Most recently, a veteran editor resigned from NPR after being suspended without pay for writing an essay that exposed the left-wing bias of the public radio network. Uri Berliner, a 25-year employee, stated, “It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding. In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.”
To make his point, Berliner searched the voter-registration records of editorial employees of the D.C. newsroom and found 87 Democrats and no Republicans. His efforts to raise alarms about this fell on deaf ears.
On another note, the Black Panther Party Museum was established in January 2024 in Oakland, CA, by the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation, which has preserved and promoted the legacy of the Black Panther Party since 1995. The Panthers were a group of Marxist thugs involved in murder, rape, drug dealing, and various other criminal endeavors.
In the college realm, the results of a report released earlier this month by the Anti-Defamation League revealed that just two American campuses out of 85 reviewed are doing enough to fight rampant Jew hatred at their schools. Brandeis University in Massachusetts and Elon University in North Carolina were the only schools to receive an “A” for fighting anti-Semitism. On the other hand, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, the universities of Chicago, Virginia, North Carolina, Tufts University, and SUNY’s Purchase and Rockland campuses were given an “F.”
On the K-12 level, several regional “technical assistance centers” have been established. One of them, the Midwest & Plains Equity Assistance Center (MAP), “provides technical assistance and training, upon request, in the areas of race, sex, national origin, and religion to public school districts and other responsible governmental agencies to promote equitable educational opportunities and work in the areas of civil rights, equity, and school reform.”
What MAP really does is provide resources based on critical race theory to schools and educators and also direct them to override the rights of parents on sex education. The organization also maintains that school-based sex education “should not teach the differences between boys and girls.”
In addition to illustrating surging leftism, the above scenarios have one other thing in common: taxpayers are getting fleeced.
Yes, all the cited cases show the government picking winners and losers. For example, while NPR is, to some extent, member-supported, it still receives tax dollars from the publicly funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Regarding the Black Panther Museum, the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation is a nonprofit 501(c)(3), which makes it tax-exempt. Why should such a vile group be allowed to exist as a tax-free endeavor?
The government-run K-12 education enterprise bleeds taxpayer money at an alarming rate. As Just Facts reports, federal, state, and local governments in the U.S. spent $834 billion on elementary and secondary education in 2022. That breaks down to $17,013 for every student enrolled in K–12 public schools. Worth noting is that this dollar amount does not include land purchases for schools and other facilities, some of the costs of durable items like buildings and computers, and the unfunded liabilities of post-employment non-pension benefits— like health insurance—for government employees.
The 2022 NAEP, or “Nation’s Report Card,” discloses that nationwide, 29% of the nation’s 8th-graders are proficient in reading, while just 26% are proficient in math. This means that the government is doing a poor job of educating our youth. No matter, tax dollars keep pouring in.
The teachers’ unions also cost taxpayers money. As a 501(c)(5), the National Education Association and, in fact, all unions have a special tax-exempt status with the IRS, which is accorded to “Labor, Agricultural, and Horticultural Organizations. Additionally, a great majority of teachers nationwide have their union dues deducted from their monthly paycheck by the local school district in the same way that federal and state taxes are withheld. Then, the school district turns the money over to the local teachers union. And the taxpayer gets to foot the bill for this service.
The unions should pay taxes like other money-making enterprises and collect their own dues, just like the NRA, AAA, etc.
On the college level, government grifting also exists on a large scale.
Higher education spending by the government in 2022 amounted to $226 billion. Jay Greene, a Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, examined payments to Ivy League schools and found that the federal government provides enormous subsidies to these schools, which are the wealthiest universities in the country. “The eight universities in the Ivy League receive $1.8 billion each year from taxpayers, despite the fact that these universities are sitting on $192 billion in endowment funds. If they need money for buildings and electricity, donors have already given them plenty. There is no need for taxpayers to give the richest universities $1.8 billion each year to cover the costs of buildings that their donors have already enabled them to maintain and update.”
