The PAC-Perspective by Ted Flint
If Donald Trump is sent back to the White House these three goals in addition to securing our borders and getting the economy on the right tract should be on his short list of things to accomplish. I would like to see Mr. Trump, working with a Republican-controlled Congress, remove the United Nations from U.S. soil, cut all federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and privatize the United States Postal Service. I know this is going to be a tall order, because progressives exert outsized influence in all three organizations, especially the last two.
The United Nations is an America and Israel hating organization that costs U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars each year, money we spend to have an organization continually working against our interests – on our soil! There was a time in which we funded fully one half of the UN’s budget, today it’s closer to roughly a quarter. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, in 2023, the United Nations assessed the United States’ share of the regular budget at 22 percent and its share of the peacekeeping budget at 27 percent; however, Congress caps contributions to the peacekeeping budget at 25 percent. Is it money well spent?
The globalists in the world body, at every turn, attempt to thwart this country and especially Israel. When Israel responded to Hamas ’murder of nearly 1,200 Israelis on October 7, Israel carried out a tactical strike in Tehran against the Hamas leader who helped plan the attack and who Iran was harboring. The reaction from the U.N. Secretary General? “Iran has the inherent right to self-defense against violations of its national security and territorial integrity.” Whose territory and national security were violated?
According to Human Rights Watch, the armed groups committed war crimes, including: “attacks targeting civilians and civilian objects; willful killing of people in custody; cruel and other inhumane treatment; crimes involving sexual and gender-based violence; hostage-taking; mutilation and despoiling bodies; use of human shields; and pillage and looting. “But the U.N. and its boosters continue to focus on Israel’s responses to the violence of which it is the target.
A check of some of the freedom-loving countries that comprise the U.N. Human Rights Council will make it clear why Israel has a target on its back. Albania, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Cuba, Ghana, Indonesia, Kuwait, and Malawi are among the nations serving as HRC members until 2026. At the very least, our leaders should send the U.N. looking for a new home.
CPB
It is increasingly clear that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and has become nothing more than an adjunct of the Democrat Party. It is so blatantly biased in its coverage of Republicans in general and Donald Trump in particular that one conservative media outlet referred to it as “State-Run Media.” February 26, 1970, the CPB formed National Public Radio (NPR), a network of public-radio stations that began operating the following year. In the interest of full disclosure, my wife and I frequently listen to NPR and its local Albany affiliate. We enjoy the variety of programming. But since the rise of Donald Trump, NPR has become increasingly biased in its reporting. And having worked as a radio news reporter for over three decades, I know a slanted story when I hear one.
With the plethora of choices available today for Americans to get their news, why should taxpayers be forced to pay for a news outlet that clearly does not represent the views of half of America?
The Senate Appropriations Committee proposed $535 million for CPB in its fiscal year 2025 appropriations bill. Can you imagine how liberals would react if Fox News were on the receiving end of a half a billion dollars in taxpayer funding? According to the CPB’s website it bills itself as a “Steward of the U.S. government's investment in public media.” But why should the government, i.e., taxpayers, be paying for ANY media. It is time to cut off the federal spigot for this relic of the Lyndon Johnson years.
USPS
The United States Postal Service is a monolith that employees some 600,000 people and is awash in red ink. The USPS now says it will lose $56 billion more than it represented to Congress before the 2022 vote to have taxpayers bail it out. Technically, the USPS is self-funded, relying on money from stamps and the collection of other service fees. But its pension and retiree health care liabilities have pushed it into the red.
In its March 2021 10-year strategic plan, the USPS said it would cumulatively break even in the years 2021-30 if it were forgiven an additional $14 billion in pension obligations. In April 2023, in an update on the strategic report, USPS said it now expects to lose $70 billion over that period. USPS also projected in 2021 that it would break even this year. Now, the USPS does not expect that until 2030. Furthermore, the USPS’s May 9 announcement of second quarter results shows it is on track for up to $6 billion in losses this year.
With more and more Americans doing their banking and other correspondence on-line there is less of a need for an organization that has been around for almost 250 years and is billions of dollars in the red annually.
Even the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO’s) listed the USPS among federal agencies “vulnerable to waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement or in need of transformation.” Reason Magazine put it perfectly when it said that the USPS has become nothing more than an expensive way to send junk mail. If the Postal Service were privately run, it would be more efficient and operate more cheaply.
Undoubtedly, these three items are way down the list of priorities in a second Trump term but fulfilling them would save Americans billions of dollars and send a message to progressives that some of the institutions they think are sacrosanct will have work for the best interests of all Americans.
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