The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports left-wing PBS and NPR, continues to sop up hundreds of millions in taxpayer subsidies.

Despite GOP efforts to de-fund the progressive behemoth, CPB is forging ahead with its expansive mission creep agenda.

Want to know what they’re up to now?

Check out their latest initiative unveiled today:

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting Introduces Initiative to Combat the Dropout Crisis

* For Immediate Release on May 3, 2011

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, through support to CPB’s Teacher Town Halls and the StoryCorps National Teachers Initiative, will give teachers a way to share their perspectives and experiences with helping all students graduate high school prepared for college and careers.

Preventing dropouts is all well and good, but why is this a proper role for federal government-funded media? Billions of taxpayer dollars already fund education, literacy, and community outreach at the local, state, and federal level.

And what is the “National Center for Media Engagement,” anyway?

Read on:

Our Mission

Our mission is to support public media organizations nationwide in engaging their communities. By engagement, we mean working collaboratively to discover, understand, and address community needs and aspirations.

We support public media by providing resources for stations and producers to engage citizens across multiple platforms (on air, online, and in person), build sustainable community relationships, and stimulate citizen participation.

Our Vision

The National Center for Media Engagement supports and strengthens public media as community institutions that are essential to a healthy democracy. In service of this vision, we provide leadership, guidance, and resources, experiment with new technologies, identify best practices, and create and deliver community engagement initiatives on every platform.

“Build sustainable relationships? “Address community needs and aspirations?”

As the self-promoting, empire-expanding CPB explains on its “Public Media” page: “The American people need such an extraordinary public media system. Our democracy depends on it.”

In other words: They’re Community Organizers for the Preservation of Government-Funded Media.

Next stop: Building sustainable community relationships with all of Pakistan’s new Sesame Street viewers.

Those of you who were worried that Congress and the president got way too overzealous with their spending cuts yesterday can rest easy. As you’re about to discover, absolutely essential spending remains intact and fully funded.

Daily Caller:

As American politicians debate the possible de-funding of American public broadcasting, the U.S. government is spending big bucks to bolster entertainment in foreign countries.

USAID has dedicated $20 million to remake “Sesame Street” for Pakistani children. The four-year series will feature 78 episodes in Urdu and 56 in other local languages. The show, called “SimSim Humara,” will be set in a bustling village.

The Guardian reports that the American taxpayer supported Pakistan version of Sesame Street will carry an implicit message of tolerance but will feature absolutely no pro-American propaganda. So it’ll be pretty much like the US version of Sesame Street.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

The SAVE Award winner was feted at the White House recently.

From the White House website:

“If you want ideas on how to save money, ask the people who spend it. That’s what President Obama did when he began the SAVE Awards two years ago.” That’s the opening of Joe Davidson’s Washington Post write-up of the SAVE Award, the collaborative process in which all federal employees were invited to submitted their ideas on how to save taxpayer dollars and strwamline government, as well as vote and comment on others’. After a tough-but-fair crack about government acronyms, Trudy Givens gets her due recognition:

Trudy Givens, a Bureau of Prisons employee from Portage, Wis., submitted the winning suggestion. Like many of the other ideas, Givens’s suggestion is so simple, yet so effective, you wonder why [Uncle] Sam didn’t think of it earlier.

Her idea: Send the Federal Register — a daily compendium of government regulations and notices — to federal employees online, rather than by snail mail, with an estimated savings of $16 million through 2015.

As the SAVE Award winner, she got to meet the President and her agency head the Attorney General in the Oval Office

For my own SAVE Award submission, I was going to suggest that the White House lay off their website proofreader in order to save taxpayers some money, but I see they already must have done that.

President Obama is quoted as saying, “A million here, a million there. It adds up.” Yes it does. Unless we’re talking about PBS and NPR, then those millions are insignificant:

President Obama defended public broadcasting from cuts on Friday, emphasizing that defunding networks like NPR and PBS would do little to rein in spending.
[...]
“That’s not where the money is,” he added.

The SAVE Award winner’s idea is said to save $4 million or so per year and she got a party (nobody from the US Postal Service was in attendance, no doubt). Taxpayers subsidize NPR and PBS to the tune of hundreds of millions per year and that’s “insignificant.” Go figure.

Is there a federal employee out there willing to suggest defunding NPR and PBS for next year’s SAVE Awards competition? If you do, please make sure you’ve got enough money put away for a comfortable (and abrupt) retirement before submitting the entry.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

If the same amount of taxpayer dollars were going to Fox News, would it be considered such a meaningless pittance?

President Obama defended public broadcasting from cuts on Friday, emphasizing that defunding networks like NPR and PBS would do little to rein in spending.
[...]
“I think it’s going to be important for us to have a conversation after we get the short-term budget done, about how do we really tackle the problem in a comprehensive way,” Obama said at a press conference on Friday.

“And that means not just going after Head Start or Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That’s not where the money is,” he added.

It could be a moot point. As Doug Ross points out, if James O’Keefe continues at this pace, de-funding NPR won’t be necessary because it won’t have any employees left.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Quick note: Apologies for the slow posting the past couple of days. I’m “on the road” and haven’t gotten in as much time for a little writing as I originally hoped — which is merely an admission that I’ve failed miserably at the art of simultaneously blogging while playing blackjack.

