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College Graduates Are the New Favored Class of Democratic Largesse

By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | November 28, 2022

When Americans make lists of the persecuted, downtrodden groups in our society, college graduates rarely top the ranking. But President Joe Biden is offering one bribe after another to convert college graduates into perpetual dependents of the Democratic Party. Biden’s handouts helped prevent a “red wave” of Republican victories on Election Day and he appears hellbent on forcing taxpayers to pay any price to continue buying votes for his party.

Federal subsidies for higher education have been one of the least recognized boondoggles of recent decades. Federal-backed loans for higher education took off in the 1960s and have skyrocketed in this century. Almost $2 trillion in federal student loans are owed by 46 million people.

Federal aid spurred tuition increases that make it far more difficult for unsubsidized students to afford higher education. A student’s financial “need” is defined largely by tuition fees. Every tuition increase means an increase in federal aid for students—and thus an increase in the federal aid for the college. A 2012 study by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity concluded that financial aid “inevitably puts upward pressure on tuition. Higher tuition reduces college affordability, leading to calls for more financial aid, setting the vicious cycle in motion all over again.” A 2015 Federal Reserve analysis “found that for every new dollar made available in federally subsidized student loans, schools…rose their rates by 65 cents.”

Federal policies have helped turn young people into a debtor class perpetually clamoring for relief from its burdens. Rather than seeing the federal government as a potential peril to their rights and liberties, some debt-burdened young adults view it as the “Great Liberator”—presuming the right candidate is elected.

Rather than ending the perverse incentives embedded in federal aid, Biden “solved” the problem by canceling borrowers’ obligation to repay their subsidized loans. On August 24, Biden invoked an obscure provision of the post-9/11 Heroes Act to justify hundreds of billions of dollars of handouts to people who had taken out federal college loans. The Heroes Act permits the Education Department “to waive or modify student loan payments in times of national emergency.” Individuals earning less than $125,000 could have up to $20,000 in federal debt automatically erased; couples earning $250,000 could see a $40,000 forgiveness windfall.

Biden had previously admitted that the law would not justify blanket forgiveness of college loans, but he and his advisors decided to force Americans to pay any price for Democrat votes in the midterm congressional elections. The Department of Education justified Biden’s decree as “a program of categorical debt cancellation directed at addressing the financial harms caused by the COVID-19 pandemic,” including “cancellation for borrowers who have been financially harmed because of the COVID- 19 pandemic.” But college graduates were doing much better financially than other Americans who get stuck with the bill for their schooling. Their unemployment rate was less than two percent at that time.

Former Education Department lawyer Hans Bader estimates that the total cost of Biden’s student loan write-offs could exceed a trillion dollars. A Wall Street Journal editorial headlined “Biden’s Half-Trillion-Dollar Student-Loan Forgiveness Coup” derided his decision as “easily the worst domestic decision of his Presidency.” The Journal pointed out that Biden based the loan cancellation for more than 40 million borrowers “on no authority but his own” power as president. “This is a college graduate bailout paid for by plumbers and FedEx drivers,” the Journal noted. As former OMB director David Stockman observed, “Student debt is overwhelmingly an investment in professional credentialization that should never have been an obligation of the taxpayers in the first place.” ZeroHedge quipped on Twitter: “Have colleges raised tuition by $10,000 yet or are they waiting a few days first?”

There was no rationale for blanket cancellation of student debts that would not justify blanket cancellation of almost any debt citizens owed to the government. At the same time that Biden played Santa Claus with student loan forgiveness, his administration was hiring 87,000 new IRS agents and employees to squeeze more money out of working Americans.

The handouts helped buy Democrats their biggest boost among voters — a 28% advantage over Republicans in voters age 18 to 29 in the mid-term elections. Two days after the election, Biden tweeted, “I want to thank the young people of this nation” who voted for “student debt relief.” Jon Cooper, a former top Biden campaign operative, tweeted, “Young people: You saved our butts. THANK YOU.”

Two days after the election, federal judge Mark Pittman struck down the bailout as an unconstitutional decree: “In this country, we are not ruled by an all-powerful executive with a pen and a phone. Instead, we are ruled by a Constitution that provides for three distinct and independent branches of government.” Pittman rejected the “emergency” basis of the order in part because Biden had proclaimed in September on “60 Minutes” that “the pandemic is over.” The following week, a federal appeals court in St. Louis unanimously voted to impose a nationwide “injunction considering the irreversible impact the Secretary’s debt forgiveness action would have” on “Americans who pay taxes to finance the government.”

Some activists believe Biden intentionally swindled young voters with a bait-and-switch scheme. Briahna Joy Gray, who was the press secretary for Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, asked, “Did Biden RIG student debt forgiveness to fail, just to help him in midterms?” She explained on Twitter: “They used the promise of student debt cancellation to induce young voter turn out—knowing it wasn’t going anywhere [because] they relied on faulty legal authority. Hard to convince me the Biden admin didn’t do this intentionally.” A student activist group called the Debt Collective is circulating a petition: “I refuse to pay a debt the President promised to cancel.”

