Trump’s DHS Pick, Kristi Noem, Decides To Undermine Public Safety By Cutting Funding For Public Broadcasting
from the failing-upward dept
Hitch yourself to a wagon and see what you get. Area dog-killer/current governor/possible DHS head Kristi Noem boarded the Trump Train when it first passed through town nearly a decade ago. Since then, she’s won the loyalty of a bunch of fascist-adjacent dipshits who don’t care how much they vote against their own interests, as long as it hurts people they don’t like. You know: immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, whatever their definition of a “lib” is, renewable energy proponents, or whatever.
Kristi Noem made it clear she was willing to step on the backs of her own constituents to ensure her rise within the Republican party by vehemently arguing against stay-at-home orders (during one of the most massive COVID outbreaks in the nation), shutting down voter-approved marijuana legalization, and — in the midst of a flood that devastated several small communities — spending money scrambling National Guard units to the Texas border rather than to nearby overflowing bodies of water.
Now, there’s this: the undermining of local and national safety by yanking funding for public broadcasting. Most people may assume it’s nothing but tasteful sweaters, smoothly modulated moderators, and the occasional Brit drama relying on public broadcasting funds.
But that’s only part of it. South Dakota Searchlight — an independent news source that never stops holding the state government’s feet to the fire — talked to people that are also affected when money for public broadcasting suddenly goes missing. Journalist Brad Johnson tracked down those who are going be hurting because potential DHS boss Kristi Noem seems to believe the public shouldn’t fund public broadcasting, despite there being no tax break in it for them even if they align with Noem’s antipathy.
It seems absurd that Gov. Kristi Noem would harm the U.S. Department of Homeland Security just before she is expected to be confirmed as its leader.
But that is what she is doing with her ill-advised plan to destroy South Dakota Public Broadcasting.
Noem launched her surprise attack on SDPB in her Dec. 3 budget address, proposing to cut slightly more than $3.6 million of its $5.6 million in state funding.
The problem with this math is that it takes $4.8 million a year just to cover the basics of public broadcasting, including whatever’s needed to keep its infrastructure up and running. Even if you may not agree with what’s being broadcast on the airwaves, it seems extremely ignorant to cut funding that affects all of the government ancillaries that depend on the state’s broadcast towers.
And yet, here we are, watching a bunch of government infrastructure being hamstrung by a performative Trumpist who’s about to bring this same level of foresight and expertise to the Department of Homeland Security.
There’s going to be a cascade of failure if there’s not enough money to keep these towers fully operational, as SDPB’s direction of engineering, SeVern Ashes told Brad Johnson:
The network is critical “to all emergency communication from the SD Division of Criminal Investigation on down to county-level emergency management systems such as ambulance, fire and local police departments such as Sioux Falls and Rapid City,” Ashes said.
[…]
One federal Homeland Security agency using the tower network for communications is U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Ashes said. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S Forest Service and Federal Aviation Administration also use the system, as does the Civil Air Patrol.
There are a half-dozen agencies that might be adversely affected by underfunding, including one Noem may soon oversee: ICE. And they’re not the only ones relying on SDPB towers. Law enforcement uses the towers to issue missing person alerts, and relay weather and traffic information. Firefighters use the same towers for communications, as do certain ambulance systems. SDPB’s towers provide communication coverage to 98% of the state.
It’s clear these towers are necessary to South Dakotans. But because Noem only sees them as relay stations for anti-conservative programming, she’s decided they can make do with half the budget for the next year. And it’s hard to believe she isn’t aware of the side benefits of SDPB’s broadcasting towers. After all, she heads the state and has all the access she needs to understand the potential collateral damage of slashing funding. But she just doesn’t care. The only point of this action is to score points with people as short-sighted, vindictive, and thoroughly wrong as she is. Unfortunately for the rest of the nation, she’s no longer just South Dakota’s problem — not if Trump gets his way.
Filed Under: dhs, donald trump, kristi noem, nationals security, public broadcasting, public safety
Comments on “Trump’s DHS Pick, Kristi Noem, Decides To Undermine Public Safety By Cutting Funding For Public Broadcasting”
Reminder for the Trumpist trolls: Everything that happens under the governance of Republicans is the fault of those Republicans. Blaming the consequences for their actions on their victims or the Democrats won’t make those actions any less tied to Republican governance. Your “team” has to take the blame, no matter how much you hate the idea that your team is made up of fascists who have no interest in governance and all the interest in having power and wealth. You made the bed you wanted, and now you get to lie in it, no matter how much it hurts you and the people you care about. You may have won, but victory has its price.
