Can You Be A Squatter Where You Do Not Live?
By Mitch Berg
Ralph Nader, desperately seeking relevance, rears back and tries to take a swing at Rush Limbaugh, calling him a welfare queen:
Rush Limbaugh
The Rush Limbaugh Show
2 Penn Plaza
New York, NY 10121Dear Mr. Limbaugh,
The Associated Press reports your new contract with Premiere Radio Networks will enrich you with at least $38 million a year over the next eight years. You are making this money on the public property of the American people for which you pay no rent.
You, Rush Limbaugh, are on welfare.
As you know, the public airwaves belong to the American people. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is supposed to be our trustee in managing this property. The people are the landlords and the radio and TV stations and affiliated companies are the tenants.
Leave aside the obvious double standard – could also demand “rent” from the Big Three networks? They’ve made astronomically more money than Limbaugh over the past eighty years. How about Air America?
Ralph (and the supporters of his who will hop up and down like poo-flinging monkeys at his latest utterance)? Limbaugh doesn’t own any transmitters. His production company, and Premier, his syndicator – just produce a program, and put it up on the satellite (and they do pay for that).
You’ll need to take it up with Limbaugh’s 600 affiliates, who carry the show. By the way – this is important – they carry it of their own corporate free will: nobody was forced to carry the Limbaugh show.
The problem is that since the Radio Act of 1927 these corporate tenants have been massively more powerful in Washington, DC than the tens of millions of listeners and viewers. The result has been no payment of rent by the stations for the value of their license to broadcast. You and your company are using the public’s valuable property for free. This freeloading on the backs of the American people is called corporate welfare.
No, it’s not. The airwaves are “public” in the same sense that the great outdoors is “public”; I, or Limbaugh, owes “the public” no more for sending a radio signal through the ether than I do for walking along the beach.
You need not wait for the broadcast industry-indentured FCC and Congress to do the right thing. You can lead by paying a voluntary rent–determined by a reputable appraisal organization–for the time you use on the hundreds of stations that carry your words each weekday.
Excellent idea, Ralph!
And then you can pay me “rent” for the space you’re using on my monitor!
No really – they’re the same. Equally senseless and illogical.
Anyway, Ralph; I’ll look for the same letter to go to Al Franken, Bill Maher, “Lionel”, Oprah Winfrey…
(Via Brian Maloney)
July 11th, 2008 at 7:22 am
Mitch lied: “The airwaves are “public” in the same sense that the great outdoors is “public”; I, or Limbaugh, owes “the public” no more for sending a radio signal through the ether than I do for walking along the beach.”
Sweet! Angryclown announces he’s setting up a 50,000-watt radio station on the same frequency as el Rushbo. It’s public, after all!
July 11th, 2008 at 8:12 am
on the same frequency as el Rushbo
Which one, Clownie? There are hundreds.
Hey what about live streaming on the web? Are those “public digit waves”?
July 11th, 2008 at 8:46 am
Angryclown announces he’s setting up a 50,000-watt radio station on the same frequency as el Rushbo.
Heh.
You go right aheand and put up a stick on “Rush’s Frequency”.
Hell, do it via the FCC, perfectly legally!
What “Frequency” is “Rush’s”, by the way?
July 11th, 2008 at 8:47 am
a) I’ve been to public beaches you had to pay to use (New Jersey).
2) Maher is on cable, so unless the voluntary rent is retroactive, it wouldn’t hit him now.
e) If anyone would need to pay such rents, it would be the stations, not the hosts of syndicated shows.
July 11th, 2008 at 8:55 am
E is precisely my point. Nader doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
July 11th, 2008 at 9:44 am
Mitch:
“Nader doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
You say that like it is news.
😉
July 11th, 2008 at 10:26 am
Mitch queried: “What “Frequency” is “Rush’s”, by the way?”
Might as well ask Angryclown which theaters are showing “Jackass 2.” Angryclown has no idea, my friend.
But since you’ve let Angryclown know about his right to unfettered access to the public airwaves, seems there’s nothing preventing him from setting up transmitters *everywhere* Rush is syndicated. More powerful transmitters on the same frequencies. “Air Angryclown.”
July 11th, 2008 at 10:35 am
“Air Angryclown.”
Which would make Air America look like a smashing success in comparison.
July 11th, 2008 at 10:37 am
Angryclown has no idea, my friend.
Precisely – Rush has no frequency, and he uses no “public airwaves”, himself. Zip. Nada. Dubiously, he might “own” the tiny bit of Ku-bandwidth it takes to beam his signal up to the satellite (although I’d suspect Premiere owns that), but that’s all paid for, part of the production overhead (hah hah, I slay me).
