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US Fascism Has Arrived Thanks to 30 Years of Right-Wing Talk Radio Dominance
The GOP hold on most of American radio seems pretty unshakable, but Democrats must get into the talk-radio game before ever more damage is done.
Sep 28, 2024
“Whoever controls the media controls the mind.” — Jim Morrison
After Ronald Reagan struck down the Fairness Doctrine and the Equal Time Rule, Republican money men got the memo. Whichever party controlled the most states would have a big edge in both the Senate (and thus control of the Supreme Court nominations) and the Electoral College, and most of the low- and medium-population states had relatively inexpensive media markets.
You could buy or lease radio stations for less than a party might spend over a four-year electoral cycle on advertising, so why not simply acquire a few hundred stations across a dozen or more states and program them with rightwing talk radio 24/7?
This became particularly easy after Bill Clinton signed the neoliberal Telecommunications Act of 1996 that ended limits on how many radio or TV stations a single corporation or billionaire could own. Within months of that bill passing into law, Clear Channel and other networks had gone from small regional groups to massive nationwide radio empires.The strategy worked, and today there are over 1,500 rightwing radio stations in America, along with another 700 or so religious stations that regularly endorse Republican memes and candidates for office.
I wrote the original business plan for Air America Radio back in December of 2002 with an article I published that month on Common Dreams.
Right-wing talk radio has been integral to Republican strategy for decades. In 1994, when Newt Gingrich took control of the House of Representatives, he understood the power of talk radio.
“For the first 100 days of the congressional session,” writes Randy Bobbit in his book Us Against Them, “talk radio hosts broadcast live from the capitol building…. When the talk radio throng outgrew the working spaces available, Gingrich allowed some hosts to work in the extra space in his office.”
George W. Bush repeatedly invited talk-radio hosts to broadcast from the White House lawn, although Obama cancelled the tradition; Trump then continued the Republican seduction of the media that dated back to the 1990s.
And the GOP hold on most of American radio seems pretty unshakable.
A few years ago, a billionaire acquired one of the largest networks of these stations (800+ stations) and a senator I’ve known for years invited him and me to meet in his office near the US Capitol. The Senator asked the billionaire — who then owned several hundred stations programming exclusively rightwing content — if he’d ever considered putting some progressive content on the air.
Right-wing talk radio has been integral to Republican strategy for decades.
The billionaire leaned back in his chair, took a deep breath, tented his fingers in front of his mouth, and then said, carefully but emphatically:
“I’ll never put anybody on my air who wants to raise my taxes.”
A few years earlier, I’d sat at lunch at a Talkers Magazine conference with a vice president of what is arguably the most influential of the rightwing radio station networks; the company had started out as a bible publishing business and moved from there into radio and then into political radio.
I asked him if he’d consider putting a progressive show on any of his stations (they were all 100% conservative talk) and he bluntly told me it was “never going to happen” because, he said, “It’s impossible for a liberal to be a true Christian.”
Along with Fox “News,” rightwing talk radio is the main way Republicans have seized and held control over multiple red states. History shows that putting progressive programming on the air in those states could reverse that trend.
Back in 2008, Air America was broadcasting on 62 radio stations that covered a large part of America, including rural areas that had never before experienced progressive talk radio. Most of the stations were leased from Clear Channel, which also owned and programmed rightwing radio on several hundred of its stations.
I’m not aware of any studies proving or disproving the hypothesis, but I believe a large factor in President Obama’s election in 2008 was Air America promoting his candidacy relentlessly. It certainly didn’t hurt: we reached millions of people every single day during that election.
Liberal talk radio carried important messages that were vital to the rural parts of America. That we are all interdependent; that none of us can entirely stand alone unless we are fabulously rich, which is the sales pitch the billionaires try to sell us with their libertarianism; that without government supports and a social safety net, farming would be so vulnerable and financially dangerous (particularly with our weather emergency) that it wouldn’t be viable.
Think about it — political campaigns will pay thousands for a minute of advertising, and find that to be so effective that they continue to buy ads year after year. If that minute can be so influential, how about a host — who’s built a relationship with his or her listeners — telling them dozens of times a day who they should vote for and why? You literally can’t buy promotion like that; you have to buy the station instead.
I wrote the original business plan for Air America Radio back in December of 2002 with an article I published that month on Common Dreams.
Sheldon and Anita Drobney, two venture capitalists from Chicago, read the article and called me up; the next thing I knew I was in the Midwest helping them and Jon Sinton game out how to bring a progressive network into being. Sheldon wrote about it in his book, The Road to Air America, including reprinting my original article.
