Bush Reappoints Broadcasting Chief Who Used Public Funds To Promote Conservative Programming...

[CatWoman]

WASHINGTON --President Bush on Tuesday renominated the chairman of the agency that directs U.S. overseas broadcasts even though the nomination has been stalled in the Senate amid allegations of misconduct.

Kenneth Y. Tomlinson was nominated again as chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors and for a term on the board expiring Aug. 13, 2007. The board oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Radio and TV Marti, broadcasting initiatives in the Middle East and other nonmilitary U.S. broadcasting overseas.

In September, a spokeswoman for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said senators did not plan to act on Bush's nomination of Tomlinson in January 2005 while a government investigation of his activities was under way. The law that created the board in 1994 allowed Tomlinson to remain as chairman until a successor was confirmed.

A report by the State Department's inspector general, released Aug. 29, said Tomlinson misused government funds for two years as chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Tomlinson disputed the allegations in the report.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/11/14/bush_reappoints_overseas_broadcast_chief/

[Hugin]

1. He stole from viewers just like you?

(I couldn't resist)

[reichstag911]

2. More of that new...

...Bush bipartisanship, I guess. :eyes:

[texpatriot2004]

3. Another scandal ridden * appointee nm

[Hugin]

4. I remember being outraged when I read about this...

In my mind it was huge. My outrage was met with silence.

Here he is a year later and he's scurrying to another dark corner.

[Gelliebeans]

5. This guy keeps

turning up like a bad penny.

[formercia]

6. But he's a team player

and in Bush World, that's 95% of the score.

[KharmaTrain]

7. Another Roadblock...They're Spoilin' For A Fight...

First Bolton, then judges, now this oxygen thief. Fortunately this isn't the PBS job that he totally screwed up on.

RL/RFE, RFA and Radio Marti are small operations now compared to what they were in the Cold War. Radio Marti barely is heard inside Cuba and TV Marti is a total joke...the station uses an antenna tethered on a balloon over the Fla. Keys and the signal barely gets to Havana...where it's covered up by an existing station. Millions going to "win hearts and minds" and no one can hear it. Radio Marti is nothing more than a hive for putting anti-Castro Cubans on the government payroll and used by the GOOP to try to keep their hold on the South Florida vote.

Hopefully his nomination will be rejected just to show this regime whose in charge of the Congress now...but overall, putting Tomlinson in this position may not be a bad idea. He's such a terrible manager, he may end up destroying these operations and in the end save us millions a year on stations that stop serving their purpose 30 years ago.

[FernBell]

8. This guy needs a public ass-whuppin'!!!

[Arkansas Granny]

9. This is the same man who accused PBS of running shows that

leaned liberal, such as NOW.

"Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, who sparked controversy by asserting that programs carried by public broadcasters have a liberal bias, resigned yesterday from the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting a day after the agency's inspector general delivered a report apparently critical of his leadership."


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/03/AR2005110302235.html

[brg5001]

10. Granny: He also hired a right-wing consultant to "fix" the "liberal bias"

Tomlinson is a know-nothing front man for the Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity/Bill O'Reilly wing of the Association of Bush Ass-Lickers. He has absolutely no expertise whatsoever in media or broadcasting, other than as a propagandist. He hired some Republican fund-raiser in Indiana to act as a consultant on how to make PBS less effective...I mean, to root out "liberal" bias. Apparently, as Steven Colbert so aptly put it, "Reality has a liberal bias."

[happydreams]

13. LOL. "Reality has a liberal bias"

:rofl:

[specimenfred1984]

11. He's a crook, no doubt about it

--- Report Says Ex-Chief of Public TV Violated Federal Law

Washington - Investigators at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting concluded today that its former chairman repeatedly broke federal law and its own regulations in a campaign to combat what he saw as liberal bias.

The scathing report by the corporation's inspector general described a dysfunctional organization that violated the Public Broadcasting Act, which created the corporation and was written to insulate programming decisions from politics. ---

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/111505R.shtml

[happydreams]

12. K&R. Good find

[Poiuyt]

14. What are the chances his nomination will go through?

Will this come up for confirmation during the lame duck session, or will confirmation take place when the Democrats take power?