Senator Stabenow Exudes Hypocrisy of "Fairness Doctrine"

Throughout history, every successful despotic regime has understood the critical importance of establishing and maintaining a monopoly of information. A governing body that intends to rule with absolute authority and impunity simply cannot afford to have its inevitable mistakes and failures highlighted in front of the general public, whose unquestioning loyalty and devotion it needs in order to survive.

It is becoming grimly obvious that the Obama Administration and Democrat dominated Congress, being of the same mindset, are determined to establish just such a control of the airwaves. This goal is a cornerstone of their effort to stifle all critical analyses of the platitudes and excuses they offer as justification for their relentless assault on the foundation of these once-great United States of America.

New and menacing rumblings of their planned assault on free speech come from Democrat Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, who on February 4 told interviewer Bill Press "It's time to bring accountability to the airwaves." In her world of all-knowing Beltway insiders, "accountability" simply means that those who disagree should be summarily stripped of their ability to say so in front of the gullible masses.

The Founding Fathers understood the essential importance of an open debate to the perpetuation of a just and free republic. Thus they established the First Amendment to ensure the preservation of real checks on those in power. Only by highlighting and informing of the dangers of an ever-expanding and overbearing government could "we the people" hope to prevail against its self-serving power grabs. Clearly, Stabenow understands this concept as well. And she does not like it.

It is strikingly significant that in her attempt to deny the realities of the corruption of her party, while attempting to project guilt onto its victims, she cleverly invokes the word "accountability" as if it is the common citizens, or anyone daring to speak on their behalf, who need to be monitored and controlled.

Washington, now under the total dominion of budget busting Democrats, has no need of "accountability." Stabenow has been completely absent from any demands to assign real guilt in the crises of home mortgage scammers Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae. She has no interest in bringing fellow Congressional and Senate Democrats Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, the real criminals of the mortgage crisis, to justice. In her world, it is instead those who might recoil at this pillaging of the national treasury, no longer in terms of billions but now in trillions, who need to be suppressed and eventually, silenced altogether.

Stabenow speaks of "accountability" as a means of imposing government oversight on her political opposition. The greater the extent of such "accountability" that she can implement, the more ignorant and compliant the public will be. And thus, she and her Capitol Hill collaborators will face that much less real accountability. When brought down to basics, this plan to censor talk-radio would constitute the final pillar of an Orwellian edifice owned and operated exclusively by governing Democrats, for the ultimate benefit of governing Democrats.

Having to still contend with the annoying reactions of an informed public, Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats are scrambling to put a less ominous face on their real objectives. As a result, talk of the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" immediately triggers alarms, so it may appear under one of several less sinister sounding names.

One plan, floated by the Obama Administration in recent weeks, calls for fees, as determined by the FCC, to be levied on stations it does not consider to be "balanced" in their broadcasting format. The monies thus derived would then be reallocated to the Public Broadcasting System, an impeccably objective source of news and analysis if ever there was one.

Detestable as such a scheme might be, the reality is that the nation and its constitutional principles could readily survive it. And for that very reason such an endeavor will never be attempted. Regardless of its ability to burden private enterprise while bringing yet more money into the government coffers, a "free speech" tax could not achieve the intended goal. It is simply not sufficient to the consuming aspirations of Capitol Hill Democrats and the Obama Administration to merely enhance the abilities of PBS to perpetrate their Goebbels styled dissemination of leftist propaganda.

Liberal leaders already have a multi-headed Hydra of leftist disinformation in the form of CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, along with numerous cable and satellite affiliates. The public already has access to numerous concurring versions of the Democrat Party line from radio, television, and the nation's major newspapers. But this barrage of Democrat approved propaganda is only half of the equation. For its falsehoods to properly resonate with the public, all conflicting sources of information, on which the public might base an alternative judgment from that sanctioned by the state, must be crushed.

Not sufficiently content with the nauseating "love fest" showered on him by the sycophants of the "mainstream" media, Obama specifically admonished Republicans not to listen to Rush Limbaugh. With those words, he spotlighted the glass-jawed weakness of his governing philosophy. More significantly still, the plebian president indicated his unwillingness to contend for his ideas based on their supposed merits. Taking this cue, the major media has likewise castigated Limbaugh in recent weeks for his assertion that he wants Obama to fail at implementing his dreadful collectivist objectives.

Herein lies the essence of the "standards" proposed by Obama, and now endorsed by Stabenow. D.C. liberals ought to be allowed to spend as they wish, remold society as they wish, and impose onerous laws on their enemies as they wish. And no one should be allowed a position of prominence from which to oppose them. Doing so constitutes an unjustifiable attack on their beneficent and potentially omnipotent political machine.

Reality, both past and present, paints a starkly different picture. In the current fiscal abomination known as the "Stimulus Bill," more than four billion dollars have been allocated to "ACORN," the dubious horde of leftist "community organizers" whose primary purpose in this last election was to garner criminally fraudulent votes for the Democrats. A host of other payouts, arguably as devoid of any real "stimulating" effect on the economy as the public bankrolling of the sixties holdovers at ACORN, are included in this mother of all earmarks. Yet they are included in the bill, based not on any bogus aid they might offer to the economy, but on their promise of a political boon for the Democrat Party.

Accountability indeed. Stabenow, Obama, and their minions know that the ludicrously misnamed "Fairness Doctrine" represents a final assault on any of the annoying aspects of real accountability that presently offers the greatest obstacle to their consuming agenda. Americans beware; a reestablishment of the "Fairness Doctrine" might represent a point of no return.