Great indignation is made of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's choice to end some taxpayer subsidies, including the popular TV program Sesame Street. The show's royalties include books, toys, costumes, watches, a hotel theme park, etc.
The program's producer, Sesame Workshop, paid 142 employees more than $100,000 in 2010 with the top 21 averaging over $400,000.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting airs Sesame Street. In 2010, it took in nearly $460 Million. Taxpayers funded 97.61 percent and viewers contributed 2.39 percent.
Both the workshop and CPB claim 501(c)3 "non-profit" status with IRS.
Creative works are copyrighted. Royalties are paid to the creator, or creator's estate, for use of that work. Eventually, copyrights run out and the works enter the public domain, allowing anyone to use them freely. A theater director suggested adding extra copyright years, benefiting the National Endowment for the Arts, releasing some of the taxpayers' burden.
Ending tax support of the National Endowment for the Arts would save $126 million in one year and $678 million in five years.
Sesame Workshop recently received a $1,067,532 stimulus grant.
Spending borrowed tax money to stimulate a prime example of a successful business is obscenely wrong when each American family's share of the national debt has increased 50 percent since 2009.
Vicki Martin
Clearfield