Will Elon Musk ‘free the bird’? I certainly hope so.

European regulation of online speech will be a speed bump for the new owner of Twitter.


After a complicated, winding, and tense standoff between Musk and the Twitter board, as well as a pending legal trial at a Delaware Chancery Court, the eccentric billionaire finally agreed to abide by his original agreement and purchase Twitter in its entirety. Elon Musk is now the sole owner and CEO of Twitter. In typical Musk style, he wandered into Twitter headquarters carrying a sink, to “let that sink in.”

Musk has repeatedly expressed his disapproval of Twitter’s heavy-handed and politically inflected moderation policies, and has insisted on various occasions that Twitter ought to become an open and inclusive “digital town square,” where citizens of diverse political persuasions can exchange opinions freely. In a recent tweet aimed at advertisers, Musk said:

The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence. There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society.

The notion of a “common digital square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner,” is the very opposite of Twitter today. Right now, Twitter is essentially a “safe space” to express Woke, leftist, pro-lockdown, and pro-Big Pharma opinions, and a very dangerous place for anyone who wanders from the fold of left progressivism or says something that could potentially endanger Big Pharma’s profits.

Twitter has been shamelessly suppressing inconvenient truths, if they happen to run against Twitter’s version of reality, in which Covid vaccines are about as safe as paracetamol, male and female biology are an assault on citizens’ rights to “gender identity,” and Big Pharma CEOs are altruistic saviours of humanity.

If this were just a silly game, the suppression of one side of the debate would be annoying, but no big deal. However, it is a game in which the stakes are extremely high. As things stand, Twitter is arguably the most important digital forum in the world, so suppressing important medical information concerning issues like vaccine harms and potential Covid treatments may literally be a matter of life and death.

The question is, can and will Elon really “free the bird,” as he so colourfully put it himself? Recently, in a query from Jordan Peterson’s daughter, Mikhaila concerning whether he can get her Dad back on Twitter, he has indicated that “anyone suspended for minor & dubious reasons will be freed from Twitter jail.” In a separate tweet, Musk has indicated that “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints. No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.”

It is true that Musk has, in the past, backtracked on important statements, including his original offer to purchase Twitter. But his stance in favour of free speech has been quite consistent, so I see no reason to doubt that he sincerely intends to “free the bird” from the heavily biased, politicised, and frankly Orwellian censorship policies it has been weighed down by for the past few years. Not to mention that it may be very good business to welcome non-lefties and non-Covideans back onto the platform.

If Musk manages to follow through on his free speech dream, then we could see the release of thousands of people from permanent Twitter “jail” over the coming months, including yours truly (Twitter handle @davidjthunder), as well as a radical revamping of Twitter’s anti-scientific and politically partisan moderation policies, which have served, principally, to protect certain scientists, politicians, and corporations from serious public scrutiny and challenge.

But dreaming is one thing, implementing another. Even if Musk manages to pull off the Solomonic task of keeping advertisers, investors, and customers more or less happy with his new moderation policies, he will also have to contend with governments that are increasingly enthusiastic about using their legislative and regulatory powers to shut down speech they object to.

I wish I could say that it only private actors like Microsoft and Google that suppress free speech. But it turns out that many of the people who currently stand at the helm of our governments, most notably in the European Union, seem to be determined to “protect” the public from what they happen to deem “dangerous or harmful” speech.

The aggressive regulation of speech by governments may come in the shape of notoriously malleable “hate speech” laws, which inevitably end up criminalising speech that is disagreeable to this or that political tribe, or “misinformation” laws that require people to only express opinions on matters of medicine and science that certain powerful actors in the political, pharmaceutical, and scientific establishment approve of.

It is worth noting that as soon as Musk announced that the “bird is freed,” Thierry Breton, EU Commissioner for the Internal Market, replied, “in Europe, the bird will fly by our rules.” He was referring to increasing efforts by the European Commission to clamp down on what they perceive as “misinformation” and to potentially impose enormous fines on Big Tech platforms that do not live up to the EU’s expectations concerning the regulation of “misinformation.”

Twitter is one of the 37 signatories of the 2022 Code of Practice on Disinformation promoted by the European Commission, which includes a set of commitments which appear from the official website to rely heavily on self-regulation, even though the Commission monitors compliance with the code. Even if this code of practice is difficult to police in practice, it provides a political tool to pressure Big Tech companies into doing the Commission’s bidding.

What is especially worrying is the Digital Services Act, which was passed into law by the European Parliament on 5th July 2022. The Digital Services Act, as reported by Ecommerce Europe,

aims to set an ambitious framework to guarantee a safe and trustworthy online environment for consumers, mainly by introducing new obligations for digital service providers. Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs), designated as ‘online platforms which reach a number of average monthly active recipients of the service in the Union equal to or higher than 45 million’, will have to comply with stricter rules, enforced by the Commission.

According to Thierry Breton, one of the Act’s most fervent advocates, one of the features of the Digital Services Act is that it introduces “a harmonised system to fight ALL forms of #illegal content – from counterfeit or dangerous products to hate speech. Any national authority will be able to request that illegal content is removed, regardless of where the platform is established in Europe.”

Breton goes so far as to suggest that the European Union could impose steep financial and regulatory sanctions for non-compliance: “The DSA imposes effective and dissuasive #sanctions. From #fines for breaches of obligations of up to 6% of global turnover to a #ban on operating in the EU single market in case of repeated serious breaches.” Don’t ask me if any of this would withstand judicial scrutiny. But the threat of massive fines and bans for non-compliance is coming from the highest level of the European Union, so I imagine Mr Breton has thought through the legal ramifications of these threats, and is not just bluffing.

To cut a long story short, if the laws of any given jurisdiction become an instrument of tyranny and Groupthink, Mr Musk will be put in a tough spot, and might find himself under enormous pressure to back away from his free speech commitments. That would feel like a terrible betrayal of his declared mission of creating an inclusive “digital town square.”

On the other hand, if Elon Musk is willing to fight the Eurocrats, he might be able to win some legal battles for free speech. Undoubtedly, the European Commission is flexing its muscles in the hopes of intimidating Musk into compliance. But if Musk cares about free speech as much as he says he does, he might just dig in and put the legality of the Commission’s threats to the test in a court of law.

All of this assumes, of course, that we can take Musk at face value in his fighting words on behalf of free speech. Only time will tell if that is true. But there aren’t too many glimmers of hope in the world of Big Tech and free speech these days, so I’ll take whatever breadcrumbs of hope I can pick up along the way.

This article has been republished from David Thunder’s Substack, The Freedom Blog.