Impatient to prove the concept of progressive talk radio could work, I started my own program on a local Vermont station in March, 2003, and then moved it to a radio network in 2004. When Air America came online in 2005, we moved it to that network and picked up SiriusXM.
Then Mitt Romney decided he was going to run for president. No slouch, Mr. Romney: he understood the power of media and so apparently directed his private equity firm, Bain Capital, to purchase the entire portfolio of Clear Channel radio stations in the summer of 2008.
Within two years, heading toward the 2012 election when Romney challenged Obama, most all of their stations had flipped their programming from Air America to sports. It killed Air America, although my show was the lone survivor and is still on SiriusXM, Free Speech TV, and stations across the country.
Around the time Romney was buying Clear Channel, a group of Air America talent and I met in DC with a group of Democratic members of the House and Senate. We suggested they should reach out to big Democratic donors and encourage them to buy stations, so if Clear Channel ever pulled the plug on our leases we’d still be on the air.
We argued that, just as Republicans have discovered, it would be a lot cheaper than spending billions on advertising every two or four years.
Initially, the response was positive until one of the senators, who later ran for president, threw cold water on the idea, arguing that the “free market” should determine things like who owns radio stations, rather than a political party or people aligned with it.
Time has passed and word has spread. Entrepreneurs across America have bought or started radio stations — some normal, some “low-power FM” that works just fine in urban areas — to carry progressive programming. It’s a growing trend, and there are even rumors that George Soros is investing in the business.
I’ll be the opening keynote speaker for the Grassroots Radio Conference this week in New Orleans; progressive radio station owners, operators, programmers, and talent from more than half the American states will be there. This is a big step.
A Pew study found that 16 percent of Americans get their election-year information from talk radio. In rural states, where radio stations are cheap, people are far more likely to drive long distances and listen to local radio than in cities; flipping smaller red states shouldn’t be impossible if progressives could put up a few good stations in each state.
While Democrats spend over a billion dollars on paid advertising every two years, and several billion every four years, Republicans use this model of long-term trusting relationships with radio hosts to get out the vote for the GOP.
They know the truth of the old advertising saying, “Nothing beats word-of-mouth.” And a recent Neilson survey supports that adage when it found that 92 percent of consumers “believe recommendations from friends and family over all forms of advertising.”
In 2016, right-wing talk radio gave Donald Trump the boost he needed to put him in the White House. The hosts loved him and promoted him relentlessly. The same went for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, as talk radio became the primary locus for swift-boating John Kerry.
It works. Every weekday, all across America, people get into their cars and drive to or from work listening to the radio; as the nation’s largest statistics organization, Statista, notes, “During an average week in September 2020, radio reached 90.9 percent of all American men aged between 35 and 64 years of age.”
Radio engages, persuades, and informs — and, when done right, builds trust. And the first rule of politics is that trust wins elections.
In politics, just a few points usually decides winners and losers — and talk radio has reliably delivered that incremental edge to the GOP for three decades.
Democrats must get into the talk-radio game. As the old saying goes, “You can’t win if you don’t play.”
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If They Retake Congress, Republicans Plan to Make Trump Tax Cuts for Rich Permanent
"I'm shocked," said one progressive journalist, "shocked to see that when it comes to tax cuts for the wealthy, the Republicans really don't care about inflation, deficits, the debt, or inequality."
Oct 17, 2022
Republican Party leaders have designs to push for the extension of corporate tax cuts and permanently reduce the rate for the wealthiest Americans if they regain control of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections, according to new reporting out Monday.
"Never, ever, ever allow any Republican to claim they can't support legislation because 'it's not paid for' or there are no 'offsets.'"
Derisively referred to as the "GOP tax scam" of 2017, the legislation signed by Trump was disingenuously touted by the former president as "a bill for the middle class," but in reality resulted in a massive windfall for large corporations and the wealthy.
While Trump said that "corporations are literally going wild" over the measure that saw most of the $1.5 trillion in tax cuts go to the wealthiest 1% of Americans and corporations, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the legislation would add $1.7 trillion to the national debt by 2027.
New reporting by The Washington Post on Monday details how Republicans believe, if they do retake the House and Senate, they can force through an extension of the Trump tax cuts for the rich by putting President Joe Biden in a political box ahead of the 2024 presidential campaign.
