Sunday, June 19, 2005

Let's be frank, Ralph. Public radio and television programming has been perceived as having a liberal slant, just as all mainstream media are. That's why you want to do away with it. But perceptions don't make it so. This is speech that could be censored by axing its budget, so that makes it fair game. But that doesn't make it right. That you have the power doesn't mean you're required to abuse it.

I was impressed, maybe even a little disappointed, with how balanced PBS and NPR 2004 campaign and election coverage was. So many stories on public radio and television tell us of the less fortunate, here and around the world, and of those who have overcome hurdles to succeed. Should stories about the toll American actions have taken on others not be told? I wonder what Native Americans might think about that.

Indeed, $400 million is a small price to pay for stories that might not otherwise be told.

Last week it was reported that government lawyers, apparently at the Bush administration's behest, backed off of monetary penalties being sought from Big Tobacco--funds that were to be used for smoking-cessation programs.

The result of the 11th-hour change of direction is that the Justice Department won't ask for the $120 billion from Big Tobacco that would have targeted the 45 million Americans who smoke. It will settle instead for $10 billion earmarked for preventing future smokers from taking up the habit.

The result is a break for big business, and a greater number of long-term smokers whose habit-related ailments will further overburden the nation's health-care system as the boomer generation ages. It's a typically short-sighted view from a short-sighted administration.

This is the perfect example of dangerous policy that combines two Bush administration favorites: the politics of fear and the abuse of power. By using the former, he is seeking permanent authorization of the latter.

...

It's the U.S. government's responsibility to keep us safe, but to accomplish that without compromising the personal freedoms that set us apart. Big Brother isn't welcome here, but no matter how the president tries to justify it, that is what he wants.

What he also wants is Big Moral Brother, a compass that always points toward the GOP conservative wing's view of things. The president approves of the precedent the government set by taking sides in the case of Terry Schiavo, the Florida woman who was allowed to die after subsisting for 16 years in a vegetative state. But about 80 percent of Americans, no matter where they stood on the issue, think government should have kept its nose out of it.

The same holds true for embryonic stem-cell research. Large majorities of Americans, up to 70 percent, want the research to proceed based on the promise--not the guarantee--that it could hold the key to various maladies and diseases from which actual living people suffer.

"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."

posted by Shaun Kenney | 6/19/2005 11:48:00 AM | 0 comments

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