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Mitt Romney’s Company Buys Clear Channel
He’s a front runner for the Republican nomination in ’08, so this situation begs the question… is this move ethically suspect? It’s certainly not illegal, but you know what they say…if you can’t beat the media, buy the media.
Okay, nobody says that…but I’d bet Romney at least made one crack about it before the sale. I mean, how could you not? Come on Mitt…fess up…we won’t hold it against you.
By the way, are we ready to elect a guy named after a piece of baseball equipment?
In any event, I take a closer look at the sale here.
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15 Responses to “Mitt Romney’s Company Buys Clear Channel”
Considering CC has a decidedly right wing bent this reeks of Orwellian, as one of the posters at Donklephant said.
If the stations start the we want Mitt chant we know it’s 100% true, untill then I’d give it a 60% chance of happening.
Well. Now I know why the Mic 92.1 in Madison, our progressive talk station, is being replaced by Clear Channel with Fox Sports – despite the fact that the Mic is doing well. =/ I mean, come on, this is MADISON. We’re liberal as all get out.
what do people see in this man? What are his accomplishments?
Is that a picture of Mitt Romney or Ted Bundy!?
He turned a projected budget deficit into a sizable surplus that allowed for a cut in the state income tax rate. He downsized state government and cut nonessential services. He oversaw legislation to give universal health care to all citizens in his state without having to raise taxes to do it. You can argue over details (some think that he gets too much credit for the budget turnaround, and some feel that the health care legislation lowers the standards of the insurance that will be offered, for example) but I hardly think its accurate to imply that he hasn’t accomplished anything. He’s certainly more accomplished than a lot of recent candidates have been. I don’t know if he’s the right person for the job of POTUS or not, but I wouldn’t count him out either. The Clear Channel purchase doesn’t pass the sniff test though, so that doesn’t bode well.
Another lost opportunity for the dumb Democrats.
The most important thing that Democrats need? Media Infrastructure.
A golden opportunity comes along for the Democrats to make some kind of headway against Republicans on the media front. A major major media network becomes available but do Democrats take advantage of the opportunity? No.
I figured for sure that Democrats would at least try to organize an investment group to try to get Clear Channel…or at least get it into neutral hands. But as usual, the Democrats squandered a golden opportunity.
hey, i can’t see real good, is that silvio berlusconi…?
I urge people to do there own research on what Mr Romney’s done for the people of Mass. It just isn’t as rosey as some folks would want us to believe.
Regardless of legality or innocence, that purchase is going to come up over and over again in any debate with the man.
Frankly, it kinda smells bad to me, but I’m certainly not going to fault someone for practicing Capitalism. I just think it’s going to bite him in the ass more often than he suspects or has even considered.
I think that Romney may be the only person who looked at what Berlusconi did in Italy and went “wow, that’s a good idea.”
He seems like he’s done a decent job as governor of Massachussetts, but it makes me nervous to elect a candidate with strong media connections. It really seems like a conflict of interest. Hmmmm, wonder if El Rushbo will carry water for Romney???
Just imagine if the Bushes had owned Clear Channel since 2000!
corvus,
If you have specific information, please share. Most of what I’ve seen of Romney’s record in MA is good, and the criticisms I’ve seen of him are pretty vague. I would be interested to see what you are talking about.
Mitt Romney is probably the most accomplished Governor in the country. People may disagree with his conservative politics, but his record of achievement is clear.
1. Inherited a $3 billion deficit and balanced the budget without increasing taxes
2. Took office during a period of high unemployment, close to 6%, when jobs were leaving Massachusetts by the thousands every month. Today, the unemployment rate is 4.6% and the economy is creating thousands of jobs every month.
3. Achieved what no other state in the country has been able to do – pass a plan with bipartisan support to get health insurance to all the state’s citizens. And Romney did it without a government takeover, and without raising taxes.
4. Instituted merit-based scholarships for high school students such that the top 25% get free tuition to the Massachusetts college or university of their choice.
5. Changed the culture of patronage and business-as-usual at the corrupt Boston State House – revamped the way judges are selected, barred family members of senior staff and Cabinet from lobbying the Administration and replaced the Office of Chief Secretary, which was the old patronage office, with a professional human resources department.
6. Continues to fight today, as he prepares to exit the Governorship, to take down tolls on the Massachusetts Turnpike, which was supposed to happen years ago but never did because the agency – like all government agencies – had become self-perpetuating.
That’s just a few of the highlights from Romney’s four years in office. That doesn’t even begin to get into his accomplishments leading the 2002 Winter Olympic games, or his successful career as a businessman who bought troubled companies and turned them around.
Mitt Romney pretty much has been useless in MA. You really cannot point to a single accomplishment. When Romney became Governor he did inherent a deficit. He said that he wouldn’t raise taxes and won election. But he instead raised fees and other non-income tax taxes to the tune of 700 million dollars per year. That is a tax that MA still pays today.
Along with that tax increase Romney gutted funding to cities and towns to the point where towns raised house taxes by a median of 42% during his tenure. I’ll use myself as an example, I pay $1500 dollars more in home taxes now than I did four years ago. That is just batsh*t crazy.
For all of these insane amount of tax increases, what did the towns get? Well not much, schools require students/parents to pay fees to sports or other activities, funding for police is cut to the point where the state has less police on the streets and violent crime ranks the highest in the entire Northeast. During Romeny’s watch MA surpassed NY with the highest crime rate in the Northeast, this is from ME to PA.
Romney attacked others on the Big Dig nightmare, but it was his appointees and the previous Republican governor who had the majority. It was later discovered that Romney had oversight approval for an annual inspection of the project but chose not to inspect for each year in office. It was pathetic, Romney was blaming everyone for this failure, he had his orange vest walking around the site, held press conferences with charts and pictures, but when the papers reported about his “oversight” or should I say non-oversight those press conferences were stopped, he hardly mentioned the Big Dig again.
To show his complete incompetence it was found that the contractor who he said was at fault, Bechtel was actually incharge of the oversight of the repairs. When the collapse of the tunnel first occurred Romeny stated that an independent firm will be hired to review what occurred and point blame at Bechtel.
Then as the cherry on top Romney cut funding to homeless shelters days before Thanksgiving and more importantly the WINTER and cut fund for the department of mental health, due to budget issues. Now the budget is for fiscal year 2007 which he just signed in July 2006, he waited until the legislature recessed to veto funding.
An earlier post is just trying to put lipstick on a pig, but you know what? It’s still a pig.
Additional comment on jobs in MA. There is no growth in jobs in Romney tenure. Lets get some perspective in the number posted above. Romney took office it was 5.7 percent, compared to 5.8 percent nationally. By November, it was 4.9 percent, compared to 5 percent nationally. The fact is that MA has less jobs now than we did when Romney took office. Not much of an accomplishment. If he actually created jobs there would have been less of a need to tax the crap out of the state.