Letters to the EDITOR

Pirate Radio Isn’t Harmless Fun

They used to primarily affect major urban areas, but now radio pirates can be found broadcasting from suburbs, mountain shacks, or even automobiles.

Often, it seems that these unlicensed, audacious broadcasters have a special genre of music or a cultural viewpoint to share. One, which I heard recently in the Canyon Country area, branded his contribution to the airwaves as “Range-Free Radio, music without all those commercials!”

Whatever the purpose or platform, if you know someone who is broadcasting without a license, you better warn them that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is getting serious about stopping them. When they find the illegal broadcaster they will confiscate their equipment and fine him/her thousands of dollars!

You see, in addition to pirate radio being illegal, it can cause audio interference to a licensed broadcast station and sometimes even to non-broadcast communications facilities. Licensed stations are regulated in their spacing, power and safety considerations of others. Broadcasting copyrighted music is also illegal and denies writers and musicians appropriate compensation for their talents and efforts. Some may even be their neighbors.

In addition, the FCC is warning those who support pirate radio (e.g. landlords and advertisers) that their support could “expose them to FCC enforcement or other legal actions.” This may even be charged in retrospect for support of prior pirate operations. Spread the word!

With all the media options now available online and digitally, there is really no reason for unlicensed broadcasters to chance the financial and legal liabilities entangled with “range-free radio.” Gary Curtis Newhall

Is ‘Fascism’ Used Appropriately?

Seems I read the word “fascism” a lot lately, linked to President Tump and Republicans. Fair? After World War 1, Europe was in ruins and the world suffered a deep depression. In Italy, an avowed Communist and writer for the Socialist newspaper ‘Avanti’ (‘Forward’), Benito Mussolini, called for a National Socialist (Marxist based) Government run by former Military men, “Because, they are trained to get things done”. He called his party the Fascist party after their symbol, sticks tied to an Ax, representing the people bound to the State. He allowed some private ownership, but businesses had to work under a centrally planned economy. In the Thirties, Germany’s Hitler founded the NAZI party (NSDAP - or “National Socialist German Workers Party”). This as opposed to Russia’s “International Communist” movement. During the Thirties, President Roosevelt, Mussolini and Hitler exchanged warm correspondences, and F.D.R. even put Italy’s Fascist symbol on the back of our dime, while instituting several ‘Third Way’ programs (CCC corps, Social Security). Hitler used the Progressive Eugenics movement as a model for his goal of Racial Purity and admired the Democratic Party’s ‘Jim Crow’ laws to legally repress his own minority’s. The renowned economist F.A. Hyack declared that Germany had a “True Socialist Economy”. So why do people today equate ‘Fascist’ with the Right? Two reasons: one, they were Nationalistic, and two, after WW2, Stalin declared that anyone who didn’t like Soviet Communism was a fascist - the reasoning stuck. That and the embarrassment on the Left for Fascism’s leftist roots has seen the term join the list of pejoratives used against Conservatives. As long as Prez Trump and the Republicans support the Constitution, limited Government, free markets and private property ownership - they can’t be called Fascist.

Richard La Motte Valencia