So a debate or two ago the Republican (Willard Mitt Romney) challenger for the presidency expressed that as president, he would defund the USA Public Broadcasting System (PBS). Hopefully there is some unstated plan to lobby the Congress to accomplish the feat, since presidents have not had the power to defund anything on their own since Richard Nixon signed the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.
As a counter to this "threat" President Obama declared that Romney wanted to "kill" Big Bird, apparently along with the rest of the Sesame Street universe:
Now, if he really knew what he was talking about, President Obama could have picked most any other PBS show and had a shot at being correct. However, Sesame Street, along with Big Bird, are a self-funding, money producing enterprise owned by billionaires. For some reason the Obama administration thought these billionaires were not getting enough money via the $444,158,950 federal appropriation to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) so he shoved another $1,067,532 their way through a 'stimulus' package. The Sesame Street crew reported that $1.07 million created 1.47 jobs.
So, now that you know that Big Bird's goose is not cooked, broiled, or fried, can we add public funding for America's largest television network into a defunding plan that also includes NPR and TVA?
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