A Day in the Life: Testing is torture

Developer: You have that F.A.T. look.
QA: How's that?
Developer: The look of eternal despair, as if you've been crying all day and drank yourself to sleep every night.
QA: ... Yeah, that sounds about right.

A Letter On Public Broadcasting to Senator Bill Posey

I support public broadcasting because the private media also needs competition, not only against each other, but also via government funded media. This is the belief that made our country strong, and to sully this belief will undermine what I consider to be one of the core foundations of democracy: Freedom of information, a right that is given to every citizen of this country.

My viewpoint is not against the general views on free market. Most private industry encourages government fundings because it allows them to compete better on the market, thus providing additional benefits to the consumer who can rely on at least one free source of information that can allow them to make informed decisions regarding the affairs of this country.

It is unfair to simply assume that any form of subsidy is a form of weakness, especially considering the fact that government subsidies are what created most of our modern corporations. Even Ford Corporation welcomed the auto industry bailout of their competitors, because they knew that it would encourage more competition among the private sectors. This is not an opinion: We have seen this in action from our days as moon walkers, where government funded research ranging from before the Apollo lunar missions to today have made private industries such as Intel and SpaceX a reality.

H.R. 1076 is an unfair and unjustified attack on our nation's public radio system and I strongly urge you to vote against it. Not only does this bill prohibit NPR from receiving federal funds, it goes so far as to prohibit the use of federal funds for acquisition of radio content regardless of the source.

Public broadcasting is an essential service to the American people. Without public broadcasting, our communities would lose access to the safe-haven of children's non-commercial educational content, the in-depth news and public affairs programming, access to the world of arts and cultural locally, nationally and internationally, and the local voice that weaves the diverse perspectives of our communities together.

The government does not exist to be absent. The government is there to represent the people that create it. Therefore public radio is the voice of the people, and speaks in the interest of the people. This is how democracy is preserved.