Letter to NPR, April 21 2007
April 21st, 2007 -
To Whom It Ought To Concern:
Today on “All Things Considered” you broadcast a segment which should have been a discussion of the pro’s and con’s of granting Washington DC “the right to vote”, de facto Statehood. In fact, it was an extremely polemic piece that presented the opposing side as white racists and nothing more. Early in your segment, you played a recording of a Representative from California attempting to speak while the “Representative” from the District of Columbia had the floor. I am not writing to defend his comity or politeness or rudeness, but the 1/2-sentence he attempted to utter during that recording was the only voice given to the opposition. Then you invited the DC “Representative” to speak and make her case on your show, and she was allotted several minutes. The interviewer was quite sympathetic to her position. I was not at all surprised that you did not grant the Republican from California the same time to make his case. (Perhaps you Democrats ought to reconsider your support of the insanely-named “Fairness Doctrine”, which would require you to give him equal time, unless of course, as Orwell wrote in “Animal Farm”, “…some are more equal than others”.)
Bottom line: You at NPR are liberal Democrats, all -not most, all- of you. You want Washington DC to be the 51st State because you know you can count on DC residents to vote Democrat. I have no problem with you holding your own opinions. We have a very big problem as a nation, because you continue to take Federal Tax Dollars to finance your broadcasts. Without tax dollars, which come from liberals as well as conservatives, and a few libertarians such as I, your broadcasts would soon go the way of Air America. If you would deny that, then just go down to the Capitol and tell the Bipartisans you won’t be needing their -our- money anymore. What you are doing is not “Taxation without Representation”, it’s arrogant and shameless “Taxation With Overt Misrepresentation.” Revolutions have been fought over lesser abuses of government power. They were justly waged, and we would be just today in overthrowing you.