You stay the hell away from my first amendment

If government can "outlaw" conspiracy theories, what will stop government from claiming that anyone who disagrees with present policy is fomenting a conspiracy theory?

Take a look at the history of the Progressive movement. One of their signatures is censorship of those who disagree. The Progressive movement is a movement that cannot stand up under the bright lights of the truth, and they know it.

The Wilson administration locked up over 100,000 citizens for the crime of "sedition." The Roosevelt administration, in coordination with progressive book publishers successfully blacked balled Paleo-conservative authors who were in opposition to FDR's building of the welfare state, the confiscation of the citizen's gold, the Federal Reserve Act and the federal income tax.

And while were at it, let's not forget the racism and elitism of the Progressive movement either. Wilson was an advocate of eugenics in order to purify the races. Roosevelt locked up over 100,000 INNOCENT American citizens after confiscating their land and wealth based upon their race during WWII.

Would it really surprise any student of history if the Progressives now in control of all three branches of our government made a move to censor conservative ideas? Fairness Doctrine, anyone??

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Can you actually name real examples of where this is being pushed by anyone in the Obama administration. Or are you just taking these people at face value for some misquote or mangle a sentence or two he wrote in some book?

http://www.google.com/search?q=obama+communications+czar&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Obama recently appointed Mark Lloyd as the Chief Diversity Officer to the FCC. We have never before had a diversity czar at the FCC. The goal is ostensibly to make sure that on radio there is a broad diversity of opinion. There is no such diversity in TV and newspapers. In 2006, Lloyd published a book entitled, Prologue to a Farce: Communications and Democracy in America, in which he proposes, among other things, that private radio broadcasters be required to pay a fine equal to their total operating costs in order to benefit public radio broadcasting.

The only solution, according to Lloyd, is state control of the media. Centralization of the means of communications in the state is one of the basic tenets of Marxism. Corporations are evil because the corporation is the primary means of accumulating capital - and capital is what is needed to accomplish large tasks. The abolition of private property is also one of the most basic tenets of Marxism.
Lloyd echoed this proposal in a Center for American Progress piece which he co-authored, The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio, published in 2007. The Center for American Progress is a leftist political organization that was funded with large contributions by George Soros.


The proposal does not analyze the news media, in general. It focuses only on talk radio. It does not focus on the “structural imbalances” in television, newspaper and publishing media markets, which are already heavily biased towards the left. Out of the three major television broadcast news organizations, all three of them (ABC, NBC and CBS) are “progressive”. Of the major cable news networks (CNN, MSNBC, Fox, CNBC) only one of them is conservative (Fox) and even that one balances it with liberal viewpoints.

This proposal recommends:

• Provide a license to radio broadcasters for a term no longer than three years.
• Require radio broadcast licensees to regularly show that they are operating on behalf of the public interest and provide public documentation and viewing of how they are meeting these obligations.
• Demand that the radio broadcast licensee announce when its license is about to expire and demonstrate how the public can participate in the process to determine whether the license should be extended. In addition, the FCC should be required to maintain a website to conduct on-line discussions and facilitate interaction with the public about licensee conduct.

If the radio station does not comply with any of these proposed regulations then a fine would be imposed that could be as much as the total operating costs of the radio station.
All of these proposals are aimed at confiscating the FCC license. Whether because some prearranged mob complains about the licensee, or more money is required to be spent on regulatory issues, or simply because of the imposition of fines that are so confiscatory that a single fine would put the radio station out of business. Either way, without a license, the radio broadcast station is out of business. To the extent that a radio station is able to stay in business by paying the fines, the revenue generated by fines would be transferred to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Appendix A of the proposal contains the “enemies list”: a list of stations which have been classified as “progressive” or “conservative”, with the latter being targeted for regulatory action. Never before has content-based regulation, which is prohibited by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, been proposed so openly. These proposed regulations should cause great concern because they are designed to:

• Achieve State control of all media and communications of the kind that the dictator Chavez has achieved in Venezuela and which has happened in every modern totalitarian state (e.g., Soviet Union, WWII-era Germany, and China. Any criticism of the state is censored and this gives the state the ability literally to get away with murder. Only tyrannical governments seek to control the media and silence the voices of dissent.
• Attack private property. A business license of any kind does not create public ownership of the business. There are very few businesses that one can operate without a license. Doctor’s require a medical license. Attorneys require a license to practice law. Businesses must get a business license from their local jurisdiction. Radio stations of all kinds, including broadcast radio, must get an FCC license. The licensee then has to invest significant amounts of money into broadcasting equipment (radios, antennas and other high end electronics), as well as structures

The comparison to Venezuela is not over the top, Mr. Lloyd has actually praised the “incredible revolution” in Venezuela!