Biden came up with a Solomonic solution—sawing taxpayers in half—to placate his enraged supporters. He announced on Twitter, “Republican special interests and elected officials sued to deny this relief even for their own constituents. It isn’t fair to ask tens of millions of borrowers eligible for relief to resume their student debt payments while the courts consider the lawsuit.” On November 22, Biden announced that he was extending the moratorium on repaying student debt until August 2023. That moratorium began in March 2020 during the first COVID lockdowns and has already cost taxpayers $155 billion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. When Biden announced his loan forgiveness decree in August, he promised, “The student-loan payment pause is gonna end. It is time for the payments to resume.” Biden betrayed that promise, apparently believing that no one should be obliged to fulfill their legal obligation as long as there was a snowball’s chance in hell that some judge would uphold his scheme. Extending the loan payment moratorium could give a crucial boost to Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, locked in a tight December 6 run-off election.

What happens when the latest moratorium extension ends in August 2023? Biden may be formally kicking off his re-election campaign at that time. And what better way to buy support than by extending a handout to one of his most important constituencies? In the 2022 mid-term elections, “52 percent of voters with college degrees supported Democrats while 42 percent of voters without degrees did so,” The Washington Post reported.

Protecting former students from the federal debts they voluntarily accepted has become one of the great human rights issues of our times. Michael Pierce, chief of the Student Borrower Protection Center, is calling for Biden to “make it clear that the student loan system will remain shut off as long as these partisan legal challenges persist. Borrowers’ fate is in Biden’s hands.”

And this is the ultimate problem for democracy. Student loan bailouts have extended Biden’s power over a huge swath of American voters. Each new federal benefit program extends political control over both the recipients and anyone forced to finance the handouts. Speaking to an AFL-CIO convention earlier this year, Biden shouted, “I don’t want to hear anymore of these lies about reckless spending. We’re changing people’s lives!” “Changing” means controlling—but only for their own good, or at least for the re-election of their benefactors

French philosopher Bertrand de Jouvenal warned, “Redistribution is in effect far less a redistribution of free income from the richer to the poorer, than a redistribution of power form the individual to the state.” If Biden’s loan repayment moratorium is extended through 2024, “a typical medical student who graduated in 2019 would effectively have $107,000 forgiven and a law school graduate would have $65,000 forgiven… New doctors receive almost ten times the benefit of the average borrower and $107,000 more than someone who never attended college,” the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget reported. Even The Washington Post editorial page slammed Biden’s student debt forgiveness decree as a “regressive, expensive mistake.”

But the inequity is irrelevant if the handouts enable Biden and his Democratic colleagues to perpetuate their grip on power. As legal fights over loan bailouts continue, Americans will continue to be assailed by claptrap about ex-students as a holy class of martyrs—or at least oppressed victims. But most of the self-proclaimed “best and brightest” are not smart enough to recognize how they have been converted into tools for Leviathan.

Jim Bovard is the author of Public Policy Hooligan (2012), Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994), and 7 other books.

November 30, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Economics | | Leave a comment

Medical clinic treating people injured by COVID shot opens in Italy

By Ken Hall | LifeSiteNews | November 28, 2022

LUCCA, Italy — A private medical clinic has opened in Lucca, Italy that is devoted to caring for patients who have been injured by the experimental COVID-19 vaccines.

The clinic was opened by a group of doctors and health workers who were recently reinstated to their positions after newly-elected Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government removed discriminatory legislation that barred vaccine-free Italians from working in healthcare.

An Italian medical rights group celebrated the clinic as “helpful” and “welcoming,” but a left-wing political party from Tuscany has attempted to pressure the mayor of Lucca to publicly disavow the clinic seeking to help heal those suffering from COVID vaccine injuries.

The local Partito Democratico (Democratic Party) released a statement saying “we believe the mayor needs to take a position, and distance himself from what is happening on this front in our city.”

The statement was made even after the party admitted that the group who started the clinic did so with the intention of helping the vaccine-injured, and that the group also wanted doctors to have freedom of conscience protections when practicing medicine.

Italy has flipped the script on COVID restrictions since the election of Meloni, who has admitted that Italy had the “most restrictive anti-COVID measures in the entire Western world,” but was still “among the countries with the highest numbers of deaths and infections.”

She vowed that her government “will not replicate that pattern in any way,” promising to never “limit fundamental freedoms.”

Under previous Prime Minister Mario Draghi, the then left-wing government had enacted severe measures against Italians who chose not to take the COVID jab, restricting them from many aspects of public life under the guise of the “Super Green Pass.”

Under the restrictions, all Italians were required to be jabbed or provide proof that they had previously recovered from COVID in order to work, and all those over 50 years old had to be vaccinated or they would be fined by the government on a monthly basis.

