I Haven't Been Here for Awhile

Things just keep getting stranger and stranger as the administration of Barack Obama trundles down the road. Trundle, an interesting word. Thoreau said, "I doubt Emerson could trundle a wheelbarrow down the street." Does that refer to Emerson as being weak or inept?

The liberals around the world have their own war starting now, a war to find mustard gas that they know is hidden in bunkers in Libya. They are going to oust Muammar Gaddafi and the French are sending an aircraft carrier across the Mediterranean Sea to help the rebels who may or may not be Islamic Fundamentalists to overthrow this evil-doer. The folks at NPR are even explaining to listeners why it is so important to escalate the United States involvement in this crisis and what the difference is between a fighter jet and a tank. In their mind this is a good and just cause. Rumsfeld lied. Bush lied. Cheney lied. But NPR knows the truth....

And a continent away from Washington DC Jerry Brown and the gang in California just cannot understand why businesses are moving from the Golden State to Texas in droves. They have a higher unemployment rate than Michigan and the highest taxes in the country in many areas. With 12% of the nations people they have 33% of the nations welfare case load. Governor Moonbeam says it is the fault of the radical Republicans who want to take down the government at all levels.

So what is their solution to California's problems? Are they going to create a new environment for businesses to thrive? Are they going to lower taxes? Are they going to reduce regulations? Are they going to rein in government spending? Are they going to tackle the State's $500 billion pension fund obligation? No. Wait for it....wait for it...They are going to send a delegation of California politicians to Texas, put them up in a luxury hotel, and ask Texans how they lured businesses away from California.

And somewhere in the Far East nuclear power plants are melting down...

And the President of the United States is telling us all his basketball picks for March Madness. I do not think they need to play basketball to figure there is a lot of March madness going on in the world.

To To Quote Randy Quaid in the movie 'Independence Day'...

...I'm Back! (For those who need further explanation it is one of the key suspenseful moments in all of movies where Randy's alien abductors are about to level all of the cities on Earth and he flies his jet fighter into the heart of the alien central command spacecraft.) Does that make it clear?

For the past few months I have been on hiatus playing with the grandkids, watching political races and elections, working for candidates that I think might have the right idea, and defending Brett Favre, and now I am refreshed and ready to start writing again. I am going to start slow, though, with just a brief comment about my favorite radio station, the completely non-partisan National Public Radio. I will spend the next few weeks writing variations on this theme.

This morning Steve Inskeep was interviewing writer Anand Giridharadas, who has written a book about India entitled: 'India Calling: The New Land of Opportunity.' I am sure this is a fine book but that is not what this blog is about. About 5 minutes into the interview, actually 5 minutes and 24 seconds, Mr. Giridharas made the comment that the image of India today is incredible but that image might be problematic. With pride in his voice Mr. Inskeep then referred to the United States and those who thought it was in decline, "...we shouldn't miss the fact that it is still the greatest economy the world has ever seen."

Let's think about Mr. Inskeep's comment. The first thing that popped into my mind when I heard it was here was a guy who in the past has been ultra liberal in his commentaries, and he works for an ultra liberal organization, and he says something like that off the top of his head. One might expect him to say that there is no hope, the United States is falling behind the rest of the world, we need to drastically change the way we have been doing business because it isn't working - all that stuff we hear over and over from Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Obama and the rest of the super-left. So what happened? Did the parallel universe suddenly diagonally park? Will Rush Limbaugh start talking about distribution of wealth to create jobs?

I have a hypothesis. Deep down inside in a liberal's heart of hearts lies a proud patriot. There, I said it. No lightening strikes so in the next few days I am going to think out loud about this phenomena. I will call it the red, white and blue syndrome, and it is the wall that will keep big government out of our lives, and has for the past couple of centuries.

This is Too Funny

This is a response from National Public Radio to my letter written to them regarding Cokie Roberts comparing Ronald Reagan to Obama (2 blogs previously at this site) . To refresh memories it was a few paragraphs to NPR at one point commenting that comparing Obama to Jimmy Carter would have been more realistic. This is what NPR replied:

Dear Susan,

Thank you for contacting NPR.

We appreciate your making us aware of this problem. After conducting a minor repair, we were able to correct the issue. Please let us know if your problems persist, as it should now function properly.

We regret any inconvenience this may have caused.

Thank you for listening, and for your continued support of public broadcasting. For the latest news and information, visit NPR.org.

Sincerely,

Erin

NPR Services

My question is: What did they do to Cokie Roberts?

Comparison of Reagan and Obama?

A Letter to National Public Radio:

This has to be the strangest comparison I have heard of. Perhaps if Cokie Roberts had compared their abilities to speak to an audience and fire them up I would agree, but to try, in any way, to discuss their similarities when it comes to economic policies or their attitude towards the country is wrong.

First, Reagan gave speeches on how great the country was and kept pushing the idea that small government was the key to business in this country continuing to expand. Smaller government, to Reagan, meant more freedom for the people of the United States - and he said so over and over again.

Obama has been the polar opposite, continually talking down what has made America great and promoting a much larger, expansive government. In the process the unemployment numbers have remained high because businesses do not know what new tax or regulation the Obama administration - and Congress - are going to hit them with.

The idea that President Obama believes that government taking more of our tax dollars and the only way to make businesses hire more people is to give them those tax dollars is not Reagonomics or Clintonomics or Kennedynomics.

How about a comparison of Obama and Jimmy Carter? That is closer to reality.

Just a Few More Thoughts on the Fairness Doctrine...

Who decides what is fair?

Who gets to decide what “fair” is? Representatives and Senators? FCC Commissioners? A free market based on supply and demand? Is it philosophers and scholars of political science? Should economists decide? Is it those with an active role in politics, whether in the media or more directly as activists, campaigners, or officials? Is it the public? Should Christian Scientists? The Amish certainly have opinions about medical procedures. Atheists have a great deal to say about God and religious practices.

