Slashdot Mirror
The Return of the Fairness Doctrine?
Slithe writes "Last week at the National Conference for Media Reform, Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich (a long-shot candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination) stated that the Fairness Doctrine may be reinstated. Kucinich will be heading up a new House subcommittee that will focus on issues around the FCC. The Fairness Doctrine was an FCC regulation that required broadcast media to present controversial issues in an honest, equal, and balanced manner. The FCC repealed it in 1987 — Democrats at the time tried to forestall this move but were ultimately thwarted by a veto by President Ronald Reagan. Critics of the Fairness Doctrine have stated that it was only used to intimidate and silence political opposition. At the convention, Kucinich said, 'We know the media has become the servant of a very narrow corporate agenda. We are now in a position to move a progressive agenda to where it is visible.'" In the interest of fairness, here is a Republican, free-market perspective on the return of the Fairness Doctrine.
I was going to sit out this flamewar, but I just have to get involved.
Despite quite a bit of disagreement with him, I have a fair amount of respect for Kucinich, if for no other reason than he at least *seems* to be consistent in what he says and does. And like him, I am worried that the media is now in the hands of so few people, but who would police this "fairness?
<sarcasm>Surely politicians are bought and sold by corporate interests. Surely we can trust committees of appointees to handle things in a "present controversial issues in an honest, equal, and balanced manner."</sarcasm>
It seems like everyone in the political scene thinks that there is a media bias one way or another, and, for all I know, there probably is but I don't see it being made better by putting the politicians in charge of it.
You'd think with their constant complaints about the liberal media, Republicans would be all in favor of a law requiring CNN et all to present their side fairly.
Now every story on global warming will need to be 1/3 saying it's happening and humans are at least partly responsible, 1/3 saying it's happening and it's 100% natural, and 1/3 saying it's not happening at all, and things like arctic melting are just a hoax manufactured for leftist propaganda.
Meanwhile, any show on PBS or the Discovery Channel that deals with evolution in any way shape or form will have to cover not just the scientific consensus that natural selection has been at work for millions of years, but also Intelligent Design and young-Earth creationism. Similarly, anything about geology will have to include both the old-earth consensus and the idea that, for instance, the Grand Canyon was created during Noah's flood.
Let's see if we can find Velikovsky and von Daniken a place while we're at it.
And let's not get started with making sure the Viet Cong's point of view is presented with equal weight to both the hawk and dove sides of the American point of view....
I agree that there serious problems with the way controversial issues are presented on the major television channels in the USA. I'm not convinced that the problem is fairness, per se. Instead, the problem seems more related to a tendency to present extremely complex issues in a simplistic binary manner (e.g. that the USA will either "succeed" or "fail" in Iraq).
I am even less convinced that legislation can solve the problem. The only solution that I see is to let people who care about being informed move to other more complete sources of information such as the internet.
The one thing that does bother me is the implicit racism in many of the entertainment shows on the major television channels. I wouldn't mind seeing a rule that the racial/ethnic/religious affiliations of the villians has to be chosen at random. Essentially, if it wouldn't be OK to portray Jewish people in a particular role then it shouldn't be OK to porttray any ethnic group in that role.
Why do I feel uncomfortable with the government regulating 'fairness' with respect to media?
"'We know the media has become the servant of a very narrow corporate agenda. We are now in a position to move a progressive agenda to where it is visible.'"
So, we now move media to a different agenda?
My question really is, Will this really give us the balanced/fair coverage that we wish, or will it just bring our media even more left of center than what it is now?
Trolling Trolling Trolling....
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
The Republican free market viewpoint presented isn't - a free market approach would be to allow anyone who wanted to provide cable or television without requiring government approval; since that would result in chaos the governmnet licenses rights - once you agree to that you have a new partner - the government.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Treating every issue as if it has two sides means that often you have to go out and invent a second side.
This is why debates like global warming and evolution loom so large, because in the interests of "fairness" views that are held by very small minorities of people are given the same amount of play as views that are extensively proven and supported.
Rather than this, I'd rather see a standard of truth applied to non-opinion mass media...Make them cite their numbers, and post the credentials of their "experts", and make them admit to errors of fact that appear on their broadcasts.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
So, is this a plot to make ALL the news "Fair and Balanced"?
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
Probably will face the same fate as CNN.
Requiring a "balanced" view can be just as bad as being completely one-sided. For example, say that there's an issue where 95% of the poll participants agree. In order to present a balanced view containing the opposing side, a new journalist may take the majority opinion and a minority opinion. When presented as opposing sides it may give the impression that people are evenly divided. This occurs quite often with scientific, religious and economic issues. It's not a case of intentional deception, but the effect can be the same.
That the Communist/Socialist Big 5 ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC are going to allow a conservative viewpoint on their networks that isn't badgered and made fun of?
I seriously Doubt it.
The liberals failed in their attempt to gain radio market share, Air America is Bankrupt. Whether you agree with conservatism or no, it obviously sells well, thats why it dominates radio and liberal tripe out side of NPR doesn't do well.
Conservatism has Fox News, and Talk Radio, Liberals have ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, PBS and NPR.
So where is the lack of Fairness in the way things are now?
There is no need for the fairness doctrine, unless your liberal and want your total domination of the Information people have access too, back that you had back from the 30s through the 80s.
Which is why democrats love it so much. The talk radio explosion came after the fairness doctrine ended. Before that if a radio station offered a right leaning talk show, they'd have to offer time to a left leaning one as well.
The trouble is that left wing talk radio doesn't sell ads, because no one listens to it. So radio station operators had to chose between a few hours of right wing talk radio that was profitable, balanced by a few hours of left talk that wasn't, or just filling the airwaves with silly pop songs that generated decent revenue consistently.
You don't have to believe me, you can go check for yourself the respective popularity & profitability of Air America vs Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Rielly, Mike Savage, etc.
Left wing talk radio doesn't sell. So forcing radio stations to carry equal amounts of right wing and left wing radio makes them lose money, so they drop it altogether.
Now like most internet forums, Slashdot is teeming with lefties. I imagine most of you will be fine with this cause talk radio is just a bunch of right-wing hate mongers, right? Eh? No harm in silencing that, huh?
Unless, of course, you happen to think freedom of speech and property rights stands for something.
The obvious counter is that the airwaves are public property, and you're right. You're also ignoring that the leftist point of view permeates most broadcast TV quite thoroughly (Yes, except for Fox). If you don't realize it, it's for the same reason fish don't realize they're wet.
Truth is the elimination of the fairness doctrine made the airwaves more fair, because presenting a right wing point of view became profitable when you weren't burdened with the left wing. It wasn't be the first government policy that had the precise opposite of it's intended effect, and it won't be the last.
If you support the return of the fairness doctrine after actually paying attention to the history of it, you might as well say "Free speech for me, but not for thee."
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
The Moon: A Ridiculous Liberal Myth
Too bad this won't do a thing for cable news networks and documentary channels. Remember "broadcast" means free over the air, as in antenna; not cable coming into your house. Now, granted, the Democrats could likely change the wording this time around to include everything and most likely will. Oh well, just another kick in the nuts for free thinking society.
The constitutionality of the 'fairness doctrine' was upheld by the Supreme Court in the case Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC (1969) on the basis that the FCC content-based regulation of broadcast television programming was appropriate in light of scarce broadcast resources and its mandate to act in the public interest for limited broadcast airwave frequencies. In other words, with only so many frequencies to dole out, it made sense at the time for the FCC to have some role in ensuring that a diverse array of viewpoints had access to broadcasting.
In this day and age, where over-the-airwaves broadcast TV is mandated to be replaced by digital TV receivers (where interference and broadcast scarcity are much less of an issue) quite soon, and where cable, satellite, and the Internet have opened up innumerable avenues for mass and niche media and communication, the rationale for Red Lion just totally falls apart. This was essentially the rationale of the FCC in the 1980s when it did away with the fairness doctrine for precisely the reason that it felt it was no longer justified in light of the then-contemporary media environment (an environment that has only become more numerous and fragmented than it was then, and certainly compared to the days where all there was were the 'big three' networks).
Plus, do we really want FCC bureaucrats editing TV programming for political content? That just seems like a system ripe for abuse.
IANAL (though I very recently passed the bar exam and so I'm very close to being one...)
sig my booty, check my website
-1 Troll
See, that'll teach you to go around manipulating the truth. FAUX News is nothing if not fair and balanced.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Anyone interested in the results of the Fairness Doctrine from the first time around should check this book out. It was a bad idea then and a bad idea now.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Fox News is not broadcast media.
That is all.
With different headlines????
The end of the fairness doctrine is what allowed corporate news outlets to project their owner's agenda onto the public, and allowed the birth of Fox News. You think Fox could continue to exist unchanged if the Fairness Doctrine was reinstated? Unlikely. O'Reilly's "shut up" and "turn his mike off" rudeness would be the first thing to go... good riddance. Subtler changes would certainly follow at the other news networks.
Edward R. Murrow has been spinning in his grave for 20 because of this. Can someone check if he's slowed down yet?
He's still the only worthy candidate put up by the democrats. But the status que will never let him near the white house. If he was to win, he'll end up as dead as the Kennedys. And it is the people's fault for not putting qualified candidates on the ballot. They had a chance to put a good man in charge, and they completely blew it. This is why the world says, "WTF is wrong with you people?"
What?
"FCC Commissioner Michael Copps was also on hand at the conference and took broadcasters to task for their current 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, too much brain-numbing national play-lists."
Nice to see this from the FCC chair, but what can he do about it?
I'm no fan of the major news outlets but this sounds like foolishness if for no other reason than the fact that the concept of "what's fair" is entirely subjective, if not in theory then at least in practice. If we aren't getting the whole story from standard media outlets then there will always be a market for someone who will give us the rest of the story. Just because that someone might not be a 24 hour news network shouldn't be a reason to regulate what people can and can't say.
Furthermore, a measure like this would only relegate the regulated mediums to a less relevant role as consumers and journalists would migrate towards the internet, or other uncontrolled mediums, where people can report things as they see them rather than how the current powers that be see them.
The Wikipedia article on Fairness Doctrine is marked as being non-neutral. Ohhh the irony!!!
From the Supreme Court ruling upholding this:
What? Did they just say the first ammendment applies to the LISTENER not the SPEAKER? That's just wrong. I don't have the right to LISTEN to any viewpoint. I have the right to SPEAK any viewpoint. I can only hope that quote was taken out of context.
The Republican rebuttal argument:
"To say that this is an antiquated concept in a time of several-hundred-channel cable TV, satellite TV, satellite radio, and of course our little Internet, is to state the obvious."
Fails to acknowledge that not all communication media are created equal. Broadcast frequencies, which are easily received by inexpensive, common televisions and radios, are fundamentally different than satellite channels that are vended by select providers, which are in turn wholly different than Internet channels that mostly blend into the wallpaper.
Perhaps a better approach would be to reverse the concentration of private ownership of public frequencies, and to revoke the lifelong leases of public frequencies given to corporations. Why, for instance, can Clear Channel buy and sell these allocations? Why is there a secondary market for public resources? Why doesn't this money flow back to the owners of the airwaves?