In response, Italians protested in massive numbers, and it is believed that support swelled for the populist Meloni as a result of her opposition to such measures.

November 29, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

Oblivion: the best cure?

The effects of lockdown, now becoming clearer by the day, should never be forgotten.

By Tom Jefferson | Trust the Evidence | November 29, 2022

My grandfather was a decorated WWI veteran. He was lucky and got back home minus a hand. My dad participated in the Battle of Britain, North African and Italian campaigns. He got home apparently unscathed. However, both had one thing in common: they would not speak of what they had done and seen. What they had been through was too terrible to describe, and people were not interested; it was all in the past. That is one of the reasons why we have wars: few people have any idea what it’s like.

It’s going that way with the most traumatic experience in this lifetime: lockdowns.

Looking at the media, you would think nothing extraordinary has happened since 2020.

Well, let me remind you.

Our civil liberties were severely curtailed, drones were sent after lone runners on deserted moorland, children could see but not touch toys in stores (if they were let in at all), our elders died abandoned in nursing homes or their own homes, governments spurted gibberish on the advice of modellers and overnight experts. The media ran a wall-to-wall campaign to get the populace to toe the line. Crooks were allowed to run away with billions of public money while massive amounts were spent on useless tests. That is why the Chancellor has a large hole in his books. While patients likely to be infected were moved around hospitals, in some casualties, separation consisted of taped bin bags stretched across walls, GPs were not accessible, and the police were checking people’s movements and compliance with government policies. Children were confined to home; people stopped exercising and took to drinking. People with serious illnesses did not get treated, partly because they were rightly scared of catching the plague when in hospital. Few people questioned what was going on.

Data, real data on which momentous decisions were made, were absent. We do not know how many real infectious cases or deaths attributable to SARS-CoV-2 there were. Even deceased who tested negative were wrapped up in the Covid death tally. So we cannot separate the impact of the agent from the self-inflicted devastation.

The current economic crisis has its genesis in the demented and wasteful response to an unknown unquantified threat, then came the war in Ukraine, but the lockdown came first. Remember how many businesses stopped paying taxes because they had gone bust or could not trade?

Parliament had little say in what went on while large swathes of politicians were trying to outdo each other in demanding more restrictions and closures.

Scientific evidence, when available, was used as a political weapon regardless of its quality and credibility.

So now that I have refreshed your memory and now we know that no one will ever be held responsible for the greatest catastrophe in our generation, I ask you, when will the next round be? There is ample precedent, so it’s only a matter of time.

The government is now bending over backwards it seems to address four problems: cancer, obesity, addiction and mental health, throwing more money at four problems which its policy magnified and worsened. I will save you the effort of searching. In the glossy press release, I failed to find any mention of restrictions, isolation or lockdown.

Perhaps my grandfather and father should have spoken about the war and reminded those who wanted to forget that oblivion is the road to perdition. For our democracy, our society and our families.

November 29, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

‘Critical Win’: Appeals Court Strikes Down San Diego Schools COVID Vaccine Mandate

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 28, 2022

In a precedent-setting decision for the State of California, a state appeals court last week ruled against the San Diego Unified School District’s (SDUSD) COVID-19 vaccine requirement for students.

The decision by California’s 4th District Court of Appeal upheld a December 2021 decision by a lower state court, which found school districts cannot impose vaccine mandates of their own — on top of the vaccines required by the state — as a precondition for classroom attendance.

The lawsuit was filed in October 2021 by the Let Them Choose initiative of Let Them Breathe, a California-based nonprofit advocacy group, challenging SDUSD’s mandate.

According to Let Them Choose, this was the first COVID-19 vaccine mandate in the U.S. to be struck down in a final ruling, and the new decision upholding the original court ruling “sets precedent for all California school districts.”

Remarking on the decision, Mary Holland, president and general counsel of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), told The Defender :

“It is great news that the California appellate court affirmed that vaccine mandates under California law must come from the state, not the school district.

“This is especially welcome news as the injection in question, the COVID-19 shot, is neither safe nor effective, nor even a vaccine in any normal sense as it fails to prevent infection and transmission. Kudos to ICAN [Informed Consent Action Network] and its lawyers for a critical win.”

According to the case history accompanying the court’s December 2021 ruling, a similar lawsuit was filed by the parent of a 16-year-old student in the SDUSD. The two lawsuits were then consolidated into a single case.

Attorneys for ICAN, an Austin-based advocacy group active in challenging various COVID-19-related mandates across the U.S. and pressing for the release of government data related to COVID-19 vaccine injuries, represented the parent who sued the SDUSD.

SDUSD was “one of a few districts in California” to set its own COVID-19 vaccine requirement for students. It would have applied to students 16 and over, for in-person classroom attendance and participation in extracurricular activities.

While medical exemptions were permitted, exemptions for religious and personal reasons were not, in line with stipulations set forth in California Senate Bill 277 (SB 277).

