Bozell Column: NPR, the Statism Network
One of the greatest perversions of statism is the use of taxpayer money to push for ever more government spending and more government intervention. A casual listener to the far-left end of the FM dial, National Public Radio, will quickly conclude that NPR is one of America's leading offenders in this perversion. Let's just take one show, the August 22 evening newscast “All Things Considered,” perhaps one of the most ill-named programs in the history of radio. Conservatism is never considered. It is only besmirched, assaulted, and rhetorically dismembered. NPR anchor Robert Siegel was covering the new Martin Luther King memorial statue on the Washington Mall. So in order to consider all things, he asked black wacko-leftist Julian Bond if Tea Party activists were racist. Siegel threw this softball at Bond: “Some people read into the Tea Party's almost neuralgic reaction to government spending, a sense that white people figure black people benefit disproportionately from federal programs. Do you suspect a racial subtext to that whole argument?” Bond said “absolutely,” that “there is a racial animus there.” This was actually a little well-behaved for Bond. In the past, Bond has denounced the Tea Party as the the “Taliban wing” of the GOP. Speaking of Republicans, Bond sated afdter the 1994 revolution that the “running dogs of the wacky radical right” insured “white supremacy” was “everywhere in America,” and insisted then that in the Reagan years, the Republicans were a “crazed swarm of right-wing locusts.” That's who NPR turns to for sober analysis. Later in the same program, NPR offered a profile of Democrat Sen. Max Baucus, a member of the new “super committee” that will somehow magically reduce the deficit in a way the larger Congress cannot. Only liberals are allowed to analyze. Liberal number one: “Pat Williams was Montana's Democratic congressman through the 1980s and '90s. While he considers Baucus a friend, he doesn't agree with many of his fiscal policies.” Williams said “most notably, I've been disappointed in that he was the leading Democrat who engineered the passage of George W. Bush's tax cuts, which have been disastrous for the country.” (NPR has no time for anyone who thinks the Bush tax cuts were not “disastrous” for America.) Liberal number two: University of Montana professor Christopher Muste, who put Baucus on the right-wing fringe. Muste “says while Baucus is considered a progressive on many social and environmental issues, he's become a conservative anchor for the Democratic party on fiscal issues.” To suggest there is a “conservative anchor” in the Democrat Party is to flirt with a mental walk on the wild side. That's like suggesting there's a conservative anchor at…NPR. Muste warned Baucus is “very cautious” and “cautiousness makes him even more moderate in a lot of his policy actions.” NPR suggested on health care, “Baucus angered many liberal Democrats when he took the public option off the table in a failed attempt to bring more conservative Republicans onboard.” Muste added, “So I think he's got to view this bipartisan commission as one of his few chances to actually really come back and reestablish his credibility as one of the key players in deficit reduction in Congress.” Did you catch that? Baucus has to “reestablish his credibility” on deficit reduction by pleasing liberal Democrats. That would mean by increasing taxes and refusing to touch Obamacare, Medicare, and Social Security – anything. Right after this came another statism story: the endless rerun of billionaire Warren Buffett beating his breast and insisting he's dramatically undertaxed. I'm bored just writing that. NPR anchor Melissa Block interviewed Joseph Thorndike so he could denounce the under-taxation of the rich. Buffett can pontificate ad infinitum on this, perhaps because he knows NPR will not point out the obvious: Buffett doesn't live by his own credo. He could, but won't, write out his own check to the government. In fact, he does just the opposite, pouring more and more into the (liberal) Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, thus protecting his money from federal taxation. In July he parked another $1.5 billion there, bringing his total to $9.5 billion. Buffett and Gates have both argued for a stiffer estate tax, which this foundation craftily avoids. To real journalists, this would be a story. But not at NPR.
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Bozell Column: NPR, the Statism Network
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on August 23, 2011. Filed under