Re: the music - very enjoyable - interesting when he switched in the chorus - that's when it went to Andreas Vollenweider.

Re: NPR

From the NPR.org website's page on their annual report: http://www.npr.org/about/privatesupport.html
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Annual Reports, Audited Financial Statements, and Form 990s

NPR operates on an October 1 - September 30 fiscal year. Documents referenced on this page are posted as soon as they become available. To open any of the documents below, please install the free Adobe Acrobat Reader.

NPR is an independent, self-supporting media organization. It is also a membership organization of separately licensed and operated public radio stations across the United States.
(Read more about NPR's mission and operations.)

NPR supports its operations through a combination of membership dues and programming fees from over 860 independent radio stations, sponsorship from private foundations and corporations, and revenue from the sales of books, CDs, and merchandise. A very small percentage -- between one percent to two percent of NPR's annual budget -- comes from competitive grants sought by NPR from federally funded organizations, such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
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Take note, between 1 and 2 percent of their budget comes from grants. That is all. Your tax dollars are relatively safe. If you don't like what you hear on NPR, contact the sponsors of the shows and report your distaste. Your tax dollars are wasted on much worse things.

For me, I have heard some of the most in-depth, balanced and soundbite free (not all reports, mind you) reports on NPR. You simply cannot get in-depth (whether you like the corners explored or not is a different matter) on other 'private' radio today.

I'm generally a conservative from a moral standpoint, liberal from a fiscal standpoint if corruption can be avoided - which I realize is probably an oxymoron. The political system that has been in place in my voting years in the US has been ridiculously co-opted by special interests, both conservative and liberal / socialist and capitalist. Both parties have their saints and sinners.

I enjoy many, many shows on NPR as well as PRI: Car Talk (though they run my former employer unfairly into the ground), A Way With Words, All of Bob Boilen's stuff (the guy hosting the tiny desk concert), etc.

I've never donated to them because of similar hesitations mentioned above - but I know that because of their long fund-raising drives and the amount of corporate sponsorship, that it really wasn't my tax dollars being spent on stuff that I don't want it spent on. There a whole heckuva lot more in the public schools that is being taught that my dollars go directly to that I don't agree with, and I still send my kids there.

Anyway, I'm glad NPR is around for just the sort of audible pleasure that this tiny desk concert provides, and for the good medicine of a good laugh I get from Click 'n Clack on Car Talk and a whole lot more.

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