AUTHOR

David Thunder

David Thunder is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Navarra’s Institute for Culture and Society. More by David Thunder

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The 20 Biggest Advances in Tech Over the Last 20 Years

Despite what you may read in the newspapers or see on TV, humans continue to reach new heights of prosperity.


Another decade is over. With the 2020s upon us, now is the perfect time to reflect on the immense technological advancements that humanity has made since the dawn of the new millennium.

This article explores, in no particular order, 20 of the most significant technological advancements we have made in the last 20 years.

  1. Smartphones: Mobile phones existed before the 21st century. However, in the past 20 years, their capabilities have improved enormously. In June 2007, Apple released the iPhone, the first touchscreen smartphone with mass-market appeal. Many other companies took inspiration from the iPhone. As a consequence, smartphones have become an integral part of day-to-day life for billions of people around the world. Today, we take pictures, navigate without maps, order food, play games, message friends, listen to music, etc. all on our smartphones. Oh, and you can also use them to call people.
  2. Flash Drives: First sold by IBM in 2000, the USB flash drive allows you to easily store files, photos or videos with a storage capacity so large that it would be unfathomable just a few decades ago. Today, a 128GB flash drive, available for less than $20 on Amazon, has more than 80,000 times the storage capacity of a 1.44MB floppy disk, which was the most popular type of storage disk in the 1990s.
  3. Skype: Launched in August 2003, Skype transformed the way that people communicate across borders. Before Skype, calling friends or family abroad cost huge amounts of money. Today, speaking to people on the other side of the world, or even video calling with them, is practically free.
  4. Google: Google’s search engine actually premiered in the late 1990s, but the company went public in 2004, leading to its colossal growth. Google revolutionized the way that people search for information online. Every hour there are more than 228 million Google searches. Today Google is part of Alphabet Inc., a company that offers dozens of services such as translations, Gmail, Docs, Chrome web browser, and more.
  5. Google Maps: In February 2005, Google launched its mapping service, which changed the way that many people travel. With the app available on virtually all smartphones, Google Maps has made getting lost virtually impossible. It’s easy to forget that just two decades ago, most travel involved extensive route planning, with paper maps nearly always necessary when venturing to unfamiliar places.
  6. Human Genome Project: In April 2003, scientists successfully sequenced the entire human genome. Through the sequencing of our roughly 23,000 genes, the project shed light on many different scientific fields, including disease treatment, human migration, evolution, and molecular medicine.
  7. YouTube: In May 2005, the first video was uploaded to what today is the world’s most popular video-sharing website. From Harvard University lectures on quantum mechanics and favorite T.V. episodes to “how-to” tutorials and funny cat videos, billions of pieces of content can be streamed on YouTube for free.
  8. Graphene: In 2004, researchers at the University of Manchester became the first scientists to isolate graphene. Graphene is an atom-thin carbon allotrope that can be isolated from graphite, the soft, flaky material used in pencil lead. Although humans have been using graphite since the Neolithic era, isolating graphene was previously impossible. With its unique conductive, transparent, and flexible properties, graphene has enormous potential to create more efficient solar panels, water filtration systems, and even defenses against mosquitos.
  9. Bluetooth: While Bluetooth technology was officially unveiled in 1999, it was only in the early 2000s that manufacturers began to adopt Bluetooth for use in computers and mobile phones. Today, Bluetooth is featured in a wide range of devices and has become an integral part of many people’s day-to-day lives.
  10. Facebook: First developed in 2004, Facebook was not the first social media website. Due to its simplicity to use, however, Facebook quickly overtook existing social networking sites like Friendster and Myspace. With 2.41 billion active users per month (almost a third of the world’s population), Facebook has transformed the way billions of people share news and personal experiences with one another.
  11. Curiosity, the Mars Rover: First launched in November 2011, Curiosity is looking for signs of habitability on Mars. In 2014, the rover uncovered one of the biggest space discoveries of this millennium when it found water under the surface of the red planet. Curiosity’s work could help humans become an interplanetary species in just a few decades’ time.
  12. Electric Cars: Although electric cars are not a 21st-century invention, it wasn’t until the 2000s that these vehicles were built on a large scale. Commercially available electric cars, such as the Tesla Roadster or the Nissan Leaf, can be plugged into any electrical socket to charge. They do not require fossil fuels to run. Although still considered a fad by some, electric cars are becoming ever more popular, with more than 1.5 million units sold in 2018.
  13. Driverless Cars: In August 2012, Google announced that its automated vehicles had completed over 300,000 miles of driving, accident-free. Although Google’s self-driving cars are the most popular at the moment, almost all car manufacturers have created or are planning to develop automated cars. Currently, these cars are in testing stages, but provided that the technology is not hindered by overzealous regulations, automated cars will likely be commercially available in the next few years.
  14. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC): With its first test run in 2013, the LHC became the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. It’s also the world’s largest single machine. The LHC allows scientists to run experiments on some of the most complex theories in physics. Its most important finding so far is the Higgs-Boson particle. The discovery of this particle lends strong support to the “standard model of particle physics,” which describes most of the fundamental forces in the universe.
  15. AbioCor Artificial Heart: In 2001, the AbioCor artificial heart, which was created by the Massachusetts-based company AbioMed, became the first artificial heart to successfully replace a human heart in heart transplant procedures. The AbioCor artificial heart powers itself. Unlike previous artificial hearts, it doesn’t need intrusive wires that heighten the likelihood of infection and death.
  16. 3D Printing: Although 3D printers as we know them today began in the 1980s, the development of cheaper manufacturing methods and open-source software contributed to a 3D printing revolution over the last two decades. Today, 3D printers are being used to print spare parts, whole houses, medicines, bionic limbs, and even entire human organs.
  17. Amazon Kindle: In November 2007, Amazon released the Kindle. Since then, a plethora of e-readers has changed the way millions of people read. Thanks to e-readers, people don’t need to carry around heavy stacks of books, and independent authors can get their books to an audience of millions of people without going through a publisher.
  18. Stem Cell Research: Previously the stuff of science fiction, stem cells (i.e., basic cells that can become almost any type of cell in the body) are being used to grow, among other things, kidney, lung, brain, and heart tissue. This technology will likely save millions of lives in the coming decades as it means that patients will no longer have to wait for donor organs or take harsh medicines to treat their ailments.
  19. Multi-Use Rockets: In November and December of 2015, two separate private companies, Blue Origin and SpaceX, successfully landed reusable rockets. This development greatly cheapens the cost of getting to space and brings commercial space travel one step closer to reality.
  20. Gene Editing: In 2012, researchers from Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Broad Institute each independently discovered that a bacterial immune system known as CRISPR could be used as a gene-editing tool to change an organism’s DNA. By cutting out pieces of harmful DNA, gene-editing technology will likely change the future of medicine and could eventually eradicate some major diseases.