How do you deem something fair? Have a democrat and republican banter about? What about other parties, even the crazy ones?
How do you even begin to enforce it? It's free speech, it doesn't have to be fair or even remotely factual.
If you don't like how a radio or TV station is broadcasting its news, then you boycott it and convince others to do the same. It doesn't matter anyway, I think most people are realizing that getting the news online is quicker and easier than watching it on TV, and this law wouldn't (Or at least couldn't practically) cover that.
And what the hell do you care? You've got ABC, NBS, CBS, NPR, CNN, and MSNBC broadcasting their "propaganda". For many, Fox News is the light. Sometimes it's way brighter than it should be to the point of being painful (coughHannityAndColmescough), but at least they don't intentionally look for stories that make Republicans look badly ... not that it takes much to do that as of late, mind you.
I've given each of them a fair amount of time to try to prove their balance (including Fox) and they all failed. I can't watch any of them due to their slant (all of which in my view are to the left except for, of course, Fox) and their attitudes that nothing outside of the U.S. is worth any respectable air time if it doesn't involve the U.S.
Don't you just love it when the Feds tell us what to watch, listen, even say? Doesn't it make life so much easier when we can let some else do our thinking for us?
"Never limit what you know to what you do", Me
-pentapenguin
Will the media be required to provide "balanced" coverage on evolution vs. creationism?
Will the media be required to provide "balanced" coverage on climatologists vs. global warming deniers?
Will the media be required to provide "balanced" coverage on the "Moon hoax" or Cydonia?
What about Timecube?
The JFK assassination?
I have no idea how this could be implemented and not have it backfire.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
So, the Fairness Doctrine was rooted in the idea that if you're using the public airways, you needed to do so in a manner that benefited the public. It's the same basic idea that forced TV and radio stations to put on public interest shows that nobody watched. It's a bad idea for a number of reasons:
(1) The public has already chosen what they like to listen to and watch -- the market can, and does, give people what they want.
(2) This is really just a back-door attempt to squelch a format where liberals have been unsuccessfully trying to penetrate for years: talk radio. The idea is to FORCE radio stations to pick up the next "Air America" if they're going to continue to broadcast Rush Limbaugh. But, (going back to #1), if nobody listens, is there a benefit? To Liberals there is -- by forcing "fairness," a Radio station will have to silence about half of its conservative voices.
(3) It's not like there's a paucity of available opinions -- the Internet has made it possible for every side to get its message out, with very little budget. Plus, things have changed since the days where CBS, NBC and ABC rules the TV airways. There are now hundreds of television stations.
(4) What about the First Amendment? Sure, the fact that they're public airways means that they are subject to some restrictions, but do we really want to add more limits on speech?
(5) Despite what Commissioner Copps said, it's not going to get rid of garbage TV (I'm thinking NBC's "Fear Factor" as a great example), because those shows don't espouse any political opinions.
The Democrats are beginning the process of making sure they're not re-elected in 2 years. Did any candidate run on the Fairness Doctrine?
Incidently, the differences between the Fairness Doctrine and Net Neutrality are: (1) one is content-based and one isn't and (2) Net-Neutrality regulates the information pipes, not the sources.
I never claimed that the media actually has a liberal bias, just that the Republicans claim it does. My personal opinion is that most news outlets do have a left-wing bias, but that Fox's claim to be "fair and balanced" is a running gag that American has fallen for. The only interesting question is whether CNN is as left as Fox is right.
Yeah, oversimplification, and one should never attribute to malice what can be accounted for by mere stupidity. "Balance" seems like a reasonable request (except where it works at cross-purposes with the first amendment), but the result will not be balance--it will be further entrenchment for the two powerful and officially sanctioned sides of any argument, and a death knell for every other perspective someone might have to offer.
Bingo.
Rather than call it the "Fairness" doctrine, how about calling it by it's real intention:
The "Making Damn Sure That Only One Side or the Other of Our Two Party Junta Is Heard" Doctrine.
Might as well watch American Idol.
Simple question. This is in effect a form of censorship. Unlike a lot of people on Slashdot I don't all forms of censorship are wrong but what else can you call it when the Government gets to say what is fair and balanced? I am sure that in China they have the exact same law on the books.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
There is every reason to charge a use fee for property rights that would not exist in the absence of government and very little reason to tax domestic economic activities.
The failure to tax the right thing results in an accumulation of wealth in the hands of those already wealthiest and this results in increased centralization of ownership of everything including the means of indoctrinating the populous.
Moreover, as people increasingly recognize on both the right and left, it is important to avoid replacing centralization of wealth with centralization of political control. Tax revenues should be evenly dispersed to the citizens without any prejudice in a citizens dividend so they can enjoy the kind of yeoman class independence that created people like Newton and the Wright Brothers.
Seastead this.
A progressive response to neo-conservatism seems like more of the same old same old. How about socialists? Libertarians? Anarchists?
I suspect fairness as defined by the neoconservative-progressive duopoly will be far from fair. Much like the bipartisan version of campaign finance reform that merely guarantees that we either get more nonsense from both the Dems or Republicans.
I have come to believe that Fox News and company hav called themselves fair and balanced so much that they actually believe that they really are, and that somehow that crackpot liberals they bring on their shows to harass actually represent the liberal community at large.
So the problem is fairness according to whom.
Bias is inescapable in the media because people are somewhat oblivious to their own bias and will often present the information, which can only be filtered through the lenses of their existing biases, as fact because thats they way the actually saw the event unfold (within the limits of their biased perceptions).
The fairness doctrine is nice in principal but who is objective and neutral enough to be its enforcer?
No One
What would enivitably happen is that this fairness doctrine would become another buzz word of the day issue of partisan politics wasting everyones time slinging dirt back and forth.
People really just need to be smart enough to recognize the biases for themselves and filter out the useful information out of the news that is presented...all it takes is a grain of salt.
Thats my $0.02
The Fairness Doctrine applies to 'controversial' issues by applying equal time to opposing views. First, who defines what is controversial and what isn't? Is the hanging of Christmas decorations controversial? Will we need equal article space discussing several sides? What about really whacked out sides or ideas? Do they need presented too or do we need at least 5% of the population subscribing to the idea? What happens if Air America is sanctioned as non-controversial and does not need to balance their broadcasts and Rush Limbaugh is found to be controversial? Who is to say one is controversial and the other isn't? Second, who oversees this? What about their biases? What happens if the oversight committee is out of touch with reality? Do we accept really skewed programming? Does this amount to a form of government-sponsored censorship? This is just too many problems that I don't feel the government is capable of handling.
I called it a mighty Sperm Whale, she called it Finding Nemo.
I see this as what may finally kill off AM radio. If a station would have to put on non-profitable shows to counteract the popular shows it would kill them off, talk radio from the right is what saved AM radio. Also, does this mean that a religious AM station would have to put information about evolution to counteract preaching?
As a long time talk radio listener, it's real-time streaming.
I don't understand podcasts as they are time shifted. It works fine for some things but "news" is only news if it is "new".
The Fairness Doctrine was a lovely idea in its day -- that day is now over. Why? You're on it -- the Internet. So, a media outlet provides a biased look at some subject... and within hours, bloggers hither and yon are adding their two cents, bringing up counter arguments, and providing new information to support/refute the story. Some of the information is spurious, moronic, or downright prevarication, but much of it is relevant. People who were part of the story and feel cut out or that their words were taken out of context get to set the record straight. Depending on the societal relevance, it might make it to Wikipedia and be high on Google in a short period of time. In this age, the Internet provides the fairness, though at the price of limited transparency, given that much of the information provided is repetitive.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I'm sure I agree with the intent of what you saying. But, once again /. boys and girls, time for Mark's corollary:
> one should never attribute to malice what can be accounted for by mere stupidity
Malice and stupidity are NOT mutually exclusive.
Which, I suspect, is some essence of what you wanted to say.
Conservative radio has revived the AM band since the death of the Fairness Doctrine. Bringing it back would spell the death of AM radio. Left wing radio just doesn't sell. You get the left's message when you watch the evening news or read pretty much any newspaper or read Slashdot and other political blogs. There's no demand for another source of liberal media.
The Dems would love to silence AM radio because it's the only source of media that isn't dominated by leftists.
Fair and Balanced Reports YOU!
Those of us with blogs that have open comments and open trackbacks have an inherent openness to "presenting the other side." If you want to disagree, go post it in the comments. Everyone will see it. While "fairness doctrine" is morally despicable, let's face it. The ones who stand to lose the most are the talking heads who don't like the idea of having an open forum where they might be shown up.
This doesn't sound like a good idea to me, but when you say "Repeal of the 'fairness' doctrine basically made conservative talk radio," that really sounds like a strong argument in favor of bringing back the "fairness" doctrine.
(Yes, I'm joking.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
If radio station owners are forced to give 'equal time' to ideas that never sell, it will run them out of business - or into playing music.
Worse - I would rather not have the government in charge of what I am and am not allowed to spend my day listening to. The government should butt out as a rule. Quit throwing stones in glass houses, they have their own corporate sponsorship to worry about.
"To work for libertarianism -- to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual -- used to be
"We know what's best for the mouth-breathing masses and anyone who doesn't agree is obviously a homophobic racist reactionary."
The press needs to lose its bias and present issues fairly and factually. It's not the government's job to make them do this. In fact, the government is the last organization that should be involved in this process, just due to the obvious hypocritical nature of such an involvement as per our constitution. We won't find the solution in the government, we will need to find it elsewhere. I cannot present an alternative, I can only point out what I view as a misunderstanding of the government's purpose.
Citizens already have the ability to enact property taxes. Many states do this. Many choose not to. Its a voluntary system. Are you suggesting that the people cannot decide this one for themselves?
of the people who support the "fairness doctrine". To have the government silence those they disagree with.
Review of the licensing procedures for broadcasters is. This where the problem lies. It's way too political. And since terrestrial broadcasting is always a local phenomena(phenomena, da daaaa da da da...). The local folks should decide who gets the license, and the FCC should only check that two signals don't interfere with each other. In fact that should be the ONLY qualification for a license. The content should be regulated by the guy/gal/kid with the remote. This will be a step to insure that broadcasters follow local standards and is useful to the local communities that receive the signal. But that ain't gonna happen, is it? There's too much money in keeping tings the way they are. Anyway, I hope Kucinich makes another run for the presidency. Looking back at every candidate since Johnson, he seems overqualified, but we need him there to at least make the attempt to keep the others honest.
What?
psst free hint: populous, besides being a game, is a word meaning "populated" or "full of population". The populace is the collected population.
Anyway you have a good point but I take issue with one part of it:
That wasn't needed by Newton or the Wright Brothers. Instead, we should simply stop taking as much of it away. Of course, if we really wanted to institute fairness in taxation we would need a fairly complicated system. A flat tax is fair in that it does not allow for exemptions, but it is unfair in that the poor must spend a larger percentage of their income on the taxes for necessary goods like clothing and transportation. Thus we would need a flat tax system with rebates which occurred monthly, or with cards (or similar) giving an exemption of taxes for certain types of goods for people under a given income. If the tax exemption model is used, then the government gains access to a list of everything you purchase for which you are exempt from taxes, which raises privacy concerns.