But what if he did? Broacasters have never paid for “public” airwaves, any more than those cars full of twenty or thirty clowns pay more than a family of four when they drive to the beach on the Jersey Shore. You just stake out your piece of bandwidth/hyperdermic-clogged-sand, and do your thing.
July 11th, 2008 at 10:50 am
The FCC may have something to say if I stake out my own bandwidth. Cause it ain’t “public.” It’s free to broadcasters, of course, but it’s no more public than the land under the Empire State Building.
July 11th, 2008 at 10:57 am
Cause it ain’t “public.”
Tell it to Nader.
July 11th, 2008 at 10:59 am
It’s free to broadcasters, of course…
…and if you can find an open frequency and have enough financial backing to meet the FCC’s requirements, you can have the same shot at getting “Air Clown” on the air as everyone else.
Which, in NYC, means a helluvva lot of money in a sagging market. Why, to make ends meet you’d need to air something that’d guarantee a shizzle-load of income.
Like, say, Limbaugh.
July 11th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Good point, Mitch. And when I scrape together a billion and the owners committee approves me, then I can own the Mets. Just like everyone else! Course the guys who own the Mets right now actually had to buy it from somebody. They weren’t given away free by the government.
July 11th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Exactly.
Because unlike Mets franchises (which are “property” franchised by Major League Baseball), airspace is a public trust granted to broadcasters by the FCC.
In 20 years it’s not going to matter, anyway, since radio will be digital, will broadcast scads of stations in the bandwidth that one analog station currently occupies, and will be utterly unrecognizable, other than the fact that Limbaugh will still dominate it, and his critics will still be trying to shut him down.
July 11th, 2008 at 11:28 am
I don’t know, Mitch. Rush is, what? 57 now? I think it’s a bit optimistic to think of him on the breathing side of the ground 20 years from now.
July 11th, 2008 at 11:44 am
RoboRush2028: angryclown’s worst nightmare!
July 11th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
I wonder if Nader knows that magazines like National Review and the Weekly Standard are printed on paper that was milled from trees grown on public land?
It’s a scandal, I tells ‘ya.
July 11th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
I don’t know, Mitch. Rush is, what? 57 now?
Ever read about the Limbaugh genes? His grandfather was practicing law into his 90s. His father is still active and (if I remember Chafets’ profile correctly) very recently retired.
We might have 30 years of Rush left.
July 11th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Isn’t Paul Harvey still broadcasting? He’s at least 90.
July 11th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Terry prattled: “I wonder if Nader knows that magazines like National Review and the Weekly Standard are printed on paper that was milled from trees grown on public land?
It’s a scandal, I tells ‘ya. ”
Good to know you don’t have a problem with corporate welfare. It’s only when the government gives stuff to, you know, people that causes you wingnuts to have a stroke.
July 11th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Berg opposes corporate welfare just as he opposes subsidizing poverty to make it a permanent lifestyle.
But making airwaves a public trust is no more corporate welfare than, say, granting MLB franchises.
And if we “charged rent” on the airwaves, we’d have to pay it to the entire world; the electromagnetic spectrum isn’t US Government property.
July 11th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
That comment was incomprehensible, AC.
July 11th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
I think Limbaugh’s granddad actually lived to 104. We could have 50 more years of Excellence in Broadcasting!
And Nader? Hope he buys a Corvair and learns how to have some fun before he dies.
July 11th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Speaking of Corvairs, Someone sent a picture of a Corvair to Car and Driver magazine several years ago. The license plate read “F NADER”
That’s the 2nd best license plate photo they published. The best was a high school student’s plate down in FL: URAPNES
The kid got suspended and went to court over it, until the state took the plate away because some pussified person figured it out and complained.
July 11th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Shouldn’t that be URAPNIS?
*editor mode: off*
July 11th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Should be, yes, but the misspelling probably helped so that it lasted as long as it did.
July 11th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Ever read about the Limbaugh genes? His grandfather was practicing law into his 90s. His father is still active and (if I remember Chafets’ profile correctly) very recently retired.
We might have 30 years of Rush left.
Actually, Mitch, Rush’s father passed away in the early days of the show, still fairly young. Rush’s grandfather, on the other hand, was the oldest practicing lawyer in the US when he passed on at 104.
July 11th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Wasn’t Rush’s father known as “Big Daddy Limbaugh”?
Not being from the south I’m not sure how you’d ever get people to call you by the honorific “Big Daddy”. Surely there must be more involved than being fat, sitting on the porch in a rocker fanning yourself and putting “Esq.” on your business card.