\u201cRepublicans might be evolving in their extremism, but they have been incredibly consistent over 40 years in handing out tax cuts for the rich. Right wing populism is a joke. https://t.co/lUkNZl102s\u201d— Jordan (@Jordan) 1666015027
According to the Post:
Many economists say the GOP's plans to expand the tax cuts flies against their promises to fight inflation and reduce the federal deficit, which have emerged as central themes of their 2022 midterm campaign rhetoric. Tax cuts boost inflation just like new spending, because they increase economic demand and throw it out of balance with supply. But Republicans say they believe these efforts would put Biden in a political bind, requiring him to choose between vetoing the tax cuts--giving the GOP an attack line in the 2024 presidential election--or allowing Republicans to win on one of their central legislative agenda items.
In response to the Post's reporting, Democrats running for Congress underscored what's at stake in next month's midterms.
"The extreme MAGA Republicans' top priorities? Destroying Social Security and Medicare and criminalizing reproductive freedom," U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) tweeted in response to the Post report. "Now they also want tax cuts for corporations and the super-wealthy which adds to the deficit and worsens inflation."
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat running to represent the state in the U.S. Senate, said in a statement that his Republican opponent, TV doctor Mehmet Oz, "would be an automatic vote for this disastrous GOP agenda to cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations while making inflation worse."
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (D-Ga.) told the Post that Republicans successfully used a similar strategy to force former Democratic presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to sign tax cuts they did not initially support.
"The trick is to put the president in a position of either getting defeated in 2024 or signing your stuff into law," Gingrich explained. "Republicans will make it a priority to continue the Trump tax cuts because it puts the Democrats in a position of being for tax increases and against economic growth."
However, White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates said that "the House GOP's top priority is to worsen inflation and raise energy and healthcare costs by repealing the Inflation Reduction Act. Then they want to further sell middle-class families out to the rich with another tax giveaway to rich special interests."
Social Security and Medicare defenders are also warning that those popular social programs, which each serve tens of millions of older Americans, face "grave danger" if Republicans retake Congress.
"Never, ever, ever allow any Republican to claim they can't support legislation because 'it's not paid for' or there are no 'offsets,'" said David Badash, founder and editor of The New Civil Rights Movement. "Not when they plan to expand the massive tax cuts for the rich and corporations if they win next month."
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Will Privatization Force Traditional Medicare Out of Business?
Traditional Medicare needs to remain a robust and viable option for seniors, which means keeping profiteers out of the system.
Mar 25, 2022
Five or ten years from now, seniors may wake up one morning and discover that their beloved Medicare program has been completely privatized. And it will not be because that's what seniors want; it will be due to corporate influence and profiteering. Medicare was not created as a private program. In fact, it was enacted in 1965 as federal health insurance for seniors because many private insurers refused to cover them. But over the past three decades, insurance companies and private investors have found a way to capture a growing share of federal Medicare dollars--money that should go toward patient care, not corporate profit.
The most recent sign of this trend: The Trump administration initiated a pilot program called Direct Contracting to improve upon the Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) first authorized by the Affordable Care Act. ACOs were created to emphasize better care coordination for the purpose of managing chronic conditions rather than treating them episodically. But the problem with the Trump administration's version of ACOs--Direct Contracting Entities (DCEs)--is that it allowed 75 percent of their governance to be controlled by private insurers and other investor-backed companies. The Biden administration allowed part of this program to continue, but faced blowback from the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare and progressives concerned about for-profit interests expanding their role in traditional Medicare.
After drawing fire from seniors' champions on Capitol Hill and in the advocacy community, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) re-branded the Direct Contracting program as Accountable Care Organization/REACH, changed the governing requirements to require 75 percent provider governance, and removed other objectionable aspects of the model. However, private insurers and other investor-backed entities can still fund traditional and REACH ACOs--and participate as significant minority representatives on their boards. Some investors view these care coordination models as ripe for financial exploitation.
While we commend CMS for revising the pilot program's rules, we continue to be troubled by the potential for REACH organizations to steer beneficiaries away from traditional Medicare providers outside the ACO network. Because of payment incentives in the pilot project (if not adequately designed to improve care), patients could be pushed toward in-network doctors and hospitals simply because they cost less, and not necessarily because they provide quality care.
In recent years, there has been tremendous growth of the Medicare Advantage (MA) program. MA plans are publicly financed, but privately run--a creation of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. The putative rationale for Medicare Advantage was that the private sector could theoretically manage patient care and contain costs better than the federal government, ostensibly saving the Medicare program money. While that may sound good in theory, it hasn't worked out that way where MA is concerned.
