Corporation for Public Broadcasting Statement Regarding Executive Order • Hacker News Board

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting Statement Regarding Executive Order

#551

Post by int_19h » Sat, May 03, 2025, 5:27 AM UTC

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #478

stackbutterflow wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Educating yourself on resistance. Reading books about it. Talk to neighbors. Buy weapons and ammo. Be ready. Have difficult conversations with yourself about what you're ready to do. Have the same conversations with your partner. With your family, friends, neighbors who you know are also against this.

Yeah, no. I'm getting my passport today. I've started looking at what's required to get a skilled work visa. My personal line is when the admin starts imprisoning and renditioning people that don't agree with them, and we basically heard a congressional committee make approving comments about that this week. If it starts happening, well, time for me to cash out and move abroad.

The problem is that this kind of thing can follow you around if you never push back.

I left Russia 20 years ago for very similar reasons. I didn't think I'd be facing the same choice in US, yet here we are.

There's a difference, though. In Russia, liberals are something like 10% of the population - the groupthink is really authoritarian overall, so there was no realistic hope of fighting back in any meaningful, non-symbolic sense. But I don't think that's the case for US. The majority of people here don't want to live in an authoritarian dictatorship. Their problem is that they don't (yet?) understand that the traditional arsenal of legitimate political tools available to citizens of established democracies - things like voting or peaceful protests - becomes ineffective once authoritarians become sufficiently entrenched, and so you have to move on to other means of resistance.

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting Statement Regarding Executive Order

#552

Post by int_19h » Sat, May 03, 2025, 5:32 AM UTC

howard941 wrote: post #65

bhouston wrote: post #3

The US is so weird right now. You have a President who is ordering the defunding of tons of groups (universities, media, aid, institutes) while not clearly having that authority and often doing so for what he views as ideological crimes. Also arresting and trying to deport people for things that are not clearly crimes (newspaper op-eds, etc) and without due process. Very strange times. Right now I have some faith the…

The courts aren't going to save us. No one is going to save us.

At some point, liberals need to remember that violence intrinsically underpins all political power, and if you're unable or unwilling to engage in it in any circumstances whatsoever, all the power that you think you have will be taken away from you.

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting Statement Regarding Executive Order

#553

Post by int_19h » Sat, May 03, 2025, 5:38 AM UTC

netsharc wrote: post #353

jimbokun wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The President controls the most powerful military on Earth. What do the courts control? Where are their guns?

That's why the only "viable resistance" would be a high-ranking military-person with a tank battalion and thousands of soldiers who are willing to follow his conviction of "I'm going to perform insubordination because I believe my commander in chief is an enemy of the constitution, follow me if you believe the same", and then have a plan to besiege the White House/Capitol. Anything smaller will just be someone which…

The police will have a hard time dealing with any large-scale armed insurgency, even if all the insurgents have is small arms. They simply don't have the numbers.

In US in particular, this is further exacerbated by the kind of weaponry that civilians have access to. For example, a .50 BMG anti-materiel rifle is perfectly legal to own in most states. So is HEIAP ammunition for it. This combination can, with some skill, take down (unarmored) helicopters. And yes, there are people who have this kind of stuff.

As far as the military, when discussing these scenarios, keep in mind that their choices, in addition to "support the president" and "oppose the president" include "do nothing". I wouldn't be surprised if that is exactly what's going to happen in the even of a full-fledged constitutional crisis escalating into paramilitary violence.

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting Statement Regarding Executive Order

#554

Post by int_19h » Sat, May 03, 2025, 5:39 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #211

nemomarx wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you expect free and fair elections in 2026?

i do, and i expect the gun toting NRA people to actually enforce elections, if there's even a whiff of trying to maintain power. Otherwise, they'd be gun toting hypocrites.

You mean the same guys who do shit like this?

https://www.wired.com/story/antifa-social-media-rumor-forks-...

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting Statement Regarding Executive Order

#555

Post by explodes » Sat, May 03, 2025, 5:56 AM UTC

Nifty3929 wrote: post #535

hadrien01 wrote: post #2

I suppose this is in response to this executive order: ENDING TAXPAYER SUBSIDIZATION OF BIASED MEDIA https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/endi... I would add that PBS has this to say about public media funding: > The U.S. is almost literally off the chart for how little we allocate towards our public media. At the federal level, it comes out to a little over $1.50 per person per year. Compare that…

>>The U.S. is almost literally off the chart for how little we allocate towards our public media. So? This is no justification for spending any particular amount of money on public media. We also rank near the bottom on spending for Bigfoot observational studies and head-regrowth technology. Perhaps the burden should be on folks to justify why we would want politicians to spend any money at all on public media. I lov…

News can be non-political. Also throwing out your bigfoot analogies didn't really add any meaningful response to GP.

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting Statement Regarding Executive Order

#556

Post by quails8mydog » Sat, May 03, 2025, 7:12 AM UTC

mike_hearn wrote: post #72

hadrien01 wrote: post #2

I suppose this is in response to this executive order: ENDING TAXPAYER SUBSIDIZATION OF BIASED MEDIA https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/endi... I would add that PBS has this to say about public media funding: > The U.S. is almost literally off the chart for how little we allocate towards our public media. At the federal level, it comes out to a little over $1.50 per person per year. Compare that…

PBS would say that. Back here in reality the BBC is trusted by only about 40-44% of the British population, and actively distrusted by around a quarter. The true number who trust it is probably lower, as those polls suffer volunteering bias and other problems that push responses to the left when there's no ground truth to weight to. There's a profound moral problem with forcing people to pay money for media they acti…

People aren't forced to pay for the BBC though. Public funding is through a TV licence rather than tax, with the licence being "required" only if you watch live TV or use the BBC streaming service. Given the other streaming services available it's very easy to watch TV without it. I've never paid.