If President Obama appears on television, the Republicans in some cases have time to respond, but nobody else does (other than the talking heads, of course). Libertarians don't get the opportunity to present their case with free air time. Nor do Objectivists, Socialists, Communists, or any of the other myriad schools of political thought. Is that fair? Democrats and Republicans likely think so.

Our society is so diverse in its ideas that there is no way to find a common ground for everyone concerned through government intervention. Even our information comes from a large variety of sources, some not even under the “rules” of the FCC. The fact is that any blogger trying to boost traffic knows that the public decides what they want to listen to, with little regard for fairness or equal opportunity. Conservatives read conservative web sites and listen to conservative radio. Liberals read liberal web sites and newspapers. There are even people who cross over to media with differing ideologies just to see what’s going on, or to get a contradictory view on a subject. Research polling suggests that people are tuning in to CNN and FOX news at an almost equal percentage. Neither is considered by many to be centrist in their overall news programming.

The FCC itself changes its point of view based on who is living in the White House. There are five Commissioners that are deciding what is fair, and 3 are appointed by the sitting President of the United States. Looking back, the Commissioners appointed by Jimmy Carter did not have the same opinions regarding what was fair in broadcasting as did the Commissioners appointed by Ronald Reagan. And the fact that the Commissioners appointed by Bill Clinton were more closely aligned with the Reagan appointees just illustrates how muddled the entire fairness issue really is. As Al Gore had said, the trust in an overall market concept is important in the coverage of public issues.

Supply, Demand and Public Issues

As stated in the first part of the book The Economics of Public Issues, Miller, Benjamin and North explain that we live in a world of scarcity, of limited resources, and that we have unlimited wants. The Federal Communications Commission began because of scarcity in the amount of bandwidth available for transmission of radio signals, and that scarcity caused the numerous active radio stations to bleed over onto other bandwidths, and other station’s transmissions, in their efforts to raise their signals and reach a wider audience – wider audience meant more advertising, and more profits for the station. The FCC needed to be created to control transmission of radio signals. But the FCC was not satisfied with doing just that. For political reasons, or simply wanting to have more power over the expanding media world, or both, they chose to come up with a way not only to manage the “physical” airwaves but to control the actual content of the programming that the radio stations were transmitting. They did this by creating the Fairness Doctrine.

Should stations have been allowed to continue to develop their distinctive programming personalities to appeal to specific listening constituencies, as they are now doing? It has been shown that stations in large enough markets, when left alone, develop programming that consistently appeals to particular political, ethnic, or economic partisans. A station stays in business if there are enough listeners to justify a particular programming format.

Choices should be left to the stations to decide not only the kinds of music or entertainment programs that they broadcast, but also on whether or not they offer programming that delves into public controversies, or features candidates for public office. Stations should also be free to take a particular political posture without fear of coercion, constraint, intimidation or reprisal, all things that the FCC did while trying to enforce the Fairness Doctrine.

History has shown that some stations will not program discussions of public issues at all. Does it justify the Doctrine’s attitude of forcing public issue programming on listeners who have little or no interest in it? I don’t believe so. When unwanted programming is put in place, history has shown that listeners have simply tuned out or turned the station off completely. Former FCC Commissioner Mark S. Fowler and colleague Daniel L. Brenner stated, “The public’s interest, then, defines the public interest.” And that interest is defined in a very straightforward way: Media outlets supply the programming and the consumers of their “product” can demand more or less based on their interest in what is produced.

Case after case has appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court involving fairness in the media. In 1984 the Supreme Court declared that there were an a large number of radio and television channels around the country, and the reasons for having a Fairness Doctrine were not necessary. The FCC followed in 1987 with their own admission that the intrusion by government into the content of programming occasioned by the enforcement of the Doctrine unnecessarily restricts the journalistic freedom of broadcasters and actually inhibits the presentation of controversial issues of public importance to the detriment of the public and in degradation of the editorial prerogative of broadcast journalists.

Repeal of the Bill of Rights? “We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.” President John F. Kennedy

Did the Fairness Doctrine Ever Work?

Why do some support government intervention?

1. Does the “scarce” amount of spectrum space require oversight by federal regulators? Based on historical evidence although the spectrum is limited, the number of broadcasters in America has continuously increased.

2. Is “Fairness” or “Fair Access” best determined by federal regulators? Or is it correct that the FCC bureaucrats cannot determine what is “fair” or enforce it? In a recent discussion FCC Commissioner Michael Copps took broadcasters to task for their current programming content, speaking of “too little news, too much baloney passed off as news. Too little quality entertainment, too many people eating bugs on reality TV, too little local and regional music, and too much brain-numbing national play lists.” Mr. Copps believes he is in a position to determine what people in this country should listen to on the radio or view on television. He would obviously be promoting his own opinion, and would consider his actions “fair.”

3. Will the Fairness Doctrine guarantee that more opinions will be aired? In the past seventy years arbitrary enforcement of the Doctrine has been shown to diminish, not encourage, vigorous debate.

There are numerous writings pointing to individual instances where the Fairness Doctrine inhibited the freedom of speech. One of those cases was remembered by Nat Hentoff, a journalist with the Village Voice in New York. He has been writing his column, “Liberty Beat,” since 1957, and in 2001 he received a lifetime achievement award from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. He is considered by his peers to be one of the finest journalists of his generation. He considered the Fairness Doctrine as exemplifying what George Orwell called “Newspeak”:# it uses language to mask the harmful effects of its supposed meaning.

His personal experience with the Doctrine occurred in the 1940’s when he was working at WMEX radio station in Boston. He explained how they covered politics and politicians, and offered their political opinions on the air. Then the Fairness Doctrine letters started coming in from the FCC and the station’s front office panicked. Lawyers were called, tapes of shows were reviewed, and responses had to be sent to the FCC. After a few of these letters the radio station’s boss announced that there would be no more controversial stories of any sort on WMEX. They had been “muzzled.”

