Tag: democrats

Democrats and Media Do Not Want to Weaken Facebook, Just Commandeer its Power to Censor

Much is revealed by who is bestowed hero status by the corporate media. This week’s anointed avatar of stunning courage is Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager being widely hailed as a “whistleblower” for providing internal corporate documents to the Wall Street Journal relating to the various harms which Facebook and its other platforms (Instagram and WhatsApp) are allegedly causing.

The social media giant hurts America and the world, this narrative maintains, by permitting misinformation to spread (presumably more so than cable outlets and mainstream newspapers do virtually every week); fostering body image neurosis in young girls through Instagram (presumably more so than fashion magazines, Hollywood and the music industry do with their glorification of young and perfectly-sculpted bodies); promoting polarizing political content in order to keep the citizenry enraged, balkanized and resentful and therefore more eager to stay engaged (presumably in contrast to corporate media outlets, which would never do such a thing); and, worst of all, by failing to sufficiently censor political content that contradicts liberal orthodoxies and diverges from decreed liberal Truth. On Tuesday, Haugen’s star turn took her to Washington, where she spent the day testifying before the Senate about Facebook’s dangerous refusal to censor even more content and ban even more users than they already do.

There is no doubt, at least to me, that Facebook and Google are both grave menaces. Through consolidation, mergers and purchases of any potential competitors, their power far exceeds what is compatible with a healthy democracy. A bipartisan consensus has emerged on the House Antitrust Committee that these two corporate giants — along with Amazon and Apple — are all classic monopolies in violation of long-standing but rarely enforced antitrust laws. Their control over multiple huge platforms that they purchased enables them to punish and even destroy competitors, as we saw when Apple, Google and Amazon united to remove Parler from the internet forty-eight hours after leading Democrats demanded that action, right as Parler became the most-downloaded app in the country, or as Google suppresses Rumble videos in its dominant search feature as punishment for competing with Google’s YouTube platform. Facebook and Twitter both suppressed reporting on the authentic documents about Joe Biden’s business activities reported by The New York Post just weeks before the 2020 election. These social media giants also united to effectively remove the sitting elected President of the United States from the internet, prompting grave warnings from leaders across the democratic world about how anti-democratic their consolidated censorship power has become.

But none of the swooning over this new Facebook heroine nor any of the other media assaults on Facebook have anything remotely to do with a concern over those genuine dangers. Congress has taken no steps to curb the influence of these Silicon Valley giants because Facebook and Google drown the establishment wings of both parties with enormous amounts of cash and pay well-connected lobbyists who are friends and former colleagues of key lawmakers to use their D.C. influence to block reform. With the exception of a few stalwarts, neither party’s ruling wing really has any objection to this monopolistic power as long as it is exercised to advance their own interests.

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Pennsylvania House Democrat Introduces Forced Sterilization – Three-Child Limit Legislation

Pennsylvania Democrat Christopher M. Rabb sent out a memorandum to all House members regarding his legislation that will enforce reproductive responsibility among men.  The bill will force men to undergo vasectomies within 6 weeks from having their third child or their 40th birthday, whichever comes first.

This legislation includes a $10,000 reward to whoever snitches to the proper authority on those who have failed to submit to forced sterilization within the allotted time.

This bill will also include legal actions for unwanted pregnancies against inseminators who wrongfully conceive a child with them.

“As long as state legislatures continue to restrict the reproductive rights of cis women, trans men, and non-binary people, there should be laws that address the responsibility of men who impregnate them. Thus, my bill will also codify “wrongful conception” to include when a person has demonstrated negligence toward preventing conception during intercourse,” Rabb stated in his memorandum.

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Enlightened Algos: Democrats Demand Increased Corporate Controls To Protect Citizens From Their Own Dangerous Curiosities

Below is my column in USA Today on the recent call by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) for Amazon to steer readers to “true” books on climate change. It is the latest example of Democrat’s embracing a type of  corporate governance model to carry out tasks barred to the government under the Constitution. Companies are now being asked to protect us from our own dangerous interests and inquiries. An array of enlightened algorithms will now watch over citizens to help them make good choices and read “true” things.

Two centuries ago, rulers sought to convince subjects that they should embrace the notion of “enlightened despotism,” living without rights under the beneficent watch of overlords. Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II summed up the idea with the maxim “everything for the people, nothing by the people.”

Today, we seem to be living in an age of enlightened corporate despotism, where social media and technology companies watch over what we read and what we discuss to protect us from ourselves.

That corporate governance model was on display this month when Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., called on Amazon CEO Andy Jassy to use algorithms to steer readers away from books that spew “misinformation.”

Enlightened algorithms are already responsible for large-scale censorship across social media platforms that reach global audiences. They “stand the wall” as sentinels against dangerous ideas.

Warren argued that people were not listening to the enlightened views of herself and leading experts.

Instead, they were reading views of vaccine skeptics by searching Amazon and finding books, including “falsehoods about COVID-19 vaccines and cures, including those written by the most prominent spreaders of misinformation.”

