Tag Archives: fairness doctrine

Extreme liberals in Congress and in the Obama Administration are RESURRECTING PLANS to silence Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and other conservative voices on talk-radio – and possibly even conservatives on the Internet.

According to recent news reports, they’re bringing back the so-called Fairness Doctrine RIGHT NOW, through the “BACK-DOOR” and right under your nose… by stealth… hopefully, before you are any the wiser.

Federal Communications Commissioner (FCC) Robert McDowell recently said that he “fears the new administration and a Democratic Congress may try to revive the so-called Fairness Doctrine without the public realizing it.”

McDowell’s comments appear on the front page and above the fold in this month’s edition of IT+Telecom News, an insider-publication for elected officials, regulators and industry experts, published by The Heartland Institute.

And this time around, they WON’T call it the Fairness Doctrine.

The same Heartland Institute article, titled, “FCC Commissioner Warns Against ‘Back-Door’ Fairness Doctrine” goes on to state: “It may surface with another name and with different justifications, McDowell said, adding the doctrine could be expanded to threaten free speech on the Internet.”

And McDowell is not the only one sounding the alarm. The same article quotes other experts in the communications field:

“‘McDowell’s concerns are legitimate,’ said Jeff McCall, a professor of communications at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, ‘It’s hard to tell how [the Fairness Doctrine] might come back. It would likely be called something different. It’s a nuisance; it’s something that just won’t go away.’”

Yes… we’ve fought this battle before but it is very clear the extreme left is not going to give up.

Thomas Jefferson warned us that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance when he said; “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.”

That means we only have two choices… either we fight back RIGHT NOW… or we concede the fight and take the chance that the First Amendment will effectively become nothing more than a footnote in the history books.
The far left counts on your lack of knowledge when they pass laws and institute programs to curtail your God-given liberties. But when you shine the light of day on their plans… when they know that you can expose their intentions to the rest of the American people… they back down. The extreme left attempts to grab and keep power through stealth and deception… by controlling the media and passing legislation in smoke-filled rooms in the dark of night. You can do something RIGHT HERE AND RIGHT NOW TO TAKE THAT POWER BACK!

When you – and throngs of other patriotic Americans – flood their fax machines, they will know they cannot hide their designs and intentions from the American people. Let them know that you know that the extreme left is still trying to trample the First Amendment and SILENCE Rush Limbaugh, conservative talk radio and all dissenting opinion on the airwaves and the Internet.

EXPOSED: Plan B To Hush Rush And Silence Conservative Opinions On The Airwaves And The Internet.

Not only is it painfully obvious that extreme leftists in Congress and in the Obama administration are simply not going to give up when it comes to shutting down conservative voices on the airwaves and the Internet…

… they’ve already put Plan B into motion.

Let me explain.

A short time ago, your calls struck tremendous fear into the hearts of our elected officials in Washington. You made the term “Fairness Doctrine” such a pariah and a hot potato that on February 26, the Senate voted 87-11 in favor of an amendment offered by Senator Jim DeMint that would prevent the FCC from reinstating the Fairness Doctrine.

Only 11 hard-left Senators were willing to go on the record as supporting the Fairness Doctrine… because patriotic Americans like you made it clear that a vote in favor of the Fairness Doctrine was a vote in favor of draconian attempts to trample on the First Amendment.

Essentially YOU defined the issue and you beat them up so bad that 47 Democrats joined the entire Republican delegation in the Senate and supported the DeMint Amendment!

But hold your horses… there’s more to the story… and it isn’t pretty.

Minutes BEFORE passing the DeMint Amendment to kill the Fairness Doctrine, 57 Democrats passed another amendment, offered by Senator Dick Durbin, designed to essentially do THE EXACT SAME THING the so-called Fairness Doctrine was designed to do.

You read that right, 57 Democrats voted for an amendment designed to do the same thing as the Fairness Doctrine minutes before voting against the Fairness Doctrine so they could slyly and sanctimoniously tell the folks back home; “Hey… I voted AGAINST the Fairness Doctrine.”

