The radio socialism in our future

MSNBC host and progressive radio talker Ed Schultz took to the airwaves earlier this week to call for radio socialism.

The fact is, look, it's not a level playing field when it comes to the audio culture of the country. Ownership has its privileges. When you own, I will be honest, if I owned 500 stations, the drugster wouldn't be on any of 'em. And that's just where it's at right now. But maybe we have reached the point where the Congress needs to equal it out. Equal out the audience.

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And so, I think that, you know, hell, if we're going to be socialist, let's be socialist all across the board.

Schultz works for the Obama-obsessed MSNBC, which is owned by General Electric. GE's president, Jeffrey Immelt, sits on the Federal Reserve and has secured several special deals for GE from the Obama Administration at the expense of competitors. Both MSNBC and Schultz are lagging behind conservative competitors in the ratings. How long until Immelt leans on Obama to right that wrong? Obama's diversity czar at the FCC is already trying to make Schultz's dream a reality by supporting an initiative to tax large radio companies and redistribute the wealth to smaller, minority-owned stations.

Radio socialism has support in Congress. Rep. Louise Slaughter, of recent health care fame, introduced a bill in 2004 that would reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. Under Obama, the Democrats in Congress just nationalized the student loan industry and the health care industry in a single weekend. Does anyone doubt that they would do the same for the country's airwaves?

NBC jumps in bed with Obama

As Barack Obama's fortunes and poll numbers fall, the commentators over at cable network MSNBC have been hitting the roof. Over the past month, Chris Matthews has compared the GOP to the Khmer Rouge, Ed Schultz has encouraged Massachusetts Democrats to try to vote more than once, and Keith Olbermann has called Scott Brown "an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against woman and against politicians with whom he disagrees."

MSNBC has been a ratings loser for Barack Obama's entire presidency, yet its hosts keep sucking up to the president and attacking his critics. Even the supposed "hard news" reporters on NBC, like Andrea Mitchell and David Gregory, spout left-wing garbage. It's no coincidence. NBC has become a propaganda shop for Obama because Obama is offering kickbacks to NBC.

MSNBC is part of NBC which is owned by General Electric. GE's CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, is a long-time Obama supporter who has expressed support for the president's cap-and-tax baloney. His lip service has paid off. Since Obama was elected, Immelt has been appointed to the president's Economic Recovery Advisory Board and to the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve.

Before his promotion to CEO of GE in 2000, Immelt was head of GE Medical Services, more commonly known as GE Healthcare. As an economic advisor to the president during the health care debate, CEO of a company with a health care division, and the former head of that very health care division, Immelt represents a flaming conflict of interest. Additionally, the president's stimulus set aside billions of dollars to fund the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act. HITECH requires medical providers to hand over patient information to the federal government. Shortly after the stimulus was passed, GE Healthcare sent out a press release announcing a new program called Stimulus Simplicity that would help hospitals adopt electronic medical records. GE stood to make heaps of money from this initiative.

Then there was the behind-the-scenes lobbying by GE to apply for a government program that "sought to unfreeze credit markets by guaranteeing debt sold by banking firms," according to the Washington Post. GE initially didn't qualify because, as you may have noticed, GE is not a bank. But thanks to a little strings-pulling by Jeffrey Immelt, the Obama administration loosened the rules. "As a result, GE has joined major banks collectively saving billions of dollars by raising money for their operations at lower interest rates," the Post reported. Even though, again, GE is not even a damn bank.

This is classic Obama cronyism on a massive scale. Jeffrey Immelt and his commentators on MSNBC praise Barack Obama every night, and in return Immelt gets appointed to prestigious positions and his company gets crooked financial deals. Remember this next time you turn on one of MSNBC's political programs. The entire network has been bought off by Barack Obama.