The mandate, which was scheduled to take effect in September 2021, would have placed unvaccinated students in “involuntary independent study” as of Jan. 24, 2022.

SDUSD’s vaccine mandate was never fully enforced, precisely because of the legal challenge filed almost immediately by Let Them Choose, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

In May 2022, the SDUSD paused the mandate until at least July 2023, although the reasons cited for this pause included “the vaccines’ lower effectiveness against the virus’ Omicron variant and amid delays in full federal approval of the vaccine for children under 16 years old,” the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

Court: ‘Independent study not a real choice’

The 4th District Court’s 19-page decision rejected multiple arguments by the SDUSD, including the school district’s claim that its mandate was aligned with its responsibility to keep students healthy and safe and that school districts can develop policies to “meet local needs.”

According to the ruling, the SDUSD mandate “unlawfully seeks to usurp [the] authority” of the California state legislature in enacting vaccine requirements for school children in the state.

According to the decision:

“The issue here is whether a school district may require students to be vaccinated for COVID-19 as a condition for both (1) attending in-person class, and (2) participating in extracurricular activities. The superior court determined there was a ‘statewide standard for school vaccination,’ leaving ‘no room for each of the over 1,000 individual school districts to impose a patchwork of additional vaccine mandates.’

“On independent review, we reach the same conclusion and affirm the judgment. … In sum … we reject the District’s primary contention that the Legislature left the door open for local school districts to require student vaccination for COVID-19 as a condition to attending in-person class.”

The vaccines required by the California Department of Public Health as a precondition for school admission include four doses of the polio vaccine, five doses of the DTaP/Tdap (diphtheria toxoid, tetanus toxoid, and acellular pertussis) vaccine, three doses of the hepatitis B vaccine, two doses of the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine, two doses of the varicella (chickenpox) vaccine and a new Tdap dose for grades 7-12.

The judge presiding over the original district court case regarding this lawsuit stated:

“I think that the state … has fully occupied this field, there’s a statewide standard, and a local school district simply doesn’t have the authority to do something inconsistent with the statewide standard.”

SDUSD also claimed its vaccine mandate was not really a mandate, because it allowed unvaccinated students to continue their classes via at-home “independent study.” But the court rejected this argument, calling it “a step backwards”:

“Finally, the District makes the strained argument that the Roadmap does not actually mandate students be vaccinated for COVID-19. Rather, it gives them the choice to either do so or be enrolled in independent study. … We doubt that students and their parents perceive a real choice. For some, independent study would likely be a step backwards …

“In any event, the District’s free choice argument is belied by Regulation 6025. It gives the school no choice but to ‘admit or allow continued attendance’ to any pupil whose parent or guardian has provided documentation of the 10 required immunizations and/or medical or applicable personal belief exemptions.”

The decision went on to equate “attendance” with “in-classroom learning,” stating:

“The plain meaning of ‘attendance’ in this context is in-classroom learning.

“To the extent the Roadmap requires a student who is fully vaccinated within the meaning of Regulation 6025 to choose between a mandated COVID-19 vaccination and involuntary independent study, it is a choice the Legislature does not permit the District to compel.”

Holland, in analyzing this aspect of the court’s decision, told The Defender, “The plain meaning of ‘attendance’ in this context is in-classroom learning.”

Ray Flores, senior counsel for CHD who analyzed the ruling, told The Defender :

“This case is a victory over rogue districts attempting to impose their own vaccine schedule. The court ruled, ‘If the District desired to condition school attendance on COVID-19 vaccination, it should have urged DPH [Department of Public Health] to follow the existing statutory procedure under section 120335, subdivision (b)(11) for adding new immunizations.

“Ironically, SB 277, which has been the bane of California parents’ existence, actually protected them in this case since the court took Judicial Notice of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s analysis of Senate Bill No. 277, which required a ‘statewide standard’ from which there could be no deviation. As the appellate court opined, ‘In a nutshell, local variations must give way to a uniform state standard.’”

Lawyers for Let Them Breathe and Let Them Choose also remarked on the decision. Attorney Lee Andelin stated:

“Today the California Court of Appeal affirmed the Superior Court’s judgment in Let Them Breathe’s lawsuit against San Diego Unified holding that school districts do not have authority to impose their own vaccination requirements on top of the standard series.

“This is a great win for children and the rule of law and ensures consistency statewide. The published opinion applies to all California school districts and sets important precedent to protect access to education.”

Attorney Arie Spangler said:

“This ruling affirms the sound judgment issued in January 2022 by Superior Court Judge John Meyer, which prevented San Diego Unified from implementing an illegal COVID vaccination mandate that would have locked thousands of San Diego students out of its classrooms.”

A new precedent — but only for California

As part of his legal analysis, Flores told The Defender the 4th District Court’s decision “is encouraging” and sets a “binding precedent” for the State of California — but not for other states.

