My wife is on it (I have Medicare/Medicare Advantage) in a red state which would just as soon do away with it. Her 10-day hospital stay still left plenty of bills. We've always loved the "you're covered, you're not covered, you might be covered, in-network, out-of-network (which changes). But I'm sure Our Lord God Trump and GOP Supermajority are bringing Utopia, aa soon as insurance companies can deny coverage for pre-existing conditions again.
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Court reaffirms CPB's independence
- Thread starter K.M. Richards
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Yes, I agree that those people are members of a small group. But they represent a universal situation in their country where health care is laden with delays and conditions.
The neighbor I spoke with most recently said that a needed intervention for pain-producing backbone friction would take an 18 to 24 month wait at best, with constant "re-evaluation". Here, they got a CAT Scan, bone density tests and the procedure done on private U.S. insurance in less than 30 days.
Again, they have the money to do it here. Other Canadians have to wait.
And my co-editor of WorldRadioHistory in the UK died while waiting for a needed procedure that would have kept him alive with considerable guarantees of success.
Many of the places in Latin America where have worked have fairly decent governments. Despite criticism, Mexico has been a functioning and orderly democracy for 105 years or so. Costa Rica, Chile and Uruguay and several others are long-term stable governments and others, like Panama and the Dominican Republic are well run and have been for decades.
If it's done, why is the DOJ suing to fire three members of the defunded board? It's not done.
If the shoe was on the other foot, would he just stand by???
The free care in Canada, the UK, and Australia (where my younger brother is now a citizen) isn't bad at all; however, it may take a little more time to get that care than it takes to get insured care in the U.S.
The shoe was on the other foot for the last four years. Nothing like the lawfare going on now occurred.
The comparison I made is valid. The disasters in the regions I mentioned (Gulf Coast, Florida, Tornado Alley, etc.) are frequent enough, and are regular occurrences, like clockwork. They happen every year, when late summer or fall hits, and they cost the entire country millions of dollars when they hit.
If you move to Florida, expect to encounter a hurricane sometime within 5-6 years (or less), because the entire state gets hit by them eventually -- Florida is right in the path for hurricanes. If you move to the Gulf Coast, expect the same thing. If you move to tornado alley, expect that there may be a tornado or other extreme weather damage.
It goes with the territory. And when the damage happens, the rest of the country pays for it.
When everybody in the US has their homeowner's insurance jacked up because of hurricanes and tornadoes, and other annually occurring events that cause damage to thousands of homes and businesses, as well as infrastructure, then everybody pays for it.
The people there fish and hunt. Most of them also work, much of that work away from satellite internet hot spots.
They're best served by that one way FM radio signal. That's one of Radio's strengths: you don't have to be tethered to a 'hot spot' to actually get news, information, or audio entertainment.
You want the government to pay an extra $10 to the people in rural Alaska for service that may not reach them when they're out on the job, or away from a hot spot. $10 extra. That's not savings, that's more government spending, not less.
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But that $85K/yr that would keep your station on the air would cause the entire American government's finances to collapse. By allowing KSKO to run out of funds they're going to save America.
Insurance rates, even in individual states, are set based on risk in each area. Generally, each state has an insurance commission and they have to review to approve rate changes.
What "everybody" pays for is the enormous inflation of the last 4 years which started with the business slowdowns from the inflation and large government stimulus spending. That has nothing to do with individual area risks.
For example, try insuring a taller tower along the Gulf Coast. Then compare the cost with a similar tower in the Dakotas or Michigan... to name two different areas.
But with services like Musk's Starlink you get pretty much total coverage anywhere on the planet. And you can "talk back" or text or whatever.
I think an analysis of that cost vs the analysis of greater police and safety costs in urban areas likely favors the rural zone.
Perhaps the way to look at this is to say that government services, while different in various urban and rural environments, should fill the needs that are specific to those places. With no factual knowledge, I am guessing that it averages out.
Again, each area requires specific and often different government services. In SomeRadioGuy's area, isolation creates certain needs. What they don't spend on traffic cops and stoplights in a bigger city goes to the radio service in the rural area.
I suspect it all balances out. The error of the current administration is to put different government services in silos without looking at the overall picture. Rural Alaska needs improved communications, while Dearborn, MI, needs services for native Arabic speakers.
Like many, I think this kind of decision and budgeting should be at the state and even county levels, as there are too many variables for a national policy.