Yes… the Fairness Doctrine is gone – but in name only. And in its place, the hard left is now pushing the adoption of policies that pose an EVEN GREATER THREAT to free speech.

Fortunately, the bill containing the Durbin and DeMint amendments is held up in Congress for the time being, but we can’t let these elected officials get away with such sickening duplicity.

With your help, we’re not going to let them get away with it!

You can help us expose them RIGHT NOW!

The far left counts on your lack of knowledge when they pass laws and institute programs to curtail your God-given liberties. But when you shine the light of day on their plans… when they know that you can expose their intentions to the rest of the American people… they back down. The extreme left attempts to grab and keep power through stealth and deception… by controlling the media and passing legislation in smoke-filled rooms in the dark of night. You can do something RIGHT HERE AND RIGHT NOW TO TAKE THAT POWER BACK!

When you – and throngs of other patriotic Americans – flood their fax machines, they will know they cannot hide their designs and intentions from the American people. Let them know that you know that the extreme left is still trying to trample the First Amendment and SILENCE Rush Limbaugh, conservative talk radio and all dissenting opinion on the airwaves and the Internet.

A Back-Door Mandate For The Fairness Doctrine…

Let’s take a look at the aforementioned Durbin amendment which supposedly seeks to “encourage and promote diversity in communication media ownership and to insure the public airwaves are used in the public interest.”

Sounds innocent enough… “promote diversity” … “insure the public interest” … that’s wholesome stuff… right?

It sounds almost as innocent as advocating a doctrine to promote “fairness” on the public airwaves.

But make no mistake; this latest incarnation of the Fairness Doctrine is even worse than the first.

Here’s why.

Back when Barack Obama was a candidate for President of the United States his campaign issued the following statement regarding the Fairness Doctrine:

“Senator Obama does not support re-imposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters.”

The liberal media gleefully gave Obama cover and only reported that Obama was against the Fairness Doctrine… PERIOD.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

What the media did not report was the rest of the statement. And why should they?

Of course, the rest of the statement probably was not meant for the general public. It was essentially red meat for Obama’s extreme left wing supporters. Essentially it was a message to his base that he does not support the Fairness Doctrine because IT DOES NOT GO FAR ENOUGH!

Here’s the rest of the statement, by the way:

“He [Obama] considers this debate to be a distraction from the conversation we should be having… Sen. Obama supports media-ownership caps, network neutrality, public broadcasting, as well as increasing minority ownership of broadcasting and print outlets.”

In other words, why should the government settle with merely attempting to enforce “fairness?” Why not just call the shots when it comes to the ownership of radio stations?

Bradley Smith, a law professor at Capital University in Ohio, outlined the dangers when he said, “imposing the Fairness Doctrine through the back door by, for instance, limiting radio station ownership would be a death blow to nationally syndicated radio shows.”

The Heartland Institute quotes Smith even further:

“Smith notes another back-door ‘fairness’ strategy would be to mandate ‘community advisory boards’ empowered to determine radio programming – allowing bureaucrats to overrule audience choices.”

“Community advisory boards” … If that sounds familiar, it should.

It’s straight out of the Saul Alinsky playbook and if you’re thinking that this strategy is eerily similar to the strategy the extreme left used to cripple our economy, you’re probably right.

The far left counts on your lack of knowledge when they pass laws and institute programs to curtail your God-given liberties. But when you shine the light of day on their plans… when they know that you can expose their intentions to the rest of the American people… they back down. The extreme left attempts to grab and keep power through stealth and deception… by controlling the media and passing legislation in smoke-filled rooms in the dark of night. You can do something RIGHT HERE AND RIGHT NOW TO TAKE THAT POWER BACK!

When you – and throngs of other patriotic Americans – flood their fax machines, they will know they cannot hide their designs and intentions from the American people. Let them know that you know that the extreme left is still trying to trample the First Amendment and SILENCE Rush Limbaugh, conservative talk radio and all dissenting opinion on the airwaves and the Internet.

