This American Life

This week I was surprised to read Senator Jim DeMint's op-ed about defunding NPR. I like some of the podcasts and shows from NPR and PRI but their news I can barely stomach. Anyhow, DeMint sums up his argument against continued funding:

Public broadcasting can pay its presidents half-million and million dollar salaries. Its children's programs are making hundreds of millions in sales. Liberal financiers are willing to write million-dollar checks to help these organizations. There's no reason taxpayers need to subsidize them anymore.

Fortunately or unfortunately taxpayers subsidize many other fairly successful industries, which probably includes tobacco grown in DeMint's South Carolina. Moreover, his argument implies that the wealthy neither need nor deserve assistance--this is an argument DeMint probably does not want to extend to other areas of policy, such as taxes.

DeMint's Op-ed: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703559604576176663789314074.html

White Line Fever

Finished reading White Line Fever, Lemmy Kilmister's autobiography. I never worked Motorhead into my music collection but the book and musician's personality seemed promising. Too bad, because the prose is conversational but colorless, the stories, dull. Not to mention there were no themes, clever insights, or juicy gossip about other bands. The best autobiographies I've read to date include those by Larry Hagman and Miles Davis.

I've started the next book--Company by Max Barry. Early in that book the narrator says there is something wrong with you if you are a salesman. Lemmy wrote that there is something wrong with you if you play guitar. He, of course, plays bass.