The Republican-majority United States House of Representatives demonstrated this week, through votes on several relatively modest bills, that it will just keep demanding more US government spending and control. Republican representatives often claim to support limited government and frugality, but mostly they, and their Democratic Party colleagues, keep acting as government-loving spendthrifts.
Tag: government
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A DOGE Switcheroo
Many actions associated with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have been met with support from advocates of reducing the size and power of the United States government. Spending has been halted, and US government employment rolls have been reduced. But, is this all leading to a real government reduction or, instead, are the American people being set up for a grand switcheroo?
On November 9, a few days after Donald Trump won election to return to the White House, I wrote an article titled “Defunding NPR.” In the article, I presented reasons why “a spending cut that jumps out as among the most obvious for [Department of Government Efficiency leader Elon Musk] and the incoming Donald Trump administration to pursue is eliminating all US government support for National Public Radio (NPR) and its affiliated programing and radio stations.” Here is an update.
The United States government does not need to give a dime to any college. But, if it does continue its funding of colleges, the First Amendment of the US Constitution bars that funding from being denied to a college because the college is determined to have insufficiently prevented speech the US government opposes, such as speech the US government deems to be critical of the Israel government.
On Thursday, I wrote about the testimony of Julian Assange of WikiLeaks at a Tuesday meeting of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). Assange’s testimony provided an informative overview of his persecution for helping expose disturbing government secrets.
In his testimony, Assange stepped back at times from the particulars of his story to address broader issues related to government that are important for proponents of freedom of speech and press, and opponents of warmongering, to understand. Then, in his answering of questions after his testimony, Assange provided some insightful description of a dangerous government tendency that it is important for people to understand.
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TikTok Bans Glenn Greenwald
On Sunday, I wrote about Glenn Greenwald’s insightful discussion at his System Update news show last week about how American politicians’ threats to ban TikTok are part of the effort to gain greater government control over the social media platform that has already, Greenwald stated, “had to agree more and more” to implement United States government censorship demands.
Here is an update. TikTok has since banned Greenwald’s System Update from its social media platform.
Five years back, technology companies were hitting their stride with cracking down on alternative voices. That crackdown has continued over the ensuing years. Further, evidence has increasingly been revealed that fills out the story of how United States government agents have behind the scenes been pushing the crackdown.
In his latest weekly editorial titled “Why You Should Use Cash to Buy Guns” legal scholar and Ron Paul institute Advisory Board member Andrew Napolitano discusses how credit card companies have newly put in place a means to track credit card users’ purchases at gun shops. For people who continue to use credit cards for purchases at gun shops, Napolitano warns that the results can include United States government agents reviewing their purchase histories and even showing up on their doorsteps asking to see their guns.
Twice this century, a greater number of Americans, when asked a yearly Gallup survey question, said their opinion aligns more with the view that government “should do more to solve problems” than with the view that government is “trying to do too many things.” The first time was in 2001, shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The second time was in 2020, in the midst of the coronavirus scare. Fear, pumped up incessantly by people in government, media, and beyond, at these two time periods helped lead to a big shift in the poll answers. Every other year, polled people’s opinions came out with a plurality or majority aligned with the view that the government does too much.
In January, I wrote about a then-upcoming vote by Amazon shareholders on a resolution calling for the company’s board of directors to “prohibit sales of facial recognition technology to government agencies unless the Board concludes, after an evaluation using independent evidence, that the technology does not cause or contribute to actual or potential violations of civil and human rights.”
Here is an update. In May, in a vote of Amazon shareholders, a resolution to prevent the sales failed, receiving less than three percent of votes cast. Also, as noted in a Reuters report on the vote, a second proposal calling for the company to take the more limited step of studying how its Rekognition facial recognition technology harms civil rights and privacy also failed, receiving just 27.5 percent support.