RE: talk radio changes, fill-ins

[Garrett Wollman <wollman@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu>]

<<On Sat, 30 Aug 2003 00:33:08 -0400, "Brian Vita" <brian_vita@cssinc.com> said:

> The way that I see it, that's $3,302,303 that won't be making it to
> treasury allowing us to fund education, roads, important other programs
> and, lest we not forget, keep my taxes down.

Nonsense.  It wasn't going to be making it to the Treasury anyway.
You think the donors would voluntarily give all their money directly
to the government?

``Tax deductible'' is a red herring as you should well know.
Charitable contributions are deductions, not credits, and those who
earn a substantial income (like many large donors to public
broadcasting) don't even get the full benefit of that, thanks to AMT.
People who file federal taxes on form 1040EZ (including most
low-income earners and many single people earning less than $50,000
per annum) don't get any benefit.

Of those who do get full deductibility for their charitable
contributions, few people I know support only one charity, and if
public broadcasting were not there, they would give the money to
another charity, not to the government.  This is, after all, the
*most* democratic way of deciding how public money is to be spent:
every taxpayer choosing for him- or herself what causes are worthy.

As for the corporations, do you honestly think they would not budget
the same amount on advertising regardless of the available media?  The
days of feel-good underwriting on the part of businesses are long
past.  If public broadcasting were not there, these businesses would
spend their advertising budgets on other media.

As far as the CPB angle goes: deal.  A majority of your fellow
citizens consider it to be a worthwhile use of a tiny fraction of
their tax dollars (an average per capita of $1.35 per annum, about
$2.78 per taxpayer) to support this activity.  This being a democratic
society, you get to live with what your fellow citizens and their
representatives have decided is an appropriate and equitable
distribution of tax revenues.

-GAWollman