What’s the reflexive response by the left to market forces? Curb or stop them. To allow winners and losers is bad. The losers will feel badly if we don’t force equal outcomes, right?
This thinking is apparent in the latest attempt by the left to stop political speech on radio. Dennis Kucinich a darling of the left—especially in Portland—has proposed bringing back the antique document with the Orwellian title, “The FAIRNESS Doctrine.”


Sounds, er, fair, doesn’t it?
It would require all news and radio broadcasts to feature the two sides of every issue. That sounds reasonable, right? Sound innocuous enough until you get to their obvious aims.The reason for this is to get at opinion talk radio for its emphatic and successful agitation for political causes and candidates. It was after the Fairness Doctrine was abolished that the marketplace began to fulfill the desire for information on right side of the political spectrum. The left doesn’t like that and they want to stop it. This has been their aim for quite some time.
Even after Air America was created as a device to get around their own creation, Mc Cain Feingold, their aim is to get rid of conservative talk radio. Obviously AAR has not been successful nationally–but then success for AAR wasn’t never meant to be measured on a profit and loss statement or in arbitron, but rather an election box score.
In Oregon a live sex act on stage passes for political speech, but actual political speech leading up to an election, or through a political action committee, or on a blog, or on talk radio should be curbed according to the left. That’s what measure 47--passed by the voters in the last election–was all about.
I received an email today from an Oregon man who is asking the Secretary of State’s office to investigate Our Oregon, a political action committee created by the left to effect political change while apparently skirting current election laws. Says the man in his letter making this request,

In essence, “Our Oregon, Inc.” is a scheme to evade Oregon laws on the reporting of political campaign contributions. If a non-profit corporation can be created and operated to accept contributions from undisclosed sources and then use that money to support or oppose Oregon ballot measures and/or candidates for public office in Oregon, without ever disclosing the sources or amounts of the money, then Oregon’s campaign reporting requirements are a dead letter. All one needs to do is form a non-profit corporation and ignore all of the political contribution reporting requirements–­which is what “Our Oregon, Inc.” has done.

I trust you will enforce the law against “Our Oregon, Inc.” even though it was created and directed by the chiefs of the two largest labor unions in the state (OEA and AFL-CIO), which are the major benefactors of your political party (Democratic Party of Oregon).

Good luck with that. Two of the state’s biggest union lobbyists are now on Governor Kulongoski’s staff and the daughter of another union apparachik is one of his ‘communications’ staff. They’ve consolidated their power and are busy backfilling their influence.
Remember the lesson: the left’s first reaction is never to expand actual political speech: It’s to curb or stop it.
They can’t compete in the free marketplace of ideas so they want to curb the other side’s ability to convey their ideas. Equal outcome is their reflexive response–except in an election they win then they make their own rules to fully consolidate themselves in power.
I’m sure there are many more examples. Bring ’em on.