Michelle Obama and Big Bird

NPR & Public Television: Leftists Using Government to Take Your Money Without Asking

By John Kass

April 2, 2025

I’m not some big corporate business tycoon, with fat marketing budgets and lobbyists and servile corporate media to trumpet my wares across their platforms.

I’m a writer. Not exactly singing for my supper but scribbling for my supper, a one-man band, a scrivener.

Kind of like the old-time street peddlers selling vegetables, like my grandfather, Papou Yianni.

Why a peddler? Because IBM and Chase Bank weren’t hiring poor Greek villagers just then.

He started in business in Chicago around the turn of the century selling vegetables. He had only five bucks and with that huge sum on his first day, he bought a huge pallet of strawberries to sell. At that time, a fancy T-bone steak dinner cost around a dollar. A cigar cost a dime.

Papou carried half through the West Side with in a harness strapped to his back, and left the other half on the front porch of a nice American lady. Through smiles and gestures she said he could come and get them later.

“Stromberries!!!” he shouted, selling fruit. A future Rockefeller! “Strom–berries!!!”

Hours later, he sold out and went searching for the house of the nice lady where he left the other half of his goods.

But he couldn’t find the house with the stromberries. There were no boxes of stromberries on a porch. No nice lady, nothing.

So, on his first day in business, he’d lost half of his working capital.

He didn’t give up though. He took the money he had left and bought more stromberries, and other various fruit. Later a pushcart. And much later he got a horse to pull the cart. He sold fruit. And my grandmother learned valuable skills at Jane Adams Hull House. How to can and preserve vegetables. And midwifery. And other skills.

Thus they made their way, immigrants in the great and strange city, bustling with life and everyone working. Or fighting to work and keep what they had. In those days, if you didn’t work you didn’t eat in Chicago. There was no welfare. They didn’t come to Chicago for handouts. There were no goverenment “programs” for them. It’s not a boast. It was what it was. They were strangers in a strange land they called Tseecago, and they had to learn their way and survive or die.

They didn’t complain. They were free. At least there were no Turks to break down the door and kill them. Papou paid his bills. He fed his family. They saved.

So, what does all this have to do with Big Bird and Elmo and Oscar the Grouch and other such characters?

Like my grandfather, I’m selling my wares. I’m not driving a horse cart full of stromberries—though if I did, I’d get a stylish hat for my horse and cut holes in the brim for the horse’s ears.

But I am selling my wares. It’s what I do to make my living after I was publicly and wrongly defamed by the jacobins at “the paper” and I had to leave. But I still had stories in me. I wasn’t ready to quit and just curl up by the fire. Like old Laertes, I still had some spears left to throw.

And my loyal readers—and regular listeners to the Chicago Way podcast—know that I’ve begun advertising with several new radio commercials hoping to convince people to subscribe to johnkassnewss.com.

Recently, my friends at the Chicago Morning Answer radio program posted the offer with a discount coupon while I was sitting in, co-hosting with Dan Proft.

You can subscribe here.

I’m excited by it all. The media landscape is changing, what we once called newspapers are dead and dying, because they’ve lied and lost their credibility.

It’s an exciting, challenging time. I hope you join us.

But you know what I’m not doing?

I’m not using johnkassnews.com and the Chicago Way podcast to compel government officials to squeeze tax dollars out of all of you and give it to me.

I’m not using Big Bird and Elmo to front for the politicians taking your cash.

I hope you subscribe and join us, and allow me to charge a fair price for my labor. If you don’t like it, no one is compelling you to pay. As Don Barzini said, “after all we are not communists.”

But it’s your choice whether you’ll subscribe.

What I’m not doing is using the government to enrich me from your hard-earned pay. It’s yours.

Yet isn’t that what National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are doing: Using the hammer of government to take your cash without asking you.

And I don’t think that’s fair.

I like cooking shows on TV, and I’ve watched them including America’s Test Kitchen, on Chicago Public Television WTTW (Wilmette Talking to Winnetka).

But that’s not the only way to find them. You can find cooking shows on YouTube, too. “Sip and Feast” is one of my favorites, and #thatdudecancook, also “The Real Greek Chef”

The point is, there are choices. We’re free to choose.

But public television rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers, and National Public Radio also takes in cash. In exchange, they provide news.

NPR’s Chicago Station does news. And so does Winnetka Talking to Wilmette.