That is how insurance works. The group takes the risk, and they are charged based on the specific risk in their area. High risk areas require additional flood insurance because the risk is higher. People in high risk areas pay more - many times it is multiples of other areas premiums - because they chose to live in those Funding FM radio service is akin to providing government funded cell phones
I don’t want the government paying for any of it but if the money is going to be spent why spend it on such a limited option? Those hunters and fisherman aren’t going to hear a 25 watt repeater 30 feet off the ground very far out into the field - you could cover almost the same area with a city wifi network. So as far as being “tethered” to town for coverage they kind of are now.
As I have now mentioned several times, each area in the country, each state and even each county and city has unique or at least separate needs.
In that rural Alaskan environment, the simple and traditional service of a low power FM (or a network of them) is easy to use and requires limited, off the shelf traditional technology.
I'm a former station chief engineer, so am sort of a "techie". Yet I seem to have a never ending battle that has lasted years and years with WiFi signals, log-ins, passwords, and more. A little radio in the kitchen is so much simpler and devoid of all the higher technology issues that seemingly many neither want nor need in this situation.
It probably isn't getting government money. According to Steves' website, they get money from fundraisers and selling merchandise through the website. But the stations running that show got some CPB money.
The source for the weekday, two hour news shows was Pacifica, and one 2 hour show on weekends was CBC Sunday Morning. The station received some CPB money, but most of the funding was through pledge drives, and some was also from the college, although the station was not part of the college curriculum anymore.
Millions of people use and even depend on radio every day.
The Great Plains didn't have power until the REA provided the infrastructure. Back then, the power companies didn't want to extend their infrastructure out to the rural farmers and poor people. It wasn't cost effective for them. Huge swaths of the rural South didn't have power, either, until the REA provided the infrastructure. Republicans in Congress were against the TVA, and R's in Congress were also against Grand Coulee Dam being built as a high dam to provide power (some of which goes to California today). They used the same lame arguments that are now being used against CPB, i.e., government money for such things is "socialism".
They didn't care about the lives of the rural people.
The clock on radio is ticking. That is about the only thing where you and I agree.
But audio entertainment and information is viable and valuable. That's why so many vehicles today still have radios.
I've been to Burns. Have you? I've also been to Harney County, as well as nearby Lake County and Malheur County, parts of which are miles and miles of nothing but sagebrush, and the odd, grated entrance to a distant cattle ranch. Harney county is mostly empty desert. The people live in Burns, Hines, a small Indian reservation, and a couple other small hamlets, and the rest live out on a few ranches out in the scrub.
Did you actually look at the listing of stations receivable in Burns? Did you see that the ONLY radio station receivable in the Burns area that has news is the OPB outlet? Or did you just gloss that item over?
And radio is different from a newspaper. Try reading the newspaper while your working on a site, or at an office. Or working on a ranch. Some of the residents out in the isolated areas of the high desert might have Sirius. But Sirius costs money. Public radio is free to the consumer.
The oil industry does not need even one dollar of Federal subsidies. Yet it gets Federal subsidies. It's curious at best that conservatives never complain about that incredible waste of money. But they're complaining about CPB.
No, it gets "depletion" allowances which, in non-renewable resource situations is the same concept as depreciation in a factory or technology business.
If you look at the oil and gas industries you can see that depletion of resources is its principle financial concern; while a factory depreciates its installations as it uses them, depletion anticipates the end of production and encourages further exploration and development.
Think of your brand new $100,000 transmitter. You can not write it off the same year you bought it... you can deduct a portion each year while you continue to use it. In the fossil fuel energy field, you are given an incentive to reinvest in further exploration and development while the existing investment becomes, eventually, valueless.
Yes, trash collection was so much better when it was run by the Mafia instead of a municipal agency.
Not $10 extra... he was comparing public radio costing the people of rural Alaska about $70 per year, while satellite Internet would cost them $80 per month.
OK, but the US oil industry made $102 Billion last year. How many billions has KSKO made last year? Because that's really what this entire thread is about: small public stations like KSKO, or the small public station in rural Oregon, needing funding to serve rural and Native Americans, while the party that cut those funds just enacted a wasteful spending bill that jacked up the deficit by a couple more trillion.
Why are people so dead set against something like CPB and not dead set against subsidizing companies like Exxon-Mobil and Chevron?
Does Exxon-Mobil really need any of our money? Since when is the US a charity service for corporations that make Billions each year, but if a network of rural public radio stations needs funding all of a sudden it's time to act like it's going to break the entire back of the US economy?
Ah, thank you for clarifying that. Makes the satellite internet idea look like an even bigger waste of money.
Fair enough - that simplicity is perfect for some people. The "I forget the passwords" statement is interesting though. Seems like a minor thing to deal with to improve the situation significantly, but that is why Baskin Robbins has 31 flavors - everybody is different.
Repeating the question: Why is the government suing to fire three CPB board members on an agency they just defunded? Isn't it moot?
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