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“Everything that happens under the governance of Republicans is the fault of those Republicans. Blaming the consequences for their actions on their victims or the Democrats won’t make those actions any less tied to Republican governance. Your “team” has to take the blame, no matter how much you hate the idea that your team is made up of fascists who have no interest in governance and all the interest in having power and wealth. You made the bed you wanted, and now you get to lie in it, no matter how much it hurts you and the people you care about. You may have won, but victory has its price.” and they will still blame democrats for it
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Exactly, they won’t care if it hurts them, will never care.
They know victory comes with a price, but they don’t care.
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To a Republican, everything that has ever gone wrong, is ever going wrong, and will ever go wrong is the fault of Democrats. Always. Somehow. Nobody exactly knows how, it “just is”. Somehow. Weirdly.
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Strange. I get the exact opposite of that reading this site
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JFC, can you please learn how to use blockquote formatting in Markdown? At the very least, put your response to a comment on a new line if you’re just going to repeat someone’s entire comment verbatim (which is wholly unnecessary, but hey, “wholly unnecessary” seems to be your entire posting schtick).
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atleast i voted kamala
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So what.
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Party of Personal Responsibility!
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Triggered are we?
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i guess you are? Not seeing it anywhere else.
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Very likely. He tends to get most triggered whenever anyone dares advocate for minorities he doesn’t like.
Well see Republicans hate Americans.
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Not true! Republicans only hate Americans who are poor, non-white, non-Christian, queer, and/or non-Republicans. So if you’re a rich white conservative Christian cishet male, Republicans love you (and your money)!
Note that they’ll also make some exceptions for women, but those women have to meet all the same requirements as the men (besides being male) and they have to espouse rhetoric that makes them sound like second-class citizens compared to men. They’ll also make exceptions for anyone who is outside the Republican standard if such people (A) kiss enough Republican ass or (B) kill people that Republicans dislike (e.g., Kyle Rittenhouse killing two “liberals”).
In other words, they want to increase their (local) deficit by… What… 2.9 million per year? Yeah, so much for fixing the deficit… But hey, nobody ever said Republican’s ever were sane about this. You’d think they’d be, after all, they’re supposed to be the God capitalists or something… But apparently not
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The public shouldn’t fund “public broadcasting.”
If citizens’ money is, however, confiscated to be used to support media scumbags and the infrastructure they propagandize on, those journalists should be regime loyalists.
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You wanna maybe take a second go at that little screed bro?
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This is the best you could come up with? Man, “winning” really did punch you in the gut, huh.
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You want the US to become the North Korea of the North American continent.
That’s you; that’s what you’re asking for. You’re so afraid and hateful of people and views different to your own that that is where your head is.
Proud of that?
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Okay, I hope your fine with the WEA and similar services going away. Next time there’s a flood warning or flash flood alert in your area, you won’t know about it. I hope your alright with that. Just one consequence of getting rid of public broadcasting.
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I live at the top of a hill, dork.
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Top of a hill eh.
Watch out for them lightning bolts then dood.
Oh wait! Lightning bolts are sent by Jesus from Heaven to punish non-believers, sexual deviants and poor people.
So I guess maybe you won’t need to duck and cover after all, as long as your Trump Tithing is up to date. 🙂
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“The public shouldn’t fund “public broadcasting.””
Like the broadcasting from Donald’s depends?
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This isn’t Red Note, bruh.
So, it’s a $3.6M cut in a $7.29B budget. When, there is $10M more for school safety, and $182M to finish building the Sioux Falls prison.
It starts to make sense if we take lobbying into account.
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Public Broadcasting (PBS)
PBS consists of cultural programming of sociopolitical narratives and has no other purpose. Good riddance.
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One could say the same about Fox News.
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You sounds exactly like every Soviet propaganda speech ever.
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“PBS consists of cultural programming of sociopolitical narratives and has no other purpose. Good riddance.”
Nova is sociopolitical?
Antique Roadshow is sociopolitical?
Ask This Old House?
