We should not be fucking over NPR. It's petty goddamn shit and the republicans are just being bullies about this. I swear to god, this is downright disrespectful.

i think the styrofoam cups that Boner (I mean Boehner) brought back to the crongressional dining room cost more than support of NPR

From the Fox News report, for people not wanting to click through: “O'Keefe, the investigative reporter whose hidden camera expose led to the defunding of ACORN, recently captured on tape an ex-NPR executive calling Tea Party members gun-toting, racist, religious fanatics and saying the network doesn't really need federal money.” Note the reference to discredited reporter O'Keefe as just an “investigative reporter.” Fair or balanced? I think not.

Doug, I agree. And my point is that it's just for show and pretty much with the purpose of sending such a message so their supporters will know they're tough on anyone who stands in their path.

Elijah, the point would probably be made just as well referring to Boehner by his real name—it only lowers the discussion a notch to do otherwise. But yes, you appear to have the notion of proportion correct.

This'll create jobs. Not.

John, Republican accounting does not count government jobs nor jobs in the private sector that are based on anything government-related as jobs. They are just charity, I guess. That's why you can cut jobs there, not promise equivalent jobs in the private sector for the people left unemployed, and still claim to be pro-jobs.

Oh my god. I can't believe I agree with Ron Paul.

Thanks for reporting on this, by the way. I'm a huge NPR fan.

The problem boils down to mainly two sets of people who want to save NPR funding. The first are those who think it's governments job to have their hand in everything. It is not.

The second are those who think it's okay to gore my ox, but it's some how wrong if your ox gets gored. How often do you see something like save NPR and tax the corporations in the same post?

Actually, Kent, they use a simpler arithmetic.

"Our policies will fix what's wrong with America. Therefore we are pro-jobs".

It's the old "argument by assertion" trick.

But you think that's bad? The Democrats use the old "argument by contradiction" technique -- the one made famous by Monte Python in the "spam" bit.

I'm not in favor of slashing the NPR budget this way. But I am in favor of the NPR not being government funded. Not to save tax dollars, nor to weaken it. Rather, I think it would be stronger without the distraction of this sort of circus, and without the implied influence of those tax dollars. I think it's time the NPR became a truly independent voice.

Re O'Keefe -- that'd be hilarious were it not so pathetic. But to add to the irony -- O'Keefe may have actually captured something relevant. That may be the reporter's opinion -- and the reporter, while over-generalizing, has a point.

The Tea Party does draw from, and promote, overt racists and religious fanatics. Indeed, it would be hard for it not to, as its Anti-Washington message resonates with many among those groups. (But not everyone. I don't count racists amongst my friends, and few religious fanatics; my Tea Party friends are driven by concerns of economics and political theory).

And the NPR indeed does not need Federal dollars.

However, I think styrofoam cups (and plastic forks) only cost as as the NPR because of government procurement processes. Real companies would buy them from Costco. They probably send someone out in a federal gas-guzzler to the supermarket to buy Boehner's favorite brand.

But here's the thing. Why are we -- you and I -- buying these cups at all? Why don't we put the service up for auction, and have it generate a small-but-positive cash flow?

This would seem to fit the supposed Republican ideology a lot better -- and mine, too.

I must be crazy, Ron Paul sounded like he was making some kind of sense. I guess this proves, we need to listen and hear what is being said and why. I am against this prolonged war status and also feel the strategy is counter productive. I thought Obama made a stand on that and that is why I voted for him. I am not so sure now, not so sure about a lot of things. Additionally I keep thinking of the Soviet Union and all the soldiers who died in Afghanistan until they gave up and left. Why can't we learn from other people's mistaken sense of power and authority? We are in a real jam now with this stuff with Libya. So they really think that the terrorism will increase or decrease or be static? No, we all know what this means, a perpetual state of fear and war. Why do our leaders think this is a strategy? Thanks for posting this.

They've been after NPR for years. Financially speaking, if NPR were an earthquake, it wouldn't even show up on a seismograph. Ron Paul says that cutting NPR might save $10 million. To put that in perspective, in 2007 $10 million would have paid for approximately 20 minutes of the war in Iraq, the cost of which was around $500,000 per minute.