Left wing news for people with pretensions. The public broadcasting news programs are a joke, Beltway pretentious featuring David Brooks as a New York Times writer who once visited the Billy Goat Tavern for a beer so he apparently knows all about Chicago politics. And NPR news is the same.

I call it Commie News, so do most common-sense Americans who don’t get a thrill by burning Teslas or considering MSNBC as the voice of their progressive gods.

A of couple years ago I wrote a column supporting Miranda Devine, the brave columnist of the New York Post. She wrote the blockbuster book about the Biden family corruption called “Laptop from Hell.”

It is the book that illustrates the corruption of Big Tech and corruption of Big Media–corporate legacy media–that suppressed the New York Post’s stunning expose in October 2020 of that Hunter Biden’s “Laptop from Hell.”

Most Americans had found it difficult to understand all the ways they’ve been lied to by what we call corporate media.

But they woke up.

The column focused on the lies told by National Public Radio and public television news—all of it left wing with their newsrooms full (90 percent) of left-wing reporters.

Remember that when Miranda Devine and the New York Post broke the story about the Biden laptop before the 2020 presidential election, Biden’s political lickspittle including soon-to-be Secretary of State Anthony Blinken were running a disinformation political op falsely claiming the laptop was the work of the Russians. It was not. It belonged to Hunter Biden and the FBI and the rest of the Deep State knew it.

But National Public Radio’s managing editor Terrence Samuel guaranteed he’ll leave an immortal legacy of NPR as National Jester Radio, the national broadcast clown car with this quote about why leftist NPR ignored the most important story in decades.

“We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions,” Samuel said.

Not really stories?

“And quite frankly, that’s where we ended up, this was . . . a politically driven event and we decided to treat it that way,” Samuel said.

So, NPR has formally become National Deep State Radio. And the news division of public television not merely “leans left.” It is deeply hard left. There is no lean.

Both NPR and Public Television have pushed left-wing propaganda—papered with woke children’s shows and cooking and upper Middle-Class programming like Downton Abbey.

Both public radio and public television trotted happily along, pulling in the cash and shaping voters for the Democrat Party.

But then Republicans won both houses of Congress and the White House. The bill came due a few days ago, as Katherine Maher, NPR’s chief executive, testified before congress humiliating not only herself, but all her Marxist minions.

They’re going to lose public funding for their propaganda machines. No wonder they’re burning Teslas in rage.

Law professor Jonathan Turley wrote an excellent piece about it all in The Hill:

NPR’s CEO just made the best case yet for defunding NPR.

Maher was confronted with her own reality and she lost.

When asked about her past public statements that President Donald Trump is a “deranged, racist sociopath,” she said that she would not post such views today.

She also brushed off her statements that America is “addicted to White supremacy” and denounced the use of the words “boy and girl” as “erasing language” for non-binary people.

“When asked about her past assertion that the U.S. was founded on ‘black plunder and white democracy,’”  Turley wrote. “Maher said she no longer believed what she had said. She also wrote that “America is addicted to white supremacy. When asked about her support for the book “The Case for Reparations,” Maher denied any memory of ever having read the book. She was then read back her own public statements about how she took a day to read the book in a virtue-signaling post.”

Uh oh Katherine.

Maher denied calling for reparations, but was read back her own declaration: “Yes, the North, yes all of us, yes America. Yes, our original collective sin and unpaid debt. Yes, reparations. Yes, on this day.”

Turley said the CEO then bizarrely claimed she had not meant giving Black people actual money, or “fiscal reparations.”

What would they get? Left wing feelings?

Even the New York Times gives readers a choice.

And I don’t compare my work to the great gray lady. But from my peddler’s wagon, I give people a choice.

If they don’t like the banana, then don’t buy it. But don’t bruise it.

Yet NPR and Public Broadcasting don’t give listeners and viewers that choice. They have leverage and they want it so they take it. They simply rely on Democrat politicians to take money from the public.

That’s not the American Way.

That’s the jacobin way, or the neo-Marxist Way.

You might even call it The Chicago Way ™

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About the author: John Kass spent decades as a political writer and news columnist in Chicago working at a major metropolitan newspaper. He is co-host of The Chicago Way podcast. And he just loves his “No Chumbolone” hat, because johnkassnews.com is a “No Chumbolone” Zone where you can always get a cup of common sense.

Merchandise Now Available: If you’re looking for a gift for that hard-to-buy for special someone who has everything, just click on the link to the johnkassnews.com store.

Where else would you find a No Chumbolone™ cap or a Chicago Way™ coffee cup?

