Isn’t freedom of speech and the press such fun? We can call a spade a spade and not be afraid that a neighbor or colleague at work or a family member will notify the “authorities” and then you don't have a job anymore (unless you work for a company run by Elon Musk). Thus we can say that two former Florida Democrats who switched parties, state representatives Hillary Cassell and Susan Valdes, are complete self-serving hypocrites who think that throwing out whatever ethics and morality they ever possessed out the door in order to “party” with Republicans is a “vision for a better, more prosperous Florida,” or after losing a vote for county party chair, goes sulking in the corner because she feels “ignored.”
Freedom of speech and the press also allows us to admit that rather than put Bill Clinton on a pedestal as an “elder statesman,” we can admit that in many—if not most—ways his administration was a domestic policy disaster for this country. Clinton enabled what was then the Republican version of Project 2025. Why? Is it that hard to understand? Clinton needed “friends” after Republicans won both houses of Congress in 1994, with those troublesome Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky affairs in tow.
What followed was something we see today by some politicians, corporations and billionaires who have run afoul of Trump. From his book A Fabulous Failure, Nelson Lichtenstein 1 noted that by 1995, Clinton, desperate to remain “relevant” and fortunate enough to face a white-bread opponent, Bob Dole, for reelection in 1996, became
the first Democratic President since FDR to win two consecutive terms, but that accomplishment seems merely a product of his accommodation to an ideology that privileged trade liberalization, financial deregulation, privatization of government services, and the growth of class inequalities. Clinton’s 1996 declaration, “The era of big government is over,” seemingly ratified Reaganite conservatism.
Lichtenstein notes that Clinton relied
on Republican support against his own party’s opposition to his numerous “reforms”
in regard to everything from financial deregulation, immigration, welfare,
crime, trade and telecommunications—all which had some varying degrees of
making the “problems” they were supposed to “fix” worse. The idea that the
economy had entered a “new phase” of “technologically-driven
productivity gains, global trade, and financial innovation that simultaneously
reduced unemployment and interest rates, elevated the stock market, and made
international trade a win-win proposition” turned out to be “an illusion, but
an even greater failure," one that
may well have arisen from the Clinton Administration’s actual achievements: creating a federal budget surplus, downsizing the government workforce, enacting an ambitious crime control law, passing the North American Free Trade Agreement, constructing a pathway for China to join the World Trade Organization, and deregulating both Wall Street finance and America’s vast telecommunications infrastructure. Wall Street boomed and unemployment dropped, but in the end, none of these reforms moved the nation toward the economic stability, social equality, or global democratic resurgence. Trade with China, the Clintonites had prophesied, would undoubtedly create the conditions for a free press, entrepreneurial freedom, and the autonomy, individual and organizational, necessary to sustain a robust civil society in that ancient nation. They were convinced that democratic effervesce was sure to accompany all those new cell phones, stock markets, and supermarkets.
Of course, China remains a totalitarian state. In the end, Clinton—rather than showing the way “forward” for the Democratic Party, “was a dreadful party leader” according to Lichtenstein. The party, as shown by Bernie Sanders, could be both “progressive” and appeal to the same working class voters who were fooled by Donald Trump into thinking he and Musk have the working class “interests” in their “minds” rather than their own greed.
Let’s take a look at Clinton’s Telecommunications Act and what it brought us. At the dawn of the television era, most radio stations were operated by major media companies at the time, but who then largely abandoned radio to focus on the new medium, television. In order to replace them, radio stations relied on selling licenses to local entities, often small businesses creating shows to use to advertise their goods. Lack of control meant independent voices could be heard. As Paul Matzko of the Cato Institute pointed out
Finances were tight for these independent stations, so the owners were open to selling timeslots to groups the networks wouldn’t have given the time of day to. That included a new generation of right-wing broadcasters, who (mostly unfairly) attacked liberals and Democrats as unpatriotic Communist sympathizers. After President John F. Kennedy’s election in 1960, he became a particular target of these broadcasters, who went after everything from his mishandling of the Bay of Pigs invasion to his proposed Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. This Radio Right emerged rapidly. The biggest of them, a fundamentalist minister from New Jersey named Carl McIntire, could be heard on just two radio stations in 1956; by 1963, he was on more than 460 outlets. His estimated weekly audience was 20 million people—about as many as Rush Limbaugh reached 40 years later.
