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Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio

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Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio

#191

Post by UncleSlacky »

chrisan wrote: post #184
prevailrob wrote: post #171

Being from the UK, I take it NPR is the equivalent of Radio 4? (Albeit on a bigger scale, naturally)

You might have to define what Radio 4 is for us in the US. Here's a blurb about what NPR is: http://www.npr.org/about-npr/178640915/npr-stations-and-publ... It's basically hundreds of local radio stations that mix local news/flavor with partner stations that have very popular programs

"BBC Radio 4 is a radio station owned and operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes including news, drama, comedy, science and history."

More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Radio_4

Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio

#192

Post by BinaryIdiot »

kobeya wrote: post #141
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nobody can claim to be libertarian and be liberal in the latter sense. To be fair it's not a blanket black and white thing. You can be both, one in one area and one in another. I think we worry too much about labels.

While arguing over definitions is usually a waste of time, the libertarian platform is basically defined by its anti government stance.

> the libertarian platform is basically defined by its anti government stance

See, this is why I think arguing about labels is a complete waste of time. The majority of libertarians that I personally know are for smaller government in some areas. That doesn't always meant anti government. Sure you'll find plenty of libertarians that are anti government but you're going to find a lot of people with a lot of views calling themselves all sorts of different things that, ultimately, do not fit very well.

For example after reading multiple websites regarding my own political views it would seem some places labeled me as a Libertarian Socialist, others a Liberal and one other a Fiscal Conservative Liberal. I'm not even convinced these labels make complete sense and really only capture some of my viewpoints in a pretty inarticulate way.

Ultimately I just think all of these labels are a complete waste of time. People are imperfect and you'll never bucket them well. Even when you have finally come up with the perfect buckets for people you'll be lucky if half of the people put themselves in the correct bucket either due to a misunderstanding or some other reason.

Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio

#193

Post by morganvachon »

alphaalpha101 wrote: post #117
morganvachon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm a Libertarian and thus social conservative and economically liberally That's fascinating; I've been called Libertarian because I'm the opposite. I'm socially progressive yet fiscally conservative, and from what I've read, there are branches of Libertarianism that can embrace either extreme or a mixture. I've listened to NPR since I was a teenager in the early 90s, and while I don't always agree with the comment…

I'm not super familiar with American politics. What do you mean by 'fiscally conservative'? You want the Government to lower taxes and lower benefits and such, is that right? Because that sort of 'the market is right, we don't need no government spending in our economy' view.. well.. that just is the same as being economically liberal. But then again Americans seem to use 'liberal' to mean 'left-wing', is that right?…

> What do you mean by 'fiscally conservative'? You want the Government to lower taxes and lower benefits and such, is that right?

Not quite. I do want lower taxes and less government in people's lives, as long as that benefits the people. I have less of a problem with welfare than people might think, though I believe we'd benefit more overall from a universal basic income as long as it's funded wholly from dismantling existing welfare programs rather than as an addition to them. That eliminates tons of bureaucracy, overspending, and politicians mooching off loopholes in the existing system. I concede though, that at this stage it's nothing more than a pipe dream.

Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio

#194

Post by crispyambulance »

Not surprising.

I suspect the reason is that there is a lack of appealing alternatives to NPR on the "conservative" side.

If anyone has ever listened to conservative radio like Rush Limbaugh, you'll know that his slow-wit attempts at humor/satire are cringe-worthy failures unless the listener happens to be a septuagenarian with dementia. The other conservative options are preachers and conspiracy wack-jobs... is there anything else?

Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio

#195

Post by PrimHelios »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #188
donkeyd wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because the US is slightly messed up in the sense that there's a group of people people who say that they care about "free market" and "less government spending and regulations". At the same time, these people also support protectionism, closed borders and government regulation on things they don't agree with. On the other side, there's a group that is often called liberal, who support open borders and (often) f…

You are in error. There's a major political party which has been saying "free market", "less spending and regulations", and only turned protectionist as of the last election (Republicans) with the election of a populist president. This change hasn't pleased everyone associated with the party. You can read many editorials inveighing against Trump's economic policies in the Wall Street Journal , for instance - whilst a…

> There's a major political party which has been saying "free market", "less spending and regulations", and only turned protectionist as of the last election (Republicans

I've noticed republicans and (so-called) libertarians being protectionist long before last election, so I think that's a bit of a non-point.

Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio

#196

Post by rdl »

I think truckers are one of the groups of people that really love Sirius/XM satellite radio, too -- uniform programming and coverage across the US, and if you are in your truck all the time, the monthly cost is trivial. Sirius even has special stations dedicated to truckers, as well as most of the ads added by the network being trucker-focused.

(If it were me, I'd go for audiobooks, though.)

Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio

#197

Post by patrickg_zill »

This is a PR piece. It has no correlative relationship to reality.

Source: knowing truckers, having them in my family, extended family, friends of family etc. for 40 years. They all have XM/Sirius at this point. None listen to NPR.

Why were no statistics about truckers and NPR quoted? Because they wouldn't have supported the thrust of the article.

Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio

#198

Post by menacingly »

lsdafjklsd wrote: post #92

my dad is a fox news republican, a few years back we were driving for 5 hours and were listening to npr. he was basically waiting for the overt liberal bias, but instead we listened to a bunch of fascinating stories and interesting shows about a variety of topics. I read somewhere that npr isn't liberally biased, but their fan base is mostly liberal, because liberals tend to prefer news that has no bias. It's also no…

>because liberals tend to prefer news that has no bias

As a kid in the central US, I asked my mom why the people in our town didn't have an accent but people from everywhere else did.

Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio

#199

Post by Clubber »

alphaalpha101 wrote: post #117
morganvachon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm a Libertarian and thus social conservative and economically liberally That's fascinating; I've been called Libertarian because I'm the opposite. I'm socially progressive yet fiscally conservative, and from what I've read, there are branches of Libertarianism that can embrace either extreme or a mixture. I've listened to NPR since I was a teenager in the early 90s, and while I don't always agree with the comment…

I'm not super familiar with American politics. What do you mean by 'fiscally conservative'? You want the Government to lower taxes and lower benefits and such, is that right? Because that sort of 'the market is right, we don't need no government spending in our economy' view.. well.. that just is the same as being economically liberal. But then again Americans seem to use 'liberal' to mean 'left-wing', is that right?…

>What do you mean by 'fiscally conservative'? You want the Government to lower taxes and lower benefits and such, is that right?

To me it means balancing the budget and actually working off debt. Right now, that means higher taxes. Being responsible with the treasury rather than borrowing with no intent to pay it back. Spending responsibly and ensuring the spending is not wasteful or kickbacks to political cronies, etc.

Re: Love it or hate it, truckers say they can’t stop listening to public radio

#200

Post by donkeyd »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #188
donkeyd wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because the US is slightly messed up in the sense that there's a group of people people who say that they care about "free market" and "less government spending and regulations". At the same time, these people also support protectionism, closed borders and government regulation on things they don't agree with. On the other side, there's a group that is often called liberal, who support open borders and (often) f…

You are in error. There's a major political party which has been saying "free market", "less spending and regulations", and only turned protectionist as of the last election (Republicans) with the election of a populist president. This change hasn't pleased everyone associated with the party. You can read many editorials inveighing against Trump's economic policies in the Wall Street Journal , for instance - whilst a…

I don't think so, these groups exist, you're just assuming I'm talking about the parties. But the weird thing in the US is that Democrat and Republican are becoming more and more an identity instead of a political representation of its followers. Trump, who was despised within the party in the primaries, won because the voters wanted a person like him. At the same time, many democrats despised Clinton, but the party wanted her as the candidate and worked against Sanders.

Much of this is caused by a two party system fuelled by hate for the other party. Now I realize that I'm generalizing here, but as an outsider, this is what it looks like.

Here in the Netherlands, one of the two biggest parties of the elections 4 years ago, practically disappeared because its voters disagreed with what they did during the last 4 years. So they all moved to parties that seemed to better represent their viewpoints. Something like this is just impossible in the US and moving between the two parties is often as difficult as dropping a religion, since many people are tied to their parties through friends and family. I've experienced all of this while living in the US and am still seeing this on Facebook.

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