In the past I wrote a blog on the “Fairness Doctrine” and how those on the far left were trying to resurrect it to silence the right wing talk show hosts. The Obama administration has appointed Mark Lloyd Associate General Counsel and Chief Diversity Officer. Now Lloyd wants the independent broadcasters to fund “Public Radio”
Now he may try to claim that this is an attempt to get better programing on public radio but it is more of an attempt to silence “right wing talk show hosts” In an article he co-wrote for Center for American Progress (a progressive/socialist group) he said;
Our analysis in the spring of 2007 of the 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial station owners reveals that 91 percent of the total weekday talk radio programming is conservative, and 9 percent is progressive.
They go on further to say;
Quantitative analysis of all 10,506 licensed commercial radio stations in the country suggests that stations owned by racial or ethnic minorities are statistically
less likely to air conservative hosts or shows and more likely to air progressive hosts or shows
Here were there recommendations to force broadcasters to run their programming;
Require radio broadcast licensees to regularly show that they are operating on behalf of the public interest and provide public documentation and viewing of how they are meeting these obligations.
If commercial radio broadcasters are unwilling to abide by these regulatory standards or the FCC is unable to effectively
regulate in the public interest, a spectrum use fee should be levied on owners to directly support local, regional, and national public broadcasting.
A fee based on a sliding scale (1 percent for small markets, 5 percent for the largest markets) would be distributed directly to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting with clear mandates to support local news and public affairs programming and to cover controversial and political issues in a fair and balanced manner.
They go on to make the claim;
Taken together, these data seem to indicate that potential one-sidedness on the radio dial in terms of political programming may have just as much to do with who the owners are as it does with the demands of market listeners. Where markets are less concentrated and have more diversity of ownership, we see more variety in programming.
The bottom line is the agenda is not fairness if it were the market would decide. This is not about fairness it is about getting their socialist/progressive agenda out on someone else’s dime. Public radio is funded by government money and listener donations. Public radio has not been a fair and balanced media, it has leaned to the left for quite some time.
Broadcast stations depend on advertising dollars and how much a station can charge are based on Arbitron ratings. They don’t mention this fact in their study, if they had it would have invalidated the majority of the study. The liberal progressives made a feeble attempt to start their own broadcast group “Air America” with an extremely poor following from the public.
To emphisise the perspective the highest rating they got was in the uber liberal City of Madison, WI (affectionately called The peoples republic of madison) and then they only got a 3.5 share. So only 3.5% of the radio listeners in Madison listened to them. In Seattle Rush had a 5.4 share of the audience.
Who does perform well? Conservative talk radio station WIBA which jumped from 6.6 in the winter to 7.6 last quarter. Well known talkers like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity continue to keep that station at the top of the charts.
Now remember Madison is a Progressive/Liberal/socialist area and the listeners of Conservative talk radio is triple that of the Progressive, If you were an advertiser who would you buy time with? If you were an owner, which programming would you put on your station?
Turns out, you’re too dumb to control your own destiny. That’s the message of the Nanny State, as revealed by its various laws, prohibitions, regulations, bans, ordinances, statutes, guidelines, policies, and so forth. We have smoking bans, drug laws, seatbelt laws, laws against gambling, laws regulating gun ownership, and on and on. We have these laws in place to protect you from your own freedom. After all, freedom is too dangerous to be entrusted to you.
Anyone who has been on Smoke Free Wisconsin’s blog knows that they are celebrating the draconian tax on cigarettes. Ignoring the fact that this is nothing but an attempt at social engineering by Comrade Doyle and his socialist brethren look at the true force behind the taxes and the ban.
Smoke Free Wisconsin was started by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Why is this relevant. Well first you have to understand exactly who they are. For more on Johnson and Johnson click here. Is there any wonder that every method that they recommend includes drugs or drug company Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT)? Why the big push for Big Pharma solutions when it has been proven time and again that cold turkey has a much higher success rate? In a recent blog entry they push the American Cancer Society’s Guide to quitting smoking. If you read the guide there is a big push for Big Pharma solutions and bashes non Big Pharma solutions. This is no big surprise since Samuel S. Epstein, M.D. exposes the ACS’s ties to Big Pharma in his book “Cancer-Gate: How to Win the Losing Cancer War” He also exposes the American Cancer Society: The World’s Wealthiest “Nonprofit” Institution. In this article he says;
The “nonprofit” status of the Society is in sharp conflict with its high overhead and expenses, excessive reserves of assets and contributions to political parties. All attempts to reform the Society over the past two decades have failed; a national economic boycott of the Society is long overdue.
