Quote of the Day

I just love this one:

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.
--Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Vote Smart

If you'd like to be more informed about your representatives in Congress, this is a great site: Project Vote Smart. It contains a Who's Who at all levels of Federal and State government and provides extensive info on their background and positions on the main issues. A key component of the site is the Congressional National Political Awareness Test (NPAT), in which candidates are asked which issues they would support if elected. Sadly, only a handful have actually taken the test.

I was inspired to do a little research on Republican Representative Cliff Stearns, who represents my district here in Jacksonville, Florida, because, according to the email I received today from MoveOn.org (see previous post), he voted against reducing the proposed public broadcasting budget cuts. Great guy. He's a hardcore conservative who represents the antithesis of many of the things I value, which include separation of church and state, protecting the environment, doing away with the death penalty, allowing gay marriage and adoption, tightening up gun regulation, among many "liberal" (ooh, that's such a bad word anymore) positions I hold.

I took it upon myself to write Mr. Stearns a little note to ask (a) why he voted against public broadcasting and (b) why he has refused numerous requests to take the NPAT. We'll see if I get a response. You'll be the second to know.

Good News, Bad News for Public Broadcasting

The Good News, as quoted from an email I received today from MoveOn.org:

In an unexpected move yesterday afternoon, the House of Representatives approved a measure to restore $100 million of funding for NPR, PBS and local public stations. Republican leaders were proposing to slash $200 million from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but you helped stop them.

Everyone said it was impossible to reverse any of the House cuts with Republicans in control. Yesterday's Washington Post described the divide between Democrats and Republicans like this:

"[O]n Capitol Hill, it's hard to find a Republican with anything nice to say about National Public Radio or the Public Broadcasting Service. Instead, they denounce them as liberal and elitist, when they bother to talk about them at all."

Public broadcasting shouldn't divide Republicans and Democrats. More Americans trust NPR and PBS for balanced news and children's programming than any commercial network. Yet many Republicans have been intent on either gagging or starving public broadcasting.

So why did 87 Republicans break with the majority of their party and vote to restore the funding? In large part, because over 1 million of you signed the petition calling on Congress to reverse course. And over 40,000 of you made phone calls to your elected representatives. There was a surge of public outrage that couldn't be ignored. This victory was possible because we were joined by Free Press, Common Cause and strong allies in the House—Representatives Markey, Obey, Lowey, Dingell, Hinchey, Watson, Schakowsky, Blumenauer, Eshoo, Slaughter, and Leach, a brave Republican.

And now The Bad News:

Despite this incredible progress, the House Republicans did manage to cut over $100 million, including funding for children's programming like "Sesame Street." We'll take our fight to the Senate when it considers the budget later this summer. But yesterday's vote makes it much more likely we can restore every last cent for NPR and PBS by acting together.

Yesterday also brought darker news in the fight for public broadcasting. The Republican-dominated board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) hired a former Republican National Committee chair as the next president, injecting partisanship into the very organization designed to shield public broadcasting from political meddling. This is only the latest effort by White House ally and CPB board chair Kenneth Tomlinson to remake public broadcasting as a partisan mouthpiece. To save NPR and PBS, we'll need to take on Tomlinson, but today we showed that the public can and will defend public broadcasting from partisan attack.