Americas Test Kitchen?
Exactly what is the underlying narrative of which you speak?
Maybe I misunderstand the meaning of the word “sociopolitical”.
“: of, relating to, or involving a combination of social and political factors”
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sociopolitical
Not much help there, I suppose cooking can be a social experience as could be fixing an old house. But I suspect it has more to do with the science that some people do not like.
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They probably also hate shows like Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and Sesame Street, which teach children to share, have empathy for others, and otherwise be a decent human being.
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My wife leaves the PBS kids shows on for our cats during the day. Those shows are educational AF. I’m randomly learning stuff when I walk through the room that I don’t remember learning in middle school and I have two degrees.
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Well, Sesame Street used to do that then Autism Speaks took it over. I’ll bet you’re happy about that, though.
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Translation: “PBS consists of content that educates people with a narrative contrary to the one I’d prefer they hear from my echo chamber of propaganda and hate.”
Bitching about educational and culturally wholesome content is telling on yourself.
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Wow, Val. Saying the dumbest imaginable shit in a place that a Bratty Matty exists is quite an accomplishment.
I will never forgive you Kristi Noem.
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All dogs go to Heaven. That’s how God keeps dog killers from entering.
From the team that brought you an anti-vaxer lunatic as the head of health and safety...
It seems absurd that Gov. Kristi Noem would harm the U.S. Department of Homeland Security just before she is expected to be confirmed as its leader.
Not so much when you consider the staffing picks both this time and last, where just after loyalty to the Dear Leader one of the key ‘qualifiers’ for leading a government agency seems to be not just a willingness but eagerness to destroy it.
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To wit: Pete Hegseth. Would you pick a lecherous alcoholic to lead your company, let alone the entire U.S. military?
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lecherous, misogynistic, alcoholic….
Until we escape the monopoly that the two “only viable choice” parties have created for themselves, we’ll be stuck in BINARY COIN FLIP HELL. The best outcome we can ever really expect is the famous “lesser of two evils”, since BOTH PARTIES ARE EVIL at their core.
DEFUND THE POLITICIANS. MAKE THEM EARN THE TITLE “PUBLIC SERVANT”.
Hasn’t it occurred to any of you that they’re PLAYING US?
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So tired of braindead bothsiderism bullshit.
You are unserious. You might as well be a fucking flat-earther while you’re at it.
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They’re not wrong, though. The Democrat Party has a lot of flaws. There’s the cowardice about using power whenever the party is in power, the lip service paid to progressive causes while the party reaches across the aisle to work with Republicans, the major issues with messaging and surrendering the frame of any political issue to Republicans, and…well, basically, the problem is the party wants to win elections through winning over Republican voters by being GOP Lite, and you saw how well that worked out for Kamala Harris last year. Actual progressives in the party get edged out in favor of institutionalists and centrist liberals who think throwing certain marginalized groups under the bus will win over conservative voters who are already going to vote for actual conservatives. Same goes for younger Democrats who actually know how to connect with younger voters and could bring some much-needed modern-day tech expertise to the party. The Democrat Party is the lesser evil of the big two political parties, and that boils down to the party not going full fascist in search of both an electoral win and the full-throated support of weird-as-fuck manchild billionaires.
Re: Re: Re: Whoops wrote a novel. Sorry.
The Dems are shit. But I vote for them every time. Being an active participant in a representative democracy MEANS, at bare minimum, picking the least bad option for representing your values and interests, regardless of how many options there are to choose from.
We could have a hundred fucking parties and it would still ultimately boil down to the same choice of least-bad.
No choice will, or even CAN perfectly represent you, unless you yourself are running. You running, bro? No? Then suck it the fuck up and vote for the lesser evil.
It IS shitty we only have two options, but there’s no fixing that without voting; without working with the system.
I don’t buy accelerationist arguments. You don’t fix a car by driving it off a cliff.
Pull up your big boy pants and vote for the overall better option because otherwise you are empowering the worst. If you don’t vote you yield your power (and the need of parties to cater to your interests) to the people who do vote.
It fucking sucks that part of the Democrats’ attempt to regain power is being more dumb and evil.
But a party has no power without votes.
If good smart young people won’t consistently go vote for the lesser of two evils, then both parties have to cater to the dumb faschy old people who DO consistently vote. You don’t like it? Me either. But the votes were the votes. The fascists smell blood in the water; they’re voting.
