Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz appears to love collectivism so much, she thinks your kids are hers.
In fact, that’s some of the same sentiment behind her push to keep shoveling tax cash at PBS.
We all know that the government has be our "educator." If the government doesn’t take your money under the threat of arrest and property seizure and hand it to leftist ideologues at PBS to broadcast leftist propaganda to children, how will kids survive?
Thus, on June 10, Ms. Wasserman Schultz blessed X with a “Quote” post, offering a video clip of the CEO of South Florida's PBS station, and offering her own desperate claim:
“PBS South Florida educates millions of our kids, provides fact-based programming, warns families about hurricanes, and so much more. Congress will vote on eliminating their funding this week. But I'll oppose it. We should expand access to quality programs - not limit it.”
Note the “we” in there – the politically potent pronoun of forced inclusion. The collective will chain you to it. You are part of Debbie’s wondrous collaborative, whether you want to be included or not.
Beyond the “our” kids claim (Heritage Action has noted the recent PBS production promoting transgender-procedures to kids and parents), and in addition to the seemingly exclusive nature of “PBS warning people about hurricanes” (as if folks can’t and don’t get that information from other sources), there is the subjective nature of value, and there is the US Constitution to keep in mind.
Wasserman Schultz might find enormous chunks of PBS programming valuable, but she has no moral claim over another person to tell him or her to perceive the same value, and she has no ethical prerogative to force others to pay for what she adores.
This moral principle translates into market economics, resource allocation, and prosperity.
Natural objects, or naturally-existing things on which humans have applied labor to collect, move, or improve, only are resources if people freely make that assessment for themselves, and the level of that valuation only can be seen when each person engages in a voluntary exchange to place a price on it. This price information can be seen by others, and both natural resources and human/monetary/temporal resources can be shifted accordingly.
When government orders people to pay, that process is negated. And PBS represents that negation of rights and a negation of the valuation process that respect for rights and market exchange foster.
But don’t ask Wasserman Schultz to leave you alone. She will not let you decide for yourself. In fact, Schultz eats our taxes while creating videos to push for MORE of our taxes being shoveled into PBS.
Despite a recent Newsbusters report showing yet another important facet of leftist PBS News bias, Wasserman Schultz thought it wise to show her ever-so-fortunate X followers a video of the South Florida PBS CEO Delores Fernandez Alonso, whose opening lines were virtually the same as Debbie’s (about “educating our children” and “warnings” about hurricanes) and then morphed into her claim that this is somehow jeopardized by the GOP wanting to cut “a few pennies” from the budget.
First, if it is “a few pennies”, then, based on her claim and logic, why should she worry? PBS could get “a few pennies” by running a bake-sale based on one of their myriad cooking shows.
Second, she claims that federal funding helps the people watching her video get “access to some of YOUR favorite shows…”
Which brings us back to the hubris and assumptive nature of the statist mind. How does she know what she claims? She cannot. And even if the federal tax-redistribution were to help some people see “their” favorite shows, that comes off the backs of others.
Finally, even if PBS were to change, even if it stumbled onto a bit more journalistic fairness, it's not ethical to use tax money on it, and the PBS failures already exist – a recent NewsBusters analysis:
“…tracked and labeled every guest that appeared on the News Hour over the first four months of Trump’s second term -- January 20, 2025 (Inauguration Day) through May 19, 2025 -- and found that liberal-Democratic leaning guests outnumbered conservative-Republican leaning guests by 173-41, a ratio of 4.2 to 1 (106 guests were rated either neutral or politically unrelated). That gap surpassed findings from an analogous MRC study conducted two years ago, which uncovered a ratio of 3.7 to 1.”
So, how about Ms. Wasserman Schultz stop insulting our intelligence and stop picking our pockets? How about she and Ms. Fenandez Alonso recognize that they have utterly no moral claim to tell us what to like or not like?
How about they abide by the U.S. Constitution, which doesn’t allow any of this pork spending?
It’s been a long time coming, but PBS might have to stand on its own. That is a good thing, and if people truly value it, they can show their preferences in the free market.
Of course, while brainwashing other people's children gets a pass, individual freedom is something Ms. Wasserman Schultz seems to despise.