In 1969 the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Fairness Doctrine in the Red Lion decision. During arguments before the Court, broadcasters stated that the Doctrine had a chilling effect on their business practices, leading many of them to abandon their coverage of controversial issues in favor of “safe” issues.

In 1985 the FCC issued a report concluding the Doctrine no longer served the public interest and instead chilled First Amendment speech. Note this is the FCC making this statement. The Commission predicted that without the chilling effect of the Fairness Doctrine it was reasonable to expect an increase in the coverage of controversial issues of public importance.

In 1987 the FCC formally renounced the Fairness Doctrine, and the FCC has stated that since then there has been more, rather than less, coverage of controversial issues. The amount of opinion-oriented programming exploded over the following six years and the number of radio talk shows jumped from 400 to more than 900. Many observers attribute this growth directly to the absence of the inhibiting effect of the Fairness Doctrine. Even Louise Slaughter agreed that AM radio popularity rose at that time. “It wasn’t even gradual…almost immediately.”

Even after the decades of proof of the inhibiting of ideas due to the Fairness Doctrine there are still those that want it back. In their 2005 book, Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy, Hacker and Pierson wrote: “…the proliferation of new media…has fostered a strongly right-wing journalistic presence in talk radio and on cable. The FCC…surely can justify restoring the simple requirement that the news include a fair representation of views…”

Where do Americans get their “every day” news?

“Surely, we have evolved to the stage here in this century that we can understand some sort of balance, some sort of sense. To me it is a feeling that my country is spilling out hatred and lies on many, many of these stations (talk radio) to people who hear nothing but that, who never believe or hear any countervailing opinion ..” Louise Slaughter, Interview with Bill Moyers

The Pew Research Center conducted surveys on campaign news and political communication among 1,506 adults December 19^th through January 4^th, 2004.

Americans are more frequently getting their election news from cable news networks, morning TV shows, talk radio, NPR, the Internet and Comedy TV shows (Conservative Colbert Report and Liberal Daily Show, for example.). There has been a decline in accessing other sources of news, especially nightly network news, daily newspapers and news magazines. The Chart also shows that there are so many sources of information to Americans, that it leads one to believe that, as said by Adrian Cronauer, the Fairness Doctrine is a solution in search of a problem. Is having so many media outlets effecting our individual freedom, order or equality between individuals and groups in our society?

Some, such as Ms. Slaughter, might argue that there is unfair media bias slanting towards Conservative thought, but fairness is in the eye of the beholder. According to the polling, overall, about as many Americans now say news organizations are biased in favor of one of the two parties as say there is no bias in election coverage (39% vs. 38%). A much larger number of Democrats believe that coverage of the campaign (Presidential campaign of the year 2000) tilted in favor of Republicans. More than four in ten Republicans (42%) see news coverage of the campaign as biased in favor of the Democrats. There has also been a significant number of Independents that believe the election news is not free of bias.

Conclusions can be drawn from the polling results that, across the board, whether Conservative, Liberal, Independent, or specific age groups, or educational backgrounds, more than 50% of respondents to the survey believed that there was bias in the media. And each of the groups believed that the bias was toward opposing opinions from their own. More importantly would be the indication that Americans are going to all sources in the media for their news, and they are aware that it is necessary to sift through all of the information to find out what is really going on, or perhaps sift through to substantiate their preconceived ideas about a topic.

Radio has been accused of being the most biased, and influencing the most voters, according to Louise Slaughter and other supporters of the Fairness Doctrine. But as can be seen in the chart at the right, compared to the other sources of information, a very small percentage of voters get their campaign news from the radio. Democrats and Independents tend to look to newspapers and the mainstream nightly news stations for their campaign news.

Those rallying for the return of the Fairness Doctrine believe that what some consider politically incorrect speech must be “balanced” by law – which is to say, by the government. Others have a different opinion. In a discussion of the Fairness Doctrine, then Vice President of the United States Al Gore said, “The administration sees market forces replacing regulations and judicial models that are no longer appropriate. The administration’s goal is to provide the principles…one of those principles should be to trust in an overall market concept in the coverage of public issues with the obvious First Amendment advantages it provides.” In other words, a media outlet, in its efforts to bring in a larger audience, has the right to report the news the way their customers want to see it or hear it.

Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press

“Without deviation, without exception, without any ifs, buts, or whereas, freedom of speech means that you shall not do something to people either for the views they express, or the words they speak or write.” Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black#

The concept of Freedom of Speech is an inherent human right, the right to voice an opinion publicly without fear of censorship or punishment. It is recognized formally around the world by the laws of most nations, and depending on the type of government that is in place, the laws are upheld or ignored. Even the United Nations has a Declaration of Human Rights, which includes a person’s “right to hold opinions without interference and a right to freedom of expression.”

The topic of free speech is one of the most contentious issues in a society, but is an important part of, as Rawls suggests, balancing liberty and equality. Because the freedom is so highly valued, limitations placed on it are always going to be controversial. The U.S. Supreme Court has written that this freedom is the matrix and the indispensable condition of nearly every other form of freedom. But freedom of speech is always going to be limited because it will always take place in a framework of competing values. In the case of the Fairness Doctrine one could say the competing values were the political ideologies of conservatives and liberals.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees that “Congress shall make no law…. abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” Over time, the press has come to mean all of the media, and the courts have decided many cases that define how far freedom of the press extends under the law. One aspect of a free press is its ability to champion causes that it favors without having to argue the case for the other side.

In coming up with the Fairness Doctrine the FCC believed it would provide a vibrant marketplace of ideas among broadcasters of television and radio stations. The broadcast media have traditionally been treated differently because they were licensed by the FCC to operate as semi monopolies. Print media were not included within the enforcement power of the FCC. This was because there was no limitation on how much could be printed, unlike the limitations for transmission over the airwaves.