Consequently what we need to do is close tax loopholes for the very rich. I did a little research on this a while back and in the year 2000, the top ten taxpayers were only paying taxes on only 50% of their income! Meanwhile, I pay taxes on 100% of my income. What is this shit all about? The people making the least money barely pay taxes, the people making the median incomes pay the most, and the people at the very top pay less than the people in the middle. The people most able to pay aren't paying even THEIR share.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So... perfectly legal, political speech would be silenced. And you consider this a good thing because it is political speech with which you disagree. Liberal fascists like yourself only extoll and uphold the values of free speech, as long as it is your free speech, all other opinions be damned.
Right now, who decides what is fair? The listener/viewer. Under the 'fairness' doctrine, this would be decided by an unelected committe of power-hungry liberal facists like yourself, effectively eliminating free speech on the airwaves.
Free speech is free speech, even if you disagree with it. We are free to listen to, ignore, agree, disagree, praise, and criticize it. That's what free speech is all about.
Clearly, the Colbert Report is the "balance" to the Daily Show!
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Tried to view the counter point arguement, but my company's filte classified it as porn.
It's "assholes with access to microphones" that sell. "Political Radio Shows" these days are to "intelligent discourse" as "Professional Wrestling" is to "Combative Sports". Rush Limbaugh was not popular because of his knowledge of political matters (which he may well have had), he was popular because he made controversial and obviously inflammatory statements on the air. Apparantly, he was better at it than Al Franken.
For another example - intentionally taken from other than the "talk radio" arena to help emphasize my point, "Judge Judy" might be a well qualified judge...or, she might not. The reason she has a TV show, however, is because she's a "bitch on wheels".
Contraversy, imflammatory statements, and being a general cynical asshole might make you popular to the lowest common denominator, but it doesn't make your point of view better or inherently more popular.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
well, they're part of a "fairness doctrine" in the UK. I've not seen *any* of the distortions that posters seem to think it causes.
Mind you, you'd probably need to reel back the ownership rules in the US - stop ClearChannel owning so much stuff. Kick Murdoch out for trying to own *everything*.
Also, good to see the "left-wing" media meme still holding out. Sheesh. Did Iraq teach you nothing?
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
"My Fox guys, I love every single one of them." -- Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice this week
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
The debates here always polarize along Dem vs Rep lines. There's some token "they both suck" posts, but not nearly enough. The geek world is just as hoodwinked by the established power structure as anyone. Rail all you want against the RIAA or RFID chips or the Pentagon doing credit checks, you really are not the radicals you like to think you are.
Who will police "fairness?" The FCC and ultimately the courts, as before.
"I don't see it being made better by putting the politicians in charge of it." And yet, it will. You may not be old enough to remember before the mid 1980s. Broadcast TV and radio were much more about facts and much less about FUD. You could see some of the fire because there was much less smoke.
Lifting of the Fairness Doctrine is directly responsibile for Rush Limbaugh's fame. With a Fairness Doctrine, Rush Limbaugh can't have a show.
I for one welcome the return of the Fairness Doctrine. Not all government regulation is bad.
It is demonstrable that in the absence of government people maintain subsistence property rights.
Seastead this.
As with so many things created by the government, the name is opposite to its effect. The Fairness Doctrine is not fair at all, but essentially eliminates the opportunity for political editorialization, of whatever stripe. Instead, we must be presented with "balanced" opponents, who are often anything but balanced.
As another comment said, conservatives now have Fox News and tal radio, while liberals have all of CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, and CNN. That the liberals could not mount a successful talk radio operation is a primary motivating force for returning the Fairness Doctrine.
The effect of the Fairness Doctrine, overall, is antithetical to free speech, and in the presence of a rational court position, it should be found unconstitutional.
--- Bill
A) What is NBS? B) In the last 3 years, I imagine it was a lot of work to not report on things that made Republicans look bad. Fox has generally done a good job of not "intentionallity looking for stories that make the GOP look badly" or more correctly, they have avoided those stories even when they fell in their lap. They also specifically looked for stories to make the Democratic Party look bad. Memo about trying to find evidence that someone in the middle east was happy Democrats won the midterms? C) What Propaganda? None of those stations news broadcasts are at all left. A lot of the broadcasts project from the view that Republicans are generally right. The pundits are different. Olbermann is particularly hard on Bush and company, though I am not sure that makes him Liberal as much as honest and observant.
There's a reason those two stand out in your mind. They're unusual. Do you really think the blogosphere would have stayed quiet if there were a "balance" doctrine or are you just trolling? I hope for your sake it's the latter.
It's equally hard for me to believe that you don't realize that Fox News is the quintessential "right wing" media. The reason there's no news about its mistakes is because they're not news - they're expected. Of the few episodes I've watched (because I was in someone else's house), I don't believe there wasn't a single one without an error more egregious than Dan Rather's. One lie even had one of the blonde ladies scratching her head. I guess she didn't get the memo that you're supposed to read the stories without questioning their veracity!
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Isn't that covered by property taxes today?
The tax is necessary since the economic rent of wealth holders amounts to welfare for the wealthy -- a much worse policy than welfare for the poor since the wealthy are the economy's primary decision makers and we can ill afford to corrupt them through welfare. If the rent thereby taken is more than sufficient to support property rights then the remainder should not be held under the control of an elite few politicians lest we end up with the equivalent of central economic planning. Just disperse it evenly and the corruption is minimized while tending to create a yeoman class interested, to that extent, in the common welfare of all.
Seastead this.
So, Kucinich apparently hasn't found a place for this on his newer site, but thankfully via the magic of the Wayback Machine, I can point out that Kucinich has received the endorsement of Grandfather Twilight, a classic children's book character. Clearly, that lends him enormous credibility for 2008, as it did in 2004.
With the Fairness Doctrine, the party in control of the government was actually sitting there with stop watches making sure that "both sides were presented." While corporate consolidation has in theory limited voices, the reality is the explosion of media sources has eliminated that control.
What would happen is that no radio station would ever introduce a political radio show (incumbent ones with huge audiences would likely stay and be counterbalanced with unprofitable "other side"), because if I want to take a chance on a 1 hour radio program, I need to give up 2 hours, one for the program I am interested in, and one to counter-balance it. The net affect is that stations move away from talk radio, and move towards top-40 pop music, where they know that they'll make money and not need to deal with the FCC.
The way it is structured is designed to destroy political programming, because political programming is only interesting if it is one-sided to some extent. Equal time to both sides isn't entertaining.
Now, this is targeting conservative media, because conservative media uses the confrontational political format. Liberal media of that type has failed in the marketplace, because it's boring... The extreme left-wing websites are entertaining, but they don't translate into the other media spheres because of the self-perception of America's left of being intellectually elite, which requires not entering the name calling gutter that is how talk radio is fun. Compare Rush Limbaugh to Air America... his program is funny, mostly childish making fun of people, bad impressions, punning, etc., it's gutter humor applied to a political sphere. Listen to Air America programming, it's a bunch of people whining about politics. Air America launched when the country, politically, was the exact opposite of when Limbaugh's popularity exploded (1992-1994, during the Democrat "tyranny" of full control of three branches, 2004-2006 was similar with Republican "tyranny"). Rush Limbaugh ran "America Held Hostage" as his theme, mocking the whole process. Air America screamed about how evil Gitmo is. The former is funny and tongue-in-cheek, the latter is up for serious discussion that people don't want during their daily commute.
The "liberal media bias," as it exists, is much more a function of American political distribution than a fundamental approach to the market. Fox has proven that one can insert a "conservative media bias" and compete in the marketplace, albeit with less funding and inferior reporting. People don't choose the liberal media in the open market (Fox proved that by entering, people are split, shocking considering the superior journalism of CNN), they choose media and just get the bias. The bias isn't intentional, it isn't corporate strategy to push people leftward, it's a function of the fact that to run nationwide media services essentially means setting up shop in NYC or LA, and NYC and LA are liberal cities. Further, our journalism schools graduate people that are disproportionately left of center, the field attracts liberals (improve the world, expose evil, etc., etc.), so naturally, the media trends liberal. It does so not out of a conspiracy, but just the fact that the people gathering the facts are more likely to be left-of-center, and inadvertently spin things.
The fairness doctrine would not affect news programming, so liberal/conservative spin would remain there. It would affect opinion/commentary programming, which would dry up and disappear, and we would get more thoughtless brain-dead programming.
I'd love to see a viable liberal talk radio or similar program that survives on its merits, but they need a framework that is entertaining. Things like Daily Kos show that the people do exist, but they need a format that isn't cheerleading for the Democratic Party and it actually entertaining on its merits.
Air America would have been much better off if it was designed as a viable business, attempting to attract an audience, instead of a political effort
Replace the word "media" in that sentence with "Congress" and it's still a true statement.
I imagine that a lot more of the younger generation would watch those debates! The question remains, who would be their respective running mates? I'm thinking Stewart/Bee for the Democrats and Colbert/Jansen for the Republicans.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I agree with Kucinich that media is being controlled by a few large Corporations. But saying that they must present controversial issues in an honest, equal, and balanced manner isn't going to get the job done. My God, Fox news is anything but fair and balanced even though they claim to be. If they were leaning any further to the right the US would slide into the Atlantic Ocean!
The solution is to break up the media into MUCH smaller companies that are not controlled by a few and not allow them to be combined ever again. It is incredibly important that everything we see and hear is NOT controlled by a few who will feed us what they want to meet hidden agendas. Currently we have corporate media and it's not a good thing.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
It's not training.
In 2000 a bunch of people voted for third parties and all we got for it was GW Bush.
The way our Government is setup, as defined by the Constitution, it naturally moves towards two parties. It's the winner take all foundation.
Do you know the reason why the top ten taxpayers were only paying taxes on only 50% of their income? US tax law allows charitable contributions of 50% of gross income, no limit. It's quite possible that rich people would rather give their money away than let the govt waste it.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
they get airtime for free - PBS
I really doubt that that Republican, free market perspective is a mainstream, right wing view. Considering the censorship of online media to be a form of free speech sounds like something straight out of a George Orwell novel. Ending network neutrality and charging a premium for someone else's content is not speech.
-Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety deserve neither. -Ben Franklin
I'd really appreciate it if we could stop labelling people randomly. For some odd reason, people believe Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama to be the "easy-shots" for the presidency, but that's the tail wagging the dog. The media is so obsessed with covering them, that "lesser" candidates hardly get any coverage. We get polls with Obama and Clinton's name on them, and so they become recognized. It seems very little different than payola, except in music, there's no preconception of non-bias nor anything really at stake (U2 isn't running against REM for anything; you CAN go to both concerts.)
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Who exactly gets to decide what is fair? Kucinich? The pundits doing the talking? Or how about the people listening? No one is perfect judge of what is fair. Indeed, human perception of balance is guaranteed to be arbitrary to begin with. *Everyone believes they are the center* .... or can't admit they aren't. So why not let people vote with their radio dials?
... people might listen. Those poor helpless sheeple I rescued from the Rethuglicans might be led astray again!
That's the problem. Too many people believe that if only they "got the message out", people would be swayed by XYZ on the issue of ABC. What they fail to realize is that simply shouting louder doesn't help. Here's a hint. Isn't your megaphone. Your message just effing sucks. If I am given equal time and I complain that no one listens, to whom do I assign blame? Well, that depends on your politics.
