Reply to a post from tvig0r0us
on March 8th, 2009 at 10:24 am
in the thread Pelosi Backs Senate Amendment to Censor Talk Radio

Thank you for your very civil and respectful question. I shall do my best to answer my good friend from across the aisle.

"You keep coming at this issue as if it’s not going to affect people on both sides."

I certainly never meant to. I advocate rules that apply equally across the board — justice with the blindfold, A.K.A. "Rule of Law".

"if progressive radio ever does make it out of the cellar"

Whooee! What a slam! Let’s examine your terms a little here. Right-wing media (Ron Paul coverage is the exception, please note) support the interests of the biggest piles of cash, and are the beneficiaries thereof. As David Brock explains in his book Blinded By The Right, publications like the Washington Times where he got his start, and The American Spectator where he went next, eventually getting a 6-figure salary, lost money for decades, but were sustained by their wealthy owners, Sun Myung Moon (who is the Messiah, don't cha know?) and Richard Mellon Scaife, respectively. Why? Because the propaganda value was far greater than the unprofitability of the vehicle, in terms of legislation, such as the DEREGULATION I will discuss below.

By the way, Air America was the springboard for the highly successful Rachel Maddow show, and the hopefully successful Franken senate campaign.

"It is rediculous [sic] for you to think that someone imposing a new rule on the public is somehow expanding freedom."

Rules don't promote freedom? Freedom is the absence of rules? Let me quote the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . . .

And as I explained in another post near the end of this thread, democratic governments are a "club", ie., a "strength in numbers movement" — they exist to prevent the few who are rich and powerful from taking unfair advantage over the many who are not so, but who thus can use their greater numbers to level the playing field. That’s the difference between Democracy (rule by "the people", = the many) and Monarchy (rule by one, ie., a king) or Oligarchy (rule by few) which is what the Republican party has stood for since the election of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880.

"By the way, when it comes to specifics, the only thing you have thrown out there so far is “the big money is in control, the big money controls the media.”

I hope you find more here than you did. If you read all my posts in this thread you would see tons. But Big Money is definitely the issue — Alex says the same thing, right? The European Bankers, the Bilderbergers — what is that but "Big Money"?

"No kidding!! They are doing this because they control the government"

To whatever extent this is true, it is due to one of three things:

  1. The elections are rigged, via voting machines, for example, and as we know, at least 90% of all those scandals favored Republicans — Bob Ney, Ken Blackwell, Walden O'Dell the CEO of Diebold that promised the Ohio electoral votes to Bush. Remember? Not to mention the US Attorney scandals now coming to a committee near you.

  2. Or, the elections are not that far off from the popular sentiment (a few percent is all they can safely steal), and so the people are voting for the wrong causes and initiatives due to effective propaganda and domination of TV advertising by money (this is my belief).
  3. Or, it was true, but they have just now lost a significant portion of their grip on the government (not all, of course), and they are about to lose more, MAYBE A LOT MORE, which is my hope. The people have finally woken up, and threw the bums out. Did you by chance notice a shift in the electorate lately?

"they wish to put . . . something other than complete government control out of business."

Here's where we differ. You on the right still believe Reagan, that "government isn't the solution to the problem, government IS the problem". I on the other hand still believe FDR, that:

"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power"

That of course squares exactly with Jefferson's description of the role of government quoted above from the Declaration.

"Do you think this is going to put Rush or Beck off of the air???"

I'm not for putting people off the air. Where did you get that idea? Voltaire would stop loving me if I did that. Is that what you are for?? That's not very neighborly. I'm for diversity! A left-wing monoculture is no safer than a right-wing monoculture (monopoly). As Pelosi told Rachel Maddow last week, in reference to things she was told by the CIA and military that contradicted the lies being told to the public about the justification for war, and about torture:

MADDOW: But you think the rules should be changed in terms of what members...

PELOSI: No -- who can you go to? Can you go to the chief justice of the Supreme Court? Can you -- these are issues, mind you, that you can't even talk to your staff about. I have a security adviser, but we can't talk -- you can't talk to anybody about it.

And that just isn't right, because it gives all the cards to the administration. And then if you say anything about it, you have violated our national security. And it shouldn't be that way.

MADDOW: It neuters the oversight rule for voters.

PELOSI: It does, and that's what we’re going to change, because you can't -- even with a Democratic president -- you don't want any president, Democrat or Republican, to have that kind of authority. And that will happen.

Continuing with your question:

"it might put smaller programs off of the air that don’t have the money to fund a failing branch of progressive speak radio."

