Obama's War on Talk Radio (It's started)

Obama's liberal philosophy dictates that when the news is bad, shoot the messenger. The newest data from Arbitron, the company charged with measuring the size of radio audiences, suggests that listenership to hip hop, inner city, and minority radio has been overstated in the past and that the popularity of conservative talk radio has been under-reported.

This conclusion - ideologically inconvenient for Obama - comes from the company's decision to dispense with the Stone Age way it has been measuring radio audiences - by hand written diaries based on listener memory - with modern machines which automatically record what the person is listening to and for how long.

The opening barrage in Obama's efforts to reign in talk radio was fired by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) this week when its acting Chairman Michael J. Copps announced an investigation of Arbitron's radio measuring technology called the Portable People Meter. (Not to be confused with the Purple People Eater celebrated in song in the 1950s).

Arbitron is the company tasked with rating radio listenership. The equivalent of the Neilson television ratings, its measurements of audience share are revered like Scripture by station managers, owners, and advertisers. Traditionally, Arbitron relied on hand written diaries. Since the diaries were based on memory, they were often faulty. So Arbitron availed itself of new technology in launching its Portable People Meter (PPM) - a cell phone sized unit the listener wears on his or her belt which automatically notes what station they are tuning in and when they switch or stop.

The PPM measurements concluded that hip hop, urban rock, and minority-oriented radio stations reached fewer listeners and for shorter periods of time than the diaries had indicated. It found that talk radio had a larger listenership.

The left saw an ideological bias at work and the states of New York and New Jersey sued Arbitron alleging discrimination in its choice of the sample charged with wearing the PPMs. It said that the ratings agency, which presumably recruited its sample by phone, was under-representing people without landlines who used only cell phones and hence under-counted minorities.

But almost all political polling is done by telephone and samples cannot include cell phones because one cannot determine the residence of the user from the number. Since survey researchers draw their samples geographically, they do not know which cell phone numbers are for which neighborhoods. (Land lines distribute the first three numbers of an exchange geographically).

If Arbitron is flawed, so is all polling, political and otherwise. The accuracy of most polling in predicting election results suggests that the flaws cannot be too bad.

What is really at work here is an effort by the FCC to stack the deck to help left-wing and minority stations earn higher advertising revenues than those to which their real market share would entitle them. Solicitous of the financial viability of its liberal allies on radio and anxious to undermine the balance sheets of conservative stations, the FCC is lending itself to the president's political agenda.

This investigation is, of course, only the first shot of the war against conservative radio. Soon the FCC will try to strip right wing stations of their licenses or impose fines on them payable to National Public Radio. In our forthcoming book, Catastrophe, we explain how this offensive will work and what will be its likely consequences.

But the opening salvo has been fired by the FCC which is willingly lending itself to stations with Democratic bias in an effort to swell their advertising revenues and to stop the growth of talk radio. Because the FCC will do much more to try to destroy the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Levin, and Neil Boortz, we must be vigilant if we hope to keep free speech alive, even if it comes from the right side of the stage.

If the narcissist now occupying the White House remains on the present course, we face actions in this country that could easily make the War Between the States look tame.

For a relatively young nation, we have had several very bloody wars here already.

Here’s the simple fact: We are now being pushed to a level of control and servitude many, many Americans cannot abide. The Founding Fathers left us four methods — represented by FOUR BOXES — for halting that process:

1. The SOAP BOX. We can freely speak out AGAINST that process in hopes we can educate enough of those around us of the dangers of the end point and they will come to their senses and use the second box. The move to silence certain voices here via the ludicrously named “Fairness Doctrine” seems to be gaining some momentum. If it succeeds, we will be far less informed and more MISinformed by an increasingly lapdog media. If we are denied the SOAP BOX, we still have – so far, at least — the

2. JURY BOX. Most judges will not tell jurors that they have the right to NULLIFY bad laws by judging the facts of the case AND THE LAW under which the case was brought. It’s called “JURY NULLIFICATION” and, despite the successful efforts of the statists and elitists to remove it from most state charters, it is STILL embodied in the constitutions of several states (GEORGIA IS ONE OF THEM!). But judges WILL NOT TELL YOU THAT. You must bring that information to the courthouse with you. And, remembering that it is NOT a sin to lie to a tyrant, if asked if you have ever even heard the phrase, say “no.” And DO NOT EVEN MENTION JURY NULLIFICATION to your fellow jurors! Simply hold out for what your common sense and love of liberty tell you is the correct verdict. AND IF YOU ARE ONE WHO LOVES – AND FULLY GRASPS — THE NOW THREATENED IDEA OF AMERICA, NEVER AVOID JURY DUTY.

3. We can also resist non-violently at the BALLOT BOX. However, given the century long trend to universal suffrage (where even the least informed, most ignorant, most easily manipulated among us can be hauled to the polls and – for a pack of smokes and a pint of Ripple – instructed to vote for the socialist-du-jour. Such massive interference with the election process by ACORN and others will probably make our effective use of this box more difficult if not impossible. Should that happen – or the denial by the state of our God-given rights under the Second Amendment becomes fact – we may be forced to pick up the
4. CARTRIDGE BOX. Pray with me that we never again reach that day. If we do get there, GOD HELP US ALL!

Let me close this with some words from the past.

“Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate
agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the
ocean without the awful roar of its waters.

“This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical
one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a
struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never
did, and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit
to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and
wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue
until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those
whom they oppress.”
Frederick Douglass August 4, 1857

Mr. Douglass was, of course, speaking of the slavery then extant here.

So, too, are we.

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