As we know, the media in the United States are in business to make money, which they mainly do by selling advertising. To sell advertising, they provide entertainment on a mass basis, which is their general function. Both print and electronic media determine which events are newsworthy largely on the basis of audience appeal. This has always been the case in this country.

The rise of mass circulation newspapers in the 1830’s produced a politically independent press in the U.S. In their aggressive competition for readers, those newspapers often engaged in sensational reporting, a charge sometimes leveled at today’s media. Even when there was nothing sensational to report the media sometimes took it upon themselves to create news that would sell papers. A prime example of this would be newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951) with his chain of newspapers, along with his friend, publisher Joseph Pulitzer. Hearst’s New York City paper, the New York Morning Journal, became known for sensationalist writing and for its agitation in favor of the Spanish-American War in 1898. Even the term yellow journalism (a reference to scandal-mongering, sensationalism, and similar practices) was derived from the Journal's color comic strip, The Yellow Kid. Were Hearst and Pulitzer over-stepping a journalistic moral code?

According to Janda, Berry and Goldman in The Challenge of Democracy, the five specific functions of the media are to report the news, interpret the news, influence citizens’ opinions, set the agenda for government action, and socialize citizens about politics. If these “rules” of reporting the news are correct then a Fairness Doctrine would not fit within any of the five listed functions. A news radio station such as NPR would have every right to report and interpret the news as they see it, thereby influencing public opinion and setting the agenda for government with a viewpoint matching the newspersons running the station. We see that occurring now with newspapers and radio and TV stations that come up with news stories that reflect the political leanings of the particular media outlet. Janda says that the media has the freedom and the obligation to go after particular “newsworthy” stories that might lead to the resignation of a President, the downfall of a corporation, or simply support for a particular candidate running for office.

Within the United States political communication moves in two directions: from government to citizens and from citizens to government. This communication rarely travels directly from government to citizens without passing through the media, especially at this time in our history. In addition, political communication not only travels between our government and its citizens and back again, but between governments and citizens around the world.

In all articles and comments that I have read about why we need a Fairness Doctrine, one idea keeps popping up: that news sources in this country are limited, and the only voice being heard is the conservative voice. But where do Americans really get their news from, and does everyone believe that some news is biased to certain perspectives, whereas other news is not?

They Said What?

Are They Serious?

According to Nancy Pelosi the people in this country should, and I quote, “quit your jobs to follow your dreams…and don’t worry, the government will take care of you.”

This quote competes with President Calderon of Mexico who said, “the new Arizona law will lead to racial profiling and the arrest and deportation of immigrants that have come to the U.S. from Mexico…” And in his next breath when asked by Wolf Blitzer what does Mexico do with illegal immigrants that come into their country from Central and South America he actually said, “we arrest them and either put them in jail or send them back across the border, of course.”

Who can forget Woody Allen's comment, seriously, about how President Obama should be left alone by everyone to do what he wants. Does everyone include the Congress and the Supreme Court? Perhaps Mr. Allen forgets that our government is not set up as a dictatorship?

As the government takes over more and more of private industry radio talk show host Michawl Medved asked just how efficient is government to run a business. He said, “Where do you feel you get the best service - at a Starbucks or at your local Motor Vehicle Department?”

And speaking of radio talk shows here is part two of our series on the Fairness Doctrine:

Fairness, Justice, and the Public Interest

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficial…The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

What is in the public interest? This seems to be at the heart of the debate over the Fairness Doctrine. The public interest refers to the common well-being or general welfare, and is central to policy debates, politics, democracy and the nature of government itself. While nearly everyone claims that aiding the common well-being or general welfare is positive, there is little, if any, consensus on what exactly constitutes the public interest. The public interest is often contrasted with the private or individual interest, under the assumption that what is good for society may not be good for a given individual and vice versa. The Fairness Doctrine explains that the interests, or rights, of all of the people in our society should be paramount. Is it reasonable to assume you can please everyione all of the time? And what are the costs and what are the benefits to individual liberties when trying to enforce a Fairness Doctrine?

In his A Theory of Justice, John Rawls used a social contract argument to show that justice, and especially distributive justice, is a form of fairness: an impartial distribution of goods. Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others. In other words justice is a form of fairness which provides basic liberties to individuals.

Rawls’ principle requires stringent protections for certain specific liberties, and liberty itself is to be assured a fair value. He states, “Fairness is justice, and justice must not be stifled or rejected.”#

Can we look at justice in terms of the Fairness Doctrine? Perhaps we should call it the Equal Time Doctrine until it is proven that it is a form of fairness. In the name of fairness Louise Slaughter and others would have a scarce resource, radio bandwidth, regulated more extensively by the federal government than it currently is. The goal of these additional regulations being an equal or fair distribution of the political ideas being discussed over the airwaves. But is the movement of information in this day and age being distributed unfairly? Some might argue that the opposite is true, and information is flowing faster than any one person can keep up with. The idea behind the Fairness Doctrine is to encourage diverse programming, and airing of controversial views. At any given time an individual can tune in radio stations that provide programming of a religious nature, political editorializing, news from around the world including current events, or just music. All of these can be in English as well as foreign languages. And that is just the radio stations. There is also television, newspapers (national to the local level), the Internet, and satellite broadcasting.

Will tighter restrictions encourage a freer flow of ideas, and at what cost to individual liberty? There is disagreement from economists and political scientists over whether government intervention is actually in the public interest.

