RUSH: Muskegon, Michigan, this is Bruce. You are first. That carries pretty high responsibility to get things off on the right foot. How are you?
CALLER: I’m doing fine. Thank you, Rush, for taking my call. I’ll get right to my point. I was listening to you and Glenn Beck yesterday talk about this Mark Lloyd, this new ‘chief diversity officer,’ and this is scary. I can’t believe what I was hearing. You know, he’s advocating charging $250 million to these radio stations if they don’t comply with government programming. What gives him the authority or the right to define how a radio station should be broadcasting its broadcast?
RUSH: Well, he’s the diversity officer at the FCC. He comes from John Podesta’s think tank, The Center for American Progress. He’s the guy that wrote that report saying that there’s a terrible imbalance between liberals and conservatives on talk radio and it’s simply not fair. What he’s trying to do is… The Fairness Doctrine is not something that the Obama administration can implement because the time has passed, for one thing. The second reason they can’t do it it’s too obvious what they’re going to try and do is an end run I don’t think they’re going to get away with it but I know they’re going to try it. Now, this diversity czar it’s called ‘localism.’
The way they’re going to try to get rid of conservative talk radio is with localism, and what they want is to divest ownership and have more minorities own radio stations. I mean, folks, there is a civil rights component to virtually everything Obama’s doing, and the civil rights component is angry. This guy is an avowed Marxist socialist. This guy praises Hugo Chavez’s takeover of the media in Venezuela. And his plan is to set out rules, content rules for diversity and fairness on the air — and if a radio station fails to meet those rules, they must pay a fine of 100% of their operating budget that year. Well, that puts you out of business. If you have to pay a fine equal to 100% of your operating budget it puts you out of business. The only way to avoid paying the fine is to get rid of conservatives on the radio and hire locals and satisfy this diversity czar.
And, by the way, the fine money would then go to The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, go to NPR. Because they are adjudged to be fair because they are public radio. This guy has been very open and honest about what he wants to do. He’s written a book, he’s written articles about it and he’s made speeches about it. He’s Jeremiah Wright. I mean, this guy is an angry, black liberation theology guy. He’s just filled with hate and rage, just like so many of these people in the Obama administration are. That’s the plan. Now, I told Beck yesterday that I don’t think they’re gonna get away with it. The American people are not going to put up with it just like they’re not putting up with health care. It doesn’t mean they can’t try it and it doesn’t mean that the broadcasters won’t be scared to death because it’s Obama who holds the broadcast license in his hands now with these clowns running the FCC for him.