Letter: Continue funding public broadcasting

After too many years being a passive listener, I finally became a sustaining member of my favorite radio station, 88.3 KCCK-FM, Eastern Iowa's jazz station. From Marion McPartland's Piano Jazz or StarDate to programs about New Orleans and Brazil and performances of local high school jazz orchestras, I've listened to programming I cannot find anywhere else.

Public radio, whether it's KCCK, KUNI or KSUI, fills voids that for-profit stations cannot. Public television provides excellent documentary series like Nature, Nova, and Frontline which are far and away superior in quality and consistency to anything you will find on for-profit networks. Public broadcasting is a vital, irreplaceable shared cultural resource which benefits us all. I may only occasionally watch Iowa Press, or listen to NPR or classical music, but I like knowing those choices are there.

Cutting all federal funding for public broadcasting is vandalism: unprincipled, unreasoned, destructive and cruel. Cutting funds for the National Institutes for Health is dangerous, indefensible policy which does not merit any consideration. The current occupant of the White House has already done terrible damage and intends to do more.

The current administration must be stopped and, if necessary, legally removed from power.

Jeff Klinzman

Coralville