Nobel Prize winning economist Friedrich Hayek said, in an interview with Thomas Hazlett of the American Enterprise Institute, in June of 1992, “…the idea that things ought to be designed in a “just” manner means, in effect, that we must abandon the market and turn to a planned economy in which somebody decides how much each ought to have, and that means, of course, that we can only have it at the price of the complete abolition of personal liberty.”#

Philosopher Thomas Nagel stated that, “the range of posibilities or likely courses of life that are open to a given individual are limited to a considerable extent by his birth…his genetic endowment.”# He continues, “There is nothing wrong with the State tinkering with that distribution when attempting to equalize benefits to individuals.”#

Thomas Sowell explains, in The Quest for Cosmic Justice, that the “tinkering” mentioned by Nagel in the name of social justice is actually going beyond a social justice and attempting to produce a justice for the Cosmos, which cannot be achieved. Sowell and Hayek would probably agree with critics of the Fairness Doctrine that the current evolution of individual media outlets catering to specific constituencies has already allowed the ‘invisible hand’ phenomenon to work in the marketplace of ideas, just as it does in the commercial marketplace. The following numbers illustrate just how many media organizations are currently working in North America alone:

In North America (numbers are approximations):

Daily Newspapers…..1800

Magazines….11,000

Radio Stations….11,000

Television Stations….2000

Book Publishers….2000

Looking at the past history of successes and failures of the Fairness Doctrine will help us to determine which of the competing ideas holds merit. But first it might be good to look at what is being ‘tinkered’ with.

What is the Fairness Doctrine?

Even though President Obama declared in his campaign speeches and after his election that he would never condone a re-instatement of a 'Fairness Doctrine' he, along with his minions, are starting to talk about it seriously. The President and other Democrats feel that if they can stifle the speech of talk radio and other conservative thinkers the Tea Partiers will go away and everyone in the country will go along with Obama's ideas on how to remake the United States into a nation of socialist ideals. I thought it would be a good idea to start a series about just how 'Fair' the Fairness Doctrine was and why we should all be very concerned as the President and Congress attempt to trample on one of our most precious rights - Freedom of Speech.

Part One - What is the Fairness Doctrine?

For the nearly 20 years she has been in Congress, Louise Slaughter (D-NY) has fought for “fairness” on the airwaves. Her latest legislation on the topic is HR 4710, “The Media Act,” which would reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. Here is a brief excerpt from an interview that she gave to the program NOW with Bill Moyers:

BILL MOYERS: So when the fairness doctrine went down in 1986, that was the first year you came to Congress, what was the consequence of it? What happened as a result?

LOUISE SLAUGHTER: AM radio rose. It wasn't even gradual, Bill. I mean, almost immediately. And I should point out to you that when we tried to reinstate [the fairness doctrine] again in '93, one of the reasons we couldn't was that Rush Limbaugh had organized this massive uprising against it, calling it "The Hush Rush Law." Which again said that while Rush can speak and anybody that he wants to can speak on those stations, the rest of us can't. But he aroused his listeners so that they contacted their members of Congress and killed the bill, and that's not the first time we've seen that.

BILL MOYERS: And you're saying that kind of discourse is dominating America right now.

LOUISE SLAUGHTER: Dominating America and a waste of good broadcast time and a waste of our airwaves.

BILL MOYERS: Not to the people who agree with him.

LOUISE SLAUGHTER: Well, they don't hear anything else. Why would they disagree with him?

BILL MOYERS: But today, you don't have to just listen to one radio. You've got a choice of radio stations. You've got the internet. You've got the magazines. You've got how many? Five hundred channels, they say?

LOUISE SLAUGHTER: Yes. But we don't have all those people lining up to discuss what's going on, what's happening in our country. Frankly, I want every American, every single one, to understand what's happened here.

BILL MOYERS: You're saying that your fairness doctrine would simply mean that if a radio station or television station offers one position, like Rush Limbaugh, on a bill or a campaign of President or an election, they should also have people who disagree with Rush Limbaugh?

LOUISE SLAUGHTER: Absolutely. They should not be putting their own bias and their own feelings out on their radio station because they think they own it. It has to be done as a public trust and in the public interest.

BILL MOYERS: Who decides what fairness is? What is fair? What's the truth?

LOUISE SLAUGHTER: Well, in political circles, it's the equal time piece where if one candidate gets to say something on the air, equal time, no matter what it is, is given to the opponent, again if asked. But fairness can't be that difficult. Surely, we have evolved to the stage here in this century that we can understand some sort of balance, some sort of sense. To me it is a feeling that my country is spilling out hatred and lies on many, many of these stations to people who hear nothing but that, who never believe or hear any countervailing opinion. I think this is one of the most dangerous things in the world, and it actually cuts out a point of view of half of America. And anything that we own as Americans, as a government, like the radio and television waves, should not be used in that way.

An Overview:

In 1934 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was created as a government agency in charge of regulating the airwaves, and administering the “public interest” standard. In other words, interests of the public should have priority over interests of the broadcasters. This was important to its advocates to further democracy, minimize advertising abuses, and encourage diverse programming and airing of controversial views - making broadcasters accountable to the “public”. The policy of the FCC that became known as the Fairness Doctrine was an attempt to ensure that all coverage of controversial issues by a broadcast station be balanced and fair, allowing opposing viewpoints to be aired along with editorial opinions. The personal attack rule, an application of the Fairness Doctrine, required stations to notify persons when personal attacks were made on them in discussions of controversial public issues. In the 1980’s the industry was de-regulated, the Fairness Doctrine was dissolved, giving way to what was called “the marketplace model.”

The Fairness Doctrine has been both defended and opposed on First Amendment grounds. Backers of the doctrine claim that listeners have the right to hear all sides of controversial issues. They believe that broadcasters will resort to partisan coverage if allowed to broadcast without government intervention. Opponents of the Fairness Doctrine say that the doctrine lessens, rather than increases, diversity of views, due to the fact that only safe issues would be broadcast. Also, the additional expense incurred by the broadcasters in allowing for “balanced viewpoints” that are not subsidized by advertising dollars have in the past, and might again, completely rid the airwaves of controversial issues, to the detriment of the public.

