Washington Post

"When you start looking at places that we reduce spending, one of the questions we asked was can we really continue to ask a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mom in Detroit to pay for these programs? The answer was no. We can ask them to pay for defense, and we will, but we can’t ask them to continue to pay for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.” -- White House budget director Mick Mulvaney.

Mulvaney may be the WH budget director, but these comments suggest little understanding of the taxes paid by single mothers or coal miners. Single mothers in Detroit, most of whom are living in poverty, likely pay no taxes at all and instead would be receiving funds from the U.S. government via the Earned Income Tax Credit. Coal miners also do not earn a lot of money, but in many cases may pay at least some taxes. The biggest part of the federal budget is entitlement programs — especially Social Security and Medicare — but President Trump has pledged to leave those untouched. That’s where the real money is, whereas programs like the CPB are a relative pittance.

[Commentary] I care deeply about cultural literacy, the idea that we should all have access to a shared set of core concepts that will not only make it easier for children to learn to read and write, but that will give Americans at least some common language and ideas we can use to understand each other across our differences. Schools are an obvious place where Americans get access to this common pool of information and ideas. And once we leave school and go out into the world, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowments are institutions that work to make sure that access continues.

If you want to create a genuine national culture, you actually have to reach all Americans, rather than losing yourself in idiotic and racist delusions about defeating “bad hombres” by force or outbreeding the competition. And you have to create compelling, high-quality content that can persuade Americans across the political spectrum, rather than mediocre trash that preys on audiences who feel under-served by mainstream media. The Trump administration shows no rhetorical sign that it understands this — or that the public broadcasting system and other federal arts and humanities institutions could have value to conservatives who want to try to meet their high standards.

President Donald Trump unveiled a budget plan that calls for a sharp increase in military spending and stark cuts across much of the rest of the government including the elimination of dozens of long-standing federal programs that assist the poor, fund scientific research and aid America’s allies abroad. Trump’s first budget proposal, which he named “America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again,” would increase defense spending by $54 billion and then offset that by stripping money from more than 18 other agencies.

While there are major cuts in President Donald Trump's "America first" budget, including a 16% cut in funds for the Department of Commerce, the document says the White House will continue to support the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), at least as far as "representing the United States interest at multi-stakeholder forums on internet governance and digital commerce." The budget also says it "supports the commercial sector’s development of next generation wireless services by funding NTIA’s mission of evaluating and ensuring the efficient use of spectrum by Government users." The budget did not break out cuts for the Federal Communications Commission, but they are part of a category that averages close to a 10% hit.

The budget would propose eliminating future federal support for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney outlined the President's budget in a conference call with reporters. Asked whether CPB's funding [$421 million] would be eliminated, Mulvaney shot back "yes" immediately, then finessed his answer a bit, but essentially only on a technicality. "No, I'm, sorry, I was too quick with that," he added. "We propose ending funding, but technically what you will see is it's elimination, but you'll see an amount of money in the budget necessary for us to unwind our involvement in CPB, but it will see a zero next to it; the policy is we're ending federal involvement with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting."

Former Indiana Republican Sen Dan Coats was confirmed as the country’s top spy chief, taking over as Congress demands more information from the intelligence community about alleged contacts between the president’s advisers and Russian officials. The Senate voted 85 to 12 to confirm Coats as the director of national intelligence, a role in which Coats pledged to work closely with members of Congress to facilitate their various probes into allegations that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections for the purpose of aiding President Trump’s chances of victory.

Coats promised to provide lawmakers access to the intelligence community’s findings during his confirmation hearing in Feb before the members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. But just hours before the Senate voted to confirm him March 15, leaders of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence raised concerns that their access to documents about the Russia investigation was being limited at the very office Coats is taking over.

When politicians talk about infrastructure, they typically mean the basics: Roads, bridges, ports. The electric grid. Maybe rail, if it's lucky. But Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai wants the government to expand that thinking by including a type of network that 3 out of 4 Americans use on a daily basis, but doesn't often make it on the politicians' lists: high-speed Internet.