Here’s A Nightmare Scenario.

Members of your so-called local community advisory board, (possibly your local chapter of ACORN), burst into a radio station that broadcasts The Rush Limbaugh Show.

“We don’t think your programming is diverse enough,” they tell the station manager. Handing him a list, they give him an ultimatum: “Here are the programs that you will broadcast. If you don’t like it, tough, we put you out of business.”

Sound a little melodramatic?

Before you cast judgment, remember that our current economic crisis can be traced back, in large part, to ACORN, and other so-called community organizations, essentially doing the same thing to banks… extorting them into giving billions of dollars in questionable loans.

Howard Husock of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government even predicted our current economic crisis years before it happened in an article: entitled “The Trillion-Dollar Bank Shakedown That Bodes Ill for Cities.”

Husock wrote:

“The National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a foundation-funded umbrella group for community activist groups that profit from the [Community Reinvestment Act] CRA, issued a clarion call to its members in a leaflet entitled ‘The New CRA Regulations: How Community Groups Can Get Involved.’ ‘Timely comments,’ the NCRC observed with a certain understatement, ‘can have a strong influence on a bank’s CRA rating.’”

Husock went on and told us how groups like ACORN essentially gained control of a huge segment of our economy and ran it – and all of us – into the dirt:

“‘To avoid the possibility of a denied or delayed application,’ advises the NCRC in its deadpan tone, ‘lending institutions have an incentive to make formal agreements with community organizations.’ By intervening, even just threatening to intervene, in the CRA review process, left-wing nonprofit groups have been able to gain control over eye-popping pools of bank capital, which they in turn parcel out to individual low-income mortgage seekers. A radical group called ACORN Housing has a $760 million commitment from the Bank of New York; the Boston-based Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America has a $3-billion agreement with the Bank of America; a coalition of groups headed by New Jersey Citizen Action has a five-year, $13-billion agreement with First Union Corporation. Similar deals operate in almost every major U.S. city.”

Others have written on how alleged ACORN extortion contributed to our current economic woes.

Here’s what Michelle Malkin wrote about ACORN thuggery:

“These are the same activists that helped sow the seeds of the subprime meltdown. They aggressively played the race card and pressured banks to loosen standards, throw out down payments and lend to some of the nation’s riskiest borrowers. Now, these mobs protest across the country, disrupt foreclosure auctions, threaten bank executives and accuse lenders of, yep, racism for lending to those riskiest of borrowers.”

Groups like ACORN got rich off your tax dollars… they operated under the radar for years… and, even though you didn’t even know it, you were paying them to trash our economy.

Today, we are all suffering.

Do we want the same thing to happen to conservative talk radio and possibly even conservative voices such as those of CFIF and other conservative organizations on the Internet?

If the answer is no, then don’t wait — it’s up to you to stop them.

The far left counts on your lack of knowledge when they pass laws and institute programs to curtail your God-given liberties. But when you shine the light of day on their plans… when they know that you can expose their intentions to the rest of the American people… they back down. The extreme left attempts to grab and keep power through stealth and deception… by controlling the media and passing legislation in smoke-filled rooms in the dark of night. You can do something RIGHT HERE AND RIGHT NOW TO TAKE THAT POWER BACK!

When you – and throngs of other patriotic Americans – flood their fax machines, they will know they cannot hide their designs and intentions from the American people. Let them know that you know that the extreme left is still trying to trample the First Amendment and SILENCE Rush Limbaugh, conservative talk radio and all dissenting opinion on the airwaves and the Internet.

Yours In Freedom,

Jeffrey Mazzella

Center for Individual Freedom
917-B King Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
703-535-5836
Fax:703-535-5838

CFIF is a 501(c)(4) not-for-profit constitutional advocacy organization with
the mission to protect and defend individual freedoms and individual rights.

Contributions to CFIF are
not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes.
Contributions may be deductible as a business expense.

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