However you choose to celebrate this new year, take a moment to think about the immense technological advancements of the last 20 years, and remember that despite what you may read in the newspapers or see on TV, humans continue to reach new heights of prosperity.

This article was reprinted from Human Action.

AUTHOR

Alexander Hammond

Alexander C. R. Hammond is a policy advisor at the Institute of Economic Affairs, a Senior Fellow at African Liberty and a Young Voices contributor. He frequently writes about African development, economic freedom, global wellbeing and British politics. Previously, he was a Research Associate at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Are we equal? What the American Founders Meant by Equality.

The Declaration of Independence was not egalitarian in the modern sense.


The Declaration of Independence famously proclaimed that “all men are created equal.” Thanks in part to that prestigious endorsement, “equality” has become a widely held social ideal.

But what most modern-day egalitarians promote is far removed from the kind of equality that the authors of the Declaration were referring to.

Many today invoke “equality” to deny any variation in qualities among individuals, or in the resulting qualitative tendencies among sets of similar individuals. They condemn any acknowledgment of differences in aptitude, ability, character, and accomplishment as an affront to equality.

Many also call for “equality of outcome.” They regard inequality of outcomes—of wealth, income, services, treatment by private individuals, etc—as a moral outrage to be rectified.

This is sometimes based on “equality” in the “quality variation denial” sense discussed above. The argument is that, since everyone is “equal” in their qualities, any inequality of outcome must be a consequence of injustice and bigotry.

Alternatively, “equality of outcome” is itself posited to be the sense of “equality” that matters most, and thus an ideal in and of itself.

But the authors of the Declaration of Independence didn’t mean any of that when they proclaimed that “all men are created equal.” What they did mean is what the English political philosopher John Locke meant when he made the same claim in his Two Treatises of Government. This can be inferred from the well-established historical fact that the founders revered Locke’s political philosophy and from the text and context of the Declaration itself.

The reference to equality occurs at the beginning of a line of reasoning used to justify the American people throwing off the British government. And that line of reasoning mirrors the line of reasoning used by Locke to justify the right of any people to cast off any tyrannical government.

As such, Locke’s syllogism for revolution also begins with an appeal to equality.

Locke wrote that all humans are “born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties.” He did not claim that the level of our faculties (or capabilities) are all the same, just that the type of faculties we have use of are. For example, as humans, we all have the faculty of reason. That does not mean that we are all equally reasonable.

From the premise that all humans are created/born equal in that specific sense, Locke derived the conclusion that they “should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection…”

Locke referred to this as the “equality of men by nature.” It is contrary to human nature for any human to subjugate another. And Locke specified what he meant by “subjection” when he wrote that “being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions…”

So, from the natural equality of humans, Locke derived rights: meaning the inviolability of an individual’s person and property.

And from rights, Locke derived the notion that legitimate governments are instituted by the people “for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties and estates.”

And from his theory of legitimate government, Locke derived the right of the people to disobey and throw off any governments that “endeavor to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other an Absolute Power over the Lives, Liberties, and Estates of the People” and thus become tyrannical and illegitimate.

In sum, Locke reasoned from equality to rights to legitimate government to tyranny to revolution. And you can see this exact line of reasoning in the Declaration’s philosophical justification for throwing off the despotic British government (emphasis added):

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

It is highly unlikely that the authors of the Declaration of Independence would so closely follow Locke’s logical reasoning from “equality” and mean something entirely different by “equality.” And Locke did not mean “equality” in the modern egalitarian sense.

So, we can say with confidence that the American founders were not proto-leftist egalitarians. It is far more likely that they agreed with Voltaire, another devotee of Locke, who wrote, as quoted by Will Durant in The Story of Philosophy:

“‘Those who say that all men are equal speak the greatest truth if they mean that all men have an equal right to liberty, to the possession of their goods, and to the protection of the laws’; but ‘equality is at once the most natural and the most chimerical thing in the world: natural when it is limited to rights, unnatural when it attempts to level goods and powers.’”

This essay was originally published on Dan Sanchez’s Substack publication “Letters on Liberty.”

AUTHOR

Dan Sanchez

Dan Sanchez is the Director of Content at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and the editor-in chief of FEE.org.

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EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

FLORIDA: Trump Files Countersuit Against New York Attorney General Letitia James Accusing Her of ‘Harassment’

Seems like James files suit against Trump every other week. So glad MEGA-MAGA King Trump is taking Legal Action Against New York’s Attorney General Letitia James—But This Time in Florida!

Trump Takes Big Legal Action Against NY Attorney General Letitia James – But This Time in Florida

  November 3, 2022

Former President Donald Trump has launched a counteroffensive against New York Attorney General Letitia James with a lawsuit accusing her of harassment.

In September, James, a progressive Democrat, filed a $250 million lawsuit against Trump and some members of his family, claiming fraud.

“The lawsuit alleges that Donald Trump, with the help of his children Donald Trump, Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump, and senior executives at the Trump Organization, falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to induce banks to lend money to the Trump Organization on more favorable terms than would otherwise have been available to the company, to satisfy continuing loan covenants, to induce insurers to provide insurance coverage for higher limits and at lower premiums, and to gain tax benefits, among other things,” the attorney general’s office said in a Sept. 21 news release announcing her lawsuit.

Trump has now replied with a lawsuit of his own filed Wednesday in Palm Beach County, Florida.

He explained his actions in a series of posts on his Truth Social platform.

“Today, I filed a lawsuit in Florida State Circuit Court against the corrupt Attorney General of New York State, Letitia ‘Peekaboo’ James,” the former president wrote.

“New York State is one of the most crime-ridden places on earth with murders, robberies, drug deals, and every other form of crime setting records on a weekly basis,” he said. “While James does nothing to protect New York against these violent crimes and criminals, she attacks great and upstanding businesses which have done nothing wrong, like the very successful, job and tax producing Trump Organization that I have painstakingly built over a long period of years.”

Read more.

©Royal A. Brown III. All rights reserved.

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WATCH: Nevada Democrat Party Organizer EXPOSED Bashing Hispanic Voters

*CLICK HERE TO TWEET THE VIDEO*


Project Veritas Action released a new video today exposing a Field Organizer for the Nevada Democrat Party, Isaac Gudino, who is working to re-elect Senator Catherine Cortez Masto in her competitive race against Adam Laxalt.

Gudino was recorded discussing how it does not surprise him that Latinos in Nevada are moving towards conservative candidates in the past few years.

He attributed that, in part, to Latinos’ alleged sexism and homophobia.

