- Republicans’ first order of business this coming 118th Congress must be to introduce a legislative firewall between the White House — and its offshoot federal law enforcement agencies such as the Department of Justice and its offshoot, the FBI — and private social media companies.
- The dissemination of news and the facilitation of public discourse is central in any democracy that allows genuine participation on the part of its citizens. Open public dialogue is a “public good”, or something which, like clean air, benefits everyone equally and greatly.
- Providers of public goods are generally regulated under common carriage laws. The Communications Act of 1934, for instance, allowed AT&T to enjoy monopolistic power over the public good it provided: the interconnecting of the American people by way of a unified, national standard for telephone communication.
- In exchange for enjoying monopoly power, and to ensure that public goods truly remain beneficial to the public, special duties or restraints are generally imposed on such companies.
- With companies such as Compuserve and AOL in mind, Congress sought to hand out special liability relief with the idea of promoting two public goods: an internet characterized by a wide dissemination and diversity of ideas; and an incentive system for platforms to create family-friendly environments.
- Unfortunately, in the ensuing case law that has been built up in dealing with Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, two giant, related problems have emerged, both involving a misreading of a landmark court decision: Zeran v. AOL.
- The first problem is that what Congress intended when it comes to protecting social media companies from liability tied to defamatory messages posted on their platforms has been greatly expanded and now encompasses virtually any and all decisions regarding “content moderation”, such as removing the accounts of epidemiologists with whom Dr. Anthony Fauci, the FBI, CIA, and possibly other federal agencies, might disagree.
- The second problem is that the “good faith” condition Congress imposed on these companies to ensure against arbitrary or biased content-removal decisions has been completely erased. It is now never applied to social media companies at all.
- Both problems can be traced to a misunderstanding and incomplete reading of Zeran v. AOL.
- As a result, as Michigan State University law professor and former Commerce Department telecom official Adam Candeub writes, “social media platforms are now treated like they’re above the law.”
- Thankfully, this can be easily changed, even at the regulatory level. Non-discrimination policies need not create a “wild west” scenario. To a large extent, people really do not need moderators to curate what they see on social media. They are free to do that themselves.
- Removing the distortive “curators”, editors, “fact-checkers” and middlemen from the information process — and reaching people who previously have been sheltered from diverse opinions — will likely not tear people apart. It might even help to bridge misunderstandings and fill in a few gaps. That, perhaps, is the ultimate public good.https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19261/big-tech-censorship
Biden's America
All posts tagged Biden's America
‘The Deep State is engineering a major energy crisis that may make life very difficult this winter across large parts of the Northern hemisphere, even in the United States, warns The New American magazine’s Alex Newman in this episode of Behind The Deep State. The emerging crisis was brought about through relentless Deep State sabotage of Western energy systems, including energy exploration and power plants, under the guise of “fighting climate change,” though even nuclear and hydropower are under attack by Deep State forces and their useful idiots. All over Europe, in large parts of America, and even in Japan, establishment media organs are warning that blackouts, brownouts and other problems are coming soon. The European Union is already working toward continent-wide, Soviet-style energy rationing. But the ultimate goal, as the Council on Foreign Relations put it in Foreign Affairs, is a new energy order in which governments will take total control of energy, thereby placing populations at the mercy of technocratic government while enforcing scarcity and outsourcing Western industry and manufacturing to Communist China.’
- The Biden administration just cleared a Chinese company to own 370 acres of land within 12 miles of Grand Forks Air Force Base in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
- As a result, China will be able to use a proposed $700 million corn milling plant on the site to spy on military communications and even disrupt them. In Beijing, they must be shaking their heads in disbelief….
- [T]he failure to include all military installations in the implementing regulations was a clear case of regulatory malpractice.
- As a result of these enormous mistakes, Fufeng USA, a subsidiary of a Shandong province-based agribusiness giant, is, at least for the moment, free to build its wet corn milling and biofermentation plant in Grand Forks.
- “The worst-case scenario involves active sabotage of operations at the Grand Forks facility. Should the U.S. and China end up in a shooting war over, say, Taiwan, Fufeng’s property near the Air Force base could be used to send malicious signals to jam passing satellites or disrupt the operation of drones. We have made ourselves vulnerable on our own territory.” — Brandon Weichert, author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, to Gatestone; December 2022.
- President Joe Biden can use his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to block the sale of the Grand Forks land and the building of the milling facility.