But what did Clinton’s Telecommunications Act do that made this situation worse? Seattle, for example, is supposed to be a “liberal” city, yet you won’t hear any “liberal” talk anywhere on the radio, unless you consider NPR “liberal.” There used to be a “progressive” talk station on AM 1090, but that only lasted a few years and was replaced by sports talk (I don’t know what it is now). Why? Because “big business” was back in “charge” and they could decide who was or wasn’t heard, especially if controlled by “conservatives.”
Before the Act, there were limits on how many broadcast stations one company could control, whether television, cable, radio or even the Internet. Those limits were removed, and the result was smaller local stations were bought out of the market. The result was a massive reduction in independent stations, and what was left was a relative few stations that were wholly corporate-controlled.
Instead of hearing something from the tiniest tweak of the dial, what was heard was what a small “sampling” of (mainly far-right) “voices," most of them syndicated countrywide. “Liberal” local voices in even “liberal” communities were thus silenced because there was no jobs open for them in order to “speak.”
So “thank you” Bill Clinton, who is in poor health and recently hospitalized, and so it is unfortunate that this nasty business has to come on now, because freedom of speech and the press is under more stress with the election of Trump. We see in states like Florida, Texas and Oklahoma that the anti-DEI and CRT movements are really a cover for far-right denial of free speech. I mean, let’s be honest about this: racists want to be racists and don’t like being called on it, and this is a way to do it.
On the other hand, they want to stuff down our throats their own “cultural” and “religious” views that they claim that all “patriotic” people (well, white people anyways) should abide by. It’s bad enough that they elected as president someone who doesn’t practice any of that himself, but hypocrisy and ignorance has no shame.
We have already seen how allegedly “liberal” media has “sucked” up to Trump so that he won’t do bad things to them. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s letter to Congress whined and begged for forgiveness for how he felt “pressured” by the Biden administration to "censure" widespread disinformation about COVID-19, and Amazon and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos nixed the intended publication of the endorsement of Kamala Harris.
Comcast, owner of MSNBC, forgot how Fox News lost
viewership after the 2020 election, and decided that MSNBC’s losing of viewership
after this past election wasn’t a “fluke” and decided to cast it and it’s NBC
News division outside to fend for themselves like unwanted children. Time will tell when viewership will rebound when people realize that what Fox News is telling them and reality are not coinciding.
Disney, which owns ABC News,
decided $15 million was a “fair” price to pay to get Trump off their back with
his phony “defamation” claim—you know, the same one that a New York judge threw
out because he said E. Jean Carroll was within her rights to call what Trump
did to her “rape” despite the technical definition of what that was in the
state penal code. But all this "settlement" did was make Trump more convinced he can wage war successfully to silence the "enemy" media.
Thus Trump and his bloated billions from his media company and the leftover PAC money will be used to intimidate the press and social media outlets through the tactic of “frivolous lawsuits” meant to put the offending voice out of business through massive legal expenses. This is what Media Matters is up against from Musk and Republican state attorney generals.
How about these
Fraudsters. Liars. Perjurers. Felons. Grifters. Stooges. Imbeciles. Murderers. When it comes to describing scientists whose peer-reviewed studies suggest the COVID-19 virus made a natural jump from animals to humans, molecular biologist Richard Ebright and microbiologist Bryce Nickels have used some very harsh language. On X (formerly Twitter), where the two scientists from Rutgers University are a constant presence, they have even compared fellow researchers to Nazi war criminals and the genocidal Cambodian dictator Pol Pot.
That’s right, it isn’t the “left” that Science is noting here that is engaging in outrageous and despicable libels against others in print or social media in order to silence differing opinions. Elbright and Nickels are far-right proponents of the “lab-leak” theory, which has gained new “credence” since the Republican-composed pandemic “report” and the former Trump CDC head recently claiming that it is “possible” that U.S. “covert” agents in the Wuhan, China lab created the virus there, of course with no evidence. The right-wing Wall Street Journal, however, printed a “report” that three Pentagon scientists are making that claim which is not supported in the “official” Pentagon report.
