I am baffled at the right wing’s obsession with cutting federal money for programs that actually educate people.

Take public broadcasting, for example.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s debate performance this past week has been hailed largely a success. But when he went off on the issue of government waste, he took dead aim at the Public Broadcasting Service and, that’s right, Big Bird.

There are literally thousands of more wasteful government programs than the money the government spends on public television. Why do right-wingers keep flogging public television when they trot out ways to cut government spending?

PBS’s programming – which comes to the Panhandle via KACV, based at Amarillo College – is educational at so many levels. It’s children’s programming has become legendary, creating the popular characters such as Big Bird and the whole cast of Sesame Street. It provides comprehensive news coverage of current events. Next month, PBS will show a documentary on the Dust Bowl, produced by the renowned filmmaker Ken Burns – and that broadcast will resonate throughout the Panhandle, which lived through that horrific event in the 1930s.

PBS’s contribution to the federal debt amounts to spitting in the ocean.

If Romney and the base of his party were truly serious about the debt, they would start trotting out all the waste everyone on the planet knows exists in, say, the Defense Department. My strong hunch is that the savings realized right there could pay for PBS all by itself – and retain America’s status as the world’s pre-eminent military power.