Warren blamed Amazon for failing to limit searches or choices:

“This pattern and practice of misbehavior suggests that Amazon is either unwilling or unable to modify its business practices to prevent the spread of falsehoods or the sale of inappropriate products.”

In her letter, Warren gave the company 14 days to change its algorithms to throttle and obstruct efforts to read opposing views.

What was most striking about this incident is that Warren was eager for others to see her efforts to promote a form of censorship.

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Matthew Dowd Runs for Office After Demanding White Christian Males Stop Running for Office

In 2018, left-wing extremist Matthew Dowd called for all “white male Christians” to stop running for political office. Today Dowd, who identifies as white, male, and Christian, is running for political office.

“We [white male Christians] don’t need to be the majority of the people who hold political power,” he wrote on this very day three years ago. Here’s more:

Instead of waiting for the diverse population of America to keep pushing and prodding, I would humbly suggest that we as white male Christians take it upon ourselves to step back and give more people who don’t look like us access to the levers of power.

[…]

Yes, let me repeat, we as white male Christians should do what real leadership demands and practice a level of humility which demonstrates strength by stepping back from the center of the room and begin to give up our seats at the table.

[…]

The greatest demonstration of strength is putting someone else ahead of ourselves. Let’s show we are that strong.

And that is precisely the kind of oily pandering that allowed Dowd to earn a cushy job as a political analyst at ABC News, where he was presented as a right-of-center analyst, as opposed to what he is: a  mewling, far-left beta male who makes Phil Donahue look like Robert Mitchum.

And on the third anniversary of that column, what is the hypocrite Dowd doing?

Well, the very white and not-terribly male Dowd is — lol — aggressively seeking a seat at the table by running for lieutenant governor of Texas.

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Democrats’ push for $50,000-per-year journalist tax credit sparks GOP ‘media collusion’ accusations

Democratic efforts to include a special $50,000-per-year journalist tax break within President Biden’s $3.5 trillion spending package have sparked accusations of “media collusion.”

Sen. Ron Johnson argued the tax credit would create an improper relationship between the federal government and the nation’s leading media outlets. Such relationships, according to the Wisconsin Republican, could be exploited for propaganda purposes.

“Not only is this proposal a grotesque waste of taxpayer money,” said Mr. Johnson, “it would be a dangerous precedent of government collusion with the media. Biden’s collusion with the press has already caused enough damage to freedom of speech and freedom of the press.”

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Budget Bill Devotes Billions to New ‘Civilian Climate Corps’

Since President Joe Biden took office, he and some congressional Democrats have pushed strongly for the creation of a New Deal-style initiative: the Civilian Climate Corps (CCC).

On Friday, congressional Democrats unveiled text from the more than 2,000-page reconciliation bill. Among its many appropriations, the new CCC will receive a substantial appropriation.

President, Progressives Have Long Fought for the Program

The broad strokes of the program were introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) when he unveiled his $3.5 trillion budget on the Senate floor in early 2021.

The CCC, Sanders said, would give young people the opportunity “to get decent pay and to roll up their sleeves … in order to combat climate change.” For Sanders, this program was only a part of a wide-ranging slew of policies “to combat climate change.” Since then, others have joined with Sanders in supporting the initiative.

Most significantly, the proposal got a green light from the White House. At his April address to congress, the commander-in-chief tied “meeting the climate crisis” to the creation of new jobs.

“For me, when I think climate change I think jobs,” the president explained.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) also put his weight behind the proposal, promising during a press conference to “fight to get the boldest CCC possible.”

Schumer was joined by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who drafted the controversial Green New Deal. The congresswoman took to the stage to defend the CCC.

“What if [the CCC] led to tens of thousands of new trails in our national forests and park service?” she asked rhetorically. Ocasio-Cortez continued, “This isn’t something we have to imagine doing—that was the record of the original [New Deal-created] Civilian Conservation Corps in 1938.”

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135 Republicans Vote With Democrats To Advance ‘Red Flag’ Gun Confiscation Bill As Part Of NDAA

This morning the United States House of Representatives voted to advance legislation that will allow police to confiscate firearms of individuals believed to be a threat to themselves or others, known as Red Flag Laws, that became highly controversial during the Trump administration due to fears they would be abused. The anti-Second Amendment bill, which soared through the U.S. House and will now head to the Senate, had the bipartisan support of 135 Republican representatives.

While many of those who voted alongside Democrats are not surprising to many, others portray themselves as America First candidates who seek to realize President Donald Trump’s agenda. Among these are Reps. Matt Gaetz, Madison Cawthorn, Elise Stefanik, Devin Nunes, Ronny Jackson, President Trump’s former White House doctor, and Greg Pence, the brother of former Vice President Mike Pence, as well as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

Other Republicans who voted for the Red Flag Law gun confiscation bill include many of President Trump’s opponents, including those who voted for impeachment. Among these are Reps. Herrera-Beutler, Dan Newhouse, Fred Upton, Peter Meijer, John Katko, Dave Valado, Adam Kinzinger, and Liz Cheney.

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