Here are some of the highlights from today’s video:

  • Isaac Gudino, Nevada Democrat Party Field Organizer: “Have you ever like, spoken to like, a Hispanic? Because when you do, it makes more sense…That’s everybody’s issue of conflating like, ‘Hispanics only care about immigration. That’s it.’ You ever talk to, like, again…they’re just ‘muy machismo.’ Like, ‘Hey, you know, I don’t like gay people and s***.’ It’s just, it’s normal to me. It doesn’t surprise me anymore.”
  • Gudino: “Like, if there’s any reason we [Nevada Democrats] lose, it will be [because of] Latino Republicans.”
  • Gudino: “I saw like a f***ing Spanish [sign] — I don’t really speak [Spanish], but I can read a little bit and it was just like, ‘The Party of Freedom, The Party of Liberty,’ and it was all in Spanish. And I was just like, ‘They’re talking about being “Pro-Life” and being “Pro-Family.”’ It was like, ‘The Latino Way.’ I was like, ‘Oh, now they — somebody got smart enough to write their s*** in Spanish.’”

You can watch the video HERE.

Nevada’s Senate seat is up for grabs, with Latinos being a crucial voting bloc in the state.

The criticism and/or disparagement of such an important demographic could jeopardize either candidate in the polls in the last week before the election.


*CLICK HERE TO TWEET THE VIDEO*


EDITORS NOTE: This Project Veritas video exposé is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Gavin Newsom Shells Out $1.6 Million To Stop Climate Measure That Would Raise Taxes On The Rich

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s reelection campaign spent over $1.6 million to oppose a climate initiative that would raise taxes on millionaires to help low-income Californians buy electric cars. Despite this, Newsom, who is a multimillionaire, has previously touted his administration’s efforts to rapidly cut carbon emissions and get more electric vehicles (EVs) on the road.

Newsom, who boasts an estimated net worth of around $20 million, signed a bill in September to codify ambitious emissions reduction targets and praised the California Air Resources Board’s decision to ban all gasoline-powered car sales by 2035. However, Newsom’s campaign gave $1,617,216 to the “No on 30” committee, which opposes Proposition 30, a ballot measure that institutes an additional 1.75% tax on individuals that make over $2 million a year to help disadvantaged Californians buy EVs, according to campaign finance disclosures filed Tuesday.

Newsom aims to make his state’s auto industry “all-electric” by 2035 and will spend $10 billion of taxpayers’ money to “aggressively fight the climate crisis” by phasing out gas cars and building EV infrastructure. The Democrat called Proposition 30 an irresponsible “special interest carve-out” and argued that the proposed law was designed to “funnel” state income tax to Lyft, a large rideshare company, according to a statement Newsom’s campaign provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Newsom aims to make his state’s auto industry “all-electric” by 2035 and will spend $10 billion of taxpayers’ money to “aggressively fight the climate crisis” by phasing out gas cars and building EV infrastructure. The Democrat called Proposition 30 an irresponsible “special interest carve-out” and argued that the proposed law was designed to “funnel” state income tax to Lyft, a large rideshare company, according to a statement Newsom’s campaign provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“California’s tax revenues are famously volatile, and this measure would make our state’s finances more unstable − all so that special interests can benefit,” Newsom said in the statement. “Californians should know that just this year our state committed $10 billion for electric vehicles and their infrastructure, part of a $54 billion nation-leading package to fight climate change and build a zero-emission future.”

A small percentage of California taxpayers would fund Proposition 30’s EV initiatives as only 35,000 of the state’s residents reported adjusted gross incomes greater than $2 million, according to 2019 statistics published by the state’s Franchise Tax Board.

Although the measure could help Lyft by raising money to help the company’s drivers buy electric cars, environmentalists began drafting the measure before the company became involved, CEO of California Environmental Voters Mary Creasman told CBS News. A Lyft spokeswoman previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation that none of the $3.5 billion to $5 billion in tax revenue generated by the law was “earmarked” for the rideshare industry.

Californians will vote to implement or reject Proposition 30 on Nov. 8.

AUTHOR

JACK MCEVOY

Energy & environment reporter.

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The Biden Administration’s Proxy War on Free Speech

Hold on to your hats.  We’re going to be learning a lot more about the Biden administration’s efforts to silence free expression through its proxy stooges in Big Tech.

A federal judge just rejected the Biden administration’s attempt to stop depositions of government officials in a lawsuit alleging a wide-ranging conspiracy by the administration and Big Tech to censor free speech.  Anthony Fauci’s deposition is set for November 23rd.  House Republicans sent a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas calling him out for his agency’s role in censoring free speech.

More details about that role have come to light.  You might remember the agency’s Disinformation Governance Board that got shut down pretty quickly.  But DHS continues its efforts to curb free speech to this day.  Records from the conspiracy lawsuit, leaked emails and memos, and public documents show DHS pivoted to monitoring social media for the purpose of suppressing ‘misinformation’ the government doesn’t like about a wide range of topics, including the origins of COVID-19, COVID vaccine safety, and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.  Facebook created a portal for DHS and other government agencies to flag posts they don’t like, for quick action.  The portal is still in operation.  Facebook and the FBI won’t comment.  A previous report showed social media companies remove or post warnings on over a third of posts government agencies flag as objectionable.

Other agencies are also involved.  The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on its own motion formed a misinformation team and expanded the agency’s mission beyond infrastructure to ‘building resilience to misinformation’.  The agency wants social media platforms to be more responsive to its directives.  An FBI official was criticized last year after falsely telling Congress the FBI does not monitor Americans’ social media posts.  The fact of the matter is the FBI has spent millions on social media tracking software.

Hunter Biden’s laptop shows you clearly why we do not want the government in the business of deciding what is true and what is false.  According to polls, many people would not have voted for Joe Biden if they had known the truth about Hunter Biden’s laptop.  But government officials called it ‘Russian disinformation’ and social media companies at the FBI’s urging dutifully suppressed the story before the 2020 election, a decision they now say they regret.  Thanks a bunch.

There’s really no difference between the government suppressing free speech and government officials getting private actors to violate the First Amendment for them.  That’s called the state actor theory and it’s at the heart of the Missouri Attorney General’s ongoing conspiracy case against the Biden administration and Big Tech where depositions are going forward and will soon give us a lot more information about all these bad actors violating your rights.

