Oops, wrong definition of "free" I suppose. (h/t Rob Port at SayAnything)

Television station owners are mobilizing against a new Democratic campaign finance bill that would force them to slash prices for many political advertisements.

The National Association of Broadcasters confirmed late last week that it will oppose provisions of the DISCLOSE Act, an attempt by House and Senate Democrats -- and a handful of House Republicans -- to roll back elements of the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

The high court's decision tossed out most restrictions on political ad buys on television by corporations, trade associations and nonprofit groups.

The bill would require television, cable and radio outlets to offer the Republican National Committee, the Democratic National Committee and other political party committees the same deeply discounted price -- the "lowest unit rate," in industry jargon -- that television stations are now required to offer only to political candidates. Although advertising rates fluctuate dramatically, veteran media buyers estimate that candidates' campaigns often pay two-thirds of the retail price that regular television advertisers such as McDonald's and Coca-Cola pay.

"NAB is reviewing the bill," spokesman Dennis Wharton said in a statement April 29. "We would have concerns with provisions in the legislation that would expand the lowest unit rate discounts now afforded federal candidates to political parties and political committees."

The upcoming fight over political advertising rates also will offer a first look at NAB President Gordon H. Smith in a full-scale lobbying battle. The former Oregon senator, a moderate Republican, replaced GOP lobbyist David Rehr last year.

In the Senate, the bill is sponsored by Rules and Administration Chairman Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Democratic Sens. Russ Feingold (Wis.), Ron Wyden (Ore.), Michael Bennet (Colo.) and Evan Bayh (Ind.). The House version is sponsored by Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen (Md.) and Republican Reps. Walter B. Jones (N.C.) and Michael N. Castle (Del.).

Consultants who specialize in purchasing airtime for political campaigns were split on what the bill may mean for TV station owners. If it passes, media consultant Doc Sweitzer said, stations would bleed revenue. "It would effectively be a government mandate to lose income," he said.

It has often been the dream of the campaign finance lot to pretty much give -- for nothing -- airtime to politicians on television.  This new bill seems to be a run-around on that.

Wonder if this suddenly starts some ill-will towards Russ Feingold when for once, his quest to silence all speech but his and other incumbents running for re-election effects the bottom-line local affiliates in Green Bay, Madison, La Crosse, Milwaukee, and other markets in Wisconsin.

As I was reading this at the American Spectator, I kept asking myself one thing: How would the MSM be reacting if the Bush White House even dreamed of doing this?

The economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama's health care "reform" law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill, according to career HHS sources, who added that Sebelius's staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken.

"The reason we were given was that they did not want to influence the vote," says an HHS source. "Which is actually the point of having a review like this, you would think."

The analysis, performed by Medicare's Office of the Actuary, which in the past has been identified as a "nonpolitical" office, set off alarm bells when submitted. "We know a copy was sent to the White House via their legislative affairs staff," says the HHS staffer, "and there were a number of meetings here almost right after the analysis was submitted to the secretary's office. Everyone went into lockdown, and people here were too scared to go public with the report."

In the end, the report was released several weeks after the vote -- the review by the secretary's office reportedly took less than three days -- and bore a note that the analysis was not the official position of the Obama administration.

Here's pretty much what we now know after this report:

1) The White House and HHS knew the bill was going to blow up costs, and couldn't release this report to the public because its facts would have derailed their legislative agenda.  This is actually worse than the whole "WMD" meme from the Left in the lead-up to the Iraq War.  At least with the WMD intelligence, other nation's had similar facts and findings that the CIA and NSA had.  In this case, they actually had the counter-intelligence telling them otherwise, and acted anyway.

Maybe those suggesting Health Care Reform was Obama's Iraq War were truly on to something after all...

2) Everything the White House and other Democrats said in the final week up to passage was a lie.

3) Any Democrat who parroted the White House talking points like a Champion, is either a) Ignorant, b) A Puppet, c) An Ideologue d) Also Lying, e) All of the Above.

The act of burying the report; for short-term legislative gain, is going to end up costing many Democratic Congressmen and Senators their jobs in the long-term.  The Obama White House must be so proud.

The "things being uncovered, now that it's passed" just keep getting better and better.

Congress may be fined tens of millions of dollars a year under its own health-care law, in part because the bill dumps members of Congress and their staffs from their current health-care plans.

But no one really knows for sure what the bill does, not even the experts. For instance, exactly who qualifies as an “employer” — and therefore is subject to fines up to $3,000 per employee — is undefined in the bill.

If Congress were subject to a $3,000 fine for each of its employees, it would need to shell out approximately $50 million each year to Uncle Sam. Congress’s research arm, the Congressional Research Service (CRS), informally confirmed the possibility to Republican aides.

