H.R. 1076, to prohibit federal funding for station dues or NPR programming, has passed the House by a vote of 228-192. “This bill is insidious,” pubcasting champion Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) told Current Wednesday (March 16). “This is a fascinating metaphor for what is going on with new Republican majority. This isn’t about cutting budgets, it’s very much ideologically driven and pretty diametrically at variance with where most of the American public is.”

Debate is now set to begin later today on H.R. 1076, which would prohibit federal funding to NPR. During morning discussions, some of which focused on a procedural rule associated with the bill, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) reported that he offered an amendment that would “prohibit federal funds — taxpayer dollars — from being used for advertising on the partisan, political platform of Fox News.” According to a Rand Study, he said, the Department of Defense spent $6 million in advertising in 2007; he called for the Government Accountability Office to study “how and where this money is being spent.” His effort to amend the bill was defeated in the House Rules Committee during an emergency meeting Wednesday (March 16).

In what the New York Times is editorializing as “the latest example of House Republicans pursuing a longstanding ideological goal in the false name of fiscal prudence,” the House today (March 17) votes on H.R. 1076, sponsored by Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), which would prohibit federal funds to be spent on NPR dues or programming. According to today’s Majority Whip schedule, debate on the bill will begin at 9 a.m., with a vote expected at 10:15 a.m. C-SPAN has live coverage. The bill would eliminate the Radio Program fund, which makes possible initiatives including Radio Bilingüe’s national program service and Native Voice One, the Native American radio service.

The House bipartisan Public Broadcasting Caucus, formed in April 2001 to educate lawmakers and defend pubcasting from funding attacks, has disbanded — at least for now. It is not registered as a Congressional Member Organization for the current House session, according to this month’s list from the Committee on House Administration, which is required. Co-Chairman Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), a founding member, tells Current he is “just letting it go” as he focuses on the current fight for federal support. “The whole purpose of the caucus was to provide a neutral forum to talk about public broadcasting issues and give people a way to support it,” he said.

About 100 WGBH employees demonstrated outside its headquarters Tuesday (March 15) as managers implemented a contract rejected by its largest union, reports the Boston Globe. The union last weekend voted to reject the final contract offer from management, which calls for allowing the station to assign individual employees to work across various platforms — radio, television, and the Web — and outsource work without negotiating. “We are at an impasse,” station spokesperson Jeanne Hopkins told the paper, “and we are implementing our best and final offer. This new contract provides wage increases, for the fourth consecutive year, only for AEEF/CWA members that no other union, nonunion, or management employees will be receiving.’’

A Maine man is in jail on federal charges that he threatened to kill or harm Melissa Block and Guy Raz, hosts of NPR’s All Things Considered, the Smoking Gun website is reporting. According to an FBI affidavit, John Crosby sent more than 20 bizarre and often threatening messages to NPR through its “Contact Us” website form. NPR contacted the FBI on Jan. 17 after Crosby allegedly described Block in a message as “an annoying [expletive] who is helping to destroy me to use me as a human sacrifice. She will be raped, beaten, tortured, and murdered very soon.” A Jan.

On a party-line vote, the House Committee on Rules today (March 16) voted 6-5 to allow H.R. 1076, which would ban federal funding to be used for NPR programming, to proceed to a floor vote on Thursday. No amendments are allowed. Members will have one hour for debate, controlled by Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Ranking Member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.).

A Prairie Home Companion host Garrison Keillor, 68, has announced that he plans to retire in the spring of 2013. He tells the AARP Bulletin that he must find his replacement first. “I’m pushing forward, and also I’m in denial,” he says. “It’s an interesting time of life.” Keillor created the show in 1974 in Minnesota. It is now distributed by American Public Media to 590 public radio stations across the country, and heard by more than 4 million people each week. As for his legacy, “I just want people in St. Paul and Minneapolis to feel that I was some sort of community asset and not a big embarrassment.

Juan Williams, writing on the Fox News website, wants to see NPR defunded. What NPR exec Ron Schiller said in the recent video sting “is just an open microphone on what I’ve been hearing from NPR top executives and editors for years. They are willing to do anything in service to any liberal with money and then they will turn around and in self-righteous indignation claim that they have cleaner hands than anybody in the news business who accepts advertising or expresses a point of view.” “The work of NPR’s many outstanding journalists is barely an afterthought to leadership with this mindset and obsessed with funding,” he says.

Peter Osnos of the progressive Century Foundation has discovered an upside in all the recent NPR turmoil. It’s “the likelihood that, for the first time, many more people among NPR and public radio’s devoted audience of over 34 million across the country will have a clearer understanding of how the system works.” Osnos, writing today (March 16), is a senior fellow at Century who focuses on media coverage of politics and policy.

Rick Moyers, writing in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, says in the wake of NPR President Vivian Schiller’s resignation, the NPR Board needs to ask itself two questions: Are we clear about our mission? And, given our mission, do we have the right board? “All nonprofit organizations need different boards at different stages of their growth and development and need clarity about their missions,” Moyers writes. “Failure to answer these questions head-on leads to organizations that are hard to govern and difficult to lead. Just ask Vivian Schiller.” Moyers is vice president of programs and communications at the Eugene and Agnes E.

Conservative video muckracker James O’Keefe, who caught NPR execs in an undercover sting last week, is seeking nonprofit status for his Project Veritas, “but it is certain that his application is not clear-cut, tax lawyers say,” according to today’s (March 16) Chronicle of Philanthropy. The main problem: O’Keefe pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor after he and three others entered the New Orleans office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) last year pretending to be telephone repairmen. O’Keefe later stated that he would do it again, albeit “differently,” the paper notes. Marc Owens, a Washington tax lawyer who formerly oversaw the IRS division that monitors tax-exempt groups, noted: “If he is proposing to do something that is, in fact, illegal, can the IRS believe, with any degree of credibility, what he is saying?”

Jim Seaver, host of one of radio’s longest-running shows, Opera is My Hobby, on Kansas Public Radio, died March 14 in Lawrence, Kan. He was 92. The show’s debut was Sept. 19, 1952, just four days after KANU (now Kansas Public Radio) signed on the air. Seaver produced his last show a week ago and was thinking of the program up until the day he died, KPR general manager Janet Campbell told the Lawrence Journal World. “It was more than a hobby, even though that is what he called it,” she said. He continued to produce the show as a volunteer until his hospitalization on March 11.

The National Center for Community Engagement is highlighting an interesting outreach project today (March 16) on its blog. Since last summer, WDET-FM’s Truck Stop has been encouraging citizens to help use anonymous text messaging to report illegal truck driving in low income and marginalized communities. The station is also partnering with a local community action group to fight blight in the city.

Craig Aaron, new managing director of the Free Press media reform organization, posted a column on Huffington Post after presenting 1.2 million signatures collected by his group, MoveOn.org and CREDO Action, on Cap Hill today (March 15). “Unfortunately,” he wrote, “there are those out there, even inside public media’s institutions, who tell organizations like MoveOn.org and Free Press to keep it down. They would rather we stayed below the radar. They seem to think they can appease their attackers by lying low or even offering up a few ‘scalps’ (to quote one insider involved in the dismissal of NPR’s Vivian Schiller).