Stop funding NPR!

I've changed my mind about supporting NPR with government funding.

I love NPR. I think NPR is one of the few places that one can get a balanced perspective on the state of the world, today. But, because they receive a large part of their funding from the government, it is easy to criticize them for their political stance.

The fact that neo-conservatives are going after NPR has very little to do with the deficit. Yes, spending money on public radio is a part of the discretionary spending the government does, and does contribute to the deficit. Just as corporate loop-holes do, though there is a wide margin between which contributes more to our debt.

So take away the funding. NPR won't go away. They get about 25% of their funding from the government, so they will have to cut back. They'll have to do more beg-a-thons. And, I will start supporting them with my own money, which I've never done before. The fact is, I've been lazy about NPR, expecting it to just be there when I turn on the dial.

And, if NPR put a much more liberal spin on their reporting due to the fact that neo-conservatives knocked the pegs out from under them, then so be it. In fact, I hope it happens. Then, our congressmen can say nothing about what NPR might have to say. They will no longer have any skin in the game.

Besides, MSNBC is figuring out that heavy liberal spin on the news is profitable.

A note for you Blue Collar Conservatives

What's happening in Wisconsin should wake up my blue-collar brethren to the fact that the Republican party isn't on the side of Johnny Paycheck or Jane Six-pack. They want you to be responsible for the debt that too-big-to-fail institutions caused.

Hopefully, those on the fence, will see corpratism behind these moves. And if any of you think, "It's just the govenment workers, and they're paid too much," just kick back and wait for a minute. If they get away with stripping the collective bargaining rights of public sector unions, they will move on to the next item on their agenda.

I can't wait to see what that might be.

Mexico, not Canada

The Nazi Cheese-head union-busting freshman governor in Wisconsin got me to thinking about who we want to be as a country. It seems that we are always asking ourselves this question. It's obvious from the 2 wars we fought against it (Korea and Vietnam) we don't want to be communists.

So, who are we?

While the debate dragged on and on over Obama Care; as the Obama administration gave in and gave in to the hard right conservatives just to get something passed, I kept hearing that his bill was 'socialist' or 'communist'. That making sure every American had health care was foreign and bad thing to do.

We shouldn't want to be like Canada or England or Germany or France or, god forbid, like China.

Who should we wanna be like?

How about Mexico?

I wanna get back to Mexico, but first I wanna talk about a tiny blip of news I'd heard sometime last year.

Something that had nothing to do with America.

This little blip of news; this little factoid, was that China has passed Germany as the world's largest exporter of manufactured goods.

Let that sink in for a minute.

China has a population of 1.3 billion. Germany, less than 82 million. China's population is 16 times larger than Germany's, yet it was only last year that they exported more than Germany.

As an aside, Germany guarantees health care to all of it's citizens, and their economy is very strong. The same with China. In fact, China owns a huge portion of our American debt.

What this says to a trucker in the mid-west is that the United States might be looking in the wrong direction. It looks to me like we are looking towards being like Mexico, and not Canada.

But ya know, a funny thing about that . . . I don't wanna insult Mexico, but, when that thought first occurred to me, it was the worst thing I could imagine. And yet, this year; 2011, Mexico will be providing Universal Health Care to all of it's citizens.

What does that say about us if we don't wanna provide universal health care, or allow unions the right to collective bargaining?

Who do we wanna be?

Nazi Cheese-head

Fox News channel commentators have all called Obama a Nazi, at one time or another because of the Affordable Health Care Act. I didn't agree. I thought such a thing as the Affordable Health Care Act was more communist than fascist. More like France than Germany.

I was listening to one of my soft-headed, tree-hugging liberal podcasters, when someone brought up the point that, what Scott Walker is attempting to do in Wisconsin, is union busting. And, one of the things that Hitler the uber-Nazi did, was to outlaw unions.

I'm only 48; born long after Hitler was dead and gone, but I'm old enough to have heard the old activist allegory, "When they came for the Jews, I said nothing, because I wasn't a Jew. And when they came for the trade-unionists, I said nothing, because I wasn't a trade-unionist."

Where are my Nazi baiters at Fox News? We have a governor who is acting as a Nazi; as a little Hitler, yet they are not calling him a Nazi. Why not? Oh yeah, because Scott walker is not acting like a communist. So a governor acting as if he is a fascist dictator is okay?

What ya gonna do when Scott Walker comes for you?