President Ronald Reagan often quipped that the "closest thing to eternal life we are ever likely to see here on Earth is a federal agency." He was elected on a platform that included promises to shut down the then-new departments of Education and Energy.
But Reagan gave up the effort to abolish both departments early in his first term when it became clear the Democratically controlled Congress would never go along with cancelling Jimmy Carter's creations.
So Terell Bell and William Bennett served as education secretaries under Reagan, while James Edwards, Donald Hodel and John Herrington filled the energy chief duties. Bennett at least led creation of the national student achievement testing system that today makes it obvious to anybody with a brain that the Education Department should never have been created in the first place.
There was also talk during the Reagan years of reducing or defunding entirely the National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) operations, thanks to their obvious and deeply rooted left-wing biases. But again, opposition from the Democratic Congresss put the issue way back on the furthest burner.
Fast forward now to the present day where we find President Donald Trump signing into law that $9 billion rescission bill Congress recently approved. That law cancels $1.1 billion previously appropriated by Congress during the final year of Joe Biden's Oval Office tenure to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) under which both NPR and PBS operate.
Given their importance to the maintenance in the Mainstream Media (MSM) of the Progressive dominance of the Democratic narrative in national politics, it's almost impossible to think one or more of the Fat Cat Lefties like George Soros won't pony up to keep NPR and PBS up and functioning in some fashion.
Even so, Trump and a Congress controlled — barely — in both chambers by Republicans has achieved something that was impossible during the Reagan Revolution .
(Full disclosure: I was very much a part of that movement, working in the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign media operation, then five years as a Reagan political appointee. My journalism career began after leaving the government in June 1985.).
During the debate over Trump's NPR/PBS defunding move, NPR Chief Executive Officeer Katherine Mayer stoutly denied the presence of any sort of left-wing bias in her troops' reporting of the news. "Please show me such a story because we want to know," she foolishly declared.
Well, in about 12 nanoseconds, Just Facts founder and chief James Agresti compiled a list of 14 such examples. Had he chosen to do so, he could easily have made that list to include 140 such examples, but for the sake of brevity, he kept the shorter list. Here it is:
1) NPR reported that “white school districts have so much more money” than those that serve “students of color” — when in reality— NPR excluded federal funding, which has equalized per-student spending between minority and non-minority school districts since the early 1970s.
2) NPR accused President Trump of calling “some of the white nationalists” at a violent protest “very fine people” — when in reality — Trump stated that they were “very bad people,” explicitly “condemned” them, and emphasized that the “very fine people” were not the white supremacists but other people who showed up to “innocently” and “legally” protest.
3) NPR reported it is false that “the federal government is banning incandescent light bulbs” — when in reality — that is what the law required and what ultimately happened.
4) NPR reported that “more than 99% of recent deaths” from Covid-19 in 2021 “were among the unvaccinated” — when in reality — more than half of all Covid deaths were among the fully vaccinated.
5) Without pushback, NPR reported the statement of a Democrat politician who alleged that Wisconsin judge Hannah Dugan was justified in obstructing ICE from arresting an illegal immigrant because ICE “did not have a real warrant signed by a real judge” — when in reality — ICE had the correct warrant to conduct the arrest.
6) NPR reported that “climate change” is causing hurricanes to move “more slowly, which means more damage” — when in reality — the study that NPR coyly cited states that the “analyses presented here do not constitute a detection and attribution study because there are likely to be many factors, natural and anthropogenic, that control tropical-cyclone translation speed.”
7) NPR reported that Joe Biden “has not explicitly expressed support for late-term abortions” — when in reality — Biden explicitly supported codifying Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortions up till birth if abortionists merely claimed they were for “health.”
8) NPR reported that the “U.S. Park Police and National Guard troops” used “tear gas” against “people nonviolently protesting police brutality” to clear the way for a “Trump church photo-op” — when in reality — the protestors were violent, the protest was cleared because of their violence, the timing had nothing to do with Trump, and it was the DC Police (under the Democrat mayor) who deployed the teargas.
9) NPR reported that “morning-after pills don’t cause abortion” — when in reality — they destroy embryos before they implant, which many doctors, scientists, and citizens consider to be abortions.
10) NPR reported that the perpetrator of a Colorado movie theater massacre used an “assault rifle” — when in reality — he had a common semi-automatic rifle, not an “assault rifle,” which are used by the military and have been generally banned for civilians since 1986.
11) NPR reported that not raising the debt ceiling could cause the federal government to “default” on its debt — when in reality — it would force the federal government to run a balanced budget and would not result in a debt default unless the president flouted the law and the Constitution.
12) NPR reported that a study on illegal voting by non-citizens was based on “discredited estimates” from a “widely contested 2014 paper” that was rejected by 200 political scientists — when in reality — that claim has always been questionable and was irrelevant to the study at hand, which uses data from 2022.
13) NPR reported that a “payroll tax holiday” “reduced Social Security’s revenues” — when in reality — the law that created the payroll tax holiday required that monies “equal to” the decreased payroll taxes be “transferred from the general fund” of the U.S. Treasury to the Social Security program.
14) NPR’s Public Editor wrote that NPR is not reporting on “the NY Post’s Hunter Biden story” because “we don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories” — when in reality — the Post’s report was accurate and implicated Joe Biden in bribery, extortion, and obstruction of justice.
Yes, to paraphrase a Bob Dylan Golden Oldie, the times, they are a' changin,' but this time for the better.
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