Kathleen Sebelius, President Obama’s top health-care cabinet official, will be responsible for establishing most of the details of how the law is implemented. Many Republicans who have raised the issue of Congress’s fining itself believe Sebelius likely will exempt Congress with a regulation narrowly defining “employer,” for instance.

Still, the possibility of the fines, and the uncertainty surrounding them, are drawing heckles from the health-care law’s critics.

“That’s the irony — here we may be the first major employer in the country to be fined for not providing proper health insurance for our employees,” Rep. Dan Lungren, California Republican, told The Daily Caller while laughing. “Isn’t that contrary to the very premise of the bill?”

State and local governments may be on the hook for the fines, but unlike for members of Congress and their staffs, the health-care bill doesn’t specifically dump them from their health-care plans.

If HHS Secretary Sebelius does indeed exempt Congress while the private sector takes a hit, oh what insanity will surely follow.

Democrats vote to give Massa pass, this after news that his earliest action of sexual harassment and other "actions" against his staff may have started a mere three months into serving in Congress.

House Democrats easily turned back another Republican effort to force a formal ethics committee investigation into how House leaders and their aides handled allegations of sexual harassment against then-Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.).

The 235-157 vote to "refer" Minority Leader John Boehner's resolution to the ethics committee carries no force in compelling the panel to act. Boehner and his Republican troops hoped the House would vote to adopt his resolution and force the ethics committee to begin a formal probe. But Democrats circumvented a direct vote on the resolution by moving to refer it to ethics.

Given all the crap that went down after the Mark Foley incident occurred in 2006, it's amazing to watch the Democrats now in charge of Congress go into "See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil" with Eric Massa.  What Foley did was apprehensible at best, but it seems to be small in comparison.

Be honest with yourself, who hasn't now cringed when "snorkeling" -- in its proper term and usage -- is brought up after Eric Massa?

Democrats in Washington, DC are not taking the drip, drip, drip coming from corporate America announcing they'll be taking charges from their profit margin after the passage of the Health Care Reform well.

The Wall Street Journal's reporting that California's Henry Waxman; Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Michigan's Bart Stupak; Chairman of the House Oversight and Investigations Panel, are calling for hearings and will call the CEOs of Caterpillar, John Deere, Verizon, and others to make them explain (who explain what is of course, up for interpretation) the hits their taking from the law.

Even before AT&T Inc. said Friday that it will take a $1 billion charge in the first-quarter because of the new health-care law, the issue was front-and-center with key lawmakers.

Earlier this week, Caterpillar Inc., Deere & Co., and AK Steel Holding Corp. announced their own hefty one-time charges.

Almost immediately, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman of California and Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, chairman of the Oversight and Investigations panel, announced plans to hold an April 21 hearing on “claims by Caterpillar, Verizon, and Deere that provisions in the new health care reform law could adversely affect their company’s ability to provide health insurance to their employees. These assertions appear to conflict with independent analyses, which show that the new law will expand coverage and bring down costs.”

The committee wants the companies’ CEOs testify and provide evidence of the law’s projected impact.

The companies have said they are compensating for the expected loss of a tax deduction on tax-free government subsidies they receive when they provide retirees with prescription drug reimbursement under Medicare Part D. The current tax structure won’t change until 2013, but company executives say they’re preparing for the higher costs now.

The White House had no immediate comment on the matter, but administration officials said they believe the announcements are meant to underscore the businesses’ displeasure with the law.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce condemned the health-care law as expensive and disruptive to health-care delivery. The Business Roundtable, composed of top CEOs, offered a bland statement that called the legislation’s passage “just the first step in reforming our nation’s health care system.”

Admittedly, I'm looking forward to this hearing.  Maybe by then Waxman (or his staff) will have read the bill by then.  Because it seems a lot of attorneys and accountants outside of Washington have.

Plus, Stupak getting more attention...someone's not putting their thinking cap on are they?

A lot of folks in DC and the press are going over every single state in the nation trying to find which one fits this description.  None of those "honest as the wind drive snow" Democrats wants to own up to this one.

The health reform Christmas gifts for Sens. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska are well known . But somewhere out there is another good little legislator who got funding for a hospital in their state.

But which senator? Which hospital? It is a health care whodunit.

Somewhere out there in the United States is a “Health Care Facility” “at a public research university in the United States that contains a State’s sole public academic medical and dental school.”

We know this because in the bill Democrats released Saturday morning is a $100,000,000 check for that hospital (presumably there is only one).