So the answer is no?

Mark Lloyd, chief diversity officer of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), called for a “confrontational movement” to combat what he claimed was control of the media by international corporations and to re-establish the regulatory power of government through robust public broadcasting and a more powerful FCC.

Lloyd expressed his regulatory call to arms in his 2006 book, “Prologue to a Farce: Communications and Democracy in America” (University of Illinois Press).

In the book, Lloyd also said that public broadcasting should be funded through new license fees charged to the nation’s private radio and television broadcasters, and that new regulatory fees should be used to fund eight new regional FCC offices.

These offices would be responsible for monitoring political advertising and commentary, children’s educational programs, number of commercials, and content ratings of the programs.

Frequently referencing one of his heroes, left-wing activist Saul Alinsky, Lloyd claims in his book that the history of American communications policy has been one of continued corporate control of every form of communication from the telegraph to the Internet.

“Citizen access to popular information has been undermined by bad political decisions,” Lloyd wrote. “These decisions date back to the Jacksonian Democrats’ refusal to allow the Post Office to continue to operate the telegraph service.”

Lloyd claimed that neither technology nor liberal reforms have been able to overcome the damage caused when government fails to give everyone an equal voice.

Throughout history, Lloyd said, “[t]he most powerful communications tool was deliberately placed in the hands of one faction in our republic: commercial industry.”

“Neither Progressive era reforms nor new communications technologies have been able to correct the problems resulting from government abdication of a responsibility to advance the equal capability of citizen discourse,” Lloyd added.

“Corporate liberty has overwhelmed citizen equality,” he wrote.

Government, Lloyd said in his book, is the “only” institution that can manage the communications of the public, arguing that Washington must “ensure” that everyone has an equal ability to communicate.

“The American republic requires the active deliberation of a diverse citizenry, and this, I argue, can be ensured only by our government,” he says. “Put another way, providing for the equal capability of citizens to participate effectively in democratic deliberation is our collective responsibility.”

Lessons for Radicals

Lloyd relies heavily on the left-wing radical Saul Alinsky in explaining his strategy.

Alinsky (1909-1972) was a community organizer and activist from Chicago and the author of the book, Rules for Radicals, which opens with an acknowledgment "to the very first radical ... Lucifer." As for political tactics, Alinsky said, “The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away. In this book we are concerned with how to create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people. This means revolution."

With Alinsky as the political guide, Lloyd outlines nine “lessons” that people can draw on when trying to combat international businesses.

1. “Organizing people must be a priority. In order to counter effectively the power of major corporations we understood that we had to be able to demonstrate the support of hundreds of thousands of people. As Alinksy wrote: ‘Change comes from power, and power comes from organization. In order to act, people must get together.’”

2. “Understand where people stand on your issue. Once we were clear that we needed to drum up the support of people, we needed to understand what people knew about our issues. As Alinksy wrote, ‘if people feel they don’t have the power to change a bad situation, then they do not think about it.’”

3. “Connect with groups that have already organized the community. Our means of reaching local communities was through existing national organizations. We reached out to groups that had large constituencies and articulated our message by identifying how our goals fit their core interests.”

4. “The strategy must have an inside and an outside game. For media reform, this means we needed to embrace the necessity of operating both in and outside Washington [D.C.].”

5. “Don’t wait for events to unfold on their own. Pressure, pressure, pressure. If we wanted events to work in a direction that would benefit us, we knew we needed to push. We needed to apply pressure and to direct that pressure not at the government, but through the government at our true opposition – the broadcasters. Alinsky again: ‘The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain constant pressure upon the opposition.’”

6. “Communications is a priority. Again drawing from Alinksy, we understood that ‘one can lack any of the qualities of an organizer – with one exception – and still be effective. That exception is the art of communication.’ It is not just a matter of getting media to cover your campaign. That is, undoubtedly, a part of it, but it is also about getting the sort of attention you want, so the public and your opposition see you and your issues the way you want to be seen.”

7. “Research is key. We took not only message and public opinion research seriously, we took seriously our obligation to research the activity of our opposition. Our research entailed not only public opinion polling, but academic papers presenting economic and social analysis, legal research…and grassroots research involving the inspections of dozens of televisions station’s public files.”