Liberals don't want conservatives to have a megaphone because (gasp)
Conservatives refuse to give liberals their megaphones. Those selfish bastards!
Let's be honest. If your ideology controls a market, any intrusion on your turf is unfair.
How is the "fairness doctrine" different from Chavez putting all media under his direct command ?
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030303/klein
I thought this was a joke! CNN et al ahve had there noses so far up Republican tailpipes for the last few years.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
It's sort of weird to see American lefties coming up with weird ideas that would go totally overboard even here in notorious commie Europe. I don't think anyone here would suggest that there has to be some kind of a vague fairness criterion to fill for all speech that is transmitted in media.. that would neuter most speech that tries to say anything of value. An important quality of public discussion is the ability to take a side, so that your argument may then be countered on its merits.
I am a big fan of the concept of a quality public broadcaster that seeks diversity and is open enough to serve as a conduit for all sorts of views and positions, and also transparent enough so that its functioning can be scrutinized. And no, it doesn't lead to a "state-controlled media", unless "OMG they gave a leftist politician some airtime!" counts as such. The so-called independent actors are also still there to take money from corporations and right-wingers so that the propaganda and other programming suitable for their viewership (reality TV comes to mind) is still perfectly well available.
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
If the Democrats are really interested in media no longer representing narrow corporate interests they will instead support policies encouraging the democratization of media.
Any or all of these would do far more to encourage varied viewpoints in mainstream media than any kind of stupid mandate for 'fairness'. All that does is make sure both mainstream clubs get their say instead of random citizens with their many and varied viewpoints. There are generally far more than two sides to any issue.
The Democrats aren't miffed about corporate centralized control of media, and any protestations to the contrary are shown to be complete hypocrisy by things like the fairness doctrine. They're only miffed that this centralized control has tended to exclude them.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I think the election was not so much a mandate for a liberal agenda as a mandate against the current direction that the Republican party is taking our country.
The Administration tricking us into an unnecessary and unpopular war in an effort to find WMDs that never existed didn't help the Republican image. Then when it became apparent that there were no weapons of mass destruction to have the administration try to morph the war into part of the "war on terrorism" which it IS NOT also didn't help.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Luke, help me take this mask off
fairness gives us a fascist media with content driven by political revenue
limited ownership gives us a media with no designs on content beyond maximizing profits through advertising and/or subscription
Do not look into LASER with remaining eye!
Its not about if they "ran" on it as part of their platform, its about politicians paying back the people who put them into power. This is just a way to pay off another special interest group (their's) with other people's money. There is an added bonus because it detracts from the opposing side, who are sucessful all on their own without an unofficial goverment subsidy. Double points to Kucinich for grandstanding about "fairness" while lining his buddys' pockets with other people's money. I think my cynicism of "fairness" rhetoric just increased exponentially.
The mainstream media are nothing but liars, living in the pockets of corporate america and the government. Bought off, they sold out the people for a buck. A totally new doctrine would be better. Something barring phony news provided by the government or corporations and all propaganda as well as limiting media consolidation. Why bother though? It's too late. The media has lost all credibility. A few holdouts perk their ears up now and then to see what Olbermann might say... which is somehow surprising because he's actually doing his job and that makes him rare, but for the most part big media is done. People flock to the internet for independent reporters and blogs, for the simple reason that they know the mainsteam media is lying to them.
I think any law should describe in detail what do they mean by saying honest, equal and balanced. In my view this position should be taken:
First law: Honesty: presenting facts to the best of the knowledge of the people broadcasting, without intentionally misleading or misdirecting the audience.
Second law: Equality: presenting different viewpoints in an unbiased way, except when it conflicts with the First Law (so basically the recognition that facts are inherently "biased" things, honesty about facts shouldn't be damaged by trying to present differing viewpoints equally, when one or more of those viewpoints conflicts with a reasonable standard of honesty and matter of facts). For example if there is a discussion about evolution, the facts about it should be presented first and foremost and while the intelligent design viewpoint should be mentioned, but not as a comparable scientific theory to evolution, but as a belief some people hold, quickly followed by the statement that the scientific community is in total agreement about evolution. This equality shouldn't be taken as equality in airtime or as "arguing for every side with the same strength", because different views are not equal in worth, they should only be equal in presenting them without the bias for what they are worth.
Third law: Balance: See Second Law.
The above should apply to news. Everything is news which the media presents as not an opinion piece.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Anybody working in any broadcast media news right now is so stupid, they ought to be reclassified as cattle. It should be legal to slaughter and barbecue them. I'm sure with the high fat content, their brains should be delicious.
Who gives a plug what the TV set reports?
and, for the record, at one time I listened to Rush every morning and Mike Gallagher every early afternoon. I've even seen Rush's TV show.
From where I sit, his primary method of refuting an opposing point of view is to make fun of it. I can't really respect that, regardless of political orientation.
Funny thing about Rush, when he's being interviewed, he comes across as your basic articulate, intellengent person...which lend's to my opinion that his radio personality is just a fassad. Then again, G. Gordon Liddy gave me the same impression.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
I think his point was that if you say you're "against (state-sanctioned) gay marriage," there is an unspoken assumption on most people's part that you are opposed to the "gay" part, rather than the "marriage" part, of a state-sanctioned marriage. This is because they plot the 'controversy' as one having purely one dimension, with conservatives at one end, and liberals and homosexual advocates at the other.
In reality, the issue is more complex. There are many issues and positions which may be nearly orthogonal to the single axis of 'gay marriage, for/against,' and unless you recognize that, you're going to oversimplify people's positions and pigeonhole them inappropriately.
"Equal time" laws create a false dichotomy where there may not be one. In a room of six people, you may be able to force three into "supporting" and three into "opposing" an issue, but within each three, they may be approaching the issue for completely different reasons, which may be incompatible for fundamental reasons even if they seem to be in agreement on the surface. (E.g., "I'm against gay marriage because homosexuality is a sin," and "I'm against gay marriage because all marriage is wrong and unnatural, regardless of who it's between.") To gloss over these differences and present it as being two-sided is false, and it does a disservice to the viewers of that program, by implying that there are only two opinions.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages.
- Anthem, Part Eleven
take it seriously. Rush Limbaugh is FUNNY! Neal Boortz is FUNNY!
Neither one of these guys is engaged in politics. They are entertainers as are the rest of the talk show doods.
These guys offer up OPINION. It's like the editorial section of the newspaper or most of TeeVee "news". It's not about facts, it's about who gets the most mod points...
Do not look into LASER with remaining eye!
>It's "a******* with access to microphones" that sell. "Political Radio Shows"
/. despite appearances to the contrary on THIS thread) realize you think Rush is a flaming looney, and Fox News is a bunch of conservative nutjobs, and all creationists are idiots. But that's not any more a realistic assertion than the same assertions about liberals. Both sides are rational, thoughtful individuals with a different view of the same data. Get over it and stop insulting each other. Find a way to discuss the issues, not the flames.
>these days are to "intelligent discourse" as "Professional Wrestling" is to
>"Combative Sports". Rush Limbaugh was not popular because of his knowledge of
>political matters (which he may well have had), he was popular because he made
>controversial and obviously inflammatory statements on the air. Apparantly, he
>was better at it than Al Franken.
I have been listening to Rush for about 10 years. I can tell you with a great deal of experience that people listen primarily BECAUSE they don't get his viewpoint on the mainstream media (MSM) that existed before he came around. Frankly, 3 to 20 million daily listeners (depending on who you believe) wouldn't stick around one person that long just for the hijinks. And it's those listeners who will be lobbying their congresscritters to kill this legislation.
Contrary to your assertion, everyone that I know who ACTUALLY listens to Rush (and I personally know dozens) thinks that he makes high quality arguments that speak truth, and that the average MSM folks are blathering idiots who desparately need to be countered. Sure, we enjoy his hyperbole, and frankly it's refreshing to hear SOMEBODY tease the liberals mercilessly, but that's secondary to wanting to hear what we believe to be the truth.
And before you go ranting about me and my friends being a bunch of hicks, let me point out that I live in a strongly blue state, with a middle to high income, flight test community of military pilots and scientists and engineers who uniformly have one or more college degrees, plus a fair mix of Walmart-shopping wage earners with high school diplomas. In short, it's not exactly average red state stuff.
So get off your high horse about Rush. We conservatives (some of whom DO read
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
From the article:
Let us suppose that "fairness" means showing multiple sides of the issue. This means that you now have half the airtime for each side (for a two-sided issue, if there ever is such a thing). Supposing that your television or radio show is an hour, and you typically show four segments of 10-12 minutes apiece (plus commercials), it is already impossible for you to fully explain one side of the issue. Now explaining another side means you will be even less capable of explaining both sides (or all three, or five, or fifty). Such presentations will be even more horribly compressed than they are today. In other words, we will have the illusion of fairness: by showing multiple sides, it sounds fair, but they are summarized so much that it isn't fair to the issue or the consumer.
Should the Fairness Doctrine be reinstated, the real question is whether it will come into the Internet Age. Sure, the broadcaster is telling you the XYZ perspective, but if you go on their show's web site, they go into depth about the ABC, PDQ, and WTF perspectives. Broadcasters are therefore "presenting" multiple sides, just not in the same medium. If so, this will lead to a mini-industry of commercial information vendors who have "all sides available" kits on leading topics.
Per Copp's comments: "...too little news, too much baloney passed off as news. Too little quality entertainment, too many people eating bugs on reality TV." I'm not sure how the Fairness Doctrine would improve this (and it's not clear that Copp thinks it will) but there are two sides to baloney, too. I'm not [just] trying to be funny (the bread side? the cheese side? the mustard side?) but even stupid issues have multiple perspectives. And besides, television is not about quality entertainment. It's about what makes money. If people eating bugs makes money, you'll see it on television.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
If the Fairness Doctrine passes you will see a Klan rally right after the coverage of the MLK Day parade next year.
You're in a very small minority of viewers who want "substantive analysis," therefore, your viewing options are naturally going to be the most limited.
News outlets exist basically in proportion to the number of people who desire their particular flavor at any given time. That there are apparently so few "good" news outlets (whatever your personal definition of 'good' is), suggests that your tastes probably lie outside the cultural mean.
I find it amusing how many people I've met dislike mainstream music and mainstream, lowbrow TV entertainment, but get offended by mainstream news. It's just another entertainment medium, essentially -- why should you like it, when you don't like the rest of the products that are being produced for basically the same audience?
If you don't like the TV programs that are on right before and right after the news, there's probably very little chance that you're going to like the news itself; you're going to have to look elsewhere.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I'm not asking you to agree with the ACLU on this one (I don't) - just to acknowledge that by omitting those facts, Fox News deliberately distorted the story. To be fair, they did later provide some balance to the story (at least on their web-site - I never heard this story, but I'm not a regular viewer, either).
Again, why was this not noted all over the blogosphere? I'm guessing that because it is expected from Fox News.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
News should be regulated by market, and market should be regulated by government. In no way the air should be dominated by 5 Gargantua of news.