Republicans poring over the bill Democrats released Saturday found this on page 328:

“(a) APPROPRIATION.—There are authorized to be appropriated, and there are appropriated to the Department of Health and Human Services, $100,000,000 for fiscal year 2010, to remain available for obligation until September 30, 2011, to be used for debt service on, or direct construction or renovation of, a health care facility that provides research, inpatient tertiary care, or outpatient clinical services. Such facility shall be affiliated with an academic health center at a public research university in the United States that contains a State’s sole public academic medical and dental school.” (Manager’s Amendment To H.R. 3590, Pg. 328)

We have asked for some clarification from Democrats.

Meantime, one Republican quipped: “If taxpayers are going to be expected to sign the check, Democrats should at least let them know who to make it out to.”

Update:

Democratic staffers say there are 11 states with medical schools that could qualify for the funding (we’re still waiting for the list). The Secretary of HHS would decide who gets a piece of the $100,000,000 pie.

Ah, the secrecy of vote-buying.

Good to know we have a White House which not only listens to the American people, but has the patience to wait for Congress to debate the measures put before it.  It'd be a real shame if the President campaigned as one sort of man, and then completely reversed his actions once in power when it came to executive power, legislative action, and the bureaucracy.

Oh, wait...

The Environmental Protection Agency has concluded greenhouse gases are endangering people's health and must be regulated, signaling that the Obama administration is prepared to contain global warming without congressional action if necessary.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson scheduled a news conference for later Monday to announce the so-called endangerment finding, officials told The Associated Press, speaking privately because the announcement had not been made.

The finding is timed to boost the administration's arguments at an international climate conference — beginning this week — that the United States is aggressively taking actions to combat global warming, even though Congress has yet to act on climate legislation.

Can't wait to see the Senate's reaction to this unilateral action by the President.

Caught this on "Special Report with Brett Baier" on Fox News last night, and it gave me a laugh.  It's from the Political Grapevine.

Florida Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson is asking Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to make it easier to avoid filibusters by lowering the cloture threshold from 60 votes to 55. Currently 60 votes is the magic number to stop debate and end efforts to block legislation.

Grayson says President Bush won seven major victories with fewer than 60 votes. But The Washington Times reports Grayson is incorrect on each point, either because he misunderstands senate rules or is just getting facts wrong.

Grayson says the 2003 energy bill passed with only 57 votes; in reality, it actually failed when the Senate failed to end a filibuster by a vote of 57 to forty. Had Grayson's proposed rule change been in place, the bill likely would have passed.

As part of the internship program at the Heritage Foundation, they invite one of the Chief Parliamentarians of the House of Representatives to talk with the interns.  There, she will quiz the interns on how a bill becomes a law, the ping-pong game of creating legislation, and so on.

Another thing mentioned by the Chief Parliamentarian during these talks is the length of the "Rule Book" of each legislative body.  The "House Rule Book" is said to be nearly 50 volumes in length and the "abridged version" handed to each incoming Freshman Representative is about the size of a phone book in New York City.

Most (and I'm guessing Alan Grayson fits in this description) never read it.

The "Senate Rule Book" is said to be about 150-200 pages long, and could easily read in a single sitting.

Most Senators never read it.

Much like Dave Obey, it's a vintage idea of the anti-war left for years.  Except of course with Obey, it is a nice look into the liberal mindset of "How We View Wars."

See, to Obey and friends (And by friends, I'm gonna say the rest of the Democratic members in the Wisconsin Congressional delegation), they don't view wars as the way one defends freedom.  To them, they see them as an unfair means to end the progressive advancement in America.

Don't believe me?  Just read Obey's own words.

The White House says domestic politics is irrelevant to its pending Afghanistan decision, but domestic politicians beg to differ. "There ain't going to be no money for nothing if we pour it all into Afghanistan," the liberal warhorse David Obey told ABC's Jonathan Karl, before threatening a "war surtax" if President Obama does end up granting General Stanley McChrystal's request for 40,000 more troops.

"That's what happened with the Vietnam War, which wiped out the Great Society," the House Appropriations Chairman said with his customary subtlety. "That's what happened with the Korean War, which wiped out Harry Truman's Square Deal. That's what happened with the end of the progressive movement before the '20s when we went into World War I. In each case, the costs of those wars shut off our ability to pay for anything else."

Well, that's one reading of 20th-century national security, but another way of putting it is that the real liberal objection to the war on terror is that it takes away from domestic spending priorities like ObamaCare. For many Democrats, the goal isn't victory in Afghanistan, but victory on Capitol Hill.

Mr. Obey last floated a war surtax in the Iraq debate of 2007, and this year's iteration would be imposed on all taxpayers up to 5% on the highest income bracket. Combined with the House health-care surcharge of 5.4 percentage points and the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, that would bring the top federal marginal rate to above 50%. Economic growth, in other words, would be hostage to both the anti-antiterror and the single-payer left, if that isn't redundant.

I've read Obey's said much the same about World War II ending the New Deal.

Here's hoping the Duffy Campaign jumps on this.