8. “Establish a broad base of funding and never stop raising money. Alinksy is right that people are a source of power, but without adequate funds organizing people effectively cannot be accomplished.”

9. “Find allies in power. If civil rights leaders such as King had the Kennedys and Johnson, and the anti-Bork campaign had Ted Kennedy, our main ally was [FCC Chairman] Bill Kennard.”

The solution

To combat the control of international business and restore government to what he sees as its rightful place in managing public communications, Lloyd calls for a “confrontational movement” to protest the present order and organize a political movement that could force government to rein the businesses in.

“If our republican form of government is perishing because communications – the infrastructure of that republic – is under the yoke of international business how, at last, do we save it?” he asks. “We must build a confrontational movement to reclaim our democracy, a movement committed to active and sustained protest against the present order.”

To do this, Lloyd draws on his experience lobbying the FCC during the Clinton administration, counseling would-be revolutionaries to follow the tactics used by other left-wing movements, such as the followers of Saul Alinsky and the people who ran the campaign to block Republican Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork.

"We understood at the beginning, and were certainly reminded in the course of the campaign," wrote Lloyd, "that our work was not simply convincing policy makers of the logic or morality of our arguments. We understood that we were in a struggle for power against an oppenent, the commercial broadcasters ...."

"We looked to successful political campaigns and organizers as a guide, especially the civil rights movement, Saul Alinsky, and the campaign to prevent the Supreme Court nomination of the ultra-conservative jurist Robert Bork," wrote Lloyd. "From those sources we drew inspiration and guidance."

Lloyd proposes six initial goals for wresting control of communications from the corporate interests he claims control it. As his book details:

1. “End the federal subsidy of commercial media, particularly cable and broadcast television. Broadcasters should pay for the great privileges of a federally protected license to operate a business by using the publicly owned [radio or television] spectrum.”

2. “The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) must be reformed along democratic lines and funded at a substantial level. The CPB board should be elected, [with] eight members representing eight regions of the country (New England, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, Midwest, Plains States, Southwest, Mountain States, and the Pacific Coast) and a chairman appointed by the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate.”

“Federal and regional broadcast operations and local stations should be funded at levels commensurate with or above those spending levels at which commercial operations are funded,” said Lloyd.

“This funding should come from license fees charged to commercial broadcasters. … Local public broadcasters and regional and national communications operations should be required to encourage and broadcast diverse views and programs. … Spectrum allocations should be established that create clear preferences for public broadcasters ensuring that regional, local, and neighborhood communities are well served,” he added.

3. “The FCC should be fully funded with regulatory fees from broadcast, cable, satellite, and telecommunications companies. The FCC should be staffed at regional offices, matching those CPB regions, at levels sufficient to monitor and enforce communication regulation.

“Clear federal regulations over commercial broadcast and cable programs regarding political advertising and commentary, educational programming for children, the number of commercials, ratings information about programs before they are broadcast, and the accessibility of services to the disabled should be established and widely promoted.”

4. “Universal service support provided by all commercial telecommunications providers (whether they are classified as information services or not) to fund access to advanced telecommunications services should be expanded to all nonprofit organizations, including higher-level academic and vocational schools, community centers, and 501(c) (3) organizations unaffiliated with either business or government.”

5. “Postal subsidies should be fully restored to small independent nonprofits presses. Postal subsidies should be reduced for commercial and business operations. The postal service should be returned to congressional control with the central mission of ensuring that all Americans have access to the post.”

6. “Public secondary schools should be required to include civics and media literacy as part of their core curriculum. Testing on civic, media, and computer literacy should be required and national standards set.”

For those who think any or all of these recommendations might infringe on the free speech rights of broadcasters, Lloyd says his concern is not the “exaggerated” concerns over the First Amendment.

“It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press,” he said. “This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies.”

“[T]he purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance,” said Lloyd. “[T]he problem is not only the warp to our public philosophy of free speech, but that the government has abandoned its role of advancing the communications capabilities of real people.”

Lloyd expressed his regulatory call to arms in his 2006 book, “Prologue to a Farce: Communications and Democracy in America” (University of Illinois Press).

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Nothing to do with any policy, so the answer is still no?

hanimmal said:

Nothing to do with any policy, so the answer is still no?

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The past is the past; that's wright...

Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnnyorganic
And some people who have a knee-jerk negative reaction to the mere mention of Ayn Rand's name have never bothered to read her work.

^^^ The most accurate post in the thread!

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I am stealing this from the Rand section. Think it works well here too.