Looming in the background is the question of who would determine what was fair. In his research paper, The Fairness Doctrine: A Solution in Search of a Problem, Adrian Cronauer wrote, “Fairness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.” Depending on ones political viewpoints some might consider National Public Radio a moderate broadcaster, while others would find them to be more “left of center” in their choice of material. The opposite might be considered true in the case of FOX news.

The specter of the Fairness Doctrine keeps coming back to haunt those who support First Amendment rights. This series of blogs will attempt to prove that the Fairness Doctrine is set up to defeat its own purposes. First, as soon as a broadcaster arouses public passion by covering a controversial issue he will receive an avalanche of complaints, all wanting equal time to refute what they believed were unfair one-sided ideas being broadcast over the public airwaves. The costs in time, energy and legal fees have in the past caused the broadcasters to stay away from controversial issues, and property rights and a free market economy were being sacrificed because of government intervention in the form of the Fairness Doctrine.

Second, the Doctrine’s supporters seem not to appreciate just how much the broadcast world has changed since the early days of radio and television. With the proliferation of informational resources and technology, the number of broadcast outlets available to the public has increased steadily. In such an environment, it is hard to understand why the federal government must police the airwaves to ensure that differing views are heard.

The result of a reinstituted Fairness Doctrine would not be “fair” at all.

And the Count Is.....

Headline on the cover of USA Today last week said that the government of these United States declared that 71% of households filled out their census report. So if the government already knew how many folks there were in the country why did they need to spend all those dollars to send out a census to begin with?

Will Rogers once said that he didn't need to write his comedy routines from scratch he just had to talk about what the government was currently doing.

Bush Leaguers

At a hearing Wednesday, House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, and Health Subcommittee chairman Frank Pallone, a New Jersey Democrat, called on baseball and its players to agree to bar major leaguers from using chew, dip or similar products during games.

Now one might ask just what does chewing tobacco have to do with energy and commerce? I guess you could say that baseball is a commercial enterprise, and you could also say that it is an inefficient use of energy for players to try to keep from sliding around on tobacco juice in the dugout. Now as to the health issues – last time I looked chewing tobacco was legal in this country, and whether a person chooses to chew tobacco or not is up to their own discretion.

So what is a true waste of time and energy and has no commercial value? A couple of ‘bush leaguers’ trying to make it into the majors!

“If everybody minded their own business the world would go around a great deal faster than it does.” The Queen, Alice in Wonderland

A group of what I am sure are well meaning environmentalist’s calls for a denial of special roadless rules in Colorado. The group is pushing President Obama to turn down Colorado Governor Bill Ritter’s request that would make exceptions to the enforcement of the rules for coal mines, ski areas and fire prevention projects near towns.

Sounds reasonable if these folks were living here in Colorado and experiencing Colorado but these folks are from South Carolina and their reasoning without ever having seen the millions of acres of forests in our State is: “What is at risk is the loss of what makes Colorado so special to the rest of the country.”

So South Carolinian's want Colorado to stay as pristine as they imagine it to be. Those evil coal companies and ski resorts – who needs them – certainly not those in South Carolina. And just what is their argument when it comes to fighting forest fires?

The South Carolinian’s are worried about 50,000 acres of ‘pristine’ forest here in Colorado that would be affected. As I sit here in Durango, at the edge of 2.2 million acres of the San Juan National Forest which sits within a state with 15 million acres of National Forest and an additional few million acres of designated Wilderness Areas I have to question South Carolina’s motives. Oh, that’s right, they are experts after all with their one National Forest – the Frances Marion and Sumter National Forest and its 629,000 acres – I guess 50,000 acres does seem like a lot to them when it comes right down to it.

The Iceage Cometh

And in Local News….

2 glaciers have been reported missing from Glacier Park, Montana. News flash – they have been found in our backyard here in Durango where the snow is still on the ground in mid-April and the last snowfall was 2 days ago.

Back to the missing glaciers in the National Park: According to sources who believe such things the 2 missing glaciers are not really missing they are “below the 25 acre threshold of what REAL glacier's sizes should be", and the only reason for this phenomenon is……wait for it…..climate change! According to the ‘experts’ at the USGS glaciers in the park have been shrinking since the 1960’s. Yes, you can believe it folks! The Earth has been warming since the last ice age!!!

As for me I am just happy that we are not heading into another mini ice age – although you wouldn’t be able to tell that from the winter we have had here in D-town. Oh, just a minute! Another news flash: Volcanoes are erupting in Iceland and filling the skies with ash causing cancellation of airplane flights all over Europe and ash could seen as far away as the U.S. Could this be the dawn of a new ice age? We will keep you posted…

Capitalism is Freedom and Anything Else is Socialism

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal by Frank Thomas (Conservatives and the Market for Alienation) took the stance that the true producers in this country were the blue collar workers and that larger government control over business was necessary.

According to Mr. Thomas workers wear blue collars and they are the true producers of goods and services in the United States. But do blue collar workers design the product, create accounting systems necessary to track costs for producing the product or to track sales of the product, decide where the product should be sold, decide what enhancements are necessary for the product to be more effective, or for that matter even where the product should be built?

Why do you think times are worse for blue-collar workers, Mr. Thomas? Could it be because businesses are trying to produce products at a lower cost and can do so by out-sourcing blue-collar work to foreign countries? Could it possibly be that prohibitive taxation by big government is causing this push? Could it be because Unions have a stranglehold on the companies that have not moved to right-to-work States? Mr. Thomas’ problem is he still lives in a perceived past that has Republicans as ‘evil fat cats’ sitting behind a big table in a board room with a bunch of other ‘evil fat cats’ trying to figure out how to take advantage of the workers in their company.