- “[T]he most serious problem: The [CIFIUS] Committee is chaired by Treasury, which never saw a foreign investment it did not approve. “This means, as a practical matter, that an agency that basically doesn’t give a damn about national security is entrusted with running a process that supposedly evaluates and protects national security.” — Frank Gaffney, Vice Chair of the Committee on the Present Danger; to Gatestone, December 2022,
- The CFIUS mandate must be broadened “to include any foreign investment that threatens our national security interests or, for that matter, other vital interests, in the face of unrestricted and especially economic warfare.” — Frank Gaffney to Gatestone; December 2022
- China’s regime, which has declared a “people’s war” on the U.S., uses investments to undermine America. In wartime — the Communist Party believes it is currently in such a struggle with America — Washington needs to prohibit all investments from China, especially ones near critical Air Force installations in North Dakota.https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19260/china-sabotage-north-dakota
‘The Senate Minority Leader approved the $1.7 trillion spending bill this week along with 17 Republican Senators. Mitch was OK with the purple-haired crazy lady, Democrat Rep. de Lauro sitting at the Omnibus table but NOT GOP’s Appropriations Committee ranking member Rep. Kay Granger.
Rep. Kat Cammack told Maria Bartiromo 98% of all Democrat earmarks made it into the package.’https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/12/mitch-mcconnell-ok-purple-haired-crazy-lady-sitting-omnibus-table-no-house-republican/
The Republican Party is pretty much like the Liberal Party here in Australia which is one reason conservatives have quit voting for them.
What are your thoughts on this?
‘Before turning against the U.S. military to command the Confederate army, Robert E. Lee served as the superintendent of West Point, the hallowed military academy that produced patriots like Ulysses S. Grant, Douglas MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower.
But in the coming days, the storied academy will take down a portrait of Lee dressed in his Confederate uniform from its library, where it has been hanging since the 1950s and place it in storage. It will also remove the stone bust of the Civil War’s top southern general at Reconciliation Plaza. And Lee’s quote about honor will be stripped from the academy’s Honor Plaza.
The moves are part of a Department of Defense directive issued in October ordering the academy to address racial injustice and do away with installations that “commemorate or memorialize the Confederacy.”‘https://www.npr.org/2022/12/22/1145107950/west-point-confederate-symbols-robert-e-lee
‘Westerly, Rhode Island, father Robert Chiaradio was convinced that if only people could see it with their own eyes, they would join his battle to remove Maia Kobabe’s book, Gender Queer: A Memoir, from the high school library.
So when he took the podium at the Westerly School Committee meeting last December, Chiaradio came prepared with more than just his talking points. Filing in behind him were his supporters, each one holding up a poster-sized illustration from the book [graphic material at link]. Together they revealed a revolting display of images for the whole room to see.
It didn’t last long, though. Soon, a group of seven teachers crowded around him and positioned themselves in front of each poster, blocking its view from the audience. Though everyone had already seen the sickening pictures, the teachers refused to budge, their arms folded in defiance, as if to say, “You’re not seeing that.”
Chiaradio wanted to know why it was fine for a 14-year-old at Westerly High School to see the book, but not the adults at the meeting. When he asked the Westerly Teachers Association head, Colleen Saila, that question, he says she replied that the teachers in the room were “offended” because they didn’t have a choice about seeing the poster-sized pictures from the book.
There was another choice they didn’t have that night. Like it or not, the second those posters were raised in the air, the school lost control of the narrative. The secret of Gender Queer was out.
And covering it up after the fact didn’t change the fact that the school was offering pornography to its students.
The Man Who Won’t Quit
Last December was not the first time Chiaradio was blindsided at a school committee meeting.
He has been in his adversaries’ crosshairs for over two years, ever since he started asking his pesky questions about critical race theory (CRT) in Westerly’s public schools. By now, he’s gotten used to being sabotaged, gaslit, lied to, and called the worst sorts of names. Few would be up for the abuse and aggravation that have come with his two-steps-forward, one-step-back battles.
But while Chiaradio is relentless, so are his opponents.
At a school committee meeting this past September, a teacher urged that his “dangerous rhetoric” be “shut down” “at its first breath”’https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/12/rhode-island-father-stands-strong-against-radical-race-and-gender-indoctrination-in-public-schools/
This pdf shows there is CRT being taught in this school district.
‘Nearly a year after Judicial Watch launched an investigation into the theft of U.S. COVID relief funds by foreign hackers, the Secret Service confirms that cyber criminals connected to China’s government stole $20 million in benefits. This includes Small Business Administration (SBA) loans and unemployment insurance money in multiple states, according to a national news story that identifies the perpetrators as a APT41, a hacking group based in Chengdu. The report cites U.S. law enforcement officials and cybersecurity experts who believe the multi-million-dollar theft of government pandemic funds by the Chinese faction “may just be the tip of the iceberg.”’https://www.judicialwatch.org/hackers-steal-20-mil-in-covid-relief-funds/
The following are satire videos which highlight “the alarming new trend of corporations like Disney, Amazon, and Starbucks providing abortion travel benefits while often cutting maternity benefits. The new incentives ensure women are back in their cubicles to make the corporation money in just a matter of days.” Here in Australia it is impossible to know how many babies are murdered via abortion each year!
whatyareckon 