Meanwhile, as the ACLU notes, Trump is considering every option to stifle dissent. He has “indicated that his administration would consider invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy the military to America’s cities — potentially targeting those with large BIPOC and immigrant communities — to suppress the right to protest. Trump has also indicated that his administration would attack online free expression by forcing media companies and online platforms to carry conservatives’ preferred speech.”
He can do this because “As president, with federal law enforcement agencies under his control, Trump could carry out attacks on advocacy organizations and individuals he opposes.”
I mean, there is nothing “new” or “strange” about this—Texas’ nutcase AG Ken Paxton wastes hundreds of millions of state taxpayer money inventing a new case practically every day. Of course Texas has “plenty” of that oil money to waste on frivolous lawsuits, but not so much on what people actually need to stay alive; in fact Texas’ “Lone Star” do-it-alone strategy is coming to “fruition,” with its insufficient power grid and water shortages threatening to make life miserable for a lot of people. Of course it blames its failures on immigrants.
Besides, the U.S. Supreme Court has already decided that a corrupt individual like Trump can’t be criminally prosecuted for “official acts,” and what exactly those are open to only one definition, Trump's own. The ACLU points out that the court’s ruling on “immunity” means that probably the most important “guardrail” preventing Trump from silencing his “enemies” is non-functional:
Since President Richard Nixon was held accountable for deploying the DOJ against his political enemies, the department’s independence has been a fundamental norm preventing presidents from overstepping. Yet Trump has asserted that, as president, he has “an absolute right” to do what he wants with the DOJ. The Supreme Court recently removed one guardrail in Trump v. United States, ruling that the president cannot be criminally prosecuted for “official acts,” including actions taken through the DOJ. Trump can use a politicized DOJ by dropping civil rights enforcement cases and instead bringing abusive cases attacking voters, protestors, journalists, abortion care providers and patients, and others he perceives as enemies.
The Guardian, meanwhile, pointed out that the First Amendment may not serve as the “guardrail” against Trump’s attempts to silence critics that people think. It pointed out that in the Pentagon Papers case, the Supreme Court “left open the possibility that reporters and publishers might be prosecuted after the fact.” The Supreme Court has also not resolved the question of whether “government investigators can compel reporters to reveal their sources.” While some states have “shield laws,” Congress has never passed a similar law on the federal side. In this story concerning the “mess” created by the “murky” Branzburg vs Hayes case 2 from Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court declined to recognize a First Amendment privilege that would allow news gatherers to refuse to answer grand jury questions about their sources’ criminal conduct. But even while rejecting this kind of reporter’s privilege, the majority acknowledged that “news gathering is not without its First Amendment protections”––although it declined to articulate what those protections might be, beyond indicating that the First Amendment might protect journalists where prosecutors issued subpoenas in bad faith.
The question now is if how will the U.S. Supreme Court respond to questions left “murky” and answered previously with confusing qualifications when Trump and his Justice Department to be headed by Pam Bondi leave the starting block. Bondi, who was chair of the America First Policy Institute and whose principle “qualification” for AG is that she used that position to advocate the usual Trump-inspired misinformation and conspiracies, and according the Brennan Center
AFPI has brought a series of concerning lawsuits in recent years, particularly in the voting rights and elections arena. In 2024, AFPI brought at least five lawsuits aiming to hinder ballot box access or disenfranchise specific groups of voters, according to the Brennan Center’s research. Several of these lawsuits contain questionable factual and legal reasoning.
Perhaps we give Trump too much “credit.” He is the oldest man ever elected president, and we have seen when he goes off “message” he appears to be either insane or suffering from dementia. We already know that he is backing off on some of his Day One decisions, including admitting that he won’t be able to bring down those high prices he blamed Biden for and not greedy businesses—in fact if he goes through with his tariff and deportation plans, people should expect prices to go higher--maybe a lot higher.
Trump can't blame everything on people
expressing their First Amendment rights, but he will try to shut them up if he can; after all, he won this election on voters being purposefully ignorant.
If we let him act on his dictatorial impulses by running “scared” or trying to suck-up to him instead of telling the truth, that is just another
step toward a fascist government.
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