Going harder left is seen as a bigger risk votes-wise. It’s a primacy paradox; chicken-or-egg thing.
If the kids and further left could prove they’ll vote, and in numbers to offset centrist losses, then the Democrats would do more to secure their support… except these groups keep demanding perfection before promising support.
Just being a bloc of consistent voters would give them more power than they’ve ever had before.
And I stand by my original statement: not being able to recognize the important differences between the two parties as they are right now exhibits a level of head-up-own-ass-ness on par with what’s required to believe the Earth is flat.
The bothsiderism attitude is part of the goddamn problem, because most often I see it as a justification of sitting on one’s hands, not voting.
Which in turn only empowers the fired up fascists who VOTE.
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The best outcome we can ever really expect is the famous “lesser of two evils”, since BOTH PARTIES ARE EVIL at their core.
I mean, sure, but they’re not evil equally. It’s like saying that a firefighter that stands outside your house and offers ‘thought and prayers’ and the occasional glass of water as it burns is just as bad as the firefighter that’s throwing gasoline on your house by the bucketful.
I don’t want either party in office, but I’ll take the spineless and ineffective bumbling of the democrats over the active malicious cruelty of the republicans any day.
DEFUND THE POLITICIANS. MAKE THEM EARN THE TITLE “PUBLIC SERVANT”.
Great idea and one I fully support, one problem though: The very people that would be involved in making that change are the ones who stand to lose a lot of money and power if it were to be implemented.
Hasn’t it occurred to any of you that they’re PLAYING US
Why no, the idea had never even occurred to me, thank you for bringing it to my attention and what I’m sure are a number of similarly surprised people.
I don’t imagine anyone who’s been paying attention thinks that the system is a good one and has the best interests of the people(who aren’t obscenely rich) at heart, so while hopefully that venting helped you’re not telling anyone something new.
Before this last election I would have said that the biggest problem to fixing things is that the corruption is so entrenched that there is no short-term solution and as such the best ‘solution’ is to start from the bottom with local elections, changing things as you can and moving up once things have been addressed locally, knowing from the outset that this is a task that’s being undertaken less for you and more for the generations that come after you because it’s going to take a while.
Since the election though while I still consider the above a major obstacle I now consider the biggest roadblock to fixing things a mix of terrible people being highly motivated on one side, and less-terrible but somehow even dumber people on the other side having bought into the ‘both sides’ crap and therefore sitting out or casting tantrum votes because what’s the point of getting involved at all if both choices are bad?
Given both of the above I’d still say the best solution is the first one where you start from the bottom and work your way up, mixed in with better education and the understanding that the best way to prevent terrible people from wrecking things is for less terrible people to get off their asses and vote only for viable candidates at the state and federal level, accepting that in the short-term they might have to hold their noses and vote for bad candidates in order to keep the really bad ones out, because the ones who want to burn things down have shown that they will turn up and vote come election day even if the ‘what’s the point?’ crowd don’t.
While I have no illusions of the Governor’s good will, or grasp on reality, I think SD Public Broadcasting is overcooking the grits a little here.
There’s an unsourced number of $4.8 million “just to cover the basics of public broadcasting, including whatever’s needed to keep its infrastructure up and running” (Italics mine.)
“Basics” and “infrastructure” are undefined in this context, and the cost to maintain the towers is not broken out. Unless this budget cut forces SDPB to cancel leases on tower(s) they do not own or defer necessary maintenance, I do not see how this reduction in state funding is ‘a cascade of failure.’
The budget cut is probably still stupid, but alarmist exaggeration should be called out, whatever the source.
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Considering we have one source with knowledge of operations that says the funding is for basics, and you’re claiming that it’s ‘alarmist exaggeration ‘ without even the faintest of evidence….you’re gonna have to do some math or research to support your claim if you want to be taken even remotely seriously.
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Noem Governor SD
Governor Noem had done a great job for the citizens of South Dakota and will dedicate herself to providing the highest quality of care and security for all states and all people. She believes in hard work, determination, and has created opportunity for days ahead!
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… and if you do not hunt, well that’s too bad
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Sure, that’s true if you ignore literally everything Noem has done in office. You dunce.
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So are you her husband or gay lover or what?
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[citation needed]