The news side of Fox, very likely having been tougher on Obama than its broadcast and cable competitors, has made itself a target for White House scorn. By arguing that Fox has an agenda, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs (pictured left) seems to believe he will, for a time at least, create a shield to deflect questions other news organizations might raise about things Fox reports. He is following in the footsteps of Nixon Press Secretary Ron Ziegler, who tried to defuse questions about Watergate by saying they were the product of Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee's prior closeness to Jack Kennedy and well-established animosity toward Nixon. The "Ziegler approach" is a risky tactic. It will fall apart if Fox starts reporting news that the other networks will be forced to cover, just as the investigations into Watergate began to snowball once Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein started breaking stories that were so significant no other news organization could ignore them. There are those who suggest the White House is attacking Fox because the administration is losing policy debates. The White House, House GOP Leader John Boehner said Thursday, is "following a familiar pattern: When you can't win an argument based on the facts, launch vicious political attacks." True or not, the attacks on Fox, like the White House's open criticism of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its other political opponents, indicate the era of post-partisanship is over, replaced by a new spirit of "hardball," which-as the folks in TV used to say-can be seen on another network. - US News
Dominant Social Theme: First Fox, then gold bullion dealers?
Free-Market Analysis: We're major proponents of the Internet and its impact on advancing freedom around the world. But the rumblings of those that wear Paranoid Hats (PHs) are hard to resist sometimes, and so we will give them some space herein.
The rumblings that well up around us begin with the renewed talk of an Internet tax and of FCC interference with the Internet via increased regulation that seems to guarantee the Internet's continued independence but in fact does not. But the most intriguing idea is that the government will not go after the Internet in a big way but will attack its funding sources - at least the sources that provide a monetary mechanism for much of the Internet's alternative press.
This could be done easily, so our closemouthed PH friends tell us, by mounting a campaign not against the Internet but against the bullion dealers that fund many of the alternative news sites and are getting more powerful by the minute as the prices of gold and silver rise.
The attack could come several ways but the most obvious way to choke the funding off at its source would be to claim that bullion itself is a instrument of terrorism and drug abuse because bullion is anonymous and untraceable. The next step would be to mandate that all bullion be placed in central bank approved commercial lending facilities. At a stroke this would remove bullion from bullion dealers - putting them out of business - while ostensibly guaranteeing that gold and silver could not be used for nefarious purposes. And just like that, the largest collective source of funds to support "truth" media would be extinguished. Virtually overnight, the television commercials promoting honest money, the newsletters, Radio spots, etc would be terminated.
The final stroke of this campaign, our PH pals tell us, would be to inform the public that from hereon out, gold and silver would be stamped with a traceable ID. Gone would be the anonymity of gold and silver - and those who wished to remove gold and silver from vaults would soon be the proud recipients of papers - appropriately filed with government agencies - explaining how much bullion was removed along with serial numbers and the reasons for it.
Sure, those who understand the reality of fiat money can keep their gold... however it must be deposited with a Federal Reserve chartered bank. And naturally the "voters" will, after a well-scripted media and political campaign promoting the fear of "underworld money", add their support to the legalization of the meme. Thus democracy continues to work - at least for some. But not for the gold bullion dealers and not for those relying on private funding to continue to generate voluminous amounts of media material meant to enlighten folks seeking contrarian positions to the "Dominant Social Themes" spun by the mainstream media and politicos. In the end, it is humanity that loses under such a scenario.
Conclusion: We're not saying our PH pals are correct about all this, because we think there would be a ruckus if this sort of effort was seriously made. But it does occur to us in this climate - when the media itself is coming under increasing attack from both Europe and America - that such a scenario is not nearly as unlikely as it used to be. The attacks, in the opinion of our PH wearers, may well not come on the Internet itself but on its funding stream. We surely hope they are wrong and that the Obama administration does not proceed with the rumored plans of which they speak and so should you.
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