Holland explained why the decision is not binding outside of California:

“Under the doctrine of stare decisis — to stand by things (previously) decided — higher courts only have binding authority over lower courts within their particular state or circuit. Courts of appeals and state courts do not bind courts outside the state or circuit. The only exception is the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Children’s Health Defense is readying itself for the time when state legislatures will be considering adding COVID-19 vaccines to their state schedules. This will be the call to action and mobilization in those states.”

Flores also noted that the appeals court “did not buy” the argument put forth by the SDUSD that a “choice between two options, even if both are not preferred, is still a choice,” in reference to the “choice” provided by the school district to continue attending classes via at-home “independent study.”

In a statement provided to the San Diego Union-Tribune, SDUSD spokesperson Mike Murad said the district “will consider its next steps” following the ruling.

A separate lawsuit against the City of San Diego over its vaccine requirement for municipal employees is still pending.

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

November 29, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | | Leave a comment

Australia to withdraw tens of thousands of Covid-19 fines

RT | November 29, 2022

The authorities in Australia’s largest state, New South Wales (NSW), have said that they will withdraw or refund tens of thousands of fines issued for violations of restrictions during the pandemic.

The move follows a defeat that the NSW government suffered in a court battle against free advocacy group Redfern Legal Centre on Tuesday.

The group launched a test case in July on behalf of three plaintiffs, arguing their fines of between AUS$1,000 ($673) to AUS$3,000 ($2,020) were invalid because the penalty notices didn’t describe the offense sufficiently.

“It’s not a big ask, if you’re going to fine someone for an offense, to set out what the offense is in the notice,” Katherine Richardson, the lawyer for the plaintiffs argued at the New South Wales Supreme Court, as cited by the Sydney Morning Herald.

The government’s lawyers have now conceded that the tickets really didn’t meet the legal requirements.

Shortly after the hearing, the Commissioner of Fines Administration said that 33,121 fines are going to be withdrawn, as they had been issued with similar wording to those of the plaintiffs’ notices.

Redfern Legal Centre has said on Twitter that the development was a “momentous win” for it.

However, the tax administration agency Revenue NSW insisted that the challenge had been on a “technical basis” and that the court ruling didn’t mean that offenses that led to the fines hadn’t been committed.

A full judgment in the case from presiding judge Dina Yehia is expected to be delivered next year.

November 29, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

Twitter quietly changes Covid-19 policy

RT | November 29, 2022

Twitter has said it will no longer enforce its coronavirus misinformation policy, according to an update on the platform’s Covid-19 transparency page that went largely unnoticed since it was posted last week. The move came as its new owner Elon Musk announced a “general amnesty” for previously suspended accounts.

The misinformation policy was initially developed in 2020 amid the outbreak of Covid-19 and was meant to combat “harmful” misleading posts about the coronavirus, government policies aimed at curbing its spread, and related vaccines.

Users who violated the rule received strikes. After two or three strikes, their accounts were suspended for 12 hours. After four, they would be locked out for a week, while offenders with more than five strikes were permanently banned from the platform.

According to statistics published by Twitter itself, between January 2020 and September 2022, the platform’s moderators challenged over 11.72 million accounts and suspended more than 11,000 for violating the rule. They also scrubbed nearly 100,000 pieces of content worldwide under the policy.

The extensive moderation policy became a topic of heated debate. Some called for more censorship of posts deemed to be harmful, while others argued this constituted suppression of free speech.

Since Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion last month, he has made a number of dramatic changes at the company, including laying off nearly two-thirds of its staff and significantly cutting the site’s moderation and management teams.

Ahead of Thanksgiving, the billionaire also vowed to extend a “general amnesty” to an unspecified number of suspended accounts after holding a Twitter poll, in which more than 72.4% out of 3.1 million respondents supported the move.

Critics have argued that the social networking service could soon become a hotbed for misinformation, right-wing extremism and hate speech. Musk, however, has insisted that he wants Twitter to become a level playing field and a bastion of free speech where people can peacefully exchange their views on a wide range of topics.

November 29, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Separate Tech and State

By Ron Paul | November 28, 2022

Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) recently got in touch with his inner mobster and threatened Elon Musk — the new owner of Twitter and the CEO of electric car company Tesla and space ventures company SpaceX. He told Musk, “Fix your companies” or “Congress will.” As part of this threat, Markey referred to an ongoing National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigation into Tesla’s autopilot driving system and Twitter’s 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Markey has done more than make threats: He is one of a group of Democratic senators who wrote to the FTC urging an investigation into whether Musk’s actions as the new owner of Twitter violated the consent decree or consumer protection laws. Since FTC Chair Lina Khan wants to investigate as many businesses as possible, it is likely she will respond favorably to the senators’ letter.

President Biden has also endorsed an investigation into the role foreign investors played in financing Musk’s Twitter purchase. Biden may be concerned that Musk is not likely to ban tweets regarding Hunter Biden’s business deals.