Not really sure why skewing left would improve trust ratings either, unless you're suggesting that people on the right don't trust any media, or only trust media that is right wing coded. The BBC is definitely not a left wing outlet by the standards of the UK.

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting Statement Regarding Executive Order

#557

Post by mike_hearn » Sat, May 03, 2025, 10:30 AM UTC

quails8mydog wrote: post #556

mike_hearn wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PBS would say that. Back here in reality the BBC is trusted by only about 40-44% of the British population, and actively distrusted by around a quarter. The true number who trust it is probably lower, as those polls suffer volunteering bias and other problems that push responses to the left when there's no ground truth to weight to. There's a profound moral problem with forcing people to pay money for media they acti…

People aren't forced to pay for the BBC though. Public funding is through a TV licence rather than tax, with the licence being "required" only if you watch live TV or use the BBC streaming service. Given the other streaming services available it's very easy to watch TV without it. I've never paid. Not really sure why skewing left would improve trust ratings either, unless you're suggesting that people on the right do…

Yes, the UK is slowly backing away from enforcing the license fee (they also talk of decriminalization), partly because the immorality of it is clear to everyone and because those who don't care for it are now in the majority.

Nonetheless, there's no reason not to go all the way. There should not be a TV license, let alone one enforced by criminal law. Regular subscription and video scrambling systems are enough and have been for years.

The BBC is very strongly left wing and even its own employees recognize that. Look at the positions they take on a wide range of issues and you'll find they're all Labour positions or to the left of Labour.

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting Statement Regarding Executive Order

#558

Post by lazide » Sat, May 03, 2025, 10:37 AM UTC

rescripting wrote: post #294

chii wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and as long as people want their jobs so it comes to this, where people would have to take a stance, and it requires personal sacrifice on the part of those taking a stance. However, that is what it means to serve.

The idea of “checks and balances” is that systems have the strength to counteract systems. Individuals attempting to counteract systems is a much, much taller order. People are multifaceted, and those that dissent can be replaced nearly instantly with someone who won’t. I’m not saying it’s pointless, and individuals asked to do horrible things should do nothing, but it’s much much harder to resist on an individual le…

The idea of the 3 branches is that there are systemic incentives for ‘bad people’ (which is a fundamental normal state, btw) to have incentives to screw up the bad people in the other branches. Not that ‘good people’ (an idea which most of the founding fathers would have considered a naive fantasy) would use it to save everyone.

They are supposed to be 3 selfish pillars fighting each other to what is likely an actually reasonable state, not 1 or 2 pillars of ‘hero’s’ fighting evil. Which notably, presenting the executive as the ‘hero’ here is exactly what Trump is trying to do to squash what limited resistance he is getting.

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting Statement Regarding Executive Order

#559

Post by mike_hearn » Sat, May 03, 2025, 10:47 AM UTC

dotandgtfo wrote: post #474

mike_hearn wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, people who enjoy state TV like making other people pay for their enjoyment. That's immoral. Certainly, you cannot argue it's moral because you personally believe it's high quality. Lots of people in any country feel the exact opposite: that state TV damages the entire information ecosystem and is outright malign. Under what consistent moral code should they be forced to pay for it?

I don't enjoy making others pay for my entertainment. What a petty way to frame the discussion. You'll find broad/majority support for state broadcasters in Northern Europe. The business model of for-profit digital news production is not economically viable outside of certain niches or clickbait/ragebait. Doubly so in small countries with just a few million citizens. Free, broadly available, non-commercial journalism…

I already showed that the UK - definitely a country in Northern Europe - doesn't have a majority that finds its state broadcaster trustworthy. We can assume those people who don't find it trustworthy don't support it, or if they do, do so only out of inertia and wouldn't care if it went away either.

> The business model of for-profit digital news production is not economically viable outside of certain niches or clickbait/ragebait

State media is much more than just news, so are you agreeing at least that all of the non-news production should be defunded?

But, of course it's viable to do for-profit news. There are plenty of successful private news companies out there that aren't niche. You are welcome to define all news you dislike as ragebait but that's clearly not an argument, it's just a "lame value judgement".

> Free, broadly available, non-commercial journalism is a critical part of our society

It's not free and it's not non-commercial. People are paid to produce it via ordinary commercial contracts, and then people are forced to buy it. Nor is it a critical part of society. Society did just fine before state media was a thing. Meanwhile the injustice upon innocent people remains, and the existence of it harms society itself greatly via other paths as well.

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting Statement Regarding Executive Order

#560

Post by mike_hearn » Sat, May 03, 2025, 10:55 AM UTC

const_cast wrote: post #508

mike_hearn wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument makes sense everywhere. There exist in Germany TV and radio that maybe you trust and think are good, and maybe you enjoy forcing other people pay for them against their will. But there are many people who would profoundly disagree with you on that in Germany: ask any AfD voter. Again, to see this, just consider how you'd feel if FOX News launched a German version and you were forced to pay for that again…

I really dislike this line of argument that goes like "everything is the same as everything else so why don't you oppose this?". Okay, but Fox News is obviously fundamentally different because it's a private entertainment program. That's why it's bought out and influenced by the ultra-wealthy. It's a propaganda program for capitalists. You can't just say that's "the same" as a neutrally-funded public program. You can…

FOX isn't a private entertainment programme, it's a channel that's focused exclusively on news and current affairs. State media is the one that includes drama, comedy etc. If your argument is based on that distinction you'll have to rethink it. If it's just left wing good, right wing bad, then you've made my argument for me!