FCC To Require TV Stations To Post Rates For Campaign Ads 106
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the dollars-and-sense dept.
from the dollars-and-sense dept.
bs0d3 writes "The FCC has voted to require broadcast TV stations to post online advertising rates they charge political candidates and advocacy groups. The vote came despite strong opposition from many broadcasters. 'By law, television stations offer political candidates advertising rates that are much lower than those offered to other advertisers.' Advocates argue the public should have easy access to information about how much candidates and other groups are spending on television to suck in voters. 'Network-affiliated stations in the top 50 markets will have six months to comply. For all others, the deadline is 2014.'"
Re:Odd sounding argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Lowering the price doesn't necessarily level the playing field.
It allows candidates with smaller budgets to enter the game, but it also allows bigger budgets to simply buy more advertising time.
The only way leveling the playing field in this would be to 1) prohibit political commercials and 2) oblige TV stations to set aside a certain time for political broadcasts, that is then shared equally between the various parties/candidates that participate in an election. This way every single candidate has their say 15 minutes of TV time, and all have the same amount of time to spread their views.
Re:The most shocking news would be.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Look, I'm not going to argue for or against the veracity of your comments here. I just need to say the following.
Goddamn man, you must have one hell of a vendetta against Fox News to use the article/summary as a springboard into a rant about Fox News and its bias. Hell, after the first sentence, your paragraph has extremely little, if anything, to do with the article at hand and solely becomes about how Fox News has infected the news cycle.
There's a time and a place for things. And, I suppose, you follow the idea that you should make your own time and place.
Re:Technocracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Well if everyone is so fucking stupid then perhaps we should switch to a Technocratic-oligarchy instead of a Democracy. There have been several times in US history where powerful people suggested we discourage the stupid masses from being involved in democratic elections.
With "the stupid masses" defined as "anyone who disagrees with me"?
Re:or maybe honesty in superpac naming (Score:4, Insightful)
just had a crazy idea, require honest names for superpacs, like "Halliburton execs for Romney" or "Goldman Sachs managers for Obama"
"Rich donors for the Rich"
Re:Odd sounding argument (Score:5, Insightful)
This won't level the playing field. The Incumbent always has the opportunity to try to bribe voters with a new law giving them a tax break of some sort. Which proposed new law, even if it never becomes an actual law, gets the Incumbent's name on the Evening News, and the morning talk shows, and the newspapers, and that sort of thing.
All of which is free publicity.
Eliminating political advertising altogether (which would pretty much require repeal of the First Amendment) would just make sure that the only political candidates you ever heard mentioned would be the incumbents....
Re:or maybe honesty in superpac naming (Score:4, Insightful)
Won't work and here is why: Shell corps, which the USA really doesn't do little if anything to regulate. You see all GS or Halliburton would do is set up a dummy corp called "Freedom for the free' or some other bullshit name, bounce the money through two or three shell corps before it got to FFTF and voila! same problem we have now.
Personally i have serious doubts anything can be done about the system until it collapses which i truly believe is inevitable now. The corruption is just too deep and too entrenched and any solutions would cause loss of power to those top 5% who frankly won't stand for it. Instead what we will see is BOTH sides grabbing more and more power for themselves, BOTH sides giving away money to their masters as fast as they can, and BOTH sides making sure the printing presses spin like tops.
So I'm sorry friend and as much as the few optimists left like to call me a bastard for saying this I believe it to be true nonetheless, the only thing you can do now is grab as much for you and yours as you can and try to be as ready as you can be for the fall. Some have said that attitude will hasten the fall, but so what? if it crashes in 10 years or 15 will it really make any difference? The jobs are gone, the factories closed or closing, nearly half don't pay any taxes because they are too poor and more and more of the population can't even eat or clothe themselves without government assistance. and in all of this there is NOTHING you can do about it because you don't have enough money to buy congressmen and votes are worthless when both sides have been bought.
So grab what you can and be ready, because even someone with a sixth grade education knows you can't spend more than you bring in forever but with both sides so bought and paid for and their refusal to see this most basic of realities means all you can do is be ready for when the whole rotten thing comes crashing down.
Re:America has the best government money can buy.. (Score:5, Insightful)
they should just pay the voters directly
They do. If you're a minority they call it EBT.
If you're white they call it earned income tax credit.
If you're old, they call it Medicare and they call it prescription drug benefits.
They promise to tweak one or those or the others depending on which votes they're lacking in the current campaign. But the old people seem the most popular.
Re:America has the best government money can buy.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The U.S. Government (U.S. capitol-ism) is a business with all the implied stakeholders that defines crony-fascism.
FTFY to more-accurately reflect reality. BTW, it isn't limited to one political party either, so this is not a partisan attack. A pox on both their houses in this case.
Strat
Re:America has the best government money can buy.. (Score:4, Insightful)
You're ignorant. If you're poor they call it EBT,
I was going to bring this up as well.
Misinformation like "welfare is for minorities" exists only because certain groups are playing racial politics.
The majority of Americans on welfare benefits are white.
The majority of Americans on medicaid are white.
Just so everyone understands this:
As a percentage of their demographic, more minorities are using government support programs.
As a percentage of the population, more white people are using government support programs.