These statements come from the warped mind of Robert McChesney, self-professed neomarxist media scholar and the founder of the lobbying group and think tank Free Press.

These statements should scare the heck out of you.   I know that they seem like the garbage that you can hear out of the mouth of any Leftist professor in universities across America.  However,  McChesney has the ear of the president and his views are having a direct effect on the Obama administrations media policies. 

You don’t have to believe me.   Take a look at a recent report from the Federal Trade Commission entitled, “Potential Policy Recommendations to Support the Reinvention of Journalism.”  A lot of the ideas found within the document sound very familiar.

According to Adam Theirer, president of the Progress and Freedom Foundation:

I certainly think Free Press is making headway with the FTC.  They’ve been filing extensive comments with the FTC and they’ve gotten face-time at the FTC workshops. And if you look at the 47-page discussion document that the FTC just released, many of those ideas were borrowed directly from McChesney or Free Press.

Check out these tremendous ideas (and tremble):

• The establishment of a “‘journalism’ division of AmeriCorps” to “ensure that young people who love journalism will stay in the field”
• Providing “a tax credit to news organizations for every journalist they employ”
• “Establishing citizenship news vouchers”
• “Increasing postal subsidies for newspapers and periodicals”
• A tax on news aggregators, or even a policy to make news aggregation sites, like the Drudge Report, illegal
• The allocation of roughly $35 billion in public news subsidies
• A five percent tax on consumer electronics
• A ISP cell phone tax
• A revision of the tax code to allow for more nonprofit media

McChesney’s contributions to the FTC document might be a surprise to those who thought Free Press was only involved in pushing internet regulation known as net neutrality. However, Free Press has been working towards a much larger goal since its creation in 2002.

A telecommunications expert with intimate knowledge of the group said:

Free Press hasn’t always been about net neutrality.  It’s just a diversion that’s been really lucrative for them. What they’re really about is having an order of magnitude more media under government control and implementing rules that disadvantage for-profit media.

The good news is that Federal Trade Commission (FTC) leaders are now attempting to distance themselves from these proposals.  Funds collected through the proposed taxes would be redistributed to traditional media outlets.

Concerning the 5 % Device Tax,  FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz torpedoed it in testimony Wednesday before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee, saying:

I think that’s a terrible idea.

The backpedaling is not surprising, as this  proposal  is as unpopular among the masses as they come in Washington.  A poll released Tuesday by Rasmussen Reports found that three out of four of those surveyed opposed taxing gadgets. About the same amount opposed the Drudge Tax.

Per pollster Scott Rasmussen:

The American people have absolutely no interest in taxing new media or consumer electronics to prop up an industry that’s clearly on its way out. 

Trial balloons are nothing new from this administration (remember the proposal to make veterans pay for their medical benefits?).   When the administration and Congress want to enact a politically controversial policy, they often use an independent federal agency whose leadership need not face the wrath of voters. the agency then presents  potentially unpopular ideas are presented first by staff so commissioners can get rid of the plans that have no chance of being implemented.

Passing the buck is S.O.P. in the Federal Government. The FTC claims that the proposals released last month were suggested by public comments (i.e., Far Left loons like McChesney, Soros, etc.). In fact, the agency’s Federal Register announcement for the proceeding questioned the professionalism of news-aggregator websites that “do not pay for content”.  This document was filed long before public hearings were held.

The report’s views also happen to match positions that Leibowitz has held in the past.  Before joining the FTC, he was vice president of the Motion Picture Association of America, an organization that defends a leftist view of copyright law in order to perpetuate Hollywood’s increasingly obsolete business model.  At a December workshop, Mr. Leibowitz kvetched that online news readers get a “free ride instead of paying the full value – or in fact paying anything – for what they’re consuming.”

Even though they’ve retreated on the electronics tax, Mr. Leibowitz and his staff have not abandoned their opinion that the problems facing journalism can and should be solved by government, even if they are not sure of the exact form this control would take.  The Obama administration has already showed that it is more than happy to completely ignore the majority of public opinion in order to expand government involvement in areas such as health care. Therefore, if there are any left in Congress who actually care about preserving our freedoms, they must take action to stop this administration’s latest trial balloon.  Government subsidies will destroy journalism.

Uncle Joe Stalin would be so proud.

Sources:  merriam-webster.com, dailycaller.com, drudgereport.com, washingtontimes.com