The problem with people is they are used to see news as infotainment, not as a source of information. So when the news broadcaster they favor politically is getting off the air they have no problem switching to Fox news.
Too many people do not give a damn for fairness.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
And yes, My regime WOULD make gay marriage mandatory. Solves the abortion problem quite nicely. Put that in your crack pipe and smoke it, right wingers!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Lifting of the Fairness Doctrine is directly responsibile for Rush Limbaugh's fame. With a Fairness Doctrine, Rush Limbaugh can't have a show.
A lot of people that want to listen to Rush Limbaugh is responsible for Rush Limbaugh's fame. If nobody wanted to hear what he had to say, he wouldn't have a show.
That you want to take him off the air, when there are apparently a lot of people who enjoy his mindless rants, is frankly censorious, and represents the worst kind of elitism. You might as well say that the people who listen to him shouldn't be able to vote, and enlightened folks like yourself should just run everything, because you're so obviously superior.
Now, I have no love for the guy; I think he's an obnoxious blowhard, who creates a bad name for true political conservatives (there being a difference between right-wing Republicans and conservatives). But that doesn't mean I have any justification for ordering him off the air, particularly since there are quite a few people who enjoy listening to him. I find rap music offensive, too, but that doesn't mean that I have any cause to be arguing that we mandate an all-classical, all-the-time, nationwide format for music. (And to be honest, the freedom of political speech ranks far higher in my mind than freedom to play a particular type of music.)
The last thing we need is for the FCC to become the arbiter of our political speech. If there's a viewpoint that you don't like, you're free to try and convince it's supporters otherwise, or otherwise argue it down; if you have to silence them by force (which is what involving the government means), then it's pretty clear that you're attempting to push your opinions and agenda down the throats of others, and I find that even more offensive than Rush's drivel.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
They may not have done anything actively dirty (hence my hesitation to say if they're more right-wing than CNN is left-wing), but watching the way they spin stories, it's pretty hard to deny that they're fans of the Republicans. Nothing wrong with that, newscasters are allowed opinions too, but when they repeat over and over again that they're "fair and balanced," and O'Reilly touts his "no-spin zone"...I really hope it's a joke on the order of The Daily Show's claim to be the "Most important news program, ever." That is to say, they don't believe it and they don't really expect their viewers to believe it, but it's funny to say anyway.
Regulations that ping news outlets for being irresponsible and not reporting the events most relevant to the electorate. Chances are that there are tons of important news items about your local government sthat are being ignored to bring you the latest Britney/KFed update. News organizations have the privilegeresponsibility of informing the public. Businesses aren't humans and don't share the same rights. In practice, in the American society, they have greater rights than the citizens.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
The charitable contribution angle someone else brought up sounds like the main answer however this can also be explained by the large number of tax-free bonds you can buy. These bonds have a low yield which the government supplements with its tax-free status thus making them a more attractive investment. Its an investment those with lower amounts of money to invest are less attracted too as there is very little return but its much more attractive to the ultra-rich as the lower return still keeps them ultra-rich and as a bonus by having enough of these tax-free investments they may even be able to knock themselves into a lower tax bracket; thus making an even better return on their saving at the end of the year. Its hard to argue with this governmental policy though. Its through these methods that the government is raising the capitol it needs while running a deficit and supporting all if its entitlement programs. Besides which, without their tax-free status these bonds would be much less attractive and the government would have to pay a lot more interest to potential bond investors.
If you want to see these various loopholes go away then stop supporting a tax system in which a person earning X pays 10% in taxes, a person earning X+1 pays 15%, and a person earning x+2 pays 25%, etc. The stepladder taxation can get as bad as 50% or much more once you figure in local taxes. As long as the step ladder exists people will be seeking ways to artificially lower their income through tax-free investments and tax deductible expenses if it pays for them to be in a lower tax bracket.
Anyone who is an "alarmist" is denying the science, by definition. There do seem to be far more deniers (of the human contribution) than alarmists, however. Probably because either it is more lucrative to be a denier and/or it is easier to pretend like we have no impact on the environment than to take responsibility for our actions. (I.e., one doesn't have to be a shill to be a denier, but it pays better.) Luckily, a major funding source of the deniers has recently been curtailed.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The Fairness doctrine is pure evil! And a real threat to free speech. It is government censorship of free speech.
Yeah, it was needed, perhaps, when we had three choices in each market -- ABC, NBC and CBS. In that market, a fairness doctrine was needed to ensure access of a range of widely held viewpoints to the rather limited media we had at that time. That served the interest of free speech. But now we have a dozens of channels or hundreds of channels. If you don't like FOX, then listen to CNN or watch PBS. There is plenty of diversity. There is no need for a fairness doctrine anymore. It is unconstitutional, since it would only to give government the power of prior restraint and not advance free speech rights.
If you don't all oppose this vigorously now, then what will you do when government fairness monitors regulate speech on the internet? Do you really want that?
A lot of you misguided liberals will support the fairness doctrine because of the success of right-wing talk radio and the absurdities of FOX. Yeah, things will be great in a few years after Hillary is elected (I think she probably will be, really), and the Democrats control Congress. And a lot of good will be done in that time -- but if you allow the fairness doctrine to take hold -- what will happen when the wheel turns again and Republicans come back in power? Do you really want some later incarnation of Bush to weld the fairness doctrine on your media? Do you really think that the Web will be exempt if this gets started up again? It you think talk radio has become something of a conservative monopoly due Clear Channel, etc. -- How about just breaking up those chains and opening up the radio spectrum? Not institute government regulation of speech. That is a bad bad bad bad idea. Don't be fooled.
As I don't watch Fox News. But 50% of 1, 2, or 3 hours out of 24 is hardly balanced. From your other comments, you don't seem to disagree with my main point, however. Namely, Fox News clearly leans to the right. Anyone who denies that is either ignorant or disingenuous.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
"As another comment said, conservatives now have Fox News and tal radio, while liberals have all of CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, and CNN. That the liberals could not mount a successful talk radio operation is a primary motivating force for returning the Fairness Doctrine."
Mindlessly repeating that liberals somehow have all the major news outlets doesn't make it true. If the networks broadcast 24 hour calls for pacifism, gay marriage rights, stem cell research and the like then you might have a case, otherwise you just repeat the same tired old GOP talking point...
Wtf is wrong with trying to make sure that news is presenting accurate information? There should be a penalty for spreading false info into the living rooms of most Americans, who then go and make decisions and vote based on this info. If Fox News is spreading misinformation (like, hmmm, that we actually found wmd in Iraq), they deserve to be reined in.
The problem isn't lack of balance, it's lack of investigative reporting. Most issues aren't really left-vs-right, or A-vs-B, they're just reported that way. Most questions have a right answer and a wrong one, and it's the media's job to figure out which is which. Unfortunately, they've given up on that responsibility, because it's easier to just copy one press release from each side.
Being unbiased means forming an opinion based solely on the evidence. It doesn't mean refusing to form an opinion even when the evidence is clear. Yet that's what the media keeps doing.
It's through these methods that the government increases the national debt; the interest on those bonds has to be paid back somehow, and the government is not a business, it's not supposed to run a profit so that's not where the focus is. Bonds today mean higher taxes tomorrow, in the absence of any use of those monies to actually improve the system. The federal government is the largest employer in America (Wal-Mart is #2) and instead of cutting back the already-bloated federal workforce, they're hiring more people, which in turn will be used as justification for more responsibility, which will lead to hiring more people... this is simply not a sustainable model.
I'm starting to think that donations should not be tax deductible. They just lead to more poor people being taxed more, which leads to more people depending on entitlement programs, which raises taxes for everyone (and which creates MORE places for donations to go - to support those people who can no longer support themselves due to the tax system.) I understand the argument for them being deductible but I'm starting to believe that they cause more problems than they solve, especially given what percentage of monies given to charity actually reach the people they are meant to help.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Being in college radio, this will result for us in the situation that occurred the last time the "fairness" doctrine was in place. We just won't air anything controversial. It's much safer than trying to comply to it.
The only thing worse than the current slew of biased reporting is if (even more) people actually believed it wasn't biased. Even the best news program has to decide what to report on based on what it thinks is important. That's a form of bias; it's inescapable.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Ok, yes they are, but generally, when one party has been screwing it up badly enough, for long enough, it's at the point now where the other party can only do better, and will actively try to do better anyway.
In other words, when you think about it, "vote the bastards out" is generally a good strategy, if you don't like either of them.
Now, if the media actually wanted to show us a third party with enough power to kick these other two out... But that's not what "fair and balanced" does.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Net neutrality and the fairness doctrine are rather different in practice, while in theory they may share similar ideals.
Net neutrality: Let your customer(The customer, not your business partner) decide what they want to do with the bandwidth they're buying from you. Do not interfere with their bandwidth based on destination or source(if it is inbound) except where the traffic is disruptive or damaging. That is all I ask from net neutrality. Allow me to access any IP I want without restricting my bandwidth any more than you do for all other IPs. Let any IP that wants to access my IP with the same allowances. Do not block ports, do not apply traffic shaping to slow specific data below my normal limits.
I merely mean that no single label will stick to me very well. On many issues, most people would label me "liberal". On several others, I'd get a "conservative" label (and recently, a "liberal" "freak"). "Moderate" just means I don't feel like spelling out my viewpoint on every single issue, and I'm not going to follow any party line (not Republican, Democratic, Libertarian, Green, etc.). (I feel it is necessary to use the quotes on "liberal" and "conservative", because even on single issues there are usually more than two sides to be considered.)
Ben Hocking
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That political blog is 3752345354 Bites of Republican sided information, and only supports Democrats with 3752345232 Bites, you will be fined if you do not ad 122 bites of information supporting Democrats.
Consequently what we need to do is close tax loopholes for the very rich. I did a little research on this a while back and in the year 2000, the top ten taxpayers were only paying taxes on only 50% of their income! Meanwhile, I pay taxes on 100% of my income. What is this shit all about? The people making the least money barely pay taxes, the people making the median incomes pay the most, and the people at the very top pay less than the people in the middle. The people most able to pay aren't paying even THEIR share.
Let's say that the top 10 taxpayers had $10 million income each. Let's say that you had $200,000 income. So, if they have paid tax on half their income, they paid tax on $5 million. If you paid tax on 100% of your income, you paid tax on $200,000. So tell me again how it is that you paid more tax than they did?
Besides, you don't pay tax on 100% of your income anyway. There are standard deductions and exemptions that *everyone* gets, so nobody pays tax on 100% of their income.
1. The FCC's definition of fairness.
2. The free market's definition of fairness.
It's a tough choice, I don't think one of the two alternatives is better than the other.
In theory, that is.
In a perfect society both alternatives would work just fine, in the real world however, none of them do.
As I'm sure many of you Americans have noticed over the last few years, to let your government decide the truth is not a very good idea.
But if you let the (unrestrained) free market decide, you will eventually end up with an increasingly narrow perspective of the truth, since truth hurts and that's bad for business. Most people don't want to be bothered with the complex details of a story.
The ones who screamed "F*ck yeah! We'll turn Iraq into a parking lot, and make those bastards pay for 9/11!" back in 2003 probably did so because they had been sold a product, advertised like any other with boobs, beer and explosions.
