Screw you, PBS

email | Craig J. Cantoni

[randita]

Not to worry, many of the units will be trashed in short order. Not all of them, but many.

Sad, but true. It's human nature to value and protect that for which you've worked hard and earned. Something given free or for minimal charge is not valued much by the receiver.

[randita]

Liberals just don't seem to understand it, or if they do, they're intent on cheating other people out of that fantastic feeling.

They cheat others out of it because it selfishly makes them feel good by giving other people's money (i.e. the tax payers) away. How giving someone's else's money away makes a liberal feel compassionate, I'll never understand.

Also, they do it to extort votes.

[SpyGuy]

time to defund PBS.

Time to defund the government!

[massadvj]

I can certainly sympathize. But I think some of your scorn is misplaced, because the vast majority of social welfare in this country does not go to the poor. It goes to the rich.

About 87 percent of the wealth in this country is in the hands of folks over 50 years old. More than half (55 percent) is in the hands of people over 65. Yet about two-thirds of the federal budget is spent on social security and Medicare. By comparison, less than 7 percent of the federal budget is used for traditional social welfare.

So while you rightfully lament the ungrateful, lazy bastards who live in government-subsidized housing in the slums of Chicago, you ought to save your real rage for the leisure classes in Sun City, Myrtle Beach and Tampa Bay.

Most of those folks vote Republican, though, so I guess that makes them alright.

[SpyGuy]

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: "From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage."

- Alexander Fraser Tytler (later Lord Alexander Fraser Woodhouslee), in "The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic," published 1776

[chadwimc]

HEY!!! Thats how I made my "gentleman's" bathroom in my old house. I couldn't afford the cost of a plumber to sawcut the basement floor. A drain is a drain, right?(Not really, I know, I know)I added a comode and a shower stall. The new owner's wife said "We can take that out" The new owner said "I think I'll keep it. I always wanted my own bathroom".

[fishbabe]

there was a story in sf chron about three days ago how people in the bay area were getting homes{yes,homes} worth 160,000 and only paying a fraction of the cost...the taxpayer picks up the rest...the story was in lucianne.com and go to their search engine and look up the word condo..the story is there

[apackof2]

if you want a nice house, the way to get it is to drop out of school, have kids out of wedlock, and sit on your behind and eat Cheetos while watching Oprah Winfrey.

Yup, the "Rev.Jesse's" pinions have learned their lessons well

[nutmeg]

.

[GladesGuru]

In much of America, Johnson's "Urban Renewal" became "negro removel". And "ppor anybody else" removal. Poor housing and cheap hotels were leveled - but nothing was built for those who were displaced.

Where before a wino could put in a few hours at day labor and be paid cash sufficient for a flop house, some food, and a bottle of wine (the real incentive), a after "Urban Renewal" they slept on the streets and under bridges.

I once dated a surgical nurse who lived in Miami. She regularly had stories about how 'trolls' (the OR term for those living under the bridges) were kept alive by maggots which debrided the knife wounds.

When flop houses were available, emergency care was far more readily available. Why so? Ever tried to find a phone with which to make a call from under the abutment of a bridge? Remember, we are talking about a "Renewed" area, so even the phone booths are trashed. That is, those that were not removed due to a lack of profitablity due to vandalism.

Moral: Urban Renewal" had major Unintended Consequences. So do most experiments in socialism and/or social engineering.

[Drango]

I'm on travel and don't have my PBS/NPR ping list; but yes, screw PBS

[Intolerant in NJ]

...Although the segment explained the horrors of the high-rise public housing where the family used to live, it did not explain why the housing was horrible...and I'll bet it didn't explain that this original public housing was so trashed by those living there over the years that in many places it has had to be dynamited as not longer habitable, to make way for the new garden apartments - which I'll also bet will be similarly trashed within a few years, eventually to be dynamited to make way for.......

[ETERNAL WARMING]

They can also "afford" medical care, unlike most working Americans. Nice that we pay for that too.

[roadcat]

"From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage."

Very chilling quote from Alexander Fraser Tytler; thanks for posting this. So much apathy and dependence out there, today. So what happens next when the liberals' looting of the treasury runs dry? Will they push us out of our homes and strip us of our assets at gunpoint, because we worked our asses off all of our lives? Arm yourselves, that day may be coming in the near future.

Almost forgot to say it - screw PBS!

[LibertarianInExile]

Boy, I heard a lot of rebuttals there.

Although that whole 'leisure class' rhetoric is a bit Marxist in tone, doncha think?

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

it selfishly makes them feel good by giving other people's money (i.e. the tax payers) away. How giving someone's else's money away makes a liberal feel compassionate, I'll never understand.

IMHO it doesn't truely make them feel compassionate, it couldn't. What it does make them feel, IMHO, is powerful.

Also, they do it to extort votes

. . . and that really makes them feel powerful!

But the interersting question is why the middle-class liberal (a minority among the middle class, but not a small one) wants to enable the scamming hot-shots who do this. I think it's a vicarious thrill of power, myself--but ya gotta be hard up for a power trip to inflict that on your children/grandchildren.

[FreedomPoster]

< *golf clap*>

Very well put.

[kittymyrib]

Don't worry about PBS and their socialist agenda. When Republicans are in charge of the House and Senate, we'll defund that taxpayer-funded waste pit. Right.

[scabbage]

ahhh yes...PBS...The station that ran a show last week on 911 that had on it an interview with a journalist (probably from the NY Times) who described 911 as "poetic justice".

"Your either with us or your with the terrorists"....That says it all

[Mears]

Thanks for the wonderful excerpt about democracy----scary,isn't it?