[Davis Democrats] FW: contact Congress- PBS and NPR-voluntary action opportunity

[John Chendo]

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Subject: contact Congress- PBS and NPR-voluntary action opportunity







Subject: PBS and NPR
From: info at democracyforamerica.com
To: jac07 at hotmail.com
Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2011 18:10:30 +0000

john - 

The budget fight in Congress is really just beginning and it's going to be a
big one. Republicans are claiming they'll shut the government down if they
don't get their way. They're willing to cost even more Americans their jobs
-- just so Republicans can make a political point and attempt to hold Obama
hostage. 

What Republicans don't understand is if Democrats stand together, we'll win
this fight. 

That's why DFA members are demanding a budget that has no cuts to vital
programs, invests in jobs, and makes the rich and corporations pay their
fair share. 

And when we talk about vital programs, we're not just referring to Social
Security, Medicare, or the many aspects of our social safety net that keep
the struggling middle class and poor Americans from poverty and
homelessness. We're also talking about education, the Environmental
Protection Agency, and of course, NPR and PBS.

Our friends at CREDO action are calling on Congress to fully fund National
Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System, please join them right now.
<http://act.democracyforamerica.com/go/504?akid=474.159098._olCai&t=1>

House Republicans, when deciding how they want to fund the government for
the remainder of the fiscal year, immediately attacked NPR and PBS. They cut
all funding -- that's right, all of it -- for the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting (CPB), the nonprofit responsible for funding public media
including NPR, PBS, Pacifica and more.

If the funding is not restored in the Senate, it would be a tremendous blow
to the entire public interest media sector.

House Republicans disingenuously claimed that they needed to cut funding for
public media because of budgetary constraints. But what they failed to
highlight is that national public broadcasting is remarkably cost effective,
providing local news and information, free of charge, for millions of
viewers while only receiving about .0001% of the federal budget.

More to the point, it's nearly impossible to put a price tag on the actual
value of public broadcasting.

We cannot allow congressional Republicans to destroy public media.

Tell Congress: Fully fund NPR and defend public service media!
<http://act.democracyforamerica.com/go/504?akid=474.159098._olCai&t=2>

Public media is one of the last bulwarks against the corporate media, where
the combination of consolidation and profit motive has long since shifted
the focus to infotainment rather than substantive news. In many rural and
less affluent communities, broadcasters rely on federal funding to provide
the only available high-quality news and public affairs programming.

Without public media, corporate media monopolies would increase their
already large control of what we see on television, hear on the radio or
read in the newspaper.

The increased accumulation and consolidation of corporate power is a threat
to our democracy. And nowhere is this more evident than in our media. It's
important that we stand up to stop this today. America simply cannot afford
to lose what public media brings to the table.

Tell Congress: Fully fund NPR and defend public service media!
<http://act.democracyforamerica.com/go/504?akid=474.159098._olCai&t=3>

Conservatives have longed for any opportunity to defund NPR, PBS and other
public media, and now it looks like they may finally get their wish --
unless we stop them.

Tell the Senate to reject cuts to public broadcasting today.

Thank you for everything you do,

-Charles  

Charles Chamberlain, Political Director?
Democracy for America