What are the odds that if Rush Limbaugh produced the alternate viewpoint for half his broadcast to satisfy this law the content would be presented in a way Democrats would think was fair and not a bunch of strawmen presented in a humorous manner and fighting the complaints in court and wrapping himself in Free Speach. Do the Democrats really want to be considered the party of censorship for such a short term gain that cannot possibly survive a trip to the Supreme Court?
politicians too...
Rush was Speaking Truth to Power with that statement.
Naturally, Fascists always think that Speaking Truth to Power is both controversial and inflammatory. I suppose you would have liked it better if Rush only spouted administration-approved statements on his radio show.
At this point, it's fairly evident that people will listen to the media of their choosing. If a large segment of the population is out of touch with reality because they think one source has it right and alllll the others are insane, it's really their fault, and our obligation to have to defend their right to speak and vote in a free society where their votes count just as much as ours. We just have to deal with it.
The politicians can try, but I don't see the solution coming from Washington no matter how well-intentioned its proponents may be. Do you want fair and balanced coverage and have some time to spare? Read a larger variety of news sources, from multiple countries, from multiple points of view. You will gain a sense of who's biased how, and make first-hand decisions about who is being more reasonable and honest.
I have my own sites that I follow. Some air a specific point of view, but listening only to the echo chamber will weaken your perspective. Here is one site that I think does a fantastic job of presenting a wide range of views for your consideration.
And then, here are the rounds I usually make:
BBC world news
Google News
The Daily Star, an English-language Lebanese newspaper
The New York Times
The Guardian, a British news source
Le Monde, the English edition
Al Jazeera's English language page, like it or hate it
World Net Daily, if you want to know what the Christian Right is up to
Now, good luck.
I say this as someone who really likes Kucinich and would vote for him anyday.
I've always found it odd that when people talk about Fox News conservatism they bring up O'Reilly, and then say the channel is biased, but no one has ever accused Brit Hume (who anchors an actual news program on Fox) of being biased.
O'Reilly isn't supposed to be fair or balanced, his show has always been opinion and comment (which allows some news reporting, but is mostly about pursuading). The op-ed pages of your local paper are biased, too! The front pages generally aren't and if they are, that's a travesty (just as it would be quite serious if ole' Brit were biased). I realize that many days the same issues are on the front pages and the op-ed pages, but when did everyone forget how to tell the two apart?
O'Reilly is supposed to be a biased blowhard, and the fact that his program isn't called "the Nightly News Report" should be a huge indicator that he's going to be giving you mostly his opinion. Did everyone forget how to think?
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Yes, and for that reason the only assets that are taxed are those assets that should not be taxed while those assets that should be taxed aren't taxed at all.
Seastead this.
I don't watch TV, so I don't watch Fox News. However, I have watched Fox News in the past. Occasionally I watch it when I'm over at someone else's house who is watching it. The few shows I've seen on Fox News have given me little reason to seek it out.
Of course, you're right about the subjectivity of "right", "center", and "left". However, if you sincerely believe that Fox is not "right", then it's not surprising that you don't find anyone from the "right" on the other networks. As I recall, CNN's Crossfire did just that until Stewart tore them a new one. I'm reasonably sure there are still similar shows on other networks besides Fox News.
As for considering things I've never thought of before, I find my batting average is much higher in science journals than on the fluff that is cable news (of any variety). Most of my political news comes from the internet, not surprisingly. Also, I give bonus points to "freaks" and "foe of friend" on /. in order to increase the odds that I'll find dissenting views. (Usually, people don't mark you as "foe" unless you've said something interesting enough to offend them. You, not surprisingly, are a "foe of friend". Take that as the compliment I mean it to be.)
Ben Hocking
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gripping_hand
Not that a US bureaucracy can manage to reach that level of sophistication. Forcing one or more balancing "opinions" to reach a minimum level of argument beyond "is Too!/Is Not!" will prove to be an impossible goal for our congress-critters and their appointees.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
This reminds me of last Sunday's Doonesbury strip! I laughed until it hurt, with that I-wish-it-weren't-so-true kind of pain.
Jeeze what would happen to the so-called fake news shows? I've talked to FCC bureaurats and they don't have a sense of humor at all.
However redundant this may be, the diverse nature of media today surely makes any legislation of this type just plain stupid. I know Kucinich (before congress & after he was recalled [thrown out] as mayor of Cleveland) personally and anybody who follows him closely will know that the dictionary term demagogue fits Dennis to a 'T'
Demagogy (from Greek demos, "people", and agogos, "leading") refers to a political strategy for obtaining and gaining political power by appealing to the popular prejudices, fears and expectations of the public -- typically via impassioned rhetoric and propaganda, and often using nationalistic or populist themes.
The term is commonly used as a political pejorative: political opponents are described as "demagogues", while politicians approved of are "men of the people", or "statesmen".
God: When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
Your assumption that I was denying it clearly marks you as a non-believer. Repent.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Interestingly, I never actually said that. If you go back and reread... er, make that read my comment, you will see that I am talking about groups of people, not individuals. This was simple enough to figure out by inference so I did not state it explicitly; if you are talking about a plurality of people as opposed to a person then generally all you need do is use the plural form and perhaps prefix it with "the", as in "We The People" - and I did that thing.
Anyway enough of the English lesson, on with the rest of the comment:
I paid tax on a larger percentage of my income; a smaller percentage of my income is disposable. We don't tax food, a recognition that it is a basic human need, but then we have laws that say that you cannot go into public naked, but we still tax clothes. We do that because you only need a certain set of clothes, and anything above and beyond that is luxury items, but for those people who can only afford to buy the clothes they need, they are paying taxes on a basic human need - which is why the tax burden is unfair. We tax snacks (snack tax) and various high-dollar items (luxury tax) because we see that they are optional items... so what gives?
By the way there is only one standard deduction that everyone gets: themselves. Aside from deductions for money invested into things like a 401(k) which most of us can't even get (the closest we get is the 403(q) or WTFever it's called, no matching funds) the only standard exemption that everyone gets is not related to income tax but to sales tax: we don't pay tax on non-heated food items. You have to make within a certain range to qualify for the earned income tax credit - if you make too little money you can't get it. WTF?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Is that your political right wing (so right in fact they'd be titled neonazi in europe) realised some decades ago that the media did not favour their standpoints. So they set up an orchestrated campaign to get 'their' people in key places in the media. You can just outright buy a paper, but it is much more productive to go slow and support those few journalists that support your political views and use your influence to get these people into key places. Which is what they did. A few decades later, the middle ground has swayed so much to the right, that the rest of the world is afraid you will fall of the edge. Considering how fascitoid your gouvernment/country has become, it might have fallen already.
(your sercret service commands you to attack this anti-american post as hard as you can. Do you pattriotic duty and defend our free nation against those liberal foreigners, support out troups!)
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
I believe it is because of the Fairness Doctrine that I recall seeing a political ad when I was younger that featured a still photograph of some klansman and the caption of political candidate named J.B. Stoner.
The voiceover went something like this, "Thank God for AIDS, for killing the n******rs and f*********ts. Elect JB Stoner"
It was a bit shocking, but I think it's more dangerous that we NOT be exposed to this sort of thing. If it's out in the open, it is subject to public discourse, which inevitably rejects it. Keeping it underground for commercial reasons doesn't sit well with me.
Note that other fringe elements may be considerably more intelligent and valuable than my example.
Isn't this a repeat? It seems very familiar. Maybe it's just because it does ring too true, but I think this is a rerun.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I was specifically citing O'Reilly's claim to preside over a "no-spin zone" as an example of Fox's sense of humor. The regular news reporting also spins things with a somewhat Republican perspective; like I said, this isn't unethical in any way, just somewhat inconsistent if their claim to be "fair and balanced" is supposed to be more than an elaborate joke (which I don't believe it is). Basically, I'm saying that I have no evidence that Fox has done anything remotely inappropriate; it's just that their claim to be "fair and balanced" is in the "It's Funny. Laugh." category.
This doesn't particularly matter to me, since I've essentially given up on the mainstream American media. I'm an American, but I read the Guardian and watch BBC (a public station carries the nightly broadcast); I find that both of these sources don't treat me like an idiot. The problem I have with the American corporate media is that it's entirely parochial. For an example, I recall watching MSNBC (a "liberal" network): there was the news "Israel Planning to Use Nuke on Iran!." I watched an "expert" give the barest details of the plan, then there was a commercial break: "After these messages, we talk to the disqualified Miss America!" The reason why people couldn't identify Iraq on the map prior to 2003 was that they had been spoon-fed this intellectually limiting stuff. Then we went into war, because the media bashed the messaged "Saddam Hussein=bad" into our heads constantly. Media tells people how to think, and shapes them into molds. I would argue that there is no less propaganda in America then there was in the USSR.
My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. Vladimir Nabokov
Just because he posts here doesn't necessarily mean he reads here.
I think your .sig could do with a better compression method.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Outside of Fox News, the only time you see a 'conservative talking head' is if they are a guest. CNN, MSNBC news, CBS, etc all lean to the left of American Politics.
Just because those stations aren't DELUSIONALLY, RABIDLY conservative (like Fox News) doesn't make them liberal. Criticizing Bush's invasion of Iraq, for example, is not "liberal", it's "sane." There's a difference.
I know some people in Europe, and they're all of the opinion that ALL of our news channels are quite right-leaning. Then again, you did specify "American Politics"...
Actually, I usually use "Charlottesville conservative". If you knew Charlottesville, you'd realize that's not saying much more than "moderate" or "independent", however.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
You are so right! We should not trust "regulators" to decide what balance means. Our constitution (the USAs) protects freedom of speech for that very reason. Our founders did not want the state to determine what kinds of speech were to be permitted. It did not matter what reason the speech was restricted -- let the people decided what is fair, and what to listen to and what to ignore.
There was a state interest in encouraging many voices using the fairness doctrine back when broadcast TV was essentially limited to three stations -- NBC, CBS and ABC. But in an age when we have dozens or even hundreds of stations, it has out lived its usefulness. Now any such doctrine can only be an instrument of censorship. The solution now is to encourage diversity by first opening up the broadcast spectrum in radio (see this Open Spectrum FAQ..
Might I suggest that it is the job of the audience to let a media company know when it is pumping out sewage.
Now, who's gonna monitor the audience? This is getting really complicated.
>Treating every issue as if it has two sides means that often you have to go out and invent a second side.
The way it used to work was that nothing happened until someone "demanded equal time". ABC/NBC/CBS didn't have to cover flat earthers unless the flat earthers convinced the FCC that they deserved equal time.
I will gladly admit ignorance on the history of this. However, if it did indeed result in the media being more reluctant to be controversial, I'd definitely call that a "backfire". It's not the (stated) intention, and it's definitely a negative result. I would think that people on "both" sides of the aisle would agree with that.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Ahm, I think you've forgotten how to think if you believe that no-one has ever questioned Brit Hume's bias. Try a Google search sometime....
The trouble is, that the government by being a top-down centralized authoritarian power structure inherently leads to class stratification and concentration of wealth. Government power is the primary cause of the current concentration of wealth. So a government program designed to eliminate the concentration of wealth is a paradox.
am goin to bed!
before I lose my ballance.
