d.j[ackass] trump wants to remove all funding for public radio and television from the federal budget, by defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). The first step I wanted to take was to confirm the dollar figure that I heard on NPR. It's not that I don't believe NPR, but rather that I wanted to independently corroborate their figure. I constructed two simple equations that would give me the same result and also a percentage of the funds in comparison to the total budget. These equtions are as follows:
- dollars spent on CPB / total dollars spent = % spent on CPB
therefore = 445,500,000 / 3,506,000,000,000 = .0001272 = 0.01272 % = a little more than one one hundredth of a percent
- dollars spent on CPB / total # of federal tax payers = cost per person
therefore = 445,500,000 / 239,874,741 = $1.857/person
Below, you will find the information I used to perform these equations and links to their sources:
| Total expenditures | $3.77 trillion (requested) $3.506 trillion (actual)[5] |
|---|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_United_States_federal_budget
The CPB's annual budget is composed almost entirely of an annual appropriation from Congress plus interest on those funds. Ninety-five percent (95%) of CPB's appropriation goes directly to content development, community services, and other local station and system needs.[7]
For fiscal year 2014, its appropriation was US$445.5 million, including $.5M in interest earned. The distribution of these funds was as follows:[8]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_for_Public_Broadcasting
239,874,741 = total returns filed in 2014
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/14databk.pdf
The most recent year that I could find numbers for, for all three categories was 2014 and they confirm NPR's numbers. So why does trumpy boy feel the need to remove this from his budget submission. I don't think he believes that the dollar amount is a lot of money. After all, there are estimates that his weekend trips to Florida are costing upwards of $3 million dollars per weekend. Multiply that by 52 weeks and you've got approximately $150 million. So, three years of weekends in Florida at his current pace will equal one year of CPB funding.
No.....I think I know the reason. Non-Fake news. It's easy to recognize the integrity of NPRs programming and news gathering. Even trump can easily see this. And he also must recognize that integrity does not serve his purposes. So, what does he do? He attempts to make it more difficult for NPR and PBS to do their jobs. If d.j[ackass] is successful, he will not stop PBS and NPR, but he will make it difficult for rural affiliates to continue. Rural areas are where his base is. He certainly wouldn't want them to become educated or informed. As I said, that wouldn't serve his purposes.
So, the purpose of this post is to ask all of you, that read it, to call you your representatives in both houses of Congress and demand that the CPB remain funded, so the vital services the CPB can remain afloat. As usual, here are links where you can find your representatives' contact information.
No comments:
Post a Comment