Cyclical funding - NPR

From The Daily Caller:

NPR hires firm to lobby for its taxpayer funding
National Public Radio (NPR) is paying the lobbying firm Bracy, Tucker, Brown & Valanzano to defend its taxpayer funding stream in Congress, according to lobbying disclosure forms filed with the Secretary of the Senate. The taxpayer-funded radio network hired the firm in the second quarter of 2011 to work on issues regarding �funding for NPR and affiliate stations.�

It will remain unclear how much NPR is paying for these lobbying services until second quarter lobbying forms are filed. But before NPR hired the firm to represent it on funding issues, the network spent $131,666 in 2011�s first quarter on an in-house lobbyist.

So money is coming out of my wallet and going to NPR so that NPR can hire a lobbyist to keep the money coming out of my wallet and going to them (and their lobbyist). Anyone remember ex-NPR President Ron Schiller and the video sting from a few months ago? From Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:

Undercover video: NPR exec says NPR would be �far better off� without federal funds
Maybe I�m getting inured to this kind of thing, but for me the big screaming headline from the latest James O�Keefe undercover video isn�t that high-ranking NPR executive Ron Schiller bashes conservatives, Republicans, and the Tea Party as �white, gun-toting � xenophobic � seriously racist people.� The big news for me comes when Schiller, who thinks he�s meeting with representatives from the fictitious Muslim Education Action Center (MEAC) to discuss a $5 million donation to NPR to help MEAC �spread Sharia worldwide,� that NPR would do better without federal funding. Just before this, Schiller tells the two undercover reporters that federal funding only accounts for 10% of their direct funding, but a sudden end to subsidies for public broadcasting would close a number of their stations, which gives a little more clearer explanation of their financial dependence on taxpayers. Those moments come at about the six-minute mark:

No more of my tax dollars please -- they solicit enough money from the general public that they could be self supporting.