I just read the original post. That is F-ing rediculous. I am outraged. Since the usa is over 100 trillion $ in debt, they're gonna make up the defecit by taxing anything you say.Whats next? "Off with his head!" but take his wallet from him first? What a joke. I've always resented the capitolistic way this country runs things and how money runs all. Who wants to start their own country with me? Shit, if can afford the tariff for suggesting that. So is it just that proposing/saying aloud a conspiracy would be illegal? Lets all learn sign language to conspire better. Dont stick your head out or it will get chopped by the Mr. Big Dick Law. Fuck, i shouldnt say too much, or I might get assassignated by green berets like they did Che Guevara

drumbum3218 said:

I just read the original post. That is F-ing rediculous. I am outraged. Since the usa is over 100 trillion $ in debt, they're gonna make up the defecit by taxing anything you say.Whats next? "Off with his head!" but take his wallet from him first? What a joke. I've always resented the capitolistic way this country runs things and how money runs all. Who wants to start their own country with me? Shit, if can afford the tariff for suggesting that. So is it just that proposing/saying aloud a conspiracy would be illegal? Lets all learn sign language to conspire better. Dont stick your head out or it will get chopped by the Mr. Big Dick Law. Fuck, i shouldnt say too much, or I might get assassignated by green berets like they did Che Guevara

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you don't have to be outraged over the OP - it is a lie and intentional misrepresentation. it is right-wing propaganda that has no place in legitimate conversation. it was issued by the ministry of misinformation.

jeffchr said:

you don't have to be outraged over the OP - it is a lie and intentional misrepresentation. it is right-wing propaganda that has no place in legitimate conversation. it was issued by the ministry of misinformation.

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Thank you, jeffchr, for finally saying something in this thread that is based in reality!!
There has been so much distortion and misinformation and outright ignorance expressed here, especially when trying to distort what liberals and progressives have said and done, it's beyond crazy.
They all must have had their tin foil hats on for a long, long time.

hanimmal said:

Nothing to do with any policy, so the answer is still no?

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How clearly does it have to be laid out for you, hannimmal?

Would you deny that the Progressives have taken over the Democrat Party?

Would you deny that the Progressives are in power cramming their ideology down the throats of Americans as we speak?

Would you deny the history of the Progressive movement?

Would you deny that history has a way of repeating itself?

How about putting two and two together and see what you come up with.

How clearly does it have to be laid out for you, hannimmal?

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Well some policy decisions would be nice, and not just guesswork or rantings of the fringe players on both sides.

Would you deny that the Progressives have taken over the Democrat Party?

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Depends what you mean by 'progressives', there is a lot of inflection that goes on with this website, so it is hard to say. You mean people that are fit more into human rights or do you mean the lunatic fringe that believe we should live in igloos and only eat grass?

Would you deny that the Progressives are in power cramming their ideology down the throats of Americans as we speak?

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Again I would say it depends on what you mean by 'cramming down our throats'. If your going for historical context and mean things like prohibition, I would say no. Because I would assume you mean people like Barney Frank is a progressive, and he tried to make marijuana legal on the Federal level. Which is not a progressive move.

If you mean political posturing there are people out there that can shout all they like, but nobody is going to do anything based on their rantings.

Would you deny the history of the Progressive movement?

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Nope from the great things like helping women get the right to vote and helping end child labor, to the bad like prohibition, they have done what they have done. But do you deny that the lines are not blended, and old encompassing terms are no longer valid?

Would you deny that history has a way of repeating itself?

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Only to the people that are too stupid to learn from it. Like why I made the banking thread, it is important to have actual information out there, and to help people understand why and how things work and where the system has evolved from. Because if you don't understand it, you are just taking other people, that have their own agenda, at face value.

And if you don't understand the history of listening to people without learning why and how things work you yourself are doomed to repeat history. But if you learn it you can see where history is repeating, and where it is different, and change accordingly.

How about putting two and two together and see what you come up with.

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2+2 = you have a very overstimulated scare about the government today. Instead of listening to what is happening and trying to understand why it is, you instead pull from the studies you have looked at that tell you how it is bad.

You have asked me once about what books I would recommend, and I was very pumped to let you know, but sadly you seemed to ignore it. But I would urge you to do some reading outside the norm that you have been accustomed to. If you would just start to cross-reference what you read with the books that explain (like textbooks) how and why they do it, you might find a massive amount of gaping holes (one way or the other).

And that is when the fun starts, because you have an insight and can then check and see which model works best (the textbook, or the other) at explaining what is actually going on.

OK well this thread is settled then