Talk Radio in the Bullseye

The new president's uni-partisan $780 billion spending cramdown was passed today by the U.S. House, and the atmospherics surrounding the vote prove that the president's party has no intention of allowing reason and open debate to threaten their agenda to grind down the private sector under the jackboot of government regulation and intervention. The largest spending bill in U.S. history was voted on within hours after the 1000-page final version was made available for review online late Thursday night. One congressman said the bill was covered with hen scratches and handwritten markups making it barely legible. It is certain that no one who voted for this fetid package knows what they voted for.

None of this seems to bother Speaker Pelosi, who wanted a vote today so she can make the evening news with a post-passage photo op and then board a plan for Rome. A few days ago the Democrats and Republicans unanimously passed a motion promising a 48-hour cooling off period between making the final bill available to the public and a congressional vote. But it seems that motion was "merely procedural and non-binding": the Speaker has a date in Italy and we musn't keep Queen Nancy waiting.

So much for the new era of responsibility and transparency promised by President Obama. In fact it is confusion and deception, not transparency and responsibility, that this crowd values in its march to consolidating its power. Arrogance and hubris just comes with the territory.

Speaking of consolidating power, a necessary element of achieving political dominance is to isolate the threats to total power and to target and then neutralize them. The biggest threats to liberals and thus the largest targets are the purveyors of dissenting ideas and the instruments of speech and communication by which they are spread. That is why Obama and his minions on Capitol Hill have set their sights on conservative talk radio.

The emboldened liberals have made no secret of their determination to kill conservative radio. Last weekend Sen. Debbie Stabenow of the economic basket case formerly known as Michigan told the lefty radio host Bill Press that she looks forward to holding hearings on the problem of imbalance and ideological bias on radio, all in the name of "accountability:

I think it’s absolutely time to pass a standard. Now, whether it’s
called
the Fairness Standard, whether it’s called something else — I
absolutely think it’s time to be bringing accountability to the
airwaves.

This was echoed the next day by Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa. The latest to weigh in is Bill Clinton, who told an interviewer that there needs to be more "balance" on talk radio. He told radio personality Mario Solis Marich that "enforced media accountability" is necessary "because essentially there's always been a lot of big money to support the right wing talk shows."

This is a curious formulation. Clinton knows that talk radio's "big money" derives from private enterprise, that is to say, consumers paying for goods and services they want from advertisers who pay dearly for a few seconds of airtime on shows hosted by popular personalities in order to reach millions and millions of listeners who become the consumers that buy their goods and services. Perhaps Clinton is more comfortable with "big money" unloosed from Arab sheiks and third world despots instead of earned in the pursuit of profits.

In any case the idea of "enforced media accountability" should be chilling not just to conservatives but to all of us--liberals, progressives, independents alike. Those in the establishment media should be particularly alarmed, for as much as they may resent or hate Rush Limbaugh and his ilk, they have to know that any government that has the power to hush Rush tomorrow can stifle them the day after tomorrow. Yet as far as I can tell the media either ignores hints of reinstating the "Fairness Doctrine," or as is the case with Bill Press, encourages it.

Redstate.com reports that all this talk about hearings to revisit imposing the "Fairness Doctrine" is not just idle chatter. The legislators and party bosses are following a comprehensive roadmap to this effort laid out by the left-wing advocacy group Center for American Progress. CAP calls on government to effectively "nationalize" talk radio, by taking the following actions:

1. Limit the number of stations one company can own both
locally and nationally;
2. Shorten license terms so they can use government pressure to get unpopular hosts like Bill Press on more radio stations; and,
3. Require that these broadcasters prove that they operate in the
"public interest" including the government mandated reporting requirements
that the content of the programs contain both popular conservative
viewpoints and unpopular liberal viewpoints.

Yesterday I took the liberty of emailing the staff-members of CAP in charge of the effort to stifle conservative media and politely asked for their response to ten questions about their proposal. I will post these in the next day or two. I ask my readers, especially those who may be unsympathetic generally to conservative media, to ponder these questions and the implications of the efforts of CAP and others on the constitutional values that we all purport to cherish.