Mr. Thomas, take an Economics 101 class and figure out just who the producers in this country are. Businesses are trying to lower costs so that they will be able to sell more of their products to consumers, and in doing so their company is more profitable and they can spend some of those profits on research and development. They can also share those profits with stockholders in their company, which brings in more stockholders. Wall Street is not evil. Big business is not evil. Big government is evil.

In this country now there are loud voices in support of an expanded role for government. These are policies that have failed time and again; policies that lessen the capacity for human fulfillment and well-being; policies that put individuals in subservience to the state; policies that leech away our inalienable right to be free to choose. The Tea Party protesters are pushing back against those loud voices – we should not be taken lightly.

The Media Gets it Wrong Again: So What Else is New?

Within the past 50 years the U.S. Supreme Court Justices have agreed with each other more than 75% of the time and in certain decades more than 80% of the time Justices vote 9-0 on cases before them. Looking at the current Court configuration since Justice Sotomayor was confirmed and sat down on 10/10/09 there have been 38 cases brought before the Court and only ONCE have the Justices voted along Conservative-Liberal ideological lines.

Presidents have no idea of what they are really getting when they nominate who they think will be a conservative or liberal as President Obama must be realizing right about now with Sotomayor voting with Chief Justice Roberts on numerous occasions, and in one case wrote an concurring opinion with him. Another example of a Justice nomination that didn't quite go as planned was Ronald Reagan's nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor - who turned out to vote very liberally on numerous issues but still fell within the 75% 9-0 unanimous decisions of the past 50 years.

The media has portrayed the Justices as an 'us-against-them' mentality when it just isn't there. Just as the Ginsberg and Scalia families who have been best friends for decades.

Islamic Fundamentalism

1. Shovel Ready
2. Transparent
3. Czar
4. Tweet
5. App
6. Teachable Moment
7. In these economic times
8. Stimulus
9. Toxic Assets
10. Too big to fail

These are some of the words that Lake Superior University in Michigan chose as words to be banned from now on due to overuse and incorrect usage. The students come up with this list every year and it is fun and does not mean anything more than it is - some young people coming up with words that they are sick of hearing. They do not propose that the words actually be banned.

This week the President of the United States, who promised to protect and defend the Constitution, decided that free speech had its limitations when it came to the terms 'Islamic Fundamentlism' and 'Islamic Radicalism.' He has banned them - banned as in never hearing or reading them in the media or from his office staff. Now I do not know how he plans on enforcing this, but as an ex professor of Political Science he should know better. Both phases have been used historically in Universities, at the United Nations, in the media...basically everywhere to explain the difference between Arab Nationalism and Islamic Fundamentalism.

As a former student of Political Science one of my favorite series of lectures was an attempt to explain the thinking among the Arab community with regards to the Qu'ran and Sharia's Law. The series of lectures was given by a Professor from the Middle East. Basically he said there were two types of interpretations throughout the Muslim world of the Qu'ran and Shariah's Law. Depending on how a person did the interpretation they fell into the category of an Arab Nationalist or an Islamic Fundamentalist.

What is the difference between Arab Nationalism and Islamic Fundamentalism? Based on the lectures a very simple explanation is: Arab Nationalism is a celebration of the glories of the Arab civilization, the language and literature of the Arabs, and calling for rejuvenation and political union in the Arab world. At the core of the ideology is bringing certain Western concepts into the Arab world - Modernity, Progress and Socialism. The term Arab is chosen by the Nationalists to replace the word Islamic to separate them from the more radical fundamentalists.

One of the most defining characteristics of Islamic fundamentalism is the belief in the re-opening of the gates of Ijihad. Fundamentalists are not interested in Modernity, Progress and Socialism, and not interested in associating with non-Muslims. Fundamentalists hold that the problems of the world stem from secular influences and that the path to peace and justice lies in a return to the original message of Islam with a rejection of religious innovation. Finally, any Muslim that does not follow the Fundamentalist's interpretation of the Qu'ran or Sharia's Law should be killed, and it should should be considered justified and not considered to be a crime.

I should clarify that these interpretations are mine and based on lectures that impressed me so much I still think of them whenever I hear the words Islamic Fundamentalists or Islamic Radicals. If the President of the United States chooses not to hear those words, for whatever reason, that is certainly his right - a right guaranteed to him in the Constitution. If he tries to prevent others from hearing those words then his oath of office to 'preserve, protect and defend the Constitution' has been violated.

No Need for Macho Guys if you have a Single Payer Health Care System

A Wall Street Journal article discussed a study that took place in Europe with 4,000 participants. The study’s hypothesis was that European women, who have a far superior health care system to the U.S. do not prefer the macho-type guy whereas the U.S. women prefer a more macho man due to our inferior health care system.

Here is an exerpt written up in the Proceedings for the Royal Society: Biological Sciences found.

“To a person unfamiliar with the field of evolutionary psychology, this may sound a little far-fetched. How is it even possible to link a woman's masculinity preferences to the health of her nation? The answer begins with the theory of sexual selection. It goes that women are the choosier sex because they take on most of the risk and burden of reproduction and child rearing. While a man can sleep around with 100 women in a year's time and have 100 kids, a woman who sleeps with 100 men in a year will only have one baby (barring multiples). She has more at stake in each pregnancy. Therefore, it is in her best interest to at least choose a high-quality mate. And one of the hallmarks of a quality male is good health.”

The article also goes on to say that the U.S. health care system ranks 20th out of the 30 countries looked at, and in the study’s estimate the U.S. is one of the most unhealthy countries in the world. And I quote the article, “After all this is the country of James Dean and Clint Eastwood.”

So in a nutshell if you have a single payer health care system in your country you like wimpy guys because you do not need to have some cave man type protect you from a Laissez Faire health care system.

I wrote a response to the Wall Street Journal article:

A recent Variety article asked the question, "Where did America's tough guys go?" It goes on: “Not so long ago Hollywood’s male stars were men’s men. Think John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart and Steve McQueen..