“If Congress moves forward with a major infrastructure package, broadband should be included,” said Chairman Pai. He is proposing an ambitious program whereby the FCC could expand corporate subsidies for building networks while scaling back regulations that, he said, deter private investment. In addition, Chairman Pai is asking that Congress offer tax credits to Internet service providers and entrepreneurs who agree to set up shop in “gigabit opportunity zones” that could be as large as a county or as small as a city block.

President Trump's impending budget proposal is expected to include deep cuts to public media, among other things, which would surely delight Republican lawmakers who have been trying, on and off, to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for five decades. If Republican lawmakers are hoping to cripple political coverage by NPR and PBS, however, stopping the flow of taxpayer dollars to the CPB might not have the desired effect.

NPR relies on the corporation for less than 1 percent of its revenue, and PBS depends on the agency for less than 7 percent, according to data from 2014, the most recent year for which audited financial statements for all three entities were available. Because the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has low overhead costs, it distributes almost all of the taxpayer money it receives, in the form of grants. From its $445 million appropriation in 2014, the corporation paid out $441.7 million, or 99.3 percent. Defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would primarily affect local public broadcasters, not PBS and NPR. The CPB noted this when the wrote, "The federal investment in public media is vital seed money — especially for stations located in rural America, and those serving underserved populations where the appropriation counts for 40 to 50 percent of their budget. The loss of this seed money would have a devastating effect. These stations would have to raise approximately 200 percent more in private donations to replace the federal investment." In other words, defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would mean hurting the local TV and radio stations that a whole lot of Republican voters watch and listen to.

The Justice Department announced the indictments of two Russian spies and two criminal hackers in connection with the heist of 500 million Yahoo user accounts in 2014, marking the first US criminal cyber charges ever against Russian government officials. The indictments target two members of the Russian intelligence agency FSB, and two hackers hired by the Russians. The charges include hacking, wire fraud, trade secret theft and economic espionage, according to officials. The indictments are part of the largest hacking case brought by the United States.

The charges are unrelated to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the FBI’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. But the move reflects the US government’s increasing desire to hold foreign governments accountable for malicious acts in cyberspace.

A joint news conference in February between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prompted numerous complaints from big-time media outlets. They’d been shut out of the Q&A session in favor of news outlets that they considered friendly to the interests of the Trump White House.

In a discussion about the kerfuffle, Fox News host Shannon Bream asked colleague Howard Kurtz whether such outlets had fretted in the past, when Fox News had been iced out. “Nobody much cared about that in the mainstream media,” responded Kurtz. “I guess that Fox News is part of the mainstream media, but….” I guess? Whoa for a moment here. This is Howard Kurtz, Fox News media critic and a longtime observer of the national media scene. And he isn’t 100 percent sure whether his employer is part of the club known as the mainstream media?

“If you look at the president's tweet, he said very clearly, quote, 'wire tapping' — in quotes,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said during March 13's news briefing, making air quotes with his fingers to emphasize his point. “There's been substantial discussion in several reports…There's been reports in the New York Times and the BBC and other outlets about other aspects of surveillance that have occurred. The president was very clear in his tweet that it was, you know, 'wire tapping' — that spans a whole host of surveillance types of options.” Ah, the old air-quotes defense.

According to Spicer's new argument, President Trump didn't necessarily mean wiretapping when he said “wire tapping” — and reporters should know this because he put the phrase in quotation marks. By “wire tapping,” Trump could have been referring to any one among “a whole host of surveillance types.” Obviously.

Facebook is cutting police departments off from a vast trove of data that has been increasingly used to monitor protesters and activists. The move, which the social network announced March 13, comes in the wake of concerns over law enforcement’s tracking of protesters’ social media accounts in places such as Ferguson (MO) and Baltimore (MD). It also comes at a time when chief executive Mark Zuckerberg says he is expanding the company’s mission from merely “connecting the world” into friend networks to promoting safety and community.

Although the social network’s core business is advertising, Facebook, along with Twitter and Facebook-owned Instagram, also makes money by selling developers access to users’ public feeds. The developers use the data to monitor trends and public events.