But there’s more.  The federal government paid four private companies to flag so-called ‘misinformation’ on social media during the 2020 election, resulting in the censorship of election coverage from conservative news outlets.  The CDC told Facebook COVID vaccines for young children are safe and effective when there was no evidence of that, all so the CDC could suppress contrary information through Facebook in a campaign to overcome ‘vaccine hesitancy’.  Twitter has a portal for CDC officials to flag COVID-related posts it deems ‘misinformation’.  Documents from inside Twitter show the White House pressured Twitter to ban a New York Times writer who was raising questions about phony government COVID narratives.  Facebook spies on private messages and reports users to the FBI for expressing ‘anti-government sentiments’, whatever that means.

The Biden administration is waging a proxy war on our free speech.  The social media giants are only too happy to play along.   But with 47 more government defendants recently added to the conspiracy lawsuit, the day of reckoning is drawing closer and I, for one, can’t wait to see these overbearing authoritarian government officials and their fascist buddies in Big Tech get hammered for messing with the First Amendment.

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

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Biden and Democrats Are ALL-IN on Murdering Unborn Children—Watch!

Just after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Roe v Wade was unconstitutional and that the decision on abortions is a state issue Biden made the following statement.

Since then Biden and the Democrat Party have make the murder of the unborn their hallmark political issue for the 2022 midterm elections.

Here are a series of articles on how extreme Biden, the Democrat Party and their allies are on the issue of murdering unborn children. Biden lies about it, the media supports it and Democrats believe its a winning issue.

Please read the following articles from LifeNews.com to understand just how unhinged and deluded they all are.

Joe Biden Claims “No One Knows Precisely When Does Human Life Begin”

National  |  Micaiah Bilger  |   Nov 2, 2022   |   12:26PM   |  Washington, DC

Joe Biden brought up his Catholic faith Tuesday when he defended abortion on demand with the claim that “no one knows” when life begins.

Breitbart reports the president promoted the legalized killing of unborn babies in abortions during a campaign rally in Florida. Democrats have made abortion a key focus of the midterm election, and Biden promised to make abortion a top priority in 2023 if his party wins more seats in Congress.

“I’m a practicing Catholic. I’ve supported Roe vs. Wade,” Biden said. “And the reason I support Roe vs. Wade is the most rational basis upon which confessional faiths can agree: No one knows precisely when does human life begin.”

His statement was both troubling and wrong for multiple reasons in regard to the Christian faith, scientific knowledge and basic human rights.

Biden professes to be a devout Catholic, but his abortion advocacy directly defies his religion. The Catholic Church teaches that every human life is valuable from the moment of conception to natural death, and abortion is evil.

Last week, U.S. Catholic bishops condemned Biden’s “single-minded extremism” on abortion after he announced a radical pro-abortion bill as his top priority for 2023. One archbishop recently described the legislation as “child sacrifice,” saying it’s what “one would expect from a devout Satanist, not a devout Catholic.”

Actress Anne Hathaway: Killing a Baby in an Abortion is an Act of “Mercy”

National  |  Peter Pinedo  |   Nov 2, 2022   |   9:41AM   |  Washington, DC

Actress and Hollywood celebrity Anne Hathaway claimed during an interview on “The View” that “abortion can be another word for mercy.”

Let that sink in.

The actress famed for her roles in The Devil Wears Prada and Princess Diaries, believes that brutally murdering innocent children in their mothers’ wombs is somehow equivalent to mercy.

Though extremist support for abortion is the expected norm in Hollywood, Hathaway’s take still boggles the mind. Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of the undeniable, scientifically proven humanity of preborn children and the savage cruelty of abortion, has to wonder, “does Anne Hathaway not know what the word ‘mercy’ means?”

Commenting on the historic Dobbs v. Jackson Supreme Court case that resulted in the reversal of Roe v. Wade, Hathaway called for people to fight against Pro-Life laws and “radicalize” in support of killing unborn babies.

In voicing her support for abortion, Hathaway has never voiced support for any restrictions, which leaves open the door for especially cruel late-term partial birth abortions. In these outrageously barbaric “procedures” a well-developed baby is partially delivered, only to be ripped apart limb from limb.

Joe Biden Gives Planned Parenthood $17 Million to Kill Babies in Abortions

National  |  Micaiah Bilger  |   Nov 2, 2022   |   10:28AM   |  Washington, DC

Joe Biden’s administration awarded almost $17 million in taxpayer-funded grants this year to the billion-dollar abortion chain Planned Parenthood.

According to Live Action News, the nation’s largest abortion company received the money through the Title X family planning program under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Another $25.5 million from the program went to other pro-abortion groups, the news outlet discovered.

Title X funds are not supposed to be used for abortions. The program provides family planning services to low-income individuals, and the law states that Title X grants may not be used “where abortion is a method of family planning.”

However, Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion business in the U.S., has been one of the biggest recipients of Title X for years. In 2019, the Trump administration issued a rule ensuring that funding would not be used to support abortions, and Planned Parenthood dropped out of the program.

In 2021, however, the Biden administration reversed the action with a rule that requires Title X recipients to refer for abortions and ended the requirement that abortion facilities separate their abortion practices from their Title X services. Now, 12 states are suing to challenge the pro-abortion rule.

Powerful Video Shows Abortion Staffer Quitting After Seeing the Reality of How Abortions Kill Babies

 

National  |  Micaiah Bilger  |   Nov 2, 2022   |   5:58PM   |  Washington, DC

A short but powerful new video from the perspective of a hospital ultrasound technician exposes the horrific way unborn babies are killed in abortions.

A true story, the animated 4-minute film comes from Loor.tv and CHOICE42, a Canadian pro-life organization known for both satirical and serious videos about abortion. Actor Kevin Sorbo (“Hercules,” “God’s Not Dead”) is the voice-over talent in the film.

“The Procedure” follows the harrowing experience of a hospital sonographer as he is called into the operating room to unknowingly help with a second-trimester abortion.

“I had no idea what I was walking into,” the man recalls.

After plugging in the ultrasound machine, he receives orders to place the probe on the woman’s stomach so that the surgeon will not perforate her uterus. Recognizing the patient is pregnant, the tech seems to assume at first that she is being treated for a miscarriage.

To his horror, however, he soon realizes her unborn baby is still alive. Looking at the ultrasound screen, he says the woman was in her second trimester and it was easy to see that the unborn baby was a girl.

“Stunned, I watched the doctor thrust a catheter into the amniotic sac,” he says. “The fetus dodged the catheter and tried to hide in the top of her mother’s uterus to get away.”

SUPPORT LIFENEWS! To help us stand against Joe Biden’s abortion agenda, please help LifeNews.com with a donation!

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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EXCLUSIVE: Migrants Are Given ‘Literal Roadmaps’ To Reach The U.S. Border. And Big Tech Is Funding It!