The Republican vendetta against Elmo stampedes onward, so cue the cartoon aardvark human shields one more time:

Sens. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) introduced a bill Friday to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which doles out federal funds to radio and television stations.

DeMint said it “should be an easy decision” to halt taxpayer money for public broadcasting while the nation is “on the edge of bankruptcy.”

He pointed out that the bipartisan debt commission convened by President Obama suggested ending the subsidies.

The pair focused on NPR and PBS, two major recipients of public media dollars — particularly on the salaries of media execs at both outlets, including the nearly $1 million a “Sesame Street” president takes home each year.

An additional tidbit from CNS News:

DeMint and Coburn also noted that in 2010, NPR accepted a $1.8 million grant from the Open Society Foundation, backed by liberal financier George Soros, to hire 100 reporters. Additionally, NPR has an endowment of over $200 million, they said in a news release.

Imagine the outrageous outrage if Republicans were fighting for public funding for a radio network supported in part by Roger Ailes.

(h/t Weasel Zippers)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

At least “she who shall remain ma’am-less” hasn’t accused Republicans of “Muppet genocide,” but maybe Barbara’s saving that one for tomorrow’s speech:

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that House Republicans want to strip government funding of PBS because they have a “vendetta against Elmo.”
[...]
Boxer said that the cost of four hours of the Iraq war would be enough to keep PBS funded — and the popular fire-red children’s character on the air.

Forget four hours of the the Iraq war — the cost of four of Barbara Boxer’s earmarks would be enough to keep PBS funded.

How many puppets, muppets, guys in big yellow bird suits, cartoon aardvarks and other non-human shields can assorted congressional Democrats barricade themselves behind to save PBS funding? I guess we’ll find out soon enough, but it sure isn’t easy telling them apart anymore.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Someday far into the future, people might look back at the fact that a country suffocating beneath a $14 trillion debt continued to satisfy pleas for big money from cartoon characters, muppets and public trough lampreys in Congress (pardon the redundancy) and chuckle, but for me that day is not today:

House Democrats made their case for continuing taxpayer funding of public media outlets such as NPR and PBS with a little help from Arthur the PBS cartoon character, who visited the Capitol Wednesday morning.

The friendly but silent aardvark joined Democratic Reps. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, Earl Blumenauer of Oregon and others to hit back against Republicans who have pledged to cut the funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the next budget.

“We need your help today,” Markey said as a person dressed as the character walked toward the Capitol building. “We can’t leave Arthur and all of his pals in the lurch.”

Can’t leave Arthur & pals in the lurch? To quote the president, “Yes we can!” But they got one thing right — what better symbol when it comes to digging snouts into pockets than an aardvark? Next time they should bring Snuffleupagus, because he can get down in there a little deeper.

They even brought charts (full picture at the Daily Caller here):

Bert needs to lay off the Skoal.

Why do Bert and Ernie look a little rough? The horrible thought of having to scrape by only on tens of millions of dollars per year in licensing and merchandising fees with no extra taxpayer money can take its toll on a muppet.

Alan Grayson would have been great at this:

As for the NPR half of this equation, I don’t know what they’re worried about, since their CEO seems to believe their level of taxpayer support is fairly insignificant. Not insignificant enough however to forget to send President Obama a gracious thank-you note for the increase in funding in his recent budget.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Elmo’s already spoken out on behalf of the FCC’s national broadband plan, and now there’s work to be done pushing the Child Nutrition Bill. It’s the least your tax dollars can do.

When Elmo turns 65, it’s a good bet he’ll be Andy Griffith’s replacement to lie to senior citizens about the glorious benefits of Obamacare:

Is it safe to assume Bert & Ernie will be hauled out this weekend to push the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”?

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

PBS journalist and debate “moderator” Gwen Ifill partied extra-hardy as her candidate was sworn into office and her new book declaring the “Age of Obama” debuted on the same day.

Party pics and Obama schlock party favors here.

But don’t you dare question her objectivity.

You know what will happen if you do:

RAAAAAACIST!

***

I’d call it a “tricked out” affair, but you know what that will get you, too.

***

Commenter JWF: “Are they hawking her book at whitehouse.gov yet?”

***

Previous Gwen Ifill blogging.

More at Free The Film.

Sign the petition:

To Pat Harrison, President of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Members of the United States Congress:

We are among the taxpayers whose money has been used to make “Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center,” a documentary that was supposed to be aired on the Public Broadcasting Service as part of its “America at a Crossroads” series.

Yet, we are unable to see this film, despite the fact that the information it relays about what is happening to moderate Muslims at the hands of the Islamists is, arguably, as important as any issue addressed by the documentaries that were broadcast in that series.

While PBS justifies its suppression of “Islam vs. Islamists” on the grounds that the film is “unfair” and not up to the network’s “standards” we believe that, as its underwriters and the public who own our country’s public airwaves, we have a right to judge for ourselves. Please do whatever is necessary to make this documentary available to us and all other Americans at the earliest possible time.