Last Call For Hannity And Rush

And finally, the end may be near for the radio hatemongers on the right, done in by the most implacable foe of all...

...capitalism.

In a major shakeup for the radio industry, Cumulus Media, the second-biggest broadcaster in the country, is planning to drop both Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity from its stations at the end of the year, an industry source told POLITICO on Sunday. 

Cumulus has decided that it will not renew its contracts with either host, the source said, a move that would remove the two most highly rated conservative talk personalities from more than 40 Cumulus channels in major markets.

The decision comes after negotiations between Cumulus and Premiere Networks, the division of Clear Channel that distributes Limbaugh and Hannity's shows, broke down due to disagreements over the cost of the distribution rights, the source said. Cumulus is known to drive a hard bargain on costs, and Clear Channel is known to seek top dollar for big names. 

As industry insiders caution, Cumulus and Clear Channel have come to the brink before during contract negotiations only to resume talks. But the source told POLITICO that Clear Channel was unlikely to reduce the cost for distribution rights to a level that would satisfy Cumulus.

Another major win for Angelo Carusone, the Media Matters crusader who went after Glenn Beck's advertisers and got him off the air.  He's been going after Rush and Hannity's advertisers, and without the ad revenue, Clear Channel is forced to raise rates on distributors.  And they're not going to pay for a damaged product that could cost them listeners and advertisers to boot.

Hitting Hannity and Rush in the wallet has been the most effective strategy so far.  We need to keep it up.

Motor City Bailout Is Out Of Gas

Having not bailed out any other municipality that has declared bankruptcy, the Obama administration isn't about to make an exception for Detroit.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Sunday defended the administration’s decision not to help bail out Detroit, saying that the city would need to negotiate its own resolution with creditors.

“Detroit’s economic problems have been a long time in developing. We stand with Detroit trying to work through how it approaches these issues,” said Lew in an interview on ABC’s “This Week.”

But he added that “when it comes to the questions between Detroit and its creditors, that’s really something that Detroit is going to have to work out with its creditors.”

Lew’s comments come one week after Detroit became the largest municipality in American history to declare bankruptcy.

Labor unions have pressed the administration to intervene and provide a federal bailout to help protect the pensions of city workers and retirees. The AFL-CIO on Friday called for an “immediate infusion of federal assistance.”

I don't know why the AFL-CIO is trying to put President Obama in an impossible position.  They have to know a bailout is politically and most likely legally impossible.  So why are they screaming for President Obama to produce the impossible?

The real problem here is the Michigan GOP, Gov. Rick Snyder, and the odious Emergency Manager laws that unconstitutionally forced Detroit into bankruptcy and disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of Detroit voters.  There's your actual person to blame, folks.  Not President Obama.

Nobody's talking about that aspect of this story, and that's criminal.