  • Doctors Without Borders is handing out maps to migrants that show several different routes to the U.S. border, according to a map seen by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
  • “As a medical humanitarian organization providing medical and mental health care to people on this migration route, MSF [Médecins Sans Frontières] prints and distributes these maps to ensure that people know where to find shelter and humanitarian assistance and how to access mental health services along the migration route,” Doctors Without Borders spokeswoman Jessica Brown told the DCNF.
  • The Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR) labels the documents “literal roadmaps to guide migrants from Central America to our southern border,” in a statement to the DCNF.

GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala — Doctors Without Borders, a medical aid nonprofit which is funded by a number of prominent tech companies, is publishing and distributing maps to migrants showing routes through Central America that reach the U.S., according to a copy of the map seen by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The map is labeled “shelters for people on the move” in Spanish and lists a number of clinics and other areas where aid can be found along the journey to the U.S., according to the document. While Doctors Without Borders hasn’t received U.S. government funding since 2002, the group still receives sizable donations from American companies, including from tech giants Microsoft, Google.org and Amazon.

The group has also gotten millions in donations from the foundations of billionaires Elon Musk and Michael Bloomberg, according to its website.

“As a medical humanitarian organization providing medical and mental health care to people on this migration route, MSF [Médecins Sans Frontières] prints and distributes these maps to ensure that people know where to find shelter and humanitarian assistance and how to access mental health services along the migration route,” Doctors Without Borders spokeswoman Jessica Brown told the DCNF.

Click here to view the Daily Caller News Foundation map.

The map shows paths starting in Guatemala that lead up to the U.S.-Mexico border. Each path is marked with locations for shelter and aid along several different routes through Central America that end in the U.S.

The map also lists the locations of clinics and shelters along the Mexican border across from major U.S. cities, such as El Paso, Texas and San Diego, California.

“The fact that an international medical NGO with billions in the bank is making literal roadmaps to guide migrants from Central America to our southern border is not only an affront to its core mission, but a globalist attack on our sovereignty,” Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) Director of Government Relations and Communications RJ Hauman told the DCNF.

The map is labeled “Medicos Sin Fronteras,” which is the name used by the organization’s offices in Argentina and Spain, which have separate finances in addition to a combined international account with the U.S. office.

Doctors Without Border has previously highlighted its work “assisting migrants on their dangerous journeys.”

“We provided treatment for people emerging from the Panama side of the jungle, who are mainly from Cuba or Haiti, although our teams have seen people from West Africa. Regardless of origin, everyone passing through the Gap is heading north, where they still face the dangerous route through Mexico, in search of a better life in the United States,” the group noted in a 2021 report.

Between October 2021 and September 2022, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountered roughly 2.3 million migrants at the U.S. border with Mexico. Many of the migrants made the trek through South and Central America, where some are receiving the map, which Hauman compared to the smuggling operations of cartels.

“No American citizen, company, or foundation should give a dime to Doctors Without Borders until they quit working hand in glove with cartels and smugglers to enhance mass migration in the region While the federal government hasn’t funded Doctors Without Borders since 2002, there are plenty of other NGOs with similar missions that do quietly receive taxpayer dollars. Republicans must examine this immediately next Congress,” Hauman said.

Bloomberg, Google, Amazon and Microsoft also didn’t respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

The Musk Foundation couldn’t be reached for comment.

AUTHOR

JENNIE TAER

Investigative reporter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Biden Gives Divisive Speech: We Will Steal It and You Will Like It [Or Else]!

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.” – Edward Bernays, American theorist, considered a pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda – 1928


Questioning that is “unlawful.” Biden sounds like Stalin who said, “The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.”

The Democrat media axis has it marching orders, prepare the American people for delayed election results so they can rejigger the numbers.

And while Elon is a pip, Twitter has joined the latest election putsch. Sign on and you get this:

Twitter: It takes time to count the votes

And yes, Pamela Geller and Geller Report am still banned from Twitter.

Joe Biden: Democracy Itself at Stake if You Vote for Republicans in the Midterms

By: Charlie Spiering, Breitbart News, 2 Nov 202281

President Joe Biden again warned on Wednesday of Republicans taking power in the midterm elections, arguing the “very soul of America itself” was in danger.

“We the people must decide whether the rule of law will prevail or whether we will allow the dark forces and … thirst for power put ahead of the principles that have long guided us,” Biden said during a speech delivered inside Union Station.

Biden began his speech by recalling a deranged individual’s attack on Paul Pelosi on Friday after the assailant could not find Speaker Nancy Pelosi in their home in San Francisco.

The president again tried to connect the attack against Pelosi to January 6, when Trump supporters stormed Capitol Hill to protest the 2020 presidential election.

Biden blamed former President Donald Trump for challenging the results of the 2020 election, which he argued only increased the number of incidents of political violence.

“We don’t settle our differences in America with a riot, a mob, or a bullet or a hammer, we settle them peacefully at the battle box — ballot box,” he said.

Biden’s speech was sharply partisan, ignoring Democrats who protested the results of the 2016 election falsely declaring Trump an illegitimate president elected because of Russian influence. He also ignored incidents of Democrat political violence and political figures who refused to acknowledge legitimate elections.

Instead, he blamed “extreme MAGA” Republicans.

“In this moment, we have to confront those lies with the truth. The very future of our nation depends on it,” he said, calling it a “defining moment” in American history.

He warned that over 300 Republicans running for office had questioned the 2020 presidential election, which symbolized the “appetites of autocracy” versus American democracy.

“We must with one overwhelming unified voice speak as a country and say there is no place for voter intimidation or political violence in America,” he added. “No place period, no place ever.”

Biden repeated many of the talking points about democracy he has pursued since his inauguration, again blaming Republicans for endangering the future of democracy in the United States.

The president argued that the future of democracy was more important than all other issues, implicitly calling for Americans to vote Democrat in order to save the future of the country.

“We must vote, knowing what’s at stake, and not just the policy of the moment,” he said.

Fixing our fraudulent elections is easy. Paper ballots:

As Geller Report reader SR explains, “France has a good system – voters show up in person on election day, the voter roll is checked and if they are on it they are given sets of cards of candidates for each party. In a curtained compartment they put a pre-printed card with just their own candidate’s name on it into a paper envelope, show their photo ID to an official who reads the person’s name aloud and validates that they just have one envelope, then the voter inserts it into a locked transparent box called an “urn”. At the end of election day, both locks on the urns are unlocked and under supervision the envelopes are put into batches of 100, and then the batches are distributed to several on-site teams who count the votes for each candidate with a lot of supervision and unambiguous “chain of custody”. The same thing is done the prior day by French citizens in foreign territories and living abroad, so that despite the time zone being later, their vote too will be counted and included on election day in France, instead of the final results having to wait until the next day due to the time zone.

