Abstinence or Public Broadcasting?

I guess today is the day when the House votes on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) budget. If I heard right, the president (certainly not the chairman) of CPB would be happy with the restoration of a planned $100,000,000 cut. In federal budget terms this is chickenfeed. Heck, it’s half of what is being planned for our government’s abstinence program. If one were comparing ROIs (returns on investment), deciding between PBS and abstinence for teenagers would be a no brainer. The $200 million to keep teenagers ‘pure’ is, in my judgment, money wasted; whereas PBS really meets the needs of a heck of a lot of people - liberal, conservative and in between. In fact, the listeners of PBS are just about equally divided among these three camps.

I’ve received several e-mails asking me to join the campaign to maintain the budget of CPB. The problem is that I live in Massachusetts. I know my Congressman, Bill Delahunt, and my Senators, Kennedy and Kerry, will do the right thing. Perhaps, if you live in a state where your representatives are on the fence on this issue, you’re calling them might have an effect.