Because I know this about you: You’re not a Chumbolone.

Comments 36

  1. John, America has changed. The people want free stuff from the Government, they never had to work for it like in the old days, they are spoiled, and they have become so Liberal and want free stuff. Work is not what they want 7 days a week like the old folks use to do. They want the Government to take care of them and for Votes the Government has obliged. How sad the World and our Society have become. There will never be peace until Christ comes I am afraid and the book is not finished as yet.

  2. John, I am not sure that you can use such a broad brush to label NPR and Public Broadcasting as worthless. Viewers have a choice to watch some of the programs. I happen to like the programs labelled “The American Experience.” Additionally, I believe Mr. Roger”s Neighborhood was a program that stressed giving children the respect they deserve and guiding them as to how to deal with things like divorce of their parents or death.

    2. Dan, these programs will simply have to compete in the media marketplace. Programs with a sufficient audience will easily find a home on the Discovery networks. The leftist political stuff can go join CNN and MSNBC with the rest of the deep state leftist programming.

  4. “Wilmette Talking to Winnetka” is perfect! Don’t forget those 50 cent gift tote bags in recognition of a $50 contribution to WTTW, plus postage to send it to that Northshore address. Spectacular waste of money!

    PBS and NPR are both anachronisms. The “disadvantaged”
    for whom PBS and NPR were allegedly created have smartphones and Internet plans. People who view network, over-the-air TV are few and far between, opting instead for Paramount+, Peacock, Hulu. Any video series from another country worthy of a view is on the Net to be watched. YouTube, Rumble, TikTok, DailyMotion all offer the chance not only to view but to have created content seen simply and rather efficiently. The overt leftist flavor of PBS/ NPR is certainly a looming sign
    that both are well past their
    expiration dates.

    The “disadvantaged” will do just fine without PBS and NPR. What Wilmette and Winnetka will do without both to announce policy and virtue signal remains to be seen.

    1. well said I feel the same way. I don’t always agree with everything John or the responders like Mark say but I appreciate the ability to see and read a different point of view here in the California of the Midwest.

      Keep it going John.

  6. This glorious “Strom–berries!” column is another JKN treasure, while including a message as ominous as yesterday’s Wisconsin election.

    When plain-as-day news such as Hunter’s laptop present a problem for Democrats, they quickly have “public radio,” NYT and other Deep State mouthpieces declare that news is Russian disinformation.

    When Wisconsin’s legislature passes a law (even back in 2011) that is a serious tax-limiting impediment for Wisconsin Democrats, they eventually (April 1, 2025) spend a fortune making a liberal state Supreme Court more committed-leftist. Democrats are confident that court will declare the 2011 law unconstitutional thus jacking up already-high property taxes, and approve the gerrymandering of congressional districts so that Milwaukee and Madison control an otherwise-red state, also providing Democrats a crucial U.S. House advantage.

    That’s what’s happening in my adopted home state. “The Chicago Way™” disease is migrating north.

    Just a word of warning to those of you still living in the vicinity of my own youth (a mostly functional Chicago and nicely Eisenhower-ish Glen Ellyn): If you plan to escape, moving north — as I did long ago — might now be a poor choice. A better writer’s move southeast might work better.

  7. Musk is the most important NGO in the country right now. If he succeeds, it will drive a stake into the heart of the Democrat grift machine, of which NPR and Public Television are only a minor part. A grift is defined as petty, small-scale swindling. When there are thousands of them grifting concurrently, the scale becomes monstrously large.

    Democrats see DoGE for what it is: the Audit from Hell. The Fox News interview conducted by Bret Baier with DoGE principals was the most important piece of television news in decades.

    The Reagan Revolution upended the world order, but failed to dislodge the Deep State leviathan. My hope is that the Trump Revolution will permanently upend the fascist/left national order that has its roots in the New Deal and reached its apogee under Obama. Taxpayers and loyal citizens deserve no less.

  8. Hah Wilmette Talking to Winnetka. I remember when it really was Window to the World. I remember pressing mybfacrvtonyte glass at the Museum of Science and Industry to watch a real TV studio in action. After of course the obligatory visit to the Museum and Santa Fe RR (I actually own a few of the original freight cars from the auction) and the U505 and the chicks hatching.
    With hew exc et options of good British TV – Upstairs Downstairs’, All creatures and Duchess of Duke Street the rest was not on my radar. Mr Rogers hung up
    His sweater etc. Throttling back this leftist outlet paid for by the taxpayers will be a good start. We were told in the last election to course correct and Mr Trump and Doge is working on it.