Concerns that Musk would allow tweets containing information embarrassing (or worse) to the Biden administration point to the real reason many Democratic politicians and progressive writers and activists are attacking Musk. They support efforts to suppress conservative, libertarian, and other “non-woke” speech on social media. They view the prospect of a major platform refusing to silence those who dissent from the woke mob or the Democratic Party establishment as a threat to their power. Musk further angered the left by committing what, to many Democrats (and Liz Cheney), is the ultimate hate crime — allowing Donald Trump back on Twitter.

The threat against Musk shows the threat to liberty is not just from big tech; it is from the alliance between big tech and big government.

Some conservatives think that increasing government’s power over social media is the correct way to make big tech respect free speech. However, increasing the US government’s power over social media can just end up putting more power behind government threats like those from Rep. Markey. Expanded government control over how social media companies conduct their business can also further incentivize the companies to work with the federal government to shut down free speech.

Once the government steps in with increased regulation, the risk is that greater government control over what is communicated on social media will follow. The question will just be who is calling the shots on the exercise of that control. Will the result be an increase of the liberal or “woke” pressure on social media companies to silence conservatives, libertarians, opponents of teaching critical race theory and transgenderism in schools, and those who question the safety and effectiveness of covid vaccines? Alternatively, will a new sort of pressure become dominant, maybe pressure to comply with conservative or Republican preferred limits on speech? Either way, liberty loses.

Big tech companies silence their users to curry favor with politicians and bureaucrats, often after “encouragement” from politicians and bureaucrats. Therefore, to end big tech’s censorship, Americans should demand that all government officials — including the president — not violate the First Amendment. We must work to put an end to government officials pressuring or even “encouraging” social media platforms either to silence any American citizen because of his opinions or to downplay or suppress any news story. The way to protect free speech online is to separate tech and state.
Copyright © 2022 by RonPaul Institute.

November 29, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

British Media Minister Shows Double Standards on Free Speech in China and UK

Samizdat – 29.11.2022

The British government’s draft Online Safety Bill has previously come under fire from free speech campaigners and MPs — including current culture and media minister Michelle Donelan — for demanding social media sites censor posts which do not break any law.

The UK’s media minister has demanded Beijing grant British journalists freedom of speech — while suppressing it at home.

But her department is also spearheading new legislation to censor social media posts even if they do not break any laws against threats or incitement.

Speaking on a radio programme on Tuesday morning, Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Michelle Donelan said it was “absolutely shocking” that a reporter for British state media was arrested while covering protests against COVID-related restrictions in Shanghai.

“We believe in press freedom and the media to be able to report all over the globe,” Donelan said.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian accused the British media of “playing the victim” after it claimed cameraman Edward Lawrence was “beaten and kicked” by police.

Zhao urged foreign journalists not to engage in activities “unrelated to their role” — implying they were taking part in the protests rather than reporting them impartially.

The new draft of the Online Safety Bill, which Donelan’s department is pushing through Parliament, would force social media moderators to delete users’ posts if they have “reasonable grounds to infer” their content could cause “serious distress” to some individuals.

The previous version drafted under Donelan’s predecessor Nadine Dorries was criticised by MPs and free speech advocates for attempting to ban comments it dubbed “legal but harmful”.

Donelan herself said at the time that wording would create “a quasi-legal category between illegal and legal.”

A government factsheet published in May said the bill would only mandate censoring social media posts if some harm was “intended”, without a reasonable excuse or the defence of public interest — theoretically protecting satirical cartoons and statements of political opinion.

Ironically, Dorries was herself reportedly banned from a private WhatsApp group for Conservative Party MPs in December 2021 for defending then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson from her colleagues’ criticism.

November 29, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

The Australian Government Lied: Doctors are NOT covered by Government’s indemnity for Covid Injections

By Rhoda Wilson • The Exposé • November 27, 2022

Last week Elizabeth Hart wrote to Mark Butler, Australian Minister for Health and Aged Care, about the government misleading health practitioners who are administering Covid injections into believing they are covered by a government medical indemnity scheme. “It has now been confirmed by your department that health practitioners are not covered by a specific Covid-19 government medical indemnity scheme,” she wrote.

Elizabeth Hart is an independent researcher investigating the overuse of vaccine products and conflicts of interest in vaccination policy.

According to a response Hart received on 17 November from Nigel Murray – Assistant Secretary, MBS Policy and Specialist Services Branch – the government did not put in place a medical indemnity scheme for health professionals.  Instead, Murray told Hart, “the former [Morrison] Government established the no-fault Scheme, which commenced operations on 13 December 2021.”  Later in the same letter, he again confirmed the scheme did not exist:

“While a medical indemnity scheme for health professionals administering the Covid-19 vaccine was not established per se, the creation of the no-fault Scheme was intended to support increased participation by health professionals in the Covid-19 Vaccination roll-out.”