Why not build and promote a more democratic medium where money can't buy influence?
I'm still not getting the difference. You are too vague. Why don't you propose the text of a new tax statute and post it here where I can review it and comment? The devil will be in the details.
STILL couldn't hold control of Congress or many state Governorships.
The American people made their decision independently of Faux News & Rush Limbaugh. As a liberal I oppose the Fairness Doctrine. We don't need such an arbitrary system.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
.....that's all licenses are, permits wherein the state has decided that your have no inherent right to do something so you need permission to do something from them-are holdovers from the old racial and racist miscegnation laws (about the same as all gun laws really, too). And that's it, there are no other historical precedents. Before that, a marriage might have been registered at your local church if you were married in that faith, etc, or no place for that matter, but the state had nothing to do with it at all.. And it shouldn't be any of their business at all either, and is just another form of them exerting more power over the citizenry and further widening the us versus them deal with government and the people. The only debate should be, get the state to butt out completely because it is none of their business, y/n.
The one thing I will say about O'Reilly, is that, while he might be a right wing nut job, he's at least a semi-honest one. I do recall him promising that if there were no weapons of mass destruction that he would apologize and then about 8 months later him admiting it, publicly, waaaayyyy, before the administration ever did and apologizing.
When you hear people arguing for legislation that will curtail freedom of speech in the name of fairness and balance, you know that the right-wing lunatics are tiring of having 90% control of the media and want to extend it to 100%.
That's not the case in the US. If you vote green, or libertarian, or whatever the hell pat buchanan ran under, you're essentially shooting yourself in the foot. The parties know this, the conservatives ran pro-nader ads in 2000. You can't vote third party in the US without getting the opposite of what you actually want.
Outside of a few party line issues, both the democrats and the republicans might be centrist wankers(Bush is much to pro-corporate and pro-big government for a true conservative and Kerry was much to conservative for a true liberal), but until or unless they change the system(or we get some major event like the civil war which got the republicans in as the first ever third party president in the first place), they're the two we've got.
If you want an effective way to actually change American politics, vote in primaries for the candidates which most closely follow your view points. If other people agree with you, maybe in another 50 years your major party of choice might be closer to your belief system.
> In the interest of fairness, here is a Republican, free-market perspective on the return of the Fairness Doctrine.
As if the Republicans -- after six years of political domination and the support of every mean-spirited talking head corporate flunky on radio and TV -- really needed another venue to get their opinions before the public.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Do not gloat! Liberals have won an election, but we have not, and I believe we could not currently, win the war.
The Republicans lost because they fucked up, not because the Democrats have learned how to win elections. I can make a case for this, and I have written about this in my journal.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Tax net assets, in excess of subsistence, at the same rate as the rate of interest on the national debt. All other domestic taxes are repealed. Net assets are calculated as assets minus liabilities. Asset value is are assessed at the liquidation value. Liability value is assessed as the liquidation value of the debt instrument representing the liability. Liquidation value is set to the higher of either the government's bid for an asset or the owner's ask value. The government is required to take ownership at its bid and the owner is required to relinquish ownership at the owner's ask value. Liquidation value is also used in eminent domain proceedings to define fair compensation.
Citizen's Dividend
All funding of government programs are terminated except for national defense. The budget surplus paid out as a monthly citizen's dividend equally to all citizens. Children born to noncitizen residents are no longer considered US citizens.
Seastead this.
The problem with your theory is that over 80% of millionaires in this country are first-generation wealthy, and more often than not, their children do not inherit their ability to generate wealth along with whatever wealth they inherit. We live in a society that is unprecedented in the social mobility it affords its members. At no time in history has there been better financial and social mobility than we have now.
Actually, the constitution enumerates only limited powers to the government; it derives its authority from the consent of the governed, not the other way around. The basis of rights is not that they are caused by government, but that they are inherent in the people themselves. Perhaps you intended to suggest that it's reasonable to charge a use fee for services that wouldn't happen without government, but it came out backwards.
The concentration of wealth is not a problem that harms anybody, it's a non-problem that already solves itself- new wealth is constantly eclipsing the old, and sustained intergenerational wealth transfer is exceedingly rare.
Moreover, trying to 'solve' it politically is expensive and actually harmful. Whenever someone decides that it would be a great idea to use the government to take wealth away from its owners and give it to everyone else, the wealthy will quite reasonably beat them at that game like a pinata- they didn't become wealthy by losing games that involve money, after all. The resulting class warfare is expensive, divisive, and no fun. We have a tax system, for example, that is overly expensive (would you believe it costs us an estimated third of the revenue it generates, just to comply with it?) and unfair for everybody, just because we tried targeting the rich and they're better at buying congressmen (who write tax code) than the rest of us.
This is the danger we face when we try to expand the power of the government to accomplish our social missions: we become subject ourselves to this expanded power. Bringing the government into this game is like bringing a bat to a fight you're having with a better fighter than you: he'll just take the bat away from you and beat you senseless with it, at which point you'll either learn that class warfare is stupid and harmful to wage (because the rich will always win) or you'll go look for another bat to get beaten with.
Going after assets would just cause capital flight and further ensure that any taxing authority that tried it would quickly sink to bankruptcy.
If there's one thing I won't stand for, it's intolerance.
I've often marveled at the similarity between liberals and my ex-wife.
They are never happy. They always think they would do a better job if only they were in charge. Of course, other people can never do it exactly right. They are obsessive about most things. They panic at the drop of a hat. They get angry when they don't get their way. It's always someone else's fault.
If only I could give liberals the boot too.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
..."At the convention, Kucinich said, 'We know the media has become the servant of a very narrow corporate agenda. We are now in a position to move a progressive agenda to where it is visible.'"
Thats funny, lets see the Mainstream, Mass Unconsciousness, Drive By Media is serving a narrow corporate agenda. If that doen't just make a lick of sense.
In this world Republicans, Right Wing, Free Marketeers etc. = Big Business aka Corporate Agenda but yet the media is so thoroughly liberaly dominated and thus biased it seems an impossibility unless your talking about how the liberal MSM has no problem taken the Right Wing loving corporate money to ply their wares on the various mediums but yet cant seem to offer objective news and reporting especially in all things BUSHY.
Kucinich needs to get a clue and a day job because he is the last person I would vote for even over a liberal simply due to his state of cluelessness
Let's say that I have a house. Let's say I have $20,000 in the bank. I assume that is subject to tax since it is a net asset. Let's say then that I pay $20,000 to an artist to air brush a picture of Jessica Simpson in short shorts on my garage door. Some people would say this raises the value of my house. Some people would say that it lowers the value of my house. How would you the tax assessment on my house if I do this?
The government decides that a web site with significant traffic and using Government subsidized telecom should also institute the FD?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
It's all liberal propaganda now.
The same way bankruptcy courts assess it for the purpose of chapter 13 bankruptcy wherein your subsistence assets (home and tools of the trade) are protected from confiscation.
Seastead this.
Also, the way the definition of "subsistence assets" would be defined ultimately would be a single dollar amount, independent of any specific location's cost of living. With the citizen's dividend you are far less constrained in where you can locate so you subsistence basically becomes median price of a house for a household of your type, plus the median capitalization of a job.
Seastead this.
You might think so if you couldn't read. If you can read, you can clearly note that conservatism is what my sig line is about.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
You said: Perhaps you intended to suggest that it's reasonable to charge a use fee for services that wouldn't happen without government, but it came out backwards.
No I said it correctly and you read it backwards.
"Property rights that would not exist in the absence of government" are, collectively, the service that "wouldn't happen without government".
That's what I said the use fee, aka net asset tax, should be applied to. Once you understand this it is clear why it is the proper basis for revenue for the government.
Seastead this.
And although there was never a tag-line for this sorry mess along the lines of "Fair & Balanced," the old dinosaur broadcast media still put on quite a show about being "objective," "fair," and "respected journalists." They billed themselves as tireless newshounds continually digging for "the facts," but oddly none of the facts that would put a conservative in a positive light or a Democrat in a negative light ever seemed to turn up.
This is exactly the template Dan Rather was following when he failed to vet his Bush-national-guard-documents for his segment on 60-minutes. Viewers were supposed to see the SeeBS 60-minutes graphics of damning document after damning document and just assume they were all on the up and up. If Rather had pulled this same stunt 30 years ago, with no blogosphere, no Fox, no Rush Limbaugh, he would have gotten away with it. And the truth, if it ever got printed, would have been buried in a two-inch column on page A24 of the New York Times six months after the election.
Do you want the government controlling what's said on radio and TV?
No?
Good. Then the Fairness Doctrine is a bad idea.
I'm with Penn Jillette on this: A good idea automatically becomes a bad idea when it's done by the government. And this wasn't a good idea to start with.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Republican ideals are bankrupt, that's why they lost. The scandals hastened the inevitable.
The problem for Democrats is that they need to learn how to win elections. They don't need a fairness doctrine. They need a solid plan, and right now I think they're doing that. They won a lot of Republicans over (relatively speaking) for the recent minimum wage & prescription drug negotiation votes in Congress. Republicans in Congress are mad at being bullied by the radical Right.
Democrats have the power, now they need to speak softly and carry a big stick and concentrate on giving some relief to those bullied Republicans and not treating them like The Enemy[tm]. If the Democrats also give the working class a few victories, they'll own Congress for another 50 years. If they fail to do so, then no amount of Fairness Doctrine in the world will save them.
By sheer weight of scandals or by losing the war of ideas, you can own the media and still lose elections. That much has been proven.
BTW if the Liberals take more Congressional seats I'm voting GOP for President... God forbid we ever have a 1 party Government again. Ever.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
And trust me, I voted for Jesse Ventura and he won.
But a Third Party cannot succeed, unless one of the other two major parties just fundamentally collapses. Maybe we're seeing that today a bit with the Republicans. If they could fuck up things worse, I don't know how. But I rather doubt it. The last time this happened was when the Whigs turned into the Republicans in 1860.
You're far better off trying to change one of the parties from the inside, as has happened with the Democrats over the past 6 or so years.
I was wondering how long it would take for a reply from "the lowest common denominator" that StressGuy mentioned.
Half of the top 6 links (and the most professional) cited the same study that put him directly at the center of the political spectrum). Google searches aren't always indicators that you've found truth right away.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
I have read every post. Nearly everyone seems to feel that Fairness Doctrine is not a good idea. Most of the arguments are about which set of politics certain institutions espouse, with the bulk of the remainder focusing on Rush Limbaugh specifically or nitpicking catalysts for change in power in the last election.
I guess geeks know censorship when they see it. "Fairness..." a turd by any other name...
FairTax baby!
In that system, does an air brushed picture of Jessica Simpson on my garage add or subtract value from my asset?
"here is a Republican, free-market perspective on the return of the Fairness Doctrine."
Why get all theoretical? We have a "Republican, free-market perspective" on news and fairness: Fox News. The fascism channel, 24x7.
--
make install -not war
The Fairness Doctrine was an FCC regulation that required broadcast media to present controversial issues in an honest, equal, and balanced manner.
I am the US government, and I approve this message.
I"m only going to say this once. Insulting the people you're trying to persuade is counter-productive.
