of inquiry is being violated by Darwinian fascists in the academy. You can tell how warranted an idea is by how willing supporters are to defend them in public. If the true believers start to resort to judicial activism, threats and intimidation, it’s a blind-faith religion!
UPDATE: This post seems to be quite popular! Commenter ECM sent me this additional post from Denyse O’Leary’s Post-Darwinist blog. She has a citation from a scholar that, if expressed publicly in an academic setting, would be sure to doom the career of whoever uttered it. Click the link, read the quote.
WINTERY KNIGHT 