Hart informed Butler, the promise of “a medical indemnity scheme for health professionals administering the Covid-19 vaccine” probably did intend “to support increased participation by health professionals in the Covid-19 Vaccination roll-out”. But it turns out they are not personally protected by a government scheme. She explained to Butler:

In July 2021, the Morrison Government stated it was establishing a “fit-for-purpose Covid-19 vaccine medical indemnity scheme” to “support increased vaccination uptake by assuring Australians that health professionals, including GPs, nurses and pharmacists administering Covid vaccines as part of the Commonwealth vaccination program have appropriate indemnity coverage”, with a further announcement in August 2021 stating “The Morrison Government has finalised the details of the no-fault Covid-19 Vaccine Claim Scheme following extensive consultation with the peak medical, healthcare, business and insurance sectors to ensure a comprehensive National Scheme”, noting “It also ensure [sic] that health professionals administering vaccines will be able to continue with their crucial role in the vaccine roll out with assurance that the claims scheme will offer them protection”

But it now turns out health professionals are not personally protected by a specific Covid-19 medical indemnity scheme.

The letter from Nigel Murray also confirms: “Informed consent should be obtained for every Covid-19 vaccination, as per usual consent procedures for other vaccinations.”

Mark Butler, it appears health practitioners don’t have specific government medical indemnity re the Covid jab rollout, although they might think they do. They will have to look to their own medical indemnity insurance to protect them. And they should be obtaining informed consent for every Covid-19 jab…but is this actually happening?

What is the quality of information being provided to people, including parents of children, to enable them to properly evaluate the threat of SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19, and the risks and benefits of the multiple Covid jabs, in their own specific circumstances? Why are people of most ages and health status being called upon to have the Covid-19 jabs? Who is actually at serious risk with SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19? Does having repeated Covid jabs compromise the immune system and make people more vulnerable? Nigel Murray includes reference to the ‘Covid-19 vaccination – Patient resources’ webpage in his letter, but this webpage only includes information re Covid jabs for children, not for adults. Nigel Murray’s letter also includes a link to a ‘Consent form for Covid-19 vaccination’.

How does this information re Covid jabs referred to by Nigel Murray stack up in the ‘valid informed consent’ stakes? I would say not very well at all…

This is an extremely serious situation, Mark Butler – it’s highly likely ‘valid informed consent’ has not been properly obtained by many health practitioners before administering Covid-19 jabs.

The health practitioners inserting the needle must be warned they’re not protected by a specific government Covid medical indemnity scheme after all…and they need to consider the quality of the information they’re providing to people to gain their ‘valid informed consent’ to the jabs. They must also consider the impact of jab mandates – which pressure, coerce and manipulate people to submit to Covid jabs, in contravention of The Australian Immunisation Handbook, i.e., jab mandates inhibit a ‘voluntary’ decision.

Mark Butler, please advise what steps you are taking to address this matter.

This email is being circulated to other parties, including the response from your department.

Health practitioners, Covid jabs and ‘valid informed consent’ – a medical ethics disaster, Elizabeth Hart emails

As Dr. Mike Yeadon noted on his Telegram channel: “This has all the appearance of government throwing medical staff under the bus on liability & requirements for informed consent.”

Two days later, Hart forwarded her email trail with Butler to Kamran Abbasi, editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal (“BMJ”), copying in numerous “people influential on international public health/vaccination policy via the scientific and medical establishment, and other parties.”  People copied into her email included infamous modeller Neil Ferguson, UK’s Chief (Covid) Medical Adviser Chris Whitty, President of the Royal Society, and Oxford/AstraZeneca injection’s developers Adrian Hill and Sarah Gilbert.

The BMJ claims to be evidence-based and patient-centred and customer-focused – surely ensuring ‘valid informed consent’ before medical interventions, such as Covid jabs, should be foremost in your values?

Sadly, ‘valid informed consent’ appears to have been sacrificed during the grossly disproportionate and ill-targeted Covid debacle. This scandal is now unfolding in Australia.

FYI, please see [above] my response to Australian federal health minister Mark Butler, on the subject of health practitioners’ medical indemnity insurance for Covid-19 jab administration, and health practitioners’ obligation to obtain ‘informed consent’.

This information has major implications for health practitioners administering Covid-19 jabs in Australia – they need to know they’re not covered by a specific government Covid-19 medical indemnity scheme, and that they’re obligated to obtain informed consent before every Covid-19 jab.

But I strongly suspect many health practitioners have failed to obtain ‘valid informed consent’ before the Covid jabs. How have things gone so terribly wrong?

This is a very serious situation, Kamran Abbasi, at the heart of medical ethics. This should be a priority topic on the BMJ.

November 28, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Biden’s ex-disinfo czar registers as foreign agent

RT | November 28, 2022

The former disinformation czar for President Joe Biden’s administration has apparently landed on her feet after resigning amid controversy earlier this year. She has registered as a foreign agent representing a UK activist group that advocates for censorship of speech it finds objectionable.

