Capitalism vs. Socialism

The liberals are crying and whining about conservative dominance on the airways. They are absolutely incapable of conceptualizing how a business operates or how a free market works. Mixing socialism and capitalism would be akin to the feet of the statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. As with all liberal shortcomings, if they can’t compete, they go crying to the government.

Here is an excellent example of why liberal and socialist fiscal ideology has never worked.

The Center for American Progress (a liberal think tank) earlier this week released a report titled “The Structural Imbalance Of Political Talk Radio.” The report summarized that 91 percent of talk weekday talk radio is conservative, with 9 percent being liberal. The groups conclusion is stricter media ownership limits and public-interest requirements. It also stated that the “current landscape does not serve all Americans.”

This report and others like it are directly related to reinstating the Fairness Doctrine. There has been on Capital Hill about reinstating it. Congress has tried twice to congressionally mandate it, but Reagan vetoed it and so did George H.W. Bush. Now the Democrats are swarming all over this report an argument for the government to get in involved and make it all fair.

Here is where the left’s moronic mindset shines:

“There is little free speech or free choice in a market system that pushes out one-sided information 90 percent of the time on the radio,” said John Halpin, a senior fellow at the center. “Radio stations are licensed to operate in the public interest. Promoting one point of view over all others does not meet any reasonable public-interest standard.”

Why is there an imbalance? Economics 101. Buyers dictate what products sell and what products won’t, the free market principle allows business’s to adapt to this ever changing environment. We still have a free market society. Liberal talk radio does not sell. If liberal talk radio sold, they would share airtime with conservative talk radio on the same station. Sponsors will pay for listeners. Air America, came on the scene hot and heavy in 2004 as a far left talk radio program. They filed for bankruptcy in 2006. No listeners=no revenue=bankruptcy= lessons in economics 101. For the liberals to believe that the station’s owners are not carrying these liberals talk formats for what ever reason other than economic is inane and myopic.

The Center’s statistics are far from accurate because the study is so flawed it has at best dubious credibility. They have skewed the numbers to propagate their agenda. An example:

According to the methodology cited on page seven, “hosts were categorized as conservative, progressive/ liberal, or indeterminate/ neither based on self- identification, show descriptions, and listings in Talkers Magazine. Only hosts with evident and near- indisputable leanings were categorized.”

The survey is clearly biased and the Center utilized a broad poetic license in labeling what constitutes a conservative or a liberal.

If Congress applies socialist principles to the free market airwaves it would have catastrophic financial consequences. The liberals are harping for the government to force an industry to offer equal airtime to a format that is a loser.

If the fairness doctrine makes it out of Congress as a bill, a conservative President would veto it. Bush has never governed as a conservative and it would only be supposition as to his position. If it does make it into law, it would be shot down by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, with the replacement of O’Connor with Alito, has moved one step closer to a bench of originalist rather than a Junior College remedial English class trying to interpret an allegorical piece of verse. One of the reasons the FCC terminated the Fairness Doctrine was that the Fairness Doctrine “might be in violation of the first amendment.”