$20 million of our borrowed money to remake Sesame Street for Pakistan

BBC: In a new effort to win hearts and minds in Pakistan, USAID - the development arm of the US government - is donating $20m (£12m) to the country to create a local Urdu version of the show.

The project aims to boost education in Pakistan, where many children have no access to regular schooling.

The show is to be filmed in Lahore and aired later in the year.[...]

The show will be set in a village in Pakistan - rather than the streets of New York - with roadside tea shop and residents sitting on their verandas.

The remake will star a puppet called Rani, the six-year-old daughter of a peasant farmer, with pigtails and a school uniform, according to Britain's Guardian newspaper.

Targeting five to nine year olds, the series will run on Pakistan national TV and regional language channels. [MORE]

Holy crap! What a waste of money we don't have! When Boehner, Obama and Reid were squabbling over the puny "historic" cut they made and talking about hard decisions, I wonder how such an incredible waste of money go unnoticed?

When I think about all the money that must have been made on Tickle Me Elmo dolls, I have to ask why in the world can't this project be privately funded? Do we really need to waste the money we are borrowing to fund stuff like this?

It seems like the prevailing attitude in Washington is so long as money is flowing in, they will continue to spend regardless of where the money comes from. This is exactly why Washington has a spending problem and not a revenue problem.

The best thing that could happen for America in 2012 would be to elect the cheapest tightwad we can find for President. Someone who would be outraged over $50 for bathroom tissue and veto every wasteful project in sight. Oh Lord, where is that man or woman?

Via: Memeorandum
Via: BBC

PBS sting video next?

It looks like a few executives at PBS might be getting ready for they YouTube moment.

Media Decoder: NPR was not the only media organization duped by the Republican provocateur James O’Keefe.

PBS confirmed Wednesday that like NPR, one of its executives attended a lunch with people who posed as members of the Muslim Education Action Center Trust, a fictional group. When those people had lunch with NPR executives, they falsely claimed that they wanted to donate up to $5 million to public media. The NPR executives were secretly videotaped at the lunch.

Anne Bentley, a PBS spokeswoman, said PBS’ senior vice president for development, Brian Reddington, attended a lunch with the fake donors in February. She said she had “no sense at all” of whether Mr. Reddington was taped during that lunch; when asked if PBS was concerned about a possible tape surfacing, she declined to comment.

Ms. Bentley said that Mr. Reddington came back from the lunch with “profound concerns about the organization” and began what she called a routine vetting process “when there is an appearance of a conflict of interest and to ensure they meet requirements of transparency and openness.”

“Attempts to confirm the credentials of the organization proved unsatisfactory and communication was halted by PBS,” she said.

I will not be the least bit surprised if James O'Keefe drops a PBS Sting video tomorrow. It would certainly fit his method of operation. One of the reasons why the ACORN sting was so successful was because there were several videos O'Keefe was able to establish a pervasive problem within the organization rather than a singular problem at one office. So, if O'Keefe's goal is to prove that public broadcasting is biased and not worth funding, then you have to show more than NPR's problem.

Also, I noticed that PBS also speaks of finding vetting issues with the fake organization O'Keefe sets up, but they found these vetting issues after they met with the guys. That certainly doesn't sound like an intellectually superior thing to do.

Via: Memeorandum
Via: Media Decoder