  9. U\Your grandfather was like my Uncle Santo (Sam) Garofalo from Bridgeport. Sold fruits and vegetables in a horse draw cart. He came from San Mauro Castleverde Sicilia around 1912 with his family. He had the horses until the 1950s . The city told him they had to go.

    Many in the family did well. Uncle Joe was a dentist. Uncle Nick had a barber shop. He drove Caddy’s and had custom made suits. Uncle Mariano cut hair. Their cousins owned Liquor Town on Chicago Ave. I believe they had a store on Clybourn and another on Southport. Another cousin went to Milwaukee and started Milwaukee Macaroni . Anther cousin owned a import business on Randolph which later went to South Water marker.

  10. First,how bout those White Sox? Second,I subscribe to John’s pushcart of plain talk from the Paul Harvey era to Bob Greene at the Tribune to today with the MAGA-DOGE revolution. Hey,how did that Wisconsin Supreme Court seat election work out for Mr.Musk? So,I am a long in the tooth NY Times reader since 1962 with its best days long behind per the Pentagon Papers on Vietnam to the Observer columns of late,great Russell Baker. We may not need NPR but we do need PBS so I will make the case that the late John McLaughlin and his Group had long term funding from WTTW via his Oliver Productions. John would be happy with Trump disruption. We will see how it goes,later,not fair to judge him weekly via Bill Maher and Jimmy Kimmel brilliant monologues.And tune in on Friday the 11th on HBO for My Dinner with the DONALD episode. This American Life via Chicago Public Radio is great work and it is efforts like that deserving of some support,mostly private but some public funds,too. PBS gives us Nova and Masterpiece and all those cooking shows on Saturdays and in the old days,Soundstage at WTTW. Nothing has come close to the original Soundstage for artistry. You can say because I can never vote for Trump that I am out of touch. But,history matters and even back in the 1770s according to my source,Slats Grobnik,pamphleters or amateur writers near a printing press were making outrageous claims about the British folks. How did that work out after a tea party or two? You may also say Oprah can afford to fund all of public tv and radio,given the killing of syndication profits she made in Chicago for years just as Phil Donahue made in Chicago,mostly,before her. But,Chicago has plenty of others who help and make a difference in medical care and now even GE Healthcare is headquartered in the Loop. They are a big party of AI and heartcare and xray technology advancement. GE was once some young guy in a wooden shack in Menlo Park,NJ,near where I grew up playing with glass bulbs trying to get a conductor for glowing light. Tungsten? So,to wrap up,John can be convinced he is right and Gov.Pritzker is wrong and where is the original Mayor Daley when we need him. I say,we do have choices and as limited as they are with me voting for both losers Hillary and Kamala,I respect the silent majority since I once visited the Lincoln Law Office in Springfield. We remain a great country. Well,not now with old Jerry owning the White Sox but he did get us MJ and Scottie long ago on his other team. And I would buy a bruised piece of fruit anyday off John’s cart,too. But what about the McCaskeys? ouch.

    1. Are you saying that none of those good shows would have been created if not for the “meager”public funding? We keep hearing how little public funding they receive.

    2. Wow! That’s a tall glass of water. You must be competing with Cory Booker for the longest run-on sentence contest. Now take your pills and have a LONG drink of water…the meds will kick in soon…

    3. Not to be too much of a pedant, but the original GE buildings were in E. Newark, NJ and Schenectady, NY. I worked in the former building [briefly] in the 70s when it was Gemini Restoration. BTW, it was a brick building from 1892 [plaque near the main door]. I remember because it was the oldest building I had been in at the time.

  11. Excellent piece John, To the readers.. If you have not yet read Jonathan Turley’s link in today’s column, it provides a perfect case for defunding NPR NOW! Katherine Maher is a doubling down of everything wrong with public funding of NPR and Public TV. Defunding must now be a high priority.

  13. Yes. NPR and PBS are “non- profit”. “Non- profit” defined: if you’re the fool VOLUNTEERING to work for them you get the “non” part. The person running the organization who usually gift themselves with an exhorbant taxpayer funded salary gets the “profit”. Get it? It’s a “NON-PROFIT “.