Overall, there are about 4,000 for-profit colleges in the U.S., and they receive the great majority of federal donations for higher education. In fact, there are only 23 colleges in the country that refuse any public funds. Why do colleges, many of which are well endowed with private money, need taxpayer assistance, especially when pushing a political agenda that a fraction of taxpayers support?
It’s painfully obvious that government spending is out of control. Thankfully, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is focused on this issue and publishes a yearly “Festivus Report,” which delves into outrageous government spending. His latest dispatch discloses that we, as a nation, wasted $900 billion in 2023, “including an NIH grant to study Russian cats walking on a treadmill, Barbies used as proof of ID for receiving COVID Paycheck Protection Program funds, $6 million to promote tourism in Egypt, and $200 million to ‘struggling artists’ like Post Malone, Chris Brown, and Lil Wayne.”
But no matter how much money the government has already wasted, politicians demand even more. Spender-in-Chief Joe Biden is now proposing universal free lunches for students. An article in the Wall Street Journal explains, “If a mere 25% of a public school’s students meet the requirements, 100% of its students will be eligible to receive the benefit. The rule imposes no income limits, meaning middle- and upper-class children will get subsidized meals.”
To help pay for it—and every other government boondoggle—Biden wants to raise the current corporate tax rate of 21% to 28%, a 33% increase. Rachel Loren, a Policy Associate at Americans for Tax Reform, says this will saddle employers with a higher corporate tax rate than China and impose the second highest corporate tax rate in the developed world.
“The corporate income tax is embedded in the cost of goods and services. Biden’s tax hike will raise costs for households. One major example is the cost of utility bills—electric, water, and gas. Public utility companies are, in fact, required to build the cost of taxes into their rates.”
In case your socialist cousin Louie goes off on a “The rich should pay their fair share” rant, please remind him that the top 1% of Americans reported 26.3% of the country’s adjusted gross income while paying 45.8% of total income taxes.
When it comes to tax craziness, California leads the nation. Veteran tax warrior Richard Rider details that, as of 2022, California’s highest income tax rate is 13.3%, including capital gains, by far the nation’s highest rate. “We are 21% higher than second-place Hawaii and a heck of a lot higher than all the rest—including eight states with zero state income tax—NH taxes only dividends and interest income (not capital gains.)”
Rider adds that the formerly Golden, now Beholden State, also has the highest statewide sales tax rate, 7.25%, and the nation’s highest “gas pump” tax, $0.88 per gallon. (Interestingly, the government in California makes more on gas sales than the so-called greedy oil companies.)
What can be done about our out-of-control taxation?
In California, a large group of businesses and taxpayer associations have assembled enough signatures to put a significant antitax measure on the November ballot. The Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act (TPA) would amend the state’s constitution to define all levies, charges, and fees as taxes and require a two-thirds public vote to raise local taxes. As the Wall Street Journal’s Dan Henninger writes, it would even nullify some post-2022 tax increases that didn’t meet the new two-thirds threshold.
Not surprisingly, tax-crazed CA Governor Gavin Newsom is appalled by the measure and, along with state political officials and union leaders, has taken out newspaper ads calling the two-thirds tax hurdle “dangerous, an overreach and irresponsible.” Opponents have even filed a lawsuit to remove the measure from the ballot.
Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, who favors TPA, correctly asserts that California is overtaxed. “You could give them all the money in the world, and it still would not be enough.”
Coupal believes the conditions are ripe for a tax revolt, citing $32 billion in pandemic fraud at the state’s unemployment agency, a ballooning price tag for the high-speed rail project, and the narrow passage of Newsom’s Proposition 1, a $6.4 billion bond to fund housing and behavioral health treatment.
California denizens and most U.S. citizens must fight against government spending, which is totally out of hand. You wouldn’t stand for a pickpocket who regularly swipes your cash. Why sit idly by while the government is doing the same thing?
It’s definitely time for a revived Tea Party. ASAP.
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Larry Sand, a retired 28-year classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views presented here are strictly his own.