And Variety continues…

"These days, studios are hard-pressed to find home-grown traditional male leads to carry their pictures. Their star rosters include countless boy-men who, even after they turn 40, are less than credible macho movie actors.” If box office is an indicator, with a random sampling of millions, then it is the European countries with their current health care system sending strong, handsome macho actors to Hollywood to replace the tough, macho leading men of the past.

My conclusion: Women do not want just a male in good health. Natural selection has shown that the most beautiful feathers, loudest roar, and most importantly the guy most capable of hunting and gathering and fighting are what women have wanted since cave men and women first went into the light. I know, I know, in this age of enlightenment for women we hunt and gather right along with the men, as well we should, but it doesn’t change any of the dynamics. The conclusion of the Royal Society article should have been that single payor health care goes along with living in a society that will take care of ‘their people’ from cradle to grave, and it doesn’t matter how macho the guys in the country are. No hunting and gathering necessary. Just the highest alcoholism rates in the world.

My second conclusion: How are the mental health care systems in the countries the actually paid for a study like this?

Obama v. Israel

OK, where is the outrage in this country over the treatment of Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu? Perhaps it is because the Jewish community in the U.S. is so entrenched in their support of President Obama that they have blinders on to what is happening to the U.S. - Middle East policies. 78% of the Jewish community voted for President Obama. Are those 78% unwilling to take a critical look at the President’s actions?

The excerpts below are from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and can be read in its entirety at Haaretz.com. The comments are even more of a puzzlement. Again the media in Israel is left-leaning in the political spectrum and anti-Netanyahu even in the face of more aggressive Arab actions towards Israel after what looked to the Arab world like a U.S. President taking an anti-Israel foreign policy position.

Haaretz writes:

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his senior partner Ehud Barak returned from Washington yesterday, leaving behind a deep crisis with the world's most powerful country and Israel's greatest friend. U.S. President Barack Obama asked that Netanyahu give him unequivocal answers to his administration's demands, in order to begin indirect talks and advance the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. The demands include a complete freeze on settlement construction, including in East Jerusalem.”

Haaretz then shows their political stance:

“The choice here is between continued construction in East Jerusalem during the negotiations and Israel's future as a secure, democratic and Jewish state. A deterioration in relations with the U.S. administration is taking place at the peak of international efforts to block Iran and strengthen the axis of moderate Arab states. In the unnecessary fight with the United States, an essential ally for Israel, the Netanyahu government is showing itself to be the most extremist and dangerous in the country's history.”

An “unnecessary fight with the United States”? Netanyahu is the bad guy?

Obama has traveled to Saudi Arabia and kissed the hand of a Saudi Prince, but he hasn’t taken the time to visit Israel, the only friend of the U.S. in the Middle East. Now he has insulted the Prime Minister of Israel by not even extending his hand to Netanyahu either in greeting or in farewell. He certainly didn’t bow and kiss the Prime Minister’s hand, and actually cut off their meeting so that Obama could go have dinner – not even inviting Netanyahu to break bread. Netanyahu was allowed to leave through the front door of the White House this visit, though, which is better than leaving out the back door by way of the trash cans as he did after the last visit. At the White House there were no questions with the press, no photos of smiling faces, no State dinners, none of the pomp that took place with all of the Arab leaders that visited President Obama.

Perhaps this is what Obama meant when he pledged last June in Cairo that his administration would mean “a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world.” Perhaps the President hasn't seen the shouts of "death to Americans" being chanted around the Muslim world by Islamic fundamentalists.

U.S. v. Lopez and Health Care

I do not believe that the Supreme Court of these United States will allow the health care law to pass scrutiny and be deemed Constitutional. Initially, the constitutional argument focused on the requirement that everyone obtain health insurance. The federal government has Constitutionally-limited power. Congress can only do what the Constitution specifically authorizes it to do and requiring people to have health insurance is not one of their enumerated powers. But in the past the U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted certain congressional powers extremely broadly – such as finding an ‘individual’s right to privacy’, so who knows what their ruling might be.

What does the Constitution say Congress has the right to do under the umbrella of Interstate Commerce – which is what the Dems are going to use as Constitutional authority granted to them to run a national health care system?

First, Congress may regulate the use of the channels of interstate commerce.
Second, Congress is empowered to regulate and protect the instrumentalities of interstate commerce, or persons or things in Interstate Commerce, even though the threat may come only from intrastate activities;

Finally, Congress's commerce authority includes the power to regulate those activities having a substantial relation to interstate commerce (i.e., those activities that substantially affect interstate commerce).

In the Supreme Court ruling in The United States v. Lopez in 1995 new limits were placed on Congress’ commerce power. A 12th grade high school student brought a concealed .38 revolver and bullets to school and was confronted by school officials. He admitted to having the gun and was charged with violating Congress’ Gun Free School Zones Act. Lopez moved to dismiss the indictment on the grounds that ‘the Act was unconstitutional on the basis that the Gun Free law was beyond the power of Congress to regulate control over our public schools.’

The government’s principal argument was that someone with a firearm in a school would lead to violent crime, which would affect general economic conditions, causes damage and creates expense, and raises insurance costs all of which are spread throughout the economy. The government also argued that the presence of firearms would scare the students, inhibit learning, and would keep tourists from travelling ‘Interstate’ to the area the school was in which would weaken the nation’s economic health.

The Supreme Court found that supporting the government in this matter would open the doors to the federal government regulating ANY activity despite its connection to interstate commerce. What would prevent Congress from regulating any activity that might bear on a person’s economic productivity? Or, as with the current health care bill, would allow Congress to interfere with an individual’s right to choose how they want to take care of their own health care.

Justice Clarence Thomas, in his concurring opinion in the U.S. v Lopez argued that allowing Congress to regulate intrastate noncommercial activity under the Commerce Clause would confer on Congress a general ‘police power’ over the entire nation.