Both houses of Congress have now overwhelmingly approved a ten fold increase in the fines for “patently offensive” content to $325,000.

Mind you, this has nothing to do with protecting kids. This is a tool of the powers that be to make sure that broadcasters toe the line. Just as the Government is now using the excuse of protecting children to justify massive warrantless country wide spy operations, they are using fines for speech that keep consolidated media groups in check under the guise of protecting people from indecency. It’s for the children that I want to fine radio stations ten times as much for making fart sounds than we do for companies that dump toxic waste. Naturally the Democrats were completely spineless in this power play. (Congressman Gary Ackerman (NY-05) being a rare exception.)

All of this has the side effect of boosting the value of satellite radio because it isn’t under the jurisdiction of the FCC or Congressional censorship. One fun little exercise would be to see how many Congressmen have stock in Sirius or XM radio.

At some point one can only hope that one of the media giants will finally stand up to this obviously unconstitutional restriction of free speech. The FCC can’t even define what indecency is for broadcasters so that they can avoid it, often reversing themselves, and retroactively fining stations for content done years before. When in gets to the point that the choice is between fighting the government or their radio station assets becoming worthless because of satellite competition I don’t see them having any other choice.