The following is a transcript from Senator Durbin's speech on the Senate f [View All]

[banana republican]

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These are the same executives at CBS, incidentally, who, during 1999 and 2000 gave 98 percent of their soft money political contributions to the Republican Party. They decided this MoveOn.org ad, which just might raise a question about President Bush's policies leading this Nation, and the deficit and debt our children face, those same CBS executives said we don't think we ought to step into this controversial area.

The major pharmaceutical companies, which will be running ads on three different sexual dysfunction drugs during the Super Bowl, have also been consistently placed among the five top spenders on lobbying the Republican Congress and in soft money and PAC contributions to Republican candidates.

Now let's connect all the dots because there is something more direct and topical behind this CBS decision, from my point of view. These are the same executives at CBS who successfully lobbied this Congress to change the FCC rules on TV station ownership to their corporate advantage. The provision that was sneaked into the Omnibus appropriation bill that passed last week and has been signed by the President. It establishes a new ceiling of 39 percent as the maximum percentage of American TV viewers in a market that may be reached by TV stations owned by any one company. Remember that number, 39 percent.

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http://www.moveon.org/cbs/durbin.html