I admit that some extra costs are involved, and challenges will occasionally issue, necessitating meetings with FCC or maybe even court appearances. That is of course regrettable. But all laws carry these extra burdens. Do you wish to do away with all laws?

"And I still haven’t heard your take on why the television media is so slanted to the left."

I consider that a myth. Maybe back in the 60's Cronkite could be called left-of-center. But the effect that TV had in ending the Vietnam War was not doctrinal. It was simply showing the public what was going on. Simply showing the body bags, showing the famous picture of 9-year-old Kim Phuc running down the dirt road with her clothes burned off by napalm, the famous video of the police chief of Saigon putting a pistol to the head of a bound captive and executing him. That was when truth was getting out. The Times and the Post printing the Pentagon Papers, and the Watergate evidence. That's not Leftist: that's just the truth.

That's what you are calling "slanted to the left". Then came the era of the "embedded journalist" during the first Gulf War. "You report what we show you." Then the ban on showing caskets. Then "Shock and Awe", which is nothing more than an ad for the Military Industrial Complex. Oh, and before that, the New York Times, that "bastion of Socialism", printing the lies of Judith Miller and Michael Gordon, two arch-Zionists, mouthing Cheney's talking points, and then he quotes them on the next day's news show, how those "aluminum tubes" were clearly for centrifuges, whereas the Energy Department, that builds and uses centrifuges for UF6 said they were entirely inappropriate for that purpose.

Then you've got Chris Matthews saying "We're all NeoCons now!" when the oooh! fireworks started. And on and on and on. Only Olbermann, now also Maddow, and to a lesser extent PBS (which was successfully bereft of Bill Moyers via that fat guy Bush put in at FCC. What was his name?) Even the BBC has been neutered after the assassination of David Kelly, and the firing of Greg Dyke for insubordination. That wasn't Left even then — just honest!

"You want to attack talk radio for not having your views when the box in the corner of your living room spews progressive rhetoric 24/7."

For the record, I haven't turned my TV on for about 4 years, and haven't watched any but PBS since 1980. I've never had cable, but I do have DSL — my lifeline. I now watch Olbermann (a source oft quoted on Alex's site for truth, not for handedness — correct?) and Maddow online lately (about 3 weeks ago I read that Justin Raimondo at the Libertarian Antiwar.com watches her every night, and began the habit). I also watch NOVA online.

I would like you to enumerate how it " spews progressive rhetoric 24/7". A few examples are in order. I was generous with my examples, after all (the page is groaning under their weight).

Thanks in advance —

To: tvig0r0us post of March 8th, 2009 at 9:50 am Again, thanks for engaging, and in a civil and communicative manner. This is the stuff of which agreements can be made. I'll try to be more brief than the one I just posted at my website (it took me hours!)

" You could not possibly tell me that you think the television media is ballanced."

I hate television. I stopped watching in 1980. It's almost as bad as cigarette smoke!

" Since your views aren’t on AM radio, you are calling on the government to “level the playing field.”"

Look at it this way. The first multination corporation was the British East India Company. They made most of their money shipping tea to England and the American colonies. Other local traders were getting a lot of their market, though, because of quality and price issues. But King George was heavily invested in the BEIC, and so he levied a tax on that tea, but exempted his own company from the tax. That was what led Sam Adams &al. to don Amerindian garb one night and dump a boatload in Boston Harbor.

In the present case, the kings of broadcasting aren't benefitted by a Royal Decree, but by virtue of vast wealth, most of it leveraged up the yingyang with borrowed stocks and derivatives, ultimately traceable to Rockefeller and Morgan, and thence to Rothschild. This allows them to buy out all or most of the outlets in huge swathes of the American Market, and drive the once thriving independent broadcasters out of business — the very ones you are sighing and weeping for (supposedly, although you have been a big fan of Rush, O'Reilly, Hannity, G. Gordon, &c. in the not-so-distant past, before they began to stink so bad that even conservatives don't want to stand next to them. Did I guess right?)

Ten years ago, I remember Bob Edwards of NPR's Morning Edition giving a speech to the Commonwealth Club of California. Then, he said that "ten years ago, there were a hundred independent broadcasters in California. Today there are three."

That, sir is MONOPOLY. Unregulated Capitalism ALWAYS results in MONOPOLY. It's just a fact of nature. You hate government monopoly, but you don't bat an eye at plutocrat monopoly, because your immune system is damped down by social issue or religious issue hypno-words, like the enzymes in the saliva of the mosquito suppresses the clotting function