In Nashville today, during a speech to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, President Bush said there’s nothing fair about the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” that once required broadcasters to offer air time for competing ideologies.

The FCC got rid of it about 20 years ago. Now, some Democrats in Congress - long the target of popular conservative radio talk-show hosts - think it’s time to bring it back.

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” I mention this because there’s an effort afoot that would jeopardize your right to express your views on public airways. Some members of Congress want to reinstate a regulation that was repealed 20 years ago. It has the Orwellian name called the Fairness Doctrine. Supporters of this regulation say we need to mandate that any discussion of so-called controversial issues on the public airwaves includes equal time for all sides. This means that many programs wanting to stay on the air would have to meet Washington’s definition of balance. Of course, for some in Washington, the only opinions that require balancing are the ones they don’t like.”

“We know who these advocates of so-called balance really have in their sights: shows hosted by people like Rush Limbaugh or James Dobson, or many of you here today. By insisting on so-called balance, they want to silence those they don’t agree with. The truth of the matter is, they know they cannot prevail in the public debate of ideas. They don’t acknowledge that you are the balance … The country should not be afraid of the diversity of opinions. After all, we’re strengthened by diversity of opinions.”

Again, we need to look at capitalism and free markets: people will pay for what they want. We do not need more legislation regulating every bit of our lives. If there is a market for liberal radio talk shows, if there is money to be made by a host or a station, then it will exist. If the people don’t want it, there’s no money in it, and therefore it won’t exist. It really is that simple. And as evidenced by the dismal, bankrupt failure of liberal talk radio network "Air America", people don’t want to listen to liberal talk radio.

Probably because they already hear the liberal viewpoint on TV and read it in most major newspapers, but I digress.

As the President so correctly put it, it’s not a matter of being "fair" but of silencing your critics. That is the goal of the "Fairness Doctrine." Let us not forget, one of the first steps toward fascism (and socialism) is to control the media.

Full article: Austin American-Statesman | Window on Washington

With all that’s going on in the nation, with all the important issues each state faces (like crime, illegal immigration, economic development,)this is an important enough issue that demands legislative attention?

A proposed law currently making its way through the Florida legislature might help you with what can be an embarrassing problem. Here’s the bottom line, the bill would be a mandate that all eating establishment must have enough toilet paper when you go into the restroom. 

The only problem is the bill doesn’t dictate how much toilet paper is "enough."

State Senator Victor Crist, a Republican from Tampa, felt the problem was so important, a law must be passed to protect the backsides of anyone in Florida. The measure will also try to regulate the cleanliness of restrooms in eating establishments.

So if this passes, what will happen? Will they create a Department of Restroom Cleanliness and hire Restroom Inspectors and raise taxes to pay their salaries and expenses? Will they walk around with calipers to measure the amount of TP left on the roll? Will there be conversion charts for comparing single-ply versus two-ply? Will future legislation regulate the softness of the TP?

There’s a simple solution to this problem: vote with your wallet. Places with clean bathrooms stocked with TP will stay in business, places that aren’t so nice won’t. No legislation required. No tax dollars spent. No calipers.

One of the problems we have found is that politicians are used car salesmen who can’t do basic math. They are all shiny and try to woo you into believing their sales pitch, but if you sit down and do simple third-grade math you realize their “sweet deal” is really a lemon, and in reality no amount of sugar can turn that lemon into lemonade.

Case in point, Obama and Hillary denounce “evil, greedy corporations” for making too much money. Their solution? Tax the hell out of those companies to give the money to the people.

To start off with, the bald fact of the matter is that if a corporation suffers a tax increase, and their shareholders insist on x amount of profit, that means that the corporation will have to raise prices of their goods or services. Rock, meet hard place.

Let me illustrate the point by using the industries I know best: consumer packaged goods and supermarkets.

Let’s say that Procter & Gamble gets hit with a “closed loophole” tax hit which results in them having to pay, say, an extra $100 million to the IRS. There are about 100 million taxpaying households in the United States, so even if we assume that the FedGov will somehow pass on the entire $100 million directly to taxpayers (uh huh), that means that President Obama’s Greedy Corporation Tax Loophole Closure Act will result in a $1 tax rebate to you, just from that one corporation.

Impressed? Don’t be.

The author goes on to illustrate — using simple addition and multiplication that a 9-year-old could do — how that $1 “tax rebate” taken from the “greedy corporation” actually winds up costing you $1.41.

Another issue that the candidates are ignoring is the fact that companies like Exxon Mobil are owned primarily by every-day Americans, in the form of stocks and mutual funds as part of their IRAs and 401ks. 

Mutual funds, index funds and pension funds (including union pension funds) own about 52 percent of Exxon Mobil’s shares. Individual shareholders, about two million or so, own almost all the rest. The pooh-bahs who run Exxon own less than 1 percent of the company.

When Exxon Mobil earns almost $12 billion in a quarter, or $41 billion in a year, as it did in 2007, that money does not go into the coffers of a few billionaire executives quaffing Champagne in Texas. It goes into the pension and retirement accounts of ordinary citizens. When Exxon pays a dividend, that money goes to pay for the mortgages and oxygen tanks and in-home care of lots of elderly Americans.

Every person who reads this needs to do what the candidates are unwilling to do: the math. Every politician, local, state, and federal, makes campaign promises, but few do the elementary-school math. And they hope you won’t either. It is your responsibility as a voter to fully vet the candidates, and that means before voting, do the math. When you do, most of the policies and proposals just don’t add up. Vote only for the ones that do.