Babs Boxer's bad math...

(Less than zero...)

According to U.S. Sen. Barbara “Call Me Senator” Boxer, the GOP has “a vendetta, against Elmo.”

As in, Elmo from the children’s television show, “Sesame Street.”

She claims the GOP is out to de-fund the last hope for educating the nation's kids.

The truth is, Elmo and his friends aren’t the target. The questionable allocation of funds to public broadcasting, which is supposed to be non-partisan but is often driven by the Left’s agenda, is under scrutiny by Congressional cost-cutters -- especially during these tough economic times.

Perhaps Babs can explain why she thinks a huge business needs taxpayer funds.

According to an article in Entertainment Weekly, “Some PBS shows have been Jurassic-size hits: Barney & Friends, The Frugal Gourmet, Sesame Street, and The Civil War reportedly rake in heaps of dollars from toys, books, CDs, T-shirts, and video tie-ins, but GOP leaders say little of the loot ever comes back to PBS. ‘If you look at the revenues that Big Bird is generating, Sesame Street makes as much money as the National Hockey League,’ claims Brent Bozell. But the numbers themselves are hotly disputed — and have become weapons. Sen. Larry Pressler of South Dakota, who is spearheading the trim-PBS crusade, has claimed that Sesame Street grosses $800 million a year; last week, David V.B. Britt, president and CEO of the Children's Television Workshop, called such talk a "consistent campaign of misinformation."

The EW story continues: “In a sense, both sides are right. Karen Raugust, executive editor of The Licensing Letter, an industry trade paper in Brooklyn, explains that toys and tie-ins from Sesame Street did generate about $800 million in retail sales last year. However, toy stores kept approximately half of that money — and toy manufacturers kept most of the rest. She says the Children's Television Workshop, which receives a small percentage of wholesale revenues, took in only about $20 million. ‘People have been saying that Big Bird is worth a billion, but it's really much less when you're talking about royalties,’ Raugust says.

“Conservatives may accuse Big Bird of keeping the dough, but PBS profits are often recycled into PBS programming. Out of Sesame Street's $20 million, says show spokesperson Ellen Morgenstern, $13.5 million was poured straight back into Sesame Street, and the rest went toward producing shows like Ghostwriter,” states the article. “And although the Workshop gets about $6 million from PBS, it no longer receives any funding directly from CPB. In effect, this means Sesame Street receives no government money.”

Maybe Babs Boxer didn’t pay close enough attention when Count Count was presenting elementary math lessons.

Her math is so bad, it's scary...