Poor Kansas has an anti-intellectual, anti-arts governor, Sam Brownback, who defied even the GOP legislature to eliminate the state arts commission. He has the distinction of making Kansas unique. It’s the only state in the country without a state-funded arts commission.
Now Brownback has fired another shot by drastically cutting the state’s public broadcasting appropriation. Current state funding for public broadcasting is about $2 million in Kansas, but Brownback’s budget proposal cut that to $600,000. LJWorld.com reports that some in the state legislature tried unsuccessfully to restore $800,000 of the cuts to the budget.
The motion to remove the funding request deadlocked 10-10 and then Appropriations Chairman Rep. Marc Rhoades, R-Newton, broke the tie and voted to kill the funds.
Several Republican congress people engaged in the usual hype about government-supported radio…
But several western Kansas legislators said that their constituents depended on public radio and public television. And other legislators said that public television, with its emphasis on early learning and children’s programming, was a service to the state.
Yeah. The whole idea of public radio is to serve underserved areas and present content that is not available through commercial services.
Culture wars are so disgusting.
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