Nina Jankowicz filed her registration paperwork with the US Department of Justice earlier this month, identifying herself as a representative for the London-based Centre for Information Resilience (CIR). Her work with CIR will include serving as an ambassador for the group with US policymakers, media outlets and technology companies.

Jankowicz resigned as the director of the newly created US Disinformation Governance Board last May, after the administration “paused” the initiative amid public outcry that it might operate as an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth.” She had contributed to such fears by calling for blue-check Twitter users like her to police commentary on the social media platform by editing tweets that they considered false or misleading.

Jankowicz had also been criticized for being a purveyor of false information herself. For instance, she called the New York Post’s October 2020 scoop on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop a “Trump campaign product” and warned that militant supporters of then-president Donald Trump would show up at the polls to intimidate voters. She called for Big Tech platforms to censor allegations that Covid-19 leaked from a Chinese lab and claimed that online mockery of Vice President Kamala Harris was a threat to national security and democracy.

CIR, which is funded partly by the UK government, bills itself as an independent “social enterprise” that counters disinformation, exposes human rights abuses and combats online behavior it deems harmful to women and non-white people. Its advisers include former CIA analyst Cindy Otis and former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves, who led his country’s accession to NATO.

Much of the group’s commentary is anti-Russia, especially as it relates to the Ukraine conflict. For instance, it accused Russian forces of committing various war crimes and claimed that Moscow illegally deported Ukrainian civilians to Russia. Last year, CIR claimed to have discovered a coordinated network of social media accounts that posted Chinese Communist Party propaganda.

CIR co-founder Ross Burley, a former British Foreign Office operative, has publicly called for social media platforms to ban certain independent journalists and outlets, such as the Grayzone, which he called a “Russian propaganda outfit.”

November 28, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Trump Says Justice Department is ‘Corrupt’

Samizdat – 27.11.2022

WASHINGTON – Former US President Donald Trump has accused the US Department of Justice (DOJ) of corruption and of making false allegations against him.

“The ‘Justice’ Department is CORRUPT. Offered Christopher Steele $1,000,000 to lie about me, paid Russian a fortune to ‘get Trump,’ told Facebook not to mention the Hunter Biden Laptop before the Election, ‘it was Russian disinformation,’ when they KNEW it was not,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday.

Last month, Trump said that the decision by a US jury to acquit Russian national Igor Danchenko on charges of lying to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) regarding the Trump-Russia collusion probe shows the disgraceful nature of the US justice system.

The case against Danchenko started last November, when he pleaded not guilty to charges of lying to the FBI about his role in the discredited “Steele Dossier” used to allege collusion between Trump and the Kremlin during the 2018 US presidential election.

The prosecution contended that Danchenko lied to the authorities about the sources of information given to former British spy Christopher Steele for the dossier on purported contacts between Trump and Russian officials. The indictment against Danchenko accused him of fabricating the information.

A Special Counsel investigation did not find any proof of collusion between Trump and Russia.

Senior FBI intelligence analyst Brian Auten testified in court in October that the FBI had offered $1 million to Steele to provide evidence to back his allegations.

November 27, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Senator Markey calls for Twitter regulation after Elon Musk ignored his letter

Senator Markey wants social media regulated for “safety”

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | November 27, 2022

Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) has called on Congress to pass new legislation to regulate social media after  ignored his demand letter.

On November 11, Markey sent a letter to Musk asking about the new paid account verification feature. The first rollout of  Blue made it easier for users to impersonate politicians, celebrities, and brands. The Washington Post was able to create a verified account of Senator Markey.

After Markey shared a copy of the letter on Twitter and highlighted that The Post was able to impersonate him, Musk joked with him, writing: “Perhaps it is because your real account sounds like a parody.” A few hours later, Musk wrote, “And why does your pp have a mask!?”

The billionaire was referring to Markey’s profile picture, which shows him in a face covering.

Markey later threatened the Tesla owner: “One of your companies is under an FTC consent decree. Auto safety watchdog NHTSA is investigating another for killing people. And you’re spending your time picking fights online. Fix your companies. Or Congress will.”

Musk had until November 25 to respond to Markey’s letter, which he did not.

“Elon Musk could respond to my tweets but failed to respond to my letter by yesterday’s deadline and answer basic questions about Twitter verification,” Markey tweeted on November 26. “Congress must end the era of failed Big Tech self-regulation and pass laws that put user safety over the whims of billionaires.”

Musk is yet to respond to Markey’s latest tweet. However, on Friday, he did appear to answer one of the senator’s questions by announcing a new verification system. It will require manual authentication and the check marks will have different colors depending on the type of user.

“Gold check for companies, grey check for government, blue for individuals (celebrity or not), and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before check activates,” Musk said.

November 27, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

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