[sleet_spotter]

While I sympathize with the feeling, it’s a stretch to say “obligated by law”. You pay taxes, which your legally-elected representatives decide how to spend. We elect them to speak and choose on our behalf. It isn’t a “loophole” when this runs afoul of an individual’s values. It is simply that we have a representative government that makes decisions by majority votes. I don’t agree with most defense spending, but I acknowledge that a majority of this country wants it. This is the purpose of compromise. If there had been a good-faith proposal to reform CPB [1], we could have made it better. The collateral damage from destroying the good parts (e.g., PBS) due to our failure to compromise should not be celebrated. [1] Such a proposal isn’t hard to imagine. A key purpose of local stations is to give a platform to the voices of local people. Simply shifting funding from national programming to local programming (without changing the total) would have accomplished this “debiasing” and empowered the (tragically endangered) local news.

[SV_BubbleTime]

>While I sympathize with the feeling, it’s a stretch to say “obligated by law”. You pay taxes,

The number of steps that “Pay Taxes” is removed from “Literally At Fucking Gunpoint” is not as many steps as you might think.

[sleet_spotter]

I’m not sure if you are intentionally trying to miss the point. The comment was claiming they are obligated by law to support media they don’t agree with. We are all equivalently obligated by law to not steal or commit other crimes. We pay taxes. They are part of the contract of our society. What our representatives decide to spend them on doesn’t change that.

[cryptonector]

"We are all [...] obligated by law to not steal or commit other crimes" is NOT equivalent to being "obligated by law to support media [one does not] agree with". Not even remotely. Negative obligations != positive obligations.

[GuinansEyebrows]

you can either pay taxes at gunpoint or you can pay tribute/protection/insurance/ransom/bribes at gunpoint. not sure there are (or have ever been) many places in the world where you don't owe some debt of obligation to a larger organization, be it a government, organized crime, or something else.

[cryptonector]

> While I sympathize with the feeling, it’s a stretch to say “obligated by law”. You pay taxes, which your legally-elected representatives decide how to spend.

Without limit? If Trump and the Congressional GOP force a bunch of tax-funded in-your-face right-wing propaganda that would be ok with you because "[y]ou pay taxes, which your legally-elected representatives decide how to spend"?

[const_cast]

Well they're already doing this and much worse, so no need to appeal to something fake. There's plenty of actual awful things our elected officials are doing which you can point to.

But, the idea is, that we're not out here proposing that we stop paying taxes. We're not the ones committing a Jan 6th, are we?

The solution to Trump isn't assassinating him or whatever, it's legally impeaching him or not voting for him. That's how a democracy works.