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Since the text of Project 2025 is massive, I thought it might be helpful if read it — one page at a time. Today’s topic: the dismantling plan found on Page 247:
Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise
Page 247
2025 Presidential Transition Project
DEFUNDING THROUGH THE BUDGETARY PROCESS
Cutting off the CPB [Corporation for Public Broadcasting] is logistically easy. The solution lies in the budgetary process. In 2022, the CPB submitted to the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittees of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees its budget justification for fiscal year (FY) 2023. In it, the CPB requested that Congress give it a $565 million advance appropriation — a $40 million increase compared to its FY 2022 funding.[52] Unlike most other agencies, the CPB receives advance appropriations that provide them with funding two years ahead of time, which insulates the agency from Congress’s power of the purse and oversight. This special budgetary treatment is unjustified and should be ended. The 47th President can just tell the Congress — through the budget he proposes and through personal contact — that he will not sign an appropriations spending bill that contains a penny for the CPB. The President may have to use the bully pulpit, as NPR and PBS have teams of lobbyists who have convinced enough Members of Congress to save their bacon every time their taxpayer subsidies have been at risk since the Nixon era.
Defunding CPB would by no means cause NPR or PBS — or other public broadcasters that benefit from CPB funding, including the even-further-to-the Left Pacifica Radio and American Public Media — to file for bankruptcy. The membership model that the CPB uses, along with the funding from corporations and foundations that it also receives, would allow these broadcasters to continue to thrive. As George Will wrote, “If ‘Sesame Street’ programming were put up for auction, the danger would be of getting trampled by the stampede of potential bidders.”[53] Indeed, “Sesame Street” is on HBO now, which shows its potential as a money earner.
PUBLIC INTEREST VS. PRIVILEGE
Stripping public funding would, of course, mean that NPR, PBS, Pacifica Radio, and the other leftist broadcasters would be shorn of the presumption that they act in the public interest and receive the privileges that often accompany so acting. They should no longer, for example, be qualified as noncommercial education stations (NCE stations), which they clearly no longer are. NPR, Pacifica, and the other radio ventures have zero claim on an educational function (the original purpose for which they were created by President Johnson), and the percentage of on-air programming that PBS devotes to educational endeavors such as “Sesame Street” (programs that are themselves biased to the Left) is small.
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180-Day Playbook
The time is short, and conservatives need a plan. The project will create a playbook of actions to be taken in the first 180 days of the new Administration to bring quick relief to Americans suffering from the Left’s devastating policies.
The fourth pillar of Project 2025 is our 180-day Transition Playbook and includes a comprehensive, concrete transition plan for each federal agency. Only through the implementation of specific action plans at each agency will the next conservative presidential Administration be successful.
Pillar IV will provide the next President a roadmap for doing just that. To learn more about Project 2025’s vision for a conservative administration, please read our recently published book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.
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As liberal taxpayer, I take great umbrage that these Heritage Foundation instigators, presume they can decide for me, exactly how I want my to have my Tax dollars spent.
I fully endorse having some of my Tax dollars spent to fund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, so that they can meet their mission of promoting the public good.
I trust I am not alone, in thinking that shows like Sesame Street are an important public service. As are many other NPR and PBS shows, which perform similar worthwhile public services. Free shows — partially taxpayer funded — that help make America a better place.
How dare these conservative ideologues scheme to remove this funding, far from the light of day. No discussion, no debate, no compromise. Such is just one page, from one chapter, from one manual of the expansive Project 2025 plan — to remake America Government, in their own authoritarian, theocratic image. By fiat, in effect.
We need to sit up and take notice. And expose and prevent their anti-democracy take-over plans, while we still have half a chance.
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June 14, 2024 — Press Release
Rep. Pressley Joins Task Force to Counter Project 2025 and Defend Democracy
Task Force Designed To Stop Government Takeover Outlined In Far-Right Manifesto
Pressley Has Repeatedly Sounded the Alarm About Project 2025 in Committee Hearings and Roundtables
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“Project 2025 is a far-right manifesto and blueprint for Trump and Republicans to enact widespread, wholesale policy violence on everyone who calls America home,” said Rep. [Ayanna] Pressley [MA-07]. “We must call that out and use every Congressional tool to push back and prevent this harmful agenda from becoming reality. I’m proud to join my colleagues on this critical task force to save our democracy and do just that.”
Hopefully this worthwhile and noble Congressional effort will pick up steam. And us Tax-payers can together help save the public services, that truly do, help make America great.
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The National Parks: America’s Best Idea — a film by Ken Burns
Just another Show to be defunded by Project 2025 social engineers.
www.pbs.org