Cancer Drug Industry
The intimate association between the ACS and the cancer drug industry, with cur-rent annual sales of about $12 billion, is further illustrated by the unbridled aggression which the Society has directed at potential competitors of the industry (13). Just as Senator Joseph McCarthy had his “black list” of suspected communists and Richard Nixon his environmental activist “enemies list,” so too the ACS
maintains a “Committee on Unproven Methods of Cancer Management” which periodically “reviews” unorthodox or alternative therapies. This Committee is comprised of “volunteer health care professionals,” carefully selected proponents of orthodox, expensive, and usually toxic drugs patented by major pharmaceutical companies, and opponents of alternative or “unproven” therapies which are
generally cheap, nonpatentable, and minimally toxic.
Notice that the question is not: “Do you recommend a medication for me, or do you recommend that I quit cold turkey?”
This is very curious (and unwarranted) advice, since we know that on a population basis, cold turkey quit attempts are the most successful. Moreover, if the patient has already expressed a desire to quit on his or her own – cold turkey – then putting them on drugs is probably the last thing you want to do as a physician.
Nevertheless, this document tells every smoker to ask their doctor which medication to take, not whether or not to use medication.
The membership loss suggests dissatisfaction on the part of AARP members at a time when many senior citizens are concerned about proposed cuts to Medicare providers to help pay for making health care available for all. But spokesman Drew Nannis said it wasn’t unusual for the powerful, 40 million-strong senior citizens’ lobby to shed members in droves when it’s advocating on a controversial issue.
Anti-smoking campaigners last night welcomed the move by Merthyr Tydfil council, but critics have pointed out there are already not enough foster parents in Wales.
They fear the changes might discourage potential carers from coming forward and could jeopardise the future of children already in the care of smokers.
Ah but you say this is the United States not Wales, it can’t happen here. That is where you are dead wrong.
“This is just the latest step in a growing movement to protect the most vulnerable and most defenseless victims of tobacco smoke pollution,”
says public interest lawyer John Banzhaf, Executive Director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).
As a matter of fact, says Banzhaf, even years ago, when the dangers of smoking around children was far less well appreciated, ten percent of social workers specializing in adoption turned down potential parents because one or both smoked.
For similar reasons judges in more than half our states — and a few in foreign countries — have recognized that smoking around a child can be not only dangerous but deadly, and have ruled that smoking around a child can be grounds for losing custody.
Here is a scary warning from the past.
“The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.” -Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, Publ. Houghton Miflin, 1943, Page 403
Of course government sanctioned discrimination does not end there, Smokers are now denied government housing.
Faye Dodd, the agency’s executive director, said they had considered making the units non-smoking for a few months partly because the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development has been encouraging housing authorities to adopt non-smoking policies. She said 112 housing authorities across the country are currently smoke-free.
So now we not only have to subsidise children that we can’t have (SCHIP) but housing that we can’t live in.
In California they even Deny little kids from having lemonade stands.
Hoping to raise money for a family trip to Disneyland, the Tulare girl opened a lemonade stand Monday. But because Daniela didn’t have a business license, the city of Tulare shut it down the same day.</blockquote
Of course with Obamacare on the horizon we can expect more of the same. Here is a glib picture of our future as painted by the ACLU.
Michael J. Mcfadden does a very good review of Christopher Snowdon’s book Velvet Glove, Iron Fist.
While not as strongly focused on Antismokers’ psychological language tricks and dubious scientific deceptions underlying smoking bans as my own Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains, Chris Snowdon does not neglect these areas
and on the contrary has done an excellent job of showing how they form an integral part of the history. His approach embodies a strong neutrality that will win him friends and enemies on both sides of the issue, but I believe that overall, that neutrality only serves to underscore the damning facts that will eventually bring judgment against what historian Jeremy Richards has called “America’s Second Great Prohibition Experiment.”
Part of the reason that I bring upChristopher Snowdon and his book is he did an interview with David Goerlitz the former Winston man who exposed the fact that the cigarette companies did in fact target kids with their advertising. Like Dr Michael Siegel he is dissillusuoned with tobacco control and can no longer remain silent about the zellotry and corruption of the tobacco control movement. Here is an exerpt from an email he sent to Ryan.
Four or five months ago, I decided to sever ties with the anti-tobacco movement and made the decision to “come out”, but had to have my ducks in a row. I am ready to expose with what ever Army I have to back me up the inner workings, the politics. the corruption, and
moronic bans, legislation and FDA bill that is nothing short of of being racist, protectionist,cynical, hypocritical, and misguided.
Just to remind you, this has been a long time coming and I know I’m ready to take My fight and Your fight to the streets. If you are serious about bringing this issue to a head, I’m your man. Whatever you heard about me when I was the keynote speaker in Madison in Nov. of 2008, I only talked about my experiences and never came off as a zealot. I just wanted yo to know that. Check me out, and if I can help, give a call and I’ll answer any and all questions you need answered.
