FCC Diversity Czar Mark Lloyd Discussing Plans to Shut Down Conservative Media [Archive]

FrankRep

09-06-2009, 06:31 AM

Czarist America; The ranks of Obama's czars continue to swell (http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5244)

Ann Shibler | John Birch Society (http://www.jbs.org/)
01 September 2009

For those who are keeping tally, the Obama empire now has 32 czars. That figure includes Mark Lloyd, the Diversity Czar at the FCC — that’s diversity in broadcasting. Lloyd who comes from the Center for American Progress (CAP), concluded that talk radio is far too conservative, 91 percent he says, and wants to see that changed via public policy.

Truth be told, America has more czars in eight short months than the Romanovs ran through in over 300 years of rule in Imperial Russia.

Some see czars as only a symbolic gesture; when the president has something he wants emphasized, he appoints a czar, sending a clear message that certain issues are to receive more prominence. Others see it as emblematic of a bureaucracy out of control; some as a dictatorial way to implement policy changes. And still others see the appointment and proliferation of czars as a symptom of the rise in concentration of power at the White House, regardless of who is in power.

The new czars that have garnered the most attention so far include the energy czar (Carol Browner) and science czar (John Holdren), the climate czar (Todd Stern) and the health czar (Nancy-Ann DeParle), and the regulatory czar (Cass Sunstein) and the economic czar (Paul Volcker.) But did you know that there is a Great Lakes czar (Cameron Davis), a weapons czar (Ashton Carter), a Sudan czar (J. Scott Gration), a Mideast peace czar (George Mitchell), and a Mideast policy czar (Dennis Ross)? My personal favorite is the pay czar (Kenneth Feinberg) — who wouldn’t want that job? As special master for compensation he sets the compensation rates for the top 100 earners at companies who have received taxpayer money from TARP. (Imagine the possibilities!)

This brings us back to the new diversity czar, Attorney Mark Lloyd. Lloyd sees a golden opportunity to reform the congressionally-created Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), as if it weren’t liberal enough already, “along democratic lines and funded on a substantial level.” It’s no secret that the CPB already receives millions and millions of dollars from the feds, courtesy of your pocket, so why not make them dance and sing the White House party line? It would be state-TV, Amerika style.

To do this Lloyd is willing to silence private communications companies — it’s really his goal — and make them pay homage to the CPB in the form of extortion. In his 2006 Prologue to a Farce: Communications and Democracy in America (http://books.google.com/books?id=SbmxyHXadQ4C&dq=Prologue+to+a+Farce:+Communications+and+Democra cy+in+America&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=PIudSruROp6K8QbHsImyAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4#v=onepage&q=&f=false), Lloyd recommends that private broadcasters subsidize their own competition through fines, fees, and licensing requirements if their messages and programming do not conform politically to that of the federal government. So long freedom of speech!

According to Seton Motley (http://ow.ly/jjel) of the Media Research Center, Lloyd laid out his blueprint for attack in a George Soros-funded report entitled “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio.” He would silence conservative and religious talk radio in the free market with federal strings:

* Restore local and national caps on the ownership of commercial radio stations.
* Ensure greater local accountability over radio licensing.
* Require commercial owners who fail to abide by enforceable public interest obligations to pay a fee to support public broadcasting.

There is a term used by the FCC, “localism,” that is broadly defined and enforced by personal subjectivity. So it is this localism that Lloyd is invoking in his plan, apparent in the language “local” and “public interest.” This is a spectacular end run around the 1st Amendment — who needs the Fairness Doctrine brought back, when the diversity czar can impose his own prescriptions and definitions on local broadcasters?

In fact, Lloyd says this very thing in his “Forget the Fairness Doctrine” report:

To be fair, even some progressives are confused about the Fairness Doctrine. A recent news story reported that the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC for short, has asked Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to reintroduce the Fairness Doctrine—even as the same article reports on a speech to LULAC by ABC News correspondent John Quinones, who spoke of his work bringing to audiences a hard-earned perspective to the long-running immigration debate.

Quinones told the LULAC audience that he got his start because a San Antonio community organization threatened that if the stations didn't hire more Latinos, the group would go to the FCC and challenge their licenses. "Thank God for them," Quinones said. "I wouldn't be here."

Equal opportunity employment policies. Local engagement. License challenges. Nothing in there about the Fairness Doctrine...
The other part of our proposal that gets the dittoheads upset is our suggestion that the commercial radio station owners either play by the rules or pay. In other words, if they don’t want to be subject to local criticism of how they are meeting their license obligations, they should pay to support public broadcasters who will operate on behalf of the local community.

Three things are apparent here: 1) the licenses of stations who broadcast messages that don’t agree politically with the administration will be threatened; 2) those same stations will have to fork over extortion money to the state-media for daring to disagree; and 3) it will operate under somewhat of a snitch/complaint system.

It’s very telling that a regime has to fashion a visible hierarchy of many czars — the real plotters and planners who easily manipulate public opinion and Congress. The elevation of so many to positions of power and authority, out of touch with the American people and untouched by Senate confirmations or congressional control would lead many to believe that such a system amounts to an attempt to circumvent the checks and balances installed by our Founding Fathers.

But perhaps it’s just as well that it’s all out in the open for those who have eyes and ears to see and hear.

SOURCE:
http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5244