Tag Archives: free speech

It’s a Start

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Congressman Andrew Clyde (R, GA) has legislation he intends to introduce that would bar

federal officials from collaborating with Big Tech to censor Americans’ voices and create some legal recourse for those harmed by free speech infringement.

Explicitly, Clyde said,

It would also give an opportunity for those people who have been harmed by it to take legal action[.]

It’s a promising start, but I suggest a couple of fillips. One is to explicitly bar the agencies and departments of which those officials are a part from spending any money on the collaboration.

The other is to hold the agency and department heads and deputy heads personally liable for violating this law, regardless of who in their organization actually did the deed(s): these two are the MFWICs, and nothing goes on in their organization without their permission, if only because these two create the culture within which the misbehavior occurs and/or have the lax enforcement processes that let this sort of misbehavior go “unnoticed.”

In addition to that, and as a means of giving teeth to the responsibility deeming, the legislation should explicitly remove sovereign immunity and qualified immunity as defenses for the organization heads and deputy heads and the person(s) who actually did the deed.

Clyde needs to follow through on this, with the added fillips, as soon as Republicans gain majorities in both houses of Congress (whenever that happens), get the bill passed, and get it signed into law—or force President Joe Biden (D) to veto it, thereby demonstrating Progressive-Democrats’ continued insistence on government censorship of us citizens’ speech.

Progressive-Democratic Party Censorship

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There is a bill, the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, wending its way through the Senate that’s intended to let local news outlets band together to get enough scale to negotiate with Big Tech social media on a less uneven footing for payment from those outlets for their use of content that is taken by those social media and republished.

Senator Ted Cruz (R, TX) proposed an amendment that would plainly and explicitly prohibit[] payment negotiations from including discussion of content moderation—i.e., that would bar Big Tech from engaging in its penchant for censorship during payment negotiations. Cruz’ amendment wouldn’t even ban content moderation altogether, just during those content payment talks.

The Progressive-Democratic Party Senators voted it down. They blocked even this limited ban on Big Tech censorship.

Senator John Kennedy (R, LA), even as he is a sponsor of the basic bill, is on the right track.

Mr Kennedy said in a statement that he doesn’t understand why Democrats have a problem with the Cruz amendment.

­The Progressive-Democrats want to continue censoring the information us average Americans will be permitted to have. That’s why they have a problem with the Cruz amendment.

Senator Amy Klobuchar (D, MN) has a counter, she claims.

Ms Klobuchar countered that the bill already contained several protections to make sure it is content-neutral and doesn’t allow discrimination.

This is disingenuous. Were she serious about content neutrality—were she serious about no censorship—Klobuchar wouldn’t be opposed to a clear, simple ban on that along with, or replacing, her claimed protections.

“every company should be free to support what they want”

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That’s part of the typical response of Floridians regarding Governor Ron DeSantis’ (R) veto of the Tampa Bay Rays’ training facility being built with taxpayer money, at least as reported by Fox News.

After vetoing the funding, DeSantis said Friday that he doesn’t “support giving taxpayer dollars to professional sports stadiums” and that “it’s inappropriate to subsidize political activism of a private corporation.”

Most Floridians agree with the first part of DeSantis’ statement that taxpayer money shouldn’t be spent on a private sports facility.  Many—most?—disagree with the last part.

Governor DeSantis wants everyone to be free and have freedoms. I think that every company should be free to support what they want.

Certainly. And companies are. But they should express their views, support the causes they choose, on their own dime. Taxpayer dollars have no business being spent on a private company’s individual activism.

Disinformation

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…about his new Truth Division Disinformation Governance Board.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said “there’s no question” he could have more effectively communicated the purpose of his newly-created “disinformation” board….

Mayorkas also said that his

Disinformation Governance Board [is] to combat online disinformation….

Of course, it is. And it’s the Biden-Harris administration personnel and Mayorkas who will decide what is truth and what is fiction and who will dictate via that Truther Board what we American citizens will be permitted to hear, and it’s the Biden-Harris administration personnel and Mayorkas who will tell us how to evaluate what their Board allows to be passed.

And this from Mayorkas:

You know, an individual has the free speech right to spew anti-Semitic rhetoric. What they don’t have the right to do is take hostages in a synagogue, and that’s where we get involved.

That’s a cynically and dishonestly presented red herring. Those two items have little to do with each other, and we already have statutes on the books barring the latter, as well as barring the former from taking the form of inciting the latter. No Truther Board is needed except to push Government censorship.

Putting a woman well-known for her own disinformation-spreading enthusiasm and skill in charge of the Board makes plain the degree of censorship to which this agency’s actions are intended to reach.

Two Examples of Progressive-Democrats’ Assault on Free Speech

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California doesn’t want anyone to contradict the State’s preferred narrative regarding the Wuhan Virus—not even medical experts.

Disagreement with the “contemporary scientific consensus” on COVID-19 issues could be deemed “unprofessional conduct” for California doctors.
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The bill, which was cowritten by five other California Assembly and Senate members, goes beyond regulating how California doctors can treat their own patients. It opens their statements about COVID—public or private—to review by the Medical Board of California and the Osteopathic Medical Board of California, with possible sanctions to follow.

This bill doesn’t care about disagreeing science. Medical opinion doesn’t matter unless it’s the State’s opinion. There is no Truth but Truth, and State is its name.

Illinois is joining the assault.

“Though the Illinois State Police respects the rights of citizens to express their opinions in a lawful manner, there is great concern with any event that is designed to impede or block the normal and reasonable movement of traffic,” ISP Division of Patrol Colonel Margaret McGreal said in a statement. “Traffic backups are a major contributing cause to traffic crashes which lead to property damage, personal injury, and even death. A planned event designed to impede normal traffic flow is dangerous to the innocent motoring public.”

There might be a problem—which the State government will define to be illegal after the fact, or will define preemptively, as convenient—so truckers shouldn’t speak up with their convoy protest. And they’re not even honking their horns.