Bob, as I've understood it, what the NPR funding does is to make it less easy for people in some regions who want NPR to get it. My understanding is that shows would continue to come out with pretty much the same content, but it woudl reach fewer markets. I think the government has an interest in making sure that the greater need is served.

In fact, I'd probably favor NPR funding on a different theory than is presently promoted: Right now, major news agencies are falling like flies. We are in danger of having increasingly much news delivered from sources that are controlled by money. I think it's a tremendously important thing for at least some news agency free to just cover news without fear that this or that thing won't be cost-effective. I'd favor PBS funding for similar reasons. A democracy needs many sources of information and increasingly there are fewer as sources are consolidated and money falls out of the funding of many previously-independent agencies.

But none of this funding change was about that. I'm just responding to your hypothetical.

Ah, forgot to comment on Ron Paul.

Not a lot to say, really, except to note that, as in the Republican presidential debates, he's the only Republican making a lick of sense.

And he makes a lot more sense than a lot of the Democrats, too.

This happens a lot, and I repeatedly have to go to his web site to remind myself why I don't want him running the country.

His problem is that he gets fanatical. He starts with an idea based on logic -- which puts him ahead of most fanatics -- and then pursues it to a sometimes-bitter end. For example, he argues we should not get involved in Libya -- a plausible position -- in an article on his Campaign for Liberty site. Which is then immediately followed by an article arguing we shouldn't get involved in Japan, either.

But the upside is, we really ought to talk about such things. I think the Democrats are afraid to discuss the limits to governmental power, and the Republicans don't want to take the limits seriously (think Patriot Act), but are happy to beat up the Democrats on the issue (think "Obamacare"). Except they're just borrowing rhetoric, not principle.

Anyway, three cheers for Ron Paul -- may he live long, prosper, be heard, and never be elected President!

sweetfeet, I'm happy to get the word out.

Catnlion, your point of view would be more interesting if you didn't try to unfairly color things. I am not someone who thinks the government should have its hand in everything, but yet I think it's OK for the government to involve itself in this. So there are plainly more camps than you enumerate. You apparently prefer to turn more nuanced positions into cartoonish positions so that they're easier to shoot down, but that's not useful.

Sheila, the reason Ron Paul was making sense is that saving money does make sense. What doesn't make sense is blind cutting of everything in sight. The set of all “expenses” is a superset of the set of “prudent investments.” A human being does not, when faced with a sudden drop in income (e.g., being laid off from work), refuse to go to the post office and mail a resume nor refuse to get re-educated nor refuse to buy a new suit simply because they are without income. It's deficit spending, but one has to do it because one has to spend like there will be money another day. And though our country had a big collapse that is like a sudden drop in income, it must also spend money prudently, not shut down, if it wants to live to a better day. Not infinite money. But money. One has to invest in those things that will improve society and not in those things that will drain society. And Ron Paul's point, at least on this occasion, appeared to be that some common sense is called for. He might have made a similar point about health care, and perhaps on another day he might, but then I'd disagree with him if he did. Health care cannot be dispensed with when we're short of money, because that just leads to worse problems later. Unnecessary wars, by contrast, can be dispensed with, especially when it's possibly making things more bad to continue them than to fold them up and go home.

Mishima, thanks for sharpening the focus on the perspective.

This is American "Disaster Capitalism" coming back home; it was only a matter of time before this would happen. Disaster Capitalism is a little more difficult to initiate against more affluent societies, so it took longer to set up the dominos, but they finally got it done.

Tried to rate this, but it put me into some weird infinite loop. Sigh. I guess OS these days is what NPR would look like without any federal funding.

It always amazes me that Congress can find huge amounts of money for military actions but can't scrape up a pittance for something like NPR. Of course, this is genuinely an effort to silence a media outlet that the GOP doesn't control, so it doesn't have anything to do with the amount of money involved.

Thanks for sharing the excerpt from Ron Paul's speech. If we look at the perspective of budget reduction or cuts, NPR is a drop in the water. However, I thought the GOP wanted to cut funding because many NPR shows always painted the right in a bad light (aka biased reporting).

On my end, I always prefer watching the News Hour over all other evening shows. We also give money to NPR once a year.