  14. John
    You are partially right about no federal welfare b4 1935. But there was local govt welfare, ie, city run soup kitchens, public health, etc. It bought votes, shocking!
    There is no ‘neutral’ news anymore. I’m watching Fox news now and there is a commercial for buying the Bible with Trump being the sales person. He says it is his favorite book. May be true since it’s the only book he owns. I’m sure he read it when cheating on his wives.
    BTW There is a must see movie currently playing: ‘OCTOBER 8.’ Many almost normal Hollywood Jewish stars, ie Deborah Messing, helped make. See it. It exposes the BS Free Palestine movement as Hamas supported thru and thru. It also exposes the news media like no one else has. I wonder, will it be shown on PBS. YEAH RIGHT. There should be no public funding of any news. Period. It should as it is with Chgo ST, we’re they beg for money. Love it
    BTW 2 are u some kind of anti Turk racist?

  15. “I’ve never understood why it is greedy to want to keep your money but not greedy to take someone else’s money” – Thomas Sowell

    Yes, trademark “The Chicago Way”, if you have not already.

  16. Back when PBS was NET it was all children’s programing, nature shows, & public domain movies and ranged from harmless to helpful. In the 70s I really enjoyed Austin City Limits, Masterpiece Theatre [Rumple of the Bailey, then the Shakespeare Plays] and never missed TOH. The news was ridiculous. By the mid 80s, there was nothing to watch.
    I only ever listened to NPR in grad school in the mid 80s. My roommates were musicology students and the concerts, symphonies, and operas were good [they told me!]. Everything else was pretentious drivel [my opinion!]. Back when there were only 3 networks and 2-3 local stations PBS made sense, it makes none now.

  17. Katherine Maher looks much better when she is Covid masked up. That Congessional testimony was epic.
    She is one hideous creature, inside and out.

    Another hideous creature, Daniel Biss who will be our Mayor again in Evanston. He says ” we will disagree but we will learn from each other”. Smug, Leftist code for “good luck to you”

    David B, thanks for the advice. Indiana, the gateway to the Southland. That’s it! If I can convince my wife

  18. When there were only a few television stations to turn to, many of us loved what we could show our kids on WTTW – Mr. Rogers (mentioned above) would likely not be too welcome in those hallowed halls anymore. Imagine him singing “only boys can be the daddies; only girls can be the mommies” and explaining to the children that girls are girls and boys are boys; and “…everybody’s fancy, everybody’s fine. Your body’s fancy, and so is mine!” I don’t think so!!!

    All of communication has changed. We no longer have the big Philco radio in the corner of the living room, listening to Winchell calling us to pay attention: Good evening, Mr. & Mrs. America, and all the ships at sea!!! The fascination with the idea that we could communicate in such a broad way, even with the ships at sea!!! bespoke an industry just getting started; an industry just figuring itself out. It needed a bit of help getting started, as do many ideas, concepts and little businesses. But, communication writ large is all ‘growed up’ now….some of our nation’s wealthiest people made their money with the continuing outgrowth of the various kinds of communication that are no longer new – they’re mundane! We simply do NOT need the ‘leg up’ from the government anymore.

    Government money pouring into these ‘good ideas’ is just a big slush fund that we get to pay for, and it has eagerly and readily spilled over into about every area we can think of. A small food-bank in north central Minnesota figured out how to get federal money to help. Now the top four “officers” salary? $1,835,000 a year! Why not? They get the money “from the feds!”

  20. Yianni,
    Help, I’ve been robbed! For decades now, by NPR and the deep state proclaiming “fairness in broadcasting!” It’s really ironic how loud the screams are from those who’ve been fleecing us for years when their gravy train is unmasked by Trump and Musk. Then of course, are the leftist “judges” who decry any attempt to deport criminals that arrived on our doorstep illegally! It’ll take awhile, but we’re on the correct track to drain the swamp in our lifetime! God willing!

  21. The beginning of this column took me back to grandparents stories. I am a second generation immigrant. My grandparents came here legally. They arrived in a foreign land and had to figure out their life. There were no handouts. There were no hotels for them to stay with free food. I remember my grandpa telling me about riding the rails to get from town to town to work. Sometimes there were pots of soup for him and others to eat. The kindness that others provided.
    He ended up with his own business and did well for himself. Thank you for making me remember.

  22. Ring me up a year’s worth of the verbal stromberries. Just as there is no way to pick up waste by the clean end, there will be no swamp reduction, or conservative chemotherapy administered to the progressive government cancer without collateral losses. There may be certain programs mourned, but the overall patient must be primary.

  23. Beautiful! The “strom-berries” part! And the rest is getting to be almost predictable but your writing makes it infuriating even more so. A true talent you have, my friend!!!

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