Between 2009 and 2021, the government paid Medicare Advantage plans $140 billion more than it would have if the same patients had stayed in traditional Medicare. In fact, the cost to taxpayers of switching seniors to MA plans "has exploded since 2018 and is likely to rise even higher," according to Kaiser Health News. As Axiosreports, "Overpaying the Medicare Advantage plans as their enrollment continues to grow threatens Medicare's long-term finances." Meanwhile, writes Diane Archer of JustCare USA, "There's no one policing (Medicare Advantage companies) from taking taxpayer money and spending as little as possible on care."
Even as evidence against Medicare Advantage mounts, MA plans are capturing a larger and larger share of the market. In 2000, it was 17%. Today, more than 40% of Medicare patients are enrolled in MA plans. And little wonder. Medicare Advantage companies run television ads featuring celebrities like Joe Namath and Jimmy Walker, promising seniors a plethora of goodies like gym memberships and rides to the doctor. The ads do not mention MA's considerable limitations or that seniors have the option to enroll in traditional Medicare. In fact, the ads gloss over the difference between the two options, presenting MA as synonymous with Medicare itself. Of course, the more profits MA insurers reap, the more they can plow back into advertising.
Traditional Medicare does not advertise. Worse yet, during the Trump administration, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), actively promoted Medicare Advantage during enrollment season and downplayed the option of traditional Medicare. Not coincidentally, Medicare Advantage increased its market share by nearly 10% during the Trump years. Advocates, including the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare and the Center for Medicare Advocacy, decried the tilting of the playing field toward MA plans by the federal government itself, which should remain neutral with respect to enrollees' options.
In fairness, MA plans do offer coverages that traditional Medicare should offer but still doesn't - including vision, dental, and hearing care. (The President's Build Back Better plan finally would have expanded Medicare coverage, but it was effectively buried in the Senate.) However, Medicare Advantage plans come with several disadvantages that patients may not realize when they dial that 1-800 number on the tv screen.
Medicare Advantage plans offer limited networks of participating providers with whom they've negotiated lower rates. Many MA plans require pre-approval for procedures that traditional Medicare doesn't. And Medicare Advantage insurers often deny claims that traditional Medicare would have covered. All of this leaves seniors vulnerable to high out-of-pocket costs - in some cases, thousands of dollars per year--which many living on fixed incomes simply can't afford.
Unfortunately, most seniors do not discover MA's drawbacks until it's too late. There are myriad stories about MA patients who develop chronic or acute conditions only to find out that their preferred specialists or hospitals are out of network, or that their claims for care have been denied - leaving them to foot the bill. According to a 2017 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), seniors commonly cited problems with "coverage of preferred doctors and hospitals... and access to care," among other issues.
The GAO found that sicker beneficiaries are likelier to disenroll from MA, "a sign that the quality of plans with high turnover may be poor." But if patients want to switch from MA to traditional Medicare, they may not be able to obtain (or afford) supplementary Medigap insurance and can remain stuck in the MA program.
With Medicare Advantage's questionable track record, it would behoove CMS to be careful in how it sets parameters for any initiative that changes the way traditional Medicare operates. Traditional Medicare needs to remain a robust, viable option for seniors. Recent developments can be a lesson learned in proceeding cautiously so as not to undermine traditional Medicare.
The primary focus of Medicare should be patients' health and well-being, not corporate profits. Medicare Advantage has not lived up to its core promise to deliver comparable care for less money--while benefitting from government overpayments and billing schemes like "upcoding."
That hasn't stopped conservatives from trying to privatize Medicare through various means over the decades. As early as 1996, none other than Newt Gingrich gleefully predicted that privatization would cause Medicare to "wither on the vine." CMS has partly addressed this challenge in their restructured Direct Contracting/ACO REACH pilot program by limiting the participation of private insurers and other investor-backed companies to 25 percent, but concerns remain about how the demonstration's payment structure could result in a limited provider network being expanded to all of traditional Medicare.
Will traditional Medicare still have a primary role in the provision of quality, cost-effective care for seniors that get to choose their own doctors? That depends on whether Congress demands that CMS do a better job of determining what ACO REACHs are doing to improve the quality of care, enhance transparency of the contracts between ACOs and providers to ensure that financial incentives are not limiting physician choice, and develop better metrics to evaluate if ACOs are delivering on their mission of better management of chronic conditions. These steps must be taken to preserve our cherished Medicare program. They will determine whether the public program is turned over to private entities with limited provider networks and gatekeepers driven more by profit than patient care, or if an improved traditional program will continue to give seniors and people with disabilities access to most doctors and hospitals at a time in their lives when they need it the most. Let's save and expand traditional Medicare before Gingrich's ominous prediction comes true.
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