Liberals are not misguided any more than conservatives are misguided. Everyone, with very few exceptions, wants to make the world a better place. We disagree on means, for the most part.
Like what I said? You might like my music
That little fucking Fascist can take his speech codes and his Baby Hitler haircut and get stuffed.
Sometimes at night I imagine the darkness is filled with horrible things with too many teeth, like Julia Roberts.
Maybe not any more, but Rush Limbaugh used to be one. (I heard him make that comment in the early 90's.) Now that the evidence is overwhelming that GW is happening, the deniers have shifted to pretending that GW wasn't predicted before it started being obvious, and are now playing the game that it's due to things like increased solar output (even though we just passed a solar minimum).
Really? Maybe this time you're the one who has lost track of the march of progress! Can you name one climatologist who denies AGW? If you mention Lindzen or Michaels, I'd like you to find a comment from 2005 or 2006 that supports your claim. If you like, I'll dig up an interview with Michaels where he admits AGW but claims that technology will automatically arrive that will fix the problem (due to peak oil, of course). Times, they are a changin'.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
This is a no-brainer. If the Fairness Doctrine is re-instated half the radio stations in America will stop carrying the likes of Rush Limbaugh and other right wing ideologues. This is because the corporate owners will be too cheap and lazy to monitor program content and make sure that other programs are aired that provide an opposing point of view. Radio stations used to routinely do this, even with staffs as small as 8 people (I worked at one). It was not that hard and it took probably three or four hours a week to make sure the station was in compliance.
The trashing of the Fairness Doctrine is THE reason right wingers now dominate the radio spectrum. period paragraph end of sentence.
The Fairness Doctrine is bullshit, pure and simple. It's a way to keep the established party in power, nothing more. Fairness cannot be legislated.
Do I believe that the media in this country is horribly, horribly broken? Absolutely.
Can the government fix it? In a perfect world, yes. In reality, no.
Should the government fix it? Absolutely, positively not. Freedom of the press trumps concerns over fairness.
1) I actually listened to Rush myself for several years
2) My opinions on Rush Limbaugh have no bearing on whether or not I believe you are a "hick", let's not
do the tired and hackneyed "straw man" approach, OK?
3) I'm also a middle to high income engineer, although I've never though of "Walmart-shoppers" as
automatically belonging to a lower class as your statement appears to imply.
4) I don't think Rush is a flaming looney, I think his radio and TV presence is specifically crafted to
generate ratings. He does this by making fun of opposing opinions and personal attacks people who
don't agree with him. This is not a "looney", this is an intellegent, articulate, asshole.
5) I don't watch Fox New, or much TV news at all these days (use the internet), so I have no opinion.
Although, I am aware of the popular opinion of Fox News.
6) Nothing I've stated would so far would give any reasonable person cause to assume that I
think, "Creationist are Idiots". In fact, I have posted to Slashdot in defense of Creationist.
Once again, I would ask that you dispense with the "straw man" attack and remain focused.
7) I am politically independant, (not liking Rush) != (liberal)
Please refrain from making such broad-based assumptions about me that are based upon nothing more than the statement that I don't like Rush Limbaugh.
Thank You,
A goal is a dream with a deadline
And I see subjects like "this is crap". Clearly, these are kids too young to remember it, and those that are anti-democracy... and yet claim to "disbelieve the media", but hang on every word of O'Reilly and Limburger.
They don't *want* equal representation of the more than 50% of us on the other side.
mark
But they are guilty of that, quite frequently in fact, it's just no one expects Fox News to be honest. Hell, they won a court case by proving they had no legal duty to report the news accurately or truthfully and thus it didn't matter that they altered their news content to suit their advertisers.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
I'm sure it's a "fair and balanced" look at the issue.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
If you don't know what liquidation value is, read up a little.
Seastead this.
Interestingly, I never actually said that.[...]
Ok, so change my question to: So tell me again how it is that people in the middle paid more tax than they did?
By the way there is only one standard deduction that everyone gets: themselves.
I think you are confusing deductions with exemptions. Every taxpayer gets a standard deduction based on their filing status. For 2006 the standard deduction for a taxpayer filing single is $5,150. In addition, every taxpayer gets a $3,300 exemption per dependent, including themselves. Granted, some taxpayers are someone else's dependent and cannot claim any exemptions.
You have to make within a certain range to qualify for the earned income tax credit - if you make too little money you can't get it. WTF?
I'm not sure why you're even bringing up the EIC, but there is no minimum income level to qualify for it that I am aware of. Earned Income thresholds to qualify for the EIC in 2006 are $36,348 if you have 2 qualifying children, $32,001 if you have 1, and $12,120 if you have none. (If you are married filing jointly add $2,000 to each of those.) If your Earned Income is below those levels, you qualify for the EIC. See http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040.pdf, page 46 for documentation.
You really think that was an honest mistake? How does one make that "mistake" other than intentionally? So, no, I don't think pointing out this deliberate misrepresentation is disingenuous.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
No, I just can't imagine how one could accidently leave out crucial details that turn a story into something that doesn't even make sense to one of its reporters. It's like saying, "Oh, I accidently forgot to mention that the guy who I said stabbed the cop for no particular reason was being severely beaten on at the time." The words in the report were exactly that misleading. The phrase the female reporter used were something to the effect of "only because these private citizens also happened to be members of city council." I'm sure she wasn't part of the deliberate fabrication, but I'm equally sure there was a deliberate misrepresentation of the story.
And, no, that won't be considered evidence by you. I'm guessing most of their more egregious mistakes only happen on air, so I won't be able to find them on-line (yes, yes, "how convenient"). Therefore, the only way I could satisfy you is to get cable or watch Fox News on someone else's TV. As I only visit the people who watch Fox News about twice a year (hint: they're relatives), that's none too easy.
So, I'll admit I can't prove there is "an obvious deliberate fabrication", although logic dictates that it is the simplest explanation.
Upon further reflection, perhaps I can find some episodes on YouTube. OK, here's an interesting one (first one that came up with the search "Fox News ACLU"). Note that the lady says "Why [the ACLU picks] certain causes, like protecting the right of a man to marry a boy." The ACLU has never tried to protect that right. In fact, it couldn't because such a right doesn't exist. That's after watching less than 2 minutes of the first video I found. Was that, too, accidental? (Granted, it did seem off-the-cuff, so was not premeditated like the my first example.) At around 2:30 into the video, there's a more complicated misrepresentation that might be accidental. Note that the second and third hit also give an example of the type of Fox News misrepresentations of the ACLU, although I'm not sure I count O'Reilly as "news" so much as "opinion".
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Bull-loney.
Once into the top
If the holders of wealth take too literally the fantasy that their fortunes aren't tied to the fortunes of their fellow citizens, the Republic as a whole suffers. Wikipedia's articles on the US economy focus too much on yearly income. For a look at asset allocation, take a look here.
Luke, help me take this mask off
I've had a debate like this with a RL friend who has said what I was talking about wasn't Fox News' "real" news segment. How about this: if you can find me an approximately 10 minute "real" news clip from Fox News, I'll watch it and tell you if I can spot any lies and/or deliberate misrepresentation (such as leaving out details in such a way as to deliberately change the context of the story). If I can't, I'll chalk up the 2 or 3 experiences I've had in watching the Fox News channel as poor interviewing and/or editorial license.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
It's buried, but it's in there. Lindzen does not deny AGW. He merely thinks that Al Gore's movie is alarmism. He's right that no single hurricane can be attributed to global warming and that the media misrepresent it. That does not mean he disagrees with global warming. Thank you for the link, by the way. It's very handy for pointing out Lindzen's current beliefs with respect to global warming. He does not deny AGW, he merely thinks there's "no cause for alarm". He agrees 100% with the basic science. CO2 absorbs infrared radiation and mankind is directly responsible for the drastic increase in CO2 concentration.
It is interesting that he seemingly contradicts himself later when he says:
but if you read that with a skeptical eye, you'll notice that he's just arguing about the words and not the science. The distinction is between whether man is wholly responsible (i.e., one could "rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability") and whether man is only mainly or significantly responsible (i.e., "we cannot rule out..."). That's not denying AGW; that's splitting hairs.It's a really interesting read. It sounds like the words of someone who wants to be a rebel, but can't quite determine how to be non-consensus and still be an honest scientist (which he is). Having studied some non-conventional theories myself, I can understand his predicament.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
If not, I understand.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Looking throught the comments here is depressing. So many of you are clueless. This isn't a free speech issue. Rush Limbaugh isn't exercising his right of free speech with his show -- he's there because a corporation with access to the public air waves chose to put his show on the air. It's not his choice, and it's not yours. It's a corporation's choice.
This is about corporations having a monopoly on what is broadcast over the public's spectrum. It's about making corporations using the public commons act in the public interest (instead of acting in their own interest).
Corporations are not people. Corporations have no rights under the US Constitution. Corporations do not have free speech.
More importantly, corporations don't answer to the people. They answer, if they answer at all, to their shareholders. Let's see a show of hands. How many people think that GE's NBC network is going to originate any stories critical of anything that GE does? How many of you think that GE's ability to use your own broadcast spectrum to lie to you (that is, to spin the truth about itself) is good for you?
And that, my friends, is what the Fairness Doctrine is about. It's about keeping corporations honest.
Long live the Fairness Docrine!
(1) (2)
You're basically saying that no evidence will change your mind. Not the fact that we know - beyond a reasonable doubt - that we are directly responsible for increasing the concentration of CO2 from 280 ppmv to 380 ppmv. (Over the last 800,000 years, ice core samples indicate that those levels have varied naturally from 180 (ice age) - 280 ("normal" temperatures) ppmv. No proxies required - the air trapped can be measured directly.) Not the fact that CO2 absorbs infrared radiation (this is lab verifiable). Not the fact that global warming was predicted prior to the current increases in temperatures.
What makes you believe it will continue to warm up? The solar output is currently at its minimum (just passed through it). What are you basing this belief on? It seems like a convenient belief to have because it precludes future evidence from causing you to accept that you might be wrong.
Still, I agree with you that "people's capacity for self deception is enormous", and that most people (yourself included) most likely honestly come by their belief/disbelief in AGW. I also believe that nothing I say will change your mind. :)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Of course it isn't. What book is? But it is written by the producer of Edward R. Murrow (Fred Friendly, played by George Clooney in Good Night and Good Luck) who went on to be a first amendment scholar, played a key role in creating PBS, and is still a Columbia journalism professor.
In fact, a central theme of the book is how both Democrats and Republicans abused the Fairness Doctrine to their own advantage many, many times. They have both had organizations similar to the PTC - where 99% of Fairness complaints came from one organization (Democrat or Republican, depending on who controlled the White House).
Yes! Kucinich is the enemy! This is propaganda! They are trying to outlaw free speech! They are going to make all blogs register with the government! Very, very serious. Here: Bloggers Who Criticize Government May Face Prison: http://www.outlawjournalism.com/news/?p=2426 US government wants bloggers to register: http://www.outlawjournalism.com/news/?p=2427 Obviously, they can't do stuff like this without giving some explanation of "why it's good for the people." Get informed, because we cannot afford to loose all freedom on the net.