On the other hand, electronic systems, provided by sketchy corporations some with links to Venezuela, where piles of ballot batches can optionally be fed in multiple times, or unofficial pre-filled ballots can be shipped in and introduced by partisan operatives, are prone to manipulation. Plus the voting software in some of these systems can “count” in an unconventional way that is hard to track and in theory accessed from outside or have their thumb drive controller swapped out. In addition, the mail-in ballots, unmonitored drop boxes, voter rolls padded with deceased and out-of-state relocated people who miraculously “vote”, and of course the lack of voter ID in many states. Even India has had a mandatory national voter ID card (the Electors Photo Identy Card – EPIC) since 1993. The “icing on the cake” is the scam of having nursing home personnel who routinely collect their residents’ ballots and vote for them.”

 

 

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Ibn Warraq’s ‘The Islam In Islamic Terrorism’ zooms to Top 100 at Barnes & Noble after being banned at Amazon

Good to see people striking back against the fascists.

Ibn Warraq’s The Islam in Islamic Terrorism, after being banned at Amazon, has zoomed to #73 on Barnes and Noble’s charts. That’s out of all the books there are, kids.

Get your copy here.

Background of the controversy.

Amazon Fascists Ban Another Book That Leftists Hate

The battle for the freedom of speech is heating up this week, with Elon Musk chasing out the Twitter fascists and beginning to open up the platform for free discussion and dissent (amid howls of rage from the Left), but the other social media giants are showing no signs of retreating from their fascism. New English Review Press announced Sunday that a book it published back in 2017, The Islam in Islamic Terrorism: The Importance of Beliefs, Ideas, and Ideology by the renowned ex-Muslim scholar Ibn Warraq, has been pulled for sale from Amazon without explanation or the possibility of appeal.

It’s a strange move. I have the privilege and honor of having known Ibn Warraq for many years and calling him my friend. I’ve also read The Islam in Islamic Terrorism. Before I met him, his groundbreaking and courageous work Why I Am Not A Muslim was a powerful influence on me in the 1990s and had a great deal to do with my beginning to write about jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women myself. Ibn Warraq is a gentle soul, a careful scholar, a superb writer, and a profound and original thinker. The Islam in Islamic Terrorism is not some flame-throwing hate screed but a carefully documented exploration of the elements of Islam that jihad terrorists use in order to justify violence and make recruits among peaceful Muslims.

Amazon, however, is run by Leftists, and for Leftists, any criticism of Islam, including any hint that it may have some connection to Islamic terrorism, is “Islamophobic” and thus to be rejected out of hand without any discussion of the actual evidence. For years now, the notorious far-Left smear machine, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), has defamed opponents of jihad violence and Sharia oppression as “hate group leaders,” and Amazon has banned counter-jihad 501c3 charitable organizations from its Amazon Smile charity program on the basis of the SPLC’s “hate” listings.

Amazon has also shown a readiness to ban books that counter the Left’s nonsense. A few years back, the Leftist behemoth banned Ryan Anderson’s When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment. It has also banned other books that jihadis and their allies would find offensive, such as Peter McLoughlin’s Easy Meat: Inside Britain’s Grooming Gang Scandal, and Mohammed’s Koran by McLoughlin and British activist Tommy Robinson.

Leftists will say, as they always say to criticism of the social media giants, that Amazon is a private company that can do what it wants and that if patriots don’t like it, they can start their own bookstore. Remember bookstores? There used to be many in every American city. They all had different selections, based on the owners’ perspectives and interests. But now they are almost all gone. Amazon dominates the book market, and Barnes & Noble takes most of the rest. If Amazon decides that your book is not acceptable, then most people who are interested in books will never have the opportunity to see it at all.

In earlier, less polarized times, the U.S. government determined that several monopolies — Standard Oil, American Tobacco, AT&T — were not in the public interest and compelled them to break up. It would be a great boon for the freedom of speech if Big Tech were subjected to this treatment, but the U.S. government as it is currently constituted is more likely to act against Musk for protecting the freedom of speech on Twitter than against the other social media giants for suppressing that freedom. The American people would also benefit immensely from the breakup of Amazon and reconstitution of bookstores that reflect differing points of view with selections that reflect not just Amazon’s doctrinaire Leftist line, but other points of view as well.

The Islam in Islamic Terrorism can still be found here. But it’s clear that Amazon is intending to shut down debate on a highly controversial issue. Even if you don’t care for the works of Ibn Warraq (which would be odd, as it would mean you don’t care for lucid, elegant prose, compelling reasoning, and a broad command of the salient facts), make no mistake: anytime Amazon pulls a book for political reasons, we are all threatened. The precedent has been set by the only bookseller that really matters today that books that are offensive to the Leftist elites can be deep-sixed at will. This precedent is dangerous and corrosive to a free society. In this age of the Biden regime’s creeping authoritarianism, it’s ominous in the extreme.

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Is It a Sin Not to Vote?

In 1629, the first American balloting for an election occurred in Salem, Massachusetts. The issue? Choosing a minister and choosing a Christian teacher for the colony. “Such is the origin of the use of the ballot on this continent; [Samuel] Skelton was chosen pastor and [Francis] Higginson teacher.”  So writes George Bancroft, an early American historian, on this first election on American soil in Volume I of his 6-volume, History of the United States of America (1882).

Historian Paul Johnson writes in his 1997 classic, A History of the American People: “In a sense, the clergy were the first elected officials of the new American society, a society which to that extent had a democratic element from the start.”

And Christians in America have been voting ever since.

Founding father Samuel Adams once said, “Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote…that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country.”

However, there has arisen a feeling among some professing believers that somehow it is spiritual to not participate in something as earthly as politics.

As the late Dr. D. James Kennedy, noted pastor and author, once said: “A Christian said to me, ‘You don’t really believe that Christians should get active in politics do you?’ And I said, with tongue in cheek, ‘Why, of course not, we ought to leave it to the atheists. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have anything to complain about. And we’d really rather complain than do something, wouldn’t we?’”

But today we find ourselves in such a mess in America that the very least Christians could do is vote, and vote our Biblical values.

Some people have written off elections because they think it’s all rigged. They look at some of the anomalies that have occurred in recent balloting, and they think, “Why should I even bother? My vote won’t count.” Well, if you don’t cast a vote, your potential vote certainly won’t count.

With great understatement, Gary Bauer notes in his End of Day Report (10/28/22), “We know unhinged leftists are not constrained by the basic teachings of Judeo-Christian civilization. They feel justified in doing anything and everything necessary to win.”

But if Christians show up in great numbers, we can overcome the potential for cheating because the Christian conservative voting bloc is huge.

About a decade ago, Alveda King, the niece of MLK, made some interesting observations about Christians and voting in an interview for television.

Alveda told me, “I hear remarks from both sides of the aisle. You know, ‘God’s not a Republican’ and ‘God’s not a Democrat.’ And so, we as God-fearing people don’t need to try to lock in a position to a political party, but certainly our votes must always follow our values.”

One of those values is against abortion and for life. Meanwhile, the left is embracing abortion to the hilt. When we vote Biblical values, we obey what the Lord would have us do.

Writing for the Washington Times (10/30/22), Everett Piper, a former president of a Christian college, opines on how far to the left the left has gone these days because of things like the castration of children and pornography in the schools: “The Democrat party is now so extreme that no serious follower of Christ can align with it. There is no longer any such thing as a ‘Christian Democrat.’”

The aforementioned Dr. Kennedy once declared that it is indeed a sin not to vote. His proof-text was from the passage in the Gospel, where Jesus said that we should render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s (Mark 12:17).

On the issue of voting, he said: “For non-Christian Americans, voting is a privilege and responsibility; for Christians, it is a duty demanded by God that we should fulfill.” [Emphasis his]

It has been said that in America, we get the kind of government we deserve.

Historically, Christians in America applied their faith to virtually every sphere of life, including their politics. While the founding fathers were not all Christians, the vast majority of them were, and more importantly they had a Biblical worldview.

So, for example, they divided power, since they knew man is sinful. James Madison, one of the key architects of the Constitution, noted: “All men having power ought to be distrusted.” This is a Biblical perspective. Sometimes people complain that the Constitution limits the amount of power any one single branch may have. That was by design.

The only poll that counts is the one you cast at election time. Don’t sit this one out. As the late Bishop Harry Jackson once declared, “Too many people died for the right of all people in the nation to vote.”

©Jerry Newcombe, D.Min. All rights reserved.

TAKE ACTION: Tell Biden ENOUGH Regulations!

Between these two regulations, millions of franchise owners and workers will be in jeopardy of losing their jobs as the franchise business model would be destroyed.

Furthermore, independent workers such as truck drivers, freelancers, Lyft and Uber drivers, and more will be forced into an employer-employee relationship that strips away the advantage and appeal of being an independent worker. They will lose the ability to choose their hours or choose their clients.

Biden’s plans have all failed to help our economy, but as President Reagan also said “The more the plans fail, the more the planners plan.”

In the middle of an economic downturn restrictive regulations are the absolute last thing we need.

Help your fellow Americans—take two minutes to submit two comments to oppose these two rules!

Use our action center—Submit your comments now!

Janae Stracke
Director of Grassroots
Heritage Action

©Heritage Action. All rights reserved.

The Federal Reserve Hikes Interest Rates Again As Inflation Rages On

The Federal Reserve announced an interest rate hike of 0.75 percentage points, bumping the range of the federal interest rate to between 3.75% and 4% following a Wednesday meeting of Fed policymakers.

The rate hike matches investor expectations and is the fifth consecutive hike since March and the fourth at this aggressive pace since June as the Federal Reserve attempts to cool the economy and blunt persistently high inflation, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. All eyes are now on the Fed’s December meeting, with investors debating whether the Fed will continue at its aggressive pace of 0.75 percentage point hikes or slow to 0.5 in a bid to ease the pressure on an economy an emerging consensus of analysts say is heading towards a recession.

Some investors were hoping the Fed would begin a “pivot” towards reduced rate hikes in December after various signs that the economy was beginning to slow, Reuters reported Tuesday. However, following a Bureau of Labor Statistics report Tuesday that showed an unexpectedly strong labor market, with job openings in September nearly recouping an August decline, some investors believe the Fed will likely see itself as having more work to do in prompting a slowdown.

“Despite other signs of economic deceleration,” Ronald Temple, head of U.S. equity at financial advisory firm Lazard Asset Management, told Reuters, “the job openings data taken together with nonfarm payroll growth indicate the Fed is far from the point where it can declare victory over inflation and lift its foot off the economic brake.”

So-called “core inflation,” which measures inflation less food and energy, ticked up to 5.1% year-on-year in September, according to the Fed’s preferred inflation metric, the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index. The more well-known Consumer Price Index (CPI) has repeatedly come in hot, with its most recent reading also showing soaring core inflation, up 0.6% on a monthly basis in September and up 6.6% on an annual basis.

Heightened rates have pushed people away from buying houses at the fastest rates on record, as 30-year fixed mortgage rates hit their highest levels in 20 years. Elevated interest rates are also putting pressure on the federal government, with the cost of interest on the $31.1 trillion national debt set to surpass the $750 billion spent on defense this fiscal year by 2026, according to CNN.

AUTHOR

JOHN HUGH DEMASTRI

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Media Research Center Report: Google Manipulated Searches in Senate Races, Favoring Democrats

UPDATE: Biden Regime Caught Colluding With Big Tech to Silence You


This is election interference. When are these treasonous cretins going to face justice?

Media Research Center Report: Google Manipulated Searches in Senate Races

By: Allum Bokhari:

A report from the Media Research Center, strongly denied by Google, suggests the tech giant is manipulating search terms related to races for the U.S. Senate to favor Democrats.

Google is under intense scrutiny this election cycle after a study from North Carolina State University found that Gmail sent roughly 59 percent more Republican campaign emails to users’ spam folders than Democrats during the 2020 election. The Republican National Committee alleges that this imbalance is ongoing, and intentional on Google’s part.

Now, a Media Research Center (MRC) study claims Google is favoring Democrats in search results related to Senate races, but not House races.

Via the MRC:
In the Senate study MRC Free Speech America conducted, Google buried 10 of 12 Senate Republican Party candidates’ campaign websites while highlighting their opponents campaign sites in organic search results. But when doing the same search, Bing and DuckDuckGo showed both the Senate Democratic Party candidates’ campaign websites and the Senate Republican Party candidates’ campaign websites in the top five organic search results on page one.

Meanwhile, MRC Free Speech America found that Google placed Republican campaign websites higher in search results than Democrat campaign websites by a 21-11 margin in House races, while giving four races equal treatment.

[ … ]

MRC Free Speech America applied the exact same methodology from its Senate study to analyze 36 top House races, where polling shows the House does not hang in the balance.

Google strongly disputed the findings of the study, telling Fox News Digital that “This report is designed to mislead, testing uncommon search terms that people rarely use. Anyone who searches for these candidate names on Google can clearly see that their campaign websites rank at the top of results – in fact, all of these candidates currently rank in the top three and often in the first spot in Google Search results.”

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.