Funding for clinical cancer trials and other life-saving research under the National Institutes of Health was cut off in response to the government slimdown, but it looks like the cookie monster will still be knee-deep in chocolate chips (or is it carrots now?)
According to the Daily Treasury Statement and first reported by CNS News, the administration dished out $445 million to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) on the first day of the slimdown, which means funds for the likes of PBS Newshour, NPR and “Sesame Street” are being spent before cancer research.
“It’s more than irresponsible, it is reprehensible. It’s an ‘in-your-face’ move by the administration, blatantly picking winners and losers in this shutdown,” C. Edmund Wright, a columnist for Breitbart.com and American Thinker, told FOX411. “Public broadcasting is a staple of liberal propaganda.”
However, one expert we spoke to said loopholes enable the CPB and other nonprofits like it to receive federal funding while still claiming independence.
“CPB is a nonprofit corporation that is technically separate from the government. So is NeighborWorks, a nonprofit that receives congressional appropriations, just as CPB does. NeighborWorks helped cause the housing bubble; CPB provides the propaganda that anesthetizes the public, preventing people from laying blame for failed policies at the door of the government,” said Matthew Vadum, senior editor at the Capital Research Center. “Keeping a distance by incorporating these entities affords the government plausible deniability when the two nonprofits mess up.”
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2013/10/08/government-gives-445-million-to-corporation-for-public-broadcasting-on-first/