My Youtube interviews with Chris Snowdon came out a couple of weeks ago as well as the scathing accusations of one of our biggest hoaxes ever perpotrated on the public.
Exclusive interview with long-standing anti-smoking spokesman David Goerlitz. Read about it at Spiked and listen to the whole extraordinary interview here.
Caesar proposed a law for the redistribution of public lands to the poor, a proposal supported by Pompey, by force of arms if need be, and by Crassus, making the triumvirate public. Pompey filled the city with soldiers, and the triumvirate’s opponents were intimidated. Bibulus attempted to declare the omens unfavourable and thus void the new law, but was driven from the forum by Caesar’s armed supporters.
At the end of the second century BC the Roman people was sovereign. True, rich aristocrats dominated politics. In order to become one of the annually elected ‘magistrates’ (who in Rome were concerned with all aspects of government, not merely the law) a man had to be very rich.
Even the system of voting was weighted to give more influence to the votes of the wealthy. Yet ultimate power lay with the Roman people. Mass assemblies elected the magistrates, made the laws and took major state decisions. Rome prided itself on being a ‘free republic’ and centuries later was the political model for the founding fathers of the United States.
That is the biggest problems with democracy. The people vote for convenience and temporary security sacrificing the freedoms and individual rights guaranteed by the constitution.
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
Ben Franklin
“A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.”
It is high time that people wake up to the role that both the government and the unions have played in the economic disaster that we find ourselves in at this point. We are at a point where we are socializing the automobile business. Of course I don’t think that the liberals would be pushing so hard for a bailout if it were not for one of their major backers involved. The trade union. If you take a look they are demanding to control the wages of the executives but are doing nothing about the bloated benifits to the employees. Most of us do not have these bloated benefit packages and have seen our 401Ks drastically reduce in value and yet we are expected to pick up the tab for this.
But high current costs are only part of the problem. So-called “legacy costs” leave Detroit paying an enormous sum of money for mistakes made in the past. In 2004, GM, Ford, and Chrysler employed approximately 370,000 people in their U.S. automotive operations but supported more than 800,000 retirees with expensive pension and health care packages negotiated through collective bargaining.[7] From 1993 to 2007, General Motors alone spent an average of $7 billion per year to fund legacy pensions and retiree health care.[8] These legacy costs create a catch-22 for automakers: Not only are they nearly impossible to trim outside of bankruptcy, but as firms downsize existing operations, they become a proportionately larger burden on the company.
Just as the liberals helped cause the financial crisis by forcing banks to give risky loans to low income people they and the government unions did the same with the government pension funds. I sometimes wonder if this push for a cap and trade tax is nothing but a feeble attempt to bolster their bad investments and cover their tracks.
During melting markets, all pension funds come under siege. If you’re covered by a “defined contribution” plan, contributions are invested, usually by your employer and usually in the stock market, and the returns are credited to the employee’s account. Your retirement savings grow if the market rises or, as is the case now, bleed when it crashes. You carry the risk on your shoulders.
The risk shifts to the employer under “defined benefit” plans, in which future outlays are guaranteed. That seemed like a great idea for business as recently as 2007, when the market was rising and the pension funds of America’s 500 largest companies held a surplus of $60 billion. Now they’re at a deficit of $200 billion, with fund assets dropping like a lodestone.
Here is where the social engineering comes in. Instead of thinking like a businessman and investing in sound projects that would maximize the profits of the fund. They used the money to fund pet projects and investments that they deemed “socially acceptable”
Traditionally, public investments and union-based corporate pension funds were managed according to strict fiduciary principles designed to protect workers and taxpayers. For the most part they invested in safe government securities, such as bonds or U.S. Treasury bills. Professional managers oversaw the funds with little political interference.
But during the last 30 years, state pension funds began playing the market, putting their money into riskier and riskier securities—first stocks, corporate bonds, and foreign investments, then real estate, private equity firms, and hedge funds. Concurrently, baby boomers whose politics were forged in the 1960s and ’70s began using those pension funds to advance their social visions. Investments designed for the long-term welfare of retirees began to evolve into a political hammer.
Many union funds and larger state pension plans screen stocks and investment opportunities based on what are known as “socially responsible investing,” or SRI, principles. Instead of focusing solely on maximizing value, fund managers have used the economic clout of concentrated stock holdings to make a statement by divesting from companies that don’t make it through certain “sin screens.” These included companies involved with weapons, nuclear energy, tobacco, alcohol, natural resources, and genetic modifications on agriculture, many of which did well over the past decade. Stocks of public companies deemed to have poor records on labor, environmental issues, women’s rights, and gay rights are also frequently screened out, as are corporations that do business with regimes that activists consider unsavory.
I don’t know about you but I find this very disturbing. The government has never been able to run a business that could break even much less make a profit